Custom NPC/Monster creation

[Hirsute]

Hi all,

Really new to HL here, and I've been very pleased so far. I'm trying to create a custom Monster right now, and I've done it thus far by taking an NPC, adding a race and then adding class levels/templates to it, but that's resulting in a lot of overlapping abilities, abilities that don't actually do anything or are inappropriate for the monster I'm trying to create, etc, so I'm wondering if there's a preferred method for doing this that I'm not finding.

I've looked in the editor, and have created custom items, feats, traits and materials there already, but I'm not finding a custom monster/npc option.

Any recommendations of how to do this short of opening up an XML file in a text editor and just manually writing the code?

 

[Mathias]

What do you want to do that can't be accomplished by creating a new race for your monster?

 

[Hirsute]

That's actually the kind of suggestion I was looking for. I hadn't thought about making a custom race, I'll look into that.