D&D 5E DMG Creating Monster Disparity

[Psikerlord#]

I find the best way to make monsters is use the MM ones as a guide. Tweak them from there. Keep your particular party and their capabilities in mind as you do so. Tada, new bad guys ready to rock.

I have never made a monster using the half defence half offence CR guidelines. I only ever skimmed those rules and frankly it looks like far more work than necessary.

I havent had any problems just reskinning, tweaking, etc the existing monsters. Go by feel but keep in mind your particular PCs.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

Good old eyeballing is key.

 

[SkidAce]

Which is what I was doing when I noticed the disparity.

I was re-skinning a wyrmling brass dragon as a kinda Final Fantasy Couatl boss creature. And I remembered that the guidelines in the DMG said a CR 1 was...

A single monster with a challenge rating equal to the adventures' level is, by itself, a fair challenge for a group of four characters. If the monster is meant to be fought in pairs or groups, its expected challenge rating should be lower than the party's level.

so that meant a CR 1 was a solo for a level 1 group of four.


Then after changing the fluff for my Couatl, I noticed the wrymling had only 16 hp. Which caused me to look at the expected HP by CR on the same page. 71-85.

I mean maybe the wrymling is still a viable "fair" challenge for a level one party, breath weapon and all. But in my experience so far, he's toast.

Like I said, I bumped my Couatl's hp to 50, and round one they did 9 damage to it (the fighter missed, the rouge xbowed it, and the wizard fire bolted. The couatl took 9 damage and missed its bite.) Its going to breath weapon next round (PbP) so we shall see.

BL: Maybe from a very broad stroke view that quote is accurate, but I'm not feeling it, especially with the monsters at low CR from the MM.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Which is what I was doing when I noticed the disparity.

I was re-skinning a wyrmling brass dragon as a kinda Final Fantasy Couatl boss creature. And I remembered that the guidelines in the DMG said a CR 1 was...



so that meant a CR 1 was a solo for a level 1 group of four.


Then after changing the fluff for my Couatl, I noticed the wrymling had only 16 hp. Which caused me to look at the expected HP by CR on the same page. 71-85.

The breath can potentially do 24 damage and at d10+2 the wyrmling can crit for 22 damage with it's bite, either of which is lethal from full HP to most characters. Even a normal hit after an average breath weapon is potentially lethal to most characters.

The problem isn't that the fight isn't challenging, there is a very real threat of character death here, but despite that, it isn't interesting because it is short and will be decided, possibly catastrophically, by a couple die rolls rather than any meaningful decisions by the PCs.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The problem isn't that the fight isn't challenging, there is a very real threat of character death here, but despite that, it isn't interesting because it is short and will be decided, possibly catastrophically, by a couple die rolls rather than any meaningful decisions by the PCs.

It's a little rocket-taggy, but low-level D&D plays a little rocket-taggy - the decisions of note the players make are largely about how and when and under what circumstances to fight in the first place, and there are still important choices to make in combat (like how to impose disadvantage on that bite, or when to knock the flying creature prone, or how to move so that the breath can't catch the whole party), but these decisions need to be made quick. That helps the "low levels are deadly" vibe and it keeps combat flowing quick, so how big of a problem it is depends on what one really considers to be a problem.

Low level MM critters don't have the "epic boss battle solo" build, and I think this is intentional - those kinds of creatures are considered higher-level fights, because in game logic, 1st level adventurers are apprentices and amateurs, not dragon-slayers and demon-stoppers. Not that this should stop individual DMs from making high DCR solos at low levels, just that this might be something of the thought behind why the MM doesn't have stuff like that.

 

[Quickleaf]

I think that's a great point, that the level of player agency (meaningful choices) during combats suited to levels 1 and 2 is more about overall strategy of the fight's setup than tactics within the fight itself. Moving into mid and higher levels, the monster design seems to indicate an increasing importance of tactics over strategy. That's not to say that strategy becomes unimportant, rather just that tactics become more important.

About DMs wanting the "boss monster" feel at low levels...

I think you could take a CR 1 or 2 monster, scale down its damage by 1/3 to 1/2, bump up its HP an equivalent %, and then give it a lair, complete with lair actions. The MM makes it seem like only legendary monsters get lairs, but I see no reason we can't decouple the lair rules from the legendary ones. This should ensure the monster lasts long enough to do some cool things, while reducing the risk of the monster one-shotting a low level PC at full hit points.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think that's a great point, that the level of player agency (meaningful choices) during combats suited to levels 1 and 2 is more about overall strategy of the fight's setup than tactics within the fight itself. Moving into mid and higher levels, the monster design seems to indicate an increasing importance of tactics over strategy. That's not to say that strategy becomes unimportant, rather just that tactics become more important.

In general, I think 5e combat isn't divorced from the rest of the game - you don't just make character decisions on your turn in a fight, you make them constantly in play, and a DM is expected to honor those decisions to a large degree. That is, it's FINE if your party sneaks past the orc fight or knocks the dragon prone, because the game isn't about that one fight.

If you WANT a big fight, at low levels, you tend to use minion armies - you can fit a lot of 10 XP CR 0 spiders into an level 1 encounter if you really want to.

About DMs wanting the "boss monster" feel at low levels...

I think you could take a CR 1 or 2 monster, scale down its damage by 1/3 to 1/2, bump up its HP an equivalent %, and then give it a lair, complete with lair actions. The MM makes it seem like only legendary monsters get lairs, but I see no reason we can't decouple the lair rules from the legendary ones. This should ensure the monster lasts long enough to do some cool things, while reducing the risk of the monster one-shotting a low level PC at full hit points.

One might consider "phased" encounters at low levels - one fight that's really worth two, but that changes over time. This is good at all levels, but it's especially good when monster HP totals are really low.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Yeah I hate the "legendary" monster label. They should have stuck to 4e terminology and just called it a "solo" and lair.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah I hate the "legendary" monster label. They should have stuck to 4e terminology and just called it a "solo" and lair.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the label per say; after all, in plain English it just means that there a great many legends told about the monster. The idea being that PCs don't go into an encounter with such a monster without the DM building it up in the narrative and foreshadowing what's to come.

This is not to say that many legends aren't told about wights, but they're not told about one specific wight. And if they are I'd argue that wight probably should be legendary.

I do think they could have gone further with the narrative implications of what being "legendary" means. Instead we get a really thin description that's entirely based on game mechanics - a 4e solo by another name. What I'd like to see are true/false rumor tables about legendary monsters, sources of lore written about them, knowledge check results (a la the 4e Monster Manuals, but juicier), and maybe a bit more on their ecology. Something to emphasize that yes, while "legendary" monsters have a mechanical difference to better equip them to take on entire party solo, they also have a big impact on the story.

 

[Chocolategravy]

If you WANT a big fight, at low levels, you tend to use minion armies - you can fit a lot of 10 XP CR 0 spiders into an level 1 encounter if you really want to.

More than 4 counts as a "deadly" fight, although it probably isn't. A couple flying snakes at "hard" though can wreck a party.