D&D General 2014 vs 2024: Monster HP and Resistances

[Sword of Spirit]

Sigh. There is a formula because the instructions they give to their business partners instruct them to use it to determine a monster's CR. I am more and more convinced that tge formula is exact = you fill in the fields in the spreadsheet and it says "This is the CR", and if you are working with WotC you are required to put that CR in your monster statblock.

Now, if the CR is higher or lower than you wanted, you can do things like give or take a HD or change the size of a damage die (or ability scores that determine your modifiers) so that the inputs will change to give you what you are looking for.

Good monster design is an art. Figuring out what CR is produced from a given set of monster stats is an exact science.

 

[Minigiant]

4E monster and encounter building guidelines were a bit more open about this, and they also realized that just a higher CR is not neccessarily enough to create a viable "boss" or "lone monster" type challenge, and that a hoard of low level CR monsters still requires a lot of book-keeping, so it created minions, Elite and Solo monster types.
Monsters of your level basically had damage output, defenses and attacks suitable for a party of that level.
4E then scaled the XP per monster so it could suggest encounter budgets to help you guide toward what kind of challenge a given group of enemies would be. (Whether you use that prespective or descrptively is ultimately up to you). EIther way, you still have an extra step to take, because just the level is not enough to tell you the real threat level for your party

4E used 1 on 1 skrimisher monsters being the standard. Then it scaled upward on resources for elites and solos. This gave them more leeway so that they could face it.

5e when back to making solos the standard and pared down. So they had less leeway.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think that kinda represents a move from the players always fighting a monster, versus the characters fighting against other people?

I don't know if that was always the case, or true in all campaigns, but I think most combats in games involve fighting against opposition that are vaguely humanoid, only occasionally you fight a big bad evil like a dragon or some archmage or bandit king.

So there seems some assumption that you are basically putting in a number of monsters equal to the number of party members. You have a smaller party, you take less monsters, but you can still take the same ones, if you have a larger party, you can take more monsters.
It gets more complicated of course then when you want to have a big bad boss supported by his henchmen, or a big lone monster that the party is going to engage on its own, or if you want to fight a horde of enemies. Suddenly you need to use much lower or higher CRs.


4E monster and encounter building guidelines were a bit more open about this, and they also realized that just a higher CR is not neccessarily enough to create a viable "boss" or "lone monster" type challenge, and that a hoard of low level CR monsters still requires a lot of book-keeping, so it created minions, Elite and Solo monster types.
Monsters of your level basically had damage output, defenses and attacks suitable for a party of that level.
4E then scaled the XP per monster so it could suggest encounter budgets to help you guide toward what kind of challenge a given group of enemies would be. (Whether you use that prespective or descrptively is ultimately up to you). EIther way, you still have an extra step to take, because just the level is not enough to tell you the real threat level for your party.

Either way, even if a Level 4 monster was a suitable challenge for a 4th Level party. What if you want them to fight 4? What's a reasoanble CR value then? You kinda always have a situation where you can't just take equal level = reasonable challenge. ANd the math always ends up more complicated then you'd like.

May have been the theory. They rewrote the MM essentially.

Even then they messed up the entire concept. Some of the creatures were notoriously OP fir their CR while others were complete jokes (Dragons for example).

3 editions in a row cant get CR right. Arguably they've all done worse than 2E which identified nasty abilities and valued those monsters more than ones with high AC or damage.

5.5 has done a lot better but the updated 5.0 monsters still kinda suck. The newer 5.5 exclusive ones are a lit closer to what I would expect.

All the ingredients are their hey just haven't figured it out. Greater magic resistance for example needs to be on more creatures and the games still saddled with the idiotic saving throws decisions of 2012-14.

Doesn't matter how tough you make a creature if it has a weak wisdom save or lacks immunity to various things players have easy access to.

BG3 had better boss designs for example. CR10s with a boatload of resistances and immunities and 350-450 hp.

Level 6 encounter. If WotC is using a spreadsheet sheet there's your problem.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was given to understand that there wasn't actually a formula at all, at least not in 2014. They used the formula, and then did playtesting and found the formula led to undesirable results. So they just...eyeballed it, more or less. Vibes-based design, tweaking CRs up or down until they seemed to work more or less alright. It's part of why CR is such a poor guideline; it just...isn't systematic.

But that is just what I've heard, admittedly in one case what was claimed by a credited consultant, but still, hearsay. It could be that it really was more systematic.

I’d heard something similar at one point, but reading @tomedunn ’s work on analyzing 5e’s monsters, I have a hard time believing it. He’s found a very strong correlation between effective HP, effective damage per round, and monster XP. I would believe that values were tweaked slightly from a mathematically derived baseline, but the idea that it’s mostly vibes-based just doesn’t seem consistent with how closely those three values seem to relate to each other.

 

[Zardnaar]

I’d heard something similar at one point, but reading @tomedunn ’s work on analyzing 5e’s monsters, I have a hard time believing it. He’s found a very strong correlation between effective HP, effective damage per round, and monster XP. I would believe that values were tweaked slightly from a mathematically derived baseline, but the idea that it’s mostly vibes-based just doesn’t seem consistent with how closely those three values seem to relate to each other.

Vibes based might make better monsters.

If theyre using a spreadsheet its not a very good one. I suppose you can use it for basic stuff AC, damage, hit points.

Those things dont matter to much in 5.5.

AC. Not high enough.
Hp either bloated or still not enough
Damage. Already tuned really high on new monsters.

Xp budgets got tweaked. Theyre high enough to allow huge amounts of fodder starting from level 1 or 2 (Goblin minions 25 xp). The rules recommend you dont do that.

If you go the other way to a few creatures are usually very vulnerable control spells. 1-2 monsters per PC serms to be the sweet spot. Later on thst can still lead to grinding combats due to hp bloat.

Hordes. Dont work. To weak vs copious AoE available to most classes.

Solos. Dont work focus fire.

Few creatures. Can work very vulnerable to control shutdown.

Moderate amount of creatures works best but buckets of hp.
.
Encounter budgets. CR 1 us 100xp give or take. You can have 1 CR 5 or 18CR 1s. Your xp budgets in the10-20k range later on.

How much do you value rapid combat?
. Looking throw AiF and new starter set WotC defaults to 5 or so creatures in a lot of encounters. I count that as a few. I haven't checked if they're using the encounter guidelines RAW.

 

[tomedunn]

Figured I would chime in because I looked at this with my dataset a while back.

Comparing 2024 monster HP with their 2024 counterparts isn't especially revealing because some of those monsters changed in other ways beyond just their resistances/immunities and their HP. The best way I found to look at the question of how valuable resistances and immunities are was to look at how their calculated XP values compared to the value assigned to their CR when their damage mitigation stats weren't accounted for.

For example, following the 2014 DMG a CR 4 monster with multiple damage resistances should could as having twice their normal HP when determining their CR. If we exclude this effect then then their XP value should be half (1/2) the target value listed for their CR.

Doing that for non-legendary monsters with 3+ resistances and no immunities gives the following (the dashed line is what you'd expect from the "Creating a Monster" rules in the 2014 DMG).

While the data is messy, 2014 monster tend to follow the 2014 DMG, while 2024 monsters don't seem to follow much trend at all.

Applying the same approach to non-legendary monsters with 3+ immunities (resistances don't matter here) gives the following.

While the data is also messy, both 2014 and 2024 monsters appear to follow the trend we'd expect from the 2014 DMG.

 

[Zardnaar]

Figured I would chime in because I looked at this with my dataset a while back.

Comparing 2024 monster HP with their 2024 counterparts isn't especially revealing because some of those monsters changed in other ways beyond just their resistances/immunities and their HP. The best way I found to look at the question of how valuable resistances and immunities are was to look at how their calculated XP values compared to the value assigned to their CR when their damage mitigation stats weren't accounted for.

For example, following the 2014 DMG a CR 4 monster with multiple damage resistances should could as having twice their normal HP when determining their CR. If we exclude this effect then then their XP value should be half (1/2) the target value listed for their CR.

Doing that for non-legendary monsters with 3+ resistances and no immunities gives the following (the dashed line is what you'd expect from the "Creating a Monster" rules in the 2014 DMG).
View attachment 426709
While the data is messy, 2014 monster tend to follow the 2014 DMG, while 2024 monsters don't seem to follow much trend at all.

Applying the same approach to non-legendary monsters with 3+ immunities (resistances don't matter here) gives the following.
View attachment 426710
While the data is also messy, both 2014 and 2024 monsters appear to follow the trend we'd expect from the 2014 DMG.

Under the 2014 rules what CR is the assassin (5.5) supposed to be?

 

[tomedunn]

Under the 2014 rules what CR is the assassin (5.5) supposed to be?

Following the 2014 rules, the 2024 assassin would be CR 8 (defensive CR 3, offensive CR 14, average CR 8.5) assuming no adjustments to their effective AC or AB from Cunning Action and Evasion.

Valuing these is a bit tricky. Evasion is like a weaker version of the 2014 demilich's Avoidance trait, which the 2014 DMG values at +1 AC. And Cunning Action is like the 2014 goblin's Nimble Escape ability, which the 2014 DMG values at +4 AC and +4 AB. Since the assassin makes three attacks compared to the goblin's one, +1 AB is a more reasonable offensive adjustment.

Putting these all together shifts the 2024 assassin to CR 10 (defensive CR 6, offensive CR 14) using the 2014 DMG rules for calculating CR. The bonus to AC from Cunning Action is also arguably an overestimate given the tools mid level PCs have to circumvent hidden enemies. So I would consider this a soft CR 10, leaning towards CR 9.

When I calculate the assassin's CR using the same assumptions via XP I get a solid CR 9, just below the XP target for that CR.

 

[Zardnaar]

Following the 2014 rules, the 2024 assassin would be CR 8 (defensive CR 3, offensive CR 14, average CR 8.5) assuming no adjustments to their effective AC or AB from Cunning Action and Evasion.

Valuing these is a bit tricky. Evasion is like a weaker version of the 2014 demilich's Avoidance trait, which the 2014 DMG values at +1 AC. And Cunning Action is like the 2014 goblin's Nimble Escape ability, which the 2014 DMG values at +4 AC and +4 AB. Since the assassin makes three attacks compared to the goblin's one, +1 AB is a more reasonable offensive adjustment.

Putting these all together shifts the 2024 assassin to CR 10 (defensive CR 6, offensive CR 14) using the 2014 DMG rules for calculating CR. The bonus to AC from Cunning Action is also arguably an overestimate given the tools mid level PCs have to circumvent hidden enemies. So I would consider this a soft CR 10, leaning towards CR 9.

When I calculate the assassin's CR using the same assumptions via XP I get a solid CR 9, just below the XP target for that CR.

Ah I see. My players ripped them apart with command and hold person..

Very weak for CR imho. Looks like they dont account for defenses.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah I see. My players ripped them apart with command and hold person..

Very weak for CR imho. Looks like they dont account for defenses.

They account for defenses. It’s just that they have to make some baseline assumptions, and the assumptions they make tend to try to replicate a party built with fairly average player skill. Highly optimized groups like yours aren’t going to match those assumptions, so CRs are likely to feel low to you. This is why having a human brain running the game instead of a computer is beneficial. You know your own group better than any designer ever could, so you can make adjustments according to how your group fares in actual play, instead of relying on pure white room assumptions that to try to accommodate as wide a range of players as possible like the designers have to do.