Lots of statistics from the Monster Manual

[kerbarian]

Hey, I was wondering if you could make the raw data available? The analysis, while useful, is still flawed. Means are susceptible to outliers, of which I know there are several in the MM. I'm interested in seeing the median, the quartiles, and the standard distribution of the data.

This, I feel, is more useful for the DM, to learn what really is a challenge, what is exceptionally weak, etc. In addition, I have a gut feeling the data isn't centered around a single median, but has a few clumps.

The raw data I used is just the full text of the MM from the pdf (available here or here). I selected the entire pdf, then copied and pasted it into a text file.

What I can provide is the perl script I used for parsing. My first script, which I used for most of the statistics, operated on a text file that had a lot of somewhat manual pre-processing done to it, so that script wouldn't be very useful. The latest analysis script, though (for monster attacks), is much cleaner and operates directly on the pdf text, so I've included that script.

I'm hoping to spend a little more time on this soon and do some of the extra analysis that has been requested, and in the process I'm planning to convert the rest of the analysis over to the new style and add comments. If/when that happens, I'll have a much more thorough perl script I can post. Until then, this script at least contains the basics for separating out monster entries and such.

parse_MM_attacks.pl:
[sblock]

#!/usr/bin/perl

open MMFILE, $ARGV[0] or die("usage: $0 <filename>\n");
read MMFILE, $mm_text, 1e7 or die;

@entries = ($mm_text =~ /(^[^\n]*Level \d+ (?:Elite |Solo )?(?:Artillery|Brute|Controller|Lurker|Minion|Skirmisher|Soldier).*?Cha \d+ \(.?\d+\))/gsm);
for $entry (@entries)
{
	$entry =~ s/\s+/ /g;
	$entry =~ s/Refl ex/Reflex/g;
	
	$entry =~ /Level (\d+)/;
	$level = $1;
	if($level <= 10) {
		$tier = 0;
	} elsif($level <= 20) {
		$tier = 1;
	} else {
		$tier = 2;
	}
	
	$count[$tier]++;
	$count[3]++;
	
	@attacks = ($entry =~ /(\+\d+ vs\.? (?:AC|Fortitude|Reflex|Will))/g);
	@def_seen = ();
	for $attack (@attacks) {
		$attack =~ /\+(\d+) vs\.? (AC|Fortitude|Reflex|Will)/;
		if($2 eq "AC") {
			$def = 0;
		} elsif($2 eq "Fortitude") {
			$def = 1;
		} elsif($2 eq "Reflex") {
			$def = 2;
		} else {
			$def = 3;
		}
		
		if(!$def_seen[$def]) {
			$def_seen[$def] = 1;
			$def_count[$tier][$def]++;
			$def_count[3][$def]++;
		}
		
		$attack_minus_level[$tier][$def] += $1 - $level;
		$attack_minus_level[3][$def] += $1 - $level;
		$attack_count[$tier][$def]++;
		$attack_count[3][$def]++;
	}
	
	if($def_seen[0] == 1 && $def_seen[1] == 0 && $def_seen[2] == 0 && $def_seen[3] == 0) {
		$def_count[$tier][4]++;
		$def_count[3][4]++;
	}
}

for $def (0 .. 4) {
	for $tier (0 .. 3) {
		printf "%10.1f", 100 * $def_count[$tier][$def] / $count[$tier];
	}
	print "\n";
}

print "\n";

for $def (0 .. 3) {
	for $tier (0 .. 3) {
		printf "%10.2f", $attack_minus_level[$tier][$def] / $attack_count[$tier][$def];
	}
	print "\n";
}

[/sblock]

 

[Zeroth]

Okay, guess I will be compiling the raw dataset from the from the MM then. Like I said, there are plenty of outliers, unusual cases, etc.

 

[Helepolis]

Well, I can't help with much of it, but if you're interested, I went through the MM and counted up the number of resistant/vulnerable/immune monsters of each energy type.

On another note, I also counted what energy keywords are used by every player power in the PHB, divided by class.

Yeah, I was bored. But never would have been able to pull out something like what the OP did here. This is amazing.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

What had resistance to poison beside Undead and the green dragon? I find that a shame, because I like poison damage.

Off the top of my head, constructs are also immune, and Yuan-ti resist.

 

[Helepolis]

Worth noting is that there's about 4, literally, powers in the PHB that deal poison damage.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

So it seems to me that radiant damage that attacks will is very useful.

Having a high will defense of your own, however, isn't as useful as having other high defenses.

It may seem so but attacks that target will may have worse secondary effect on average than those target reflex. Getting dominated by a vampire is rather annoying, for example...

It's hard to really determine which defend is the most useful just from these numbers (though they are great stuff!).

Maybe we could do even more math and attach a value to the secondary effect and see, on average, which defenses protect the PCs against the worst secondary effects. Weeee!

 

[Vaeron]

Wow... Nice work

 

[Perenon]

Hi.
Are there any statistics about which type of damage monsters are able to deal?
I.e. like 10% of all monsters (respectively all monsters of heroic tier etc.) can deal fire damage, 2% deal psychic damage...

I didn't find a table about this information here, so does anyone know another site to look for it? Or did i maybe just fail to see it here?

Thx!

 

[Perenon]

*bump*

No one has seen anything of that kind?

 

[Rel]

No one has seen anything of that kind?

Might be worth doing some Advanced Searches using the Compendium to see if you could compile that kind of info.