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TWG_Prometheus 01-28-04, 03:14 PM

I've been having problems lately designing monsters for the campaign I've been running. Many of the monster types that exist in the campaign setting in high amounts aren't tough enough to compete on the scale of the PCs, but when I attempt to add Hit Dice to the creatures, odd things happen and the rules in the 3.5 Monster Manual aren't up to the task. For instance, a Nymph advances by HD according to the Monster Manual, and although I'm allowing some Nymphs the ability to go up in class levels as well, I want some of them to focus on their inherent abilities. Many of the abilities are nice and easy to figure out...feats and abilities go up with HD along with Save DCs ect. When I get to the spell-like abilites and Druid spell levels of a Nymph, however, I'm totally at a loss. A Nymph can dimension door once per day at caster level 7 and can cast Druid spells at 7th level. This matches well with its CR, but nothing about CR should be determining those factors. The Nymph base HD is 6, but there's no explanation of why a Nymph would cast at level 7 if they are character level 6. (I'm avoiding ECL, yes, but that's an issue that deals with PCs, not NPCs.) Another issue that has been giving me trouble is with the difference in how spell resistance is defined between a Hound Archon and a Succubus, for instance. Hound Archons have a nice little statistics block for designing Hound Archons with additional character levels, and it indicates that their SR is 16 (10 + racial HD, I infer) plus their class levels. That's all well and good, but when I attempt a similar operation on a Succubus with no such statistics block, I see an SR of 18. The same formula does not appear to apply, as they also have 6 racial HD in the most common version, but no obvious progression path. I'm currently leaving their SR at 18, but that just doesn't feel right given what a Hound Archon gets. One of the guys I play with insists that whenever the Monster Manual doesn't specify how something advances, it simply does not, but that seems a very hack-job approach to adding HD to me. Currently that's the approach I'm using with both the Nymph issue and the Succubus vs Hound Archon issue since I don't know what else to do, but I'm left feeling that the rules are horribly vague when it comes to adding HD. The 3.5 Monster Manual rules section about Advancing Monsters in chapter 4 doesn't even touch those issues. Although it gives great detail about CR and Templates, the Advancing Monsters section *doesn't* tell you how to advance a Monster beyond their most basic statistics. Thanks for putting up with the long post. Any thoughts? Is there any place I can go for solid answers?