D&D General 2024 Monster Creation

Xeviat

Dungeon Mistress, she/her
Keep me informed. I definitely want a monster building system that uses character levels and eliminates CR.

The trick is, they need an extraordinarily high amount of hit points to survive a round of attacks from player characters, but cant deal too much damage or they will one-shot a player character.

But it is still possible to think in terms of character levels.
Seems like you'll want something like 4E. 1 monster per PC of equal level is a standard fight. Since the 4 players vs copies of themselves should, by its nature, be very deadly, a monster of level X would need to be weaker than a PC of level X.

Then you have elite monsters that have twice the HP and more attacks, and you have solos that have 4 or 5 times the HP and have more area attacks or round by round damage.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Yaarel

🇮🇱He-Mage
Seems like you'll want something like 4E. 1 monster per PC of equal level is a standard fight. Since the 4 players vs copies of themselves should, by its nature, be very deadly, a monster of level X would need to be weaker than a PC of level X.

Then you have elite monsters that have twice the HP and more attacks, and you have solos that have 4 or 5 times the HP and have more area attacks or round by round damage.
Not necessarily.

A level 5 monster versus a level 5 adventurer should mean a 50%-50% survival rate.

Since player adventurers are supposed to survive more often, I would rather have the level assessment be accurately what it is. But then give the DM recommendations such as, typically pit a level 5 adventurer against a level 3 monster.
 

dave2008

Legend
not sure whether they considered it one, to me it was one back then, just without official support
What was a monster building guideline in 1e, 2e, or BECMI? I haven't looked at 1e & 2e in years, but I definitely don't remember any guidelines for making monsters when I started playing.
 

dave2008

Legend
Seems like you'll want something like 4E. 1 monster per PC of equal level is a standard fight. Since the 4 players vs copies of themselves should, by its nature, be very deadly, a monster of level X would need to be weaker than a PC of level X.
In my scheme a monster of level X = a PC of level X. So yes, that is deadly (50/50) fight.
 

No, it’s because the fans would rip it to shreds.

People who actually have to ship product are far less rigorous than obsessive fans.

Keep it secret to maintain the mystique that they know what they are doing.
I've actually thought of this possibility too...and if anything it's more disappointing than the other one.

I think it's more than the info is too much.

That in order to properly explain all of the implied aspects you would have to explain a lot about the various information about DMing and then the process then all the math behind it and the entire information dump would be several pages that most people would not read and would take up space In otherwise very important book.

The people who would actually read all the information can already figure it out.

The people who "need" it won't read it.

The people who will read it don't "need" it and will know exactly how to criticize it.

It's no conspiracy. It's just word count and page count. A half dozen charts and tables minimum. A dozen if you do it right. And pages and pages of explanations.

Monster Design is more complex than Adventure Design. Way more than Campaign Design. And less cool. And more math.
I think there is a lot of sense to that, but I have a couple points on it.

I believe there are quite a few things out there that nobody has likely yet figured out. I had not noticed the ribbon principle--that some features are not considered at all in race/class balance--ever come up as a possibility in fan discussion before we were actually told it. Converting effects into average damage of comparable spell levels is more likely to be figured out (I used something like that in my attunement revisions) but it wasn't obvious or well-know enough that everyone wanting guidelines already knew it when it came up on this thread.

When WotC explicitly puts the info out in writing it's much more accessible to more people.

Also, yeah it could take some page count, but we are mostly talking about sidebars scattered through the DMG with "behind the scenes" info. Is there a significant contingent of people who do not like those and feel like they are a waste? I love them.
 

Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
I think there is a lot of sense to that, but I have a couple points on it.

I believe there are quite a few things out there that nobody has likely yet figured out. I had not noticed the ribbon principle--that some features are not considered at all in race/class balance--ever come up as a possibility in fan discussion before we were actually told it. Converting effects into average damage of comparable spell levels is more likely to be figured out (I used something like that in my attunement revisions) but it wasn't obvious or well-know enough that everyone wanting guidelines already knew it when it came up on this thread.

When WotC explicitly puts the info out in writing it's much more accessible to more people.
I remember a podcast, I think Ghostfire Gaming's, where the interviewed people who worked on the DMG and MM.

The two people who worked on them talked about the secret formula and secret rules on designed spells, monsters, etc.

And the way they talk made the sound like a huge complex document with a ton of formulas and excel sheets.
 





Remove ads

Top