Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 J-Dubya May 21, 2015 21:53:27	As a DM, I find it tough to bring to fruition the world that I have envisioned in my head, prepare the world for my players to enter into it, and create encounters and challenges that they should face.   How do I properly "build" my own monster or NPC?  Sure, I can manipulate the stats of a current/existing monster from the books. But I want to create a unique type of monster. Here is the current theme of my world... or something like it. A demilich (actually a deposed god *alignment: good*), subjugated by a thrall of MindFlayers led by a Lich. Each Mindflayer is a specialist in his or her own field of magic. And not all of them are as versed as the others. Some have advanced to higher levels than others.  I want to manipulate these monsters and correctly determine their actual CR and HP.   A solution that I thought of today: Give spells, items, ability increases, proficiencies, innate spellcasting, and all other aspects of creating a monster point values. As the sum total of the points increases, so does the CR. It's like creating an all you can eat buffet to create your monster. You want a lower level vampire? Excellent! Here are the basic stats for a vampire, reduce these two abilities, its proficiency bonus, and the damage per attack. This should lower the CR by one or two levels. Oh! you want lower... fine...let's take out this ability.
#2 Xeviat-DM May 22, 2015 0:58:59	There's a CR calculator in the DMG. Generally, past the first fractional levels, +1 CR is +15 HP and +6 average damage. Average damage is calculated across 3 rounds, and you assume all attacks hit, so a charge attack or a breath weapon (which generally will only be doable once in 3 rounds) gets added and then divided by 3, while a standard multiattack routine is part of the base damage.   Spellcasting increases a monster's CR if the spells are used to increase their defenses, or if the spells are their primary damage dealers and deal more damage than their basic attacks. Other abilities are flagged for potentially increasing CR (flight combined with a ranged attack increases CR below CR 10).   Check out the DMG. It's a really good book.
#3 Razintarr May 22, 2015 1:51:06	I do hope to get a more expansive list than the one in the DMG for judging how a monsters abilities affect the offensive and defensive CRs. Especially a list of how the various class abilities would affect the calculation would be very nice for making npcs. Abilities that add to damage are easy enough, but how much average damage does the increased crit from the fighter champion add (if at all)? Does the cunning action the rogue has add anything to its calculations? And what about attacks that knock prone, stun or have another side-effect?   Same with spells. The damaging ones are easy. But what will the CR be of a wizard that uses spells to hinder instead of harm? How do spells like shield affect the total CR?   As it stands, it's up to the individual DM to come up with answers to these questions, which will lead to diverse answers and differing CRs for the same creatures. I would like a more standarized approach, or at least an expanded list of abilities to use as a base for CR judgements.
#4 Xeviat-DM May 22, 2015 4:04:12	Fighter's crit adds 5% of it's damage dice per attack. Cunning action doesn't really add to a challenge, but "maybe" you could compare it to the mobility of flight and count it as something like a +1 AC boost. Attacks with riders "seem" to have lower damage in the monster manual (just a guess after digesting the beasts for my wildshape analysis), but then again the champion and battlemaster's damage numbers are nearly identical yet the battlemaster has riders (the DMG only calls out the damage from pounce, not the prone).   For offensive but non damaging spells, I'd compare them to damaging spells of the same level. Theoretically, they're balanced, so they should be equivalent. Same goes for defensive spells. Shield specifically adds to AC, so it would increase an NPCs CR if it were cast on them ahead of time.   And yes, it's definitely up to individual DMs to fiddle with this. As much as I love mechanics and analysis, I'll be the first to admit that CR doesn't mean everything. It's an estimate. It's likely to be very wrong a lot. The CR of a Bugbear is higher when they get to ambush then when they don't (though the DMG does call out these types of situations). Estimating CR is an imperfect science; all it can do is help a DM get close to fair. Mishaps are going to happen, but less so with CR than without.
#5 J-Dubya May 25, 2015 0:40:22	Thanks for the feedback so far Xeviat-DM and Razintarr. I just went back and edited my original post. *It's amazing how poorly one writes at 1:00 a.m. after a 4 hour D&D session and no sleep for 30 hours.   I have a copy of the DMG and have read through the DM tools where it explains monster building. I just don't like it. It's far too vague. I have many of the same concerns and questions as Razintarr. I guess that the only way to actually get any better at building monsters is to continually practice doing so.