D&D 5E Monsters compared- new vs old versions

[MonsterEnvy]

Have you taken into account Death Throes? That's 140 dmg in the last round of combat following the calculation guidelines, and by my calcs, the Balor's CR goes from 15 without it to 18.9 with it, rounding up to 19.

I did. But I will recalculate if I got it wrong.

Fake Edit, Just calculated it again and the Balor came to 16. Even used that fancy calculator.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I did. But I will recalculate if I got it wrong.

Fake Edit, Just calculated it again and the Balor came to 16. Even used that fancy calculator.

I'm looking at your damage. Are you assuming fiery aura and death throws only hit one target? I'm pretty sure that for area effects you should assume they hit two targets. (Really fiery aura is likely to do more since it goes of on the balor's turn and also when somebody hits it).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I'm looking at your damage. Are you assuming fiery aura and death throws only hit one target? I'm pretty sure that for area effects you should assume they hit two targets. (Really fiery aura is likely to do more since it goes of on the balor's turn and also when somebody hits it).

Firey Aura has an entry and says to only increase the damage per round as indicated in the trait.

 

[abirdcall]

I did the calculation for Balor and I got:

Defensive CR: 15
Offensive CR: 22

Averaged CR of 18.5 rounded to 19.

I'm treating the death throes as a breath weapon and assuming it hits 2 targets.

 

[abirdcall]

Firey Aura has an entry and says to only increase the damage per round as indicated in the trait.

Fiery Aura is not in the table but it is given as an example on page 278 at the top right. The book says to raise the damage per round to 20.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I did the calculation for Balor and I got:

Defensive CR: 15
Offensive CR: 22

Averaged CR of 18.5 rounded to 19.

I'm treating the death throes as a breath weapon and assuming it hits 2 targets.

I got 21 assuming Fire Aura and Death Throes Hit 2 targets for a final CR of 18.

Edit: Ahh I forgot to add one final round to fire aura. So yes it does come to 18.5 rounded up to 19.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Reading that change to False Appearance gives me a visceral reaction — Bad WotC! Don’t return to giving us rules bloat and Target DCs! Tell the DM that it looks like a tree and let sneaky descriptions, paranoid players, and “call I roll…?” gut checks continue to rule the day!

 

[TerraDave]

So a monster ability is clarified. Core math is not changing, but there is a correction to monster math--reducing damage in this case.

Both are good. When they finally get around to it, MM changes could still be substantial just from these.

 

[dave2008]

Huh? Saying what to me? . I was just saying 20 steps or even 10 are too many to be worth the time - at least to me - regardless of the outcome.

I can't tell you what is to many steps, but I ideally I want as many steps it takes to make it accurately. In general I like the CR guidelines in the DMG. My fault with them is there are not enough steps (or enough modifiers really). There are to many monsters that have features that should modify the CR math, but we don't have them listed in the DMG. Obviously this is much worse now with most of the monsters being release after the DMG was printed.

As a side note, people seem to forget how much of a problem this was in 4e too. For its apparently simple monster creations rules (which often had the same number of steps as the 5e method), it never gave you any advice on how special features or even conditions should affect the monsters level. They simply ignored that part entirely.

 

[dave2008]

Reading that change to False Appearance gives me a visceral reaction — Bad WotC! Don’t return to giving us rules bloat and Target DCs! Tell the DM that it looks like a tree and let sneaky descriptions, paranoid players, and “call I roll…?” gut checks continue to rule the day!

I think your out on a limb on this one. These are exactly the type of clarifications people* have been asking for.

*people on these forums