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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9550910" data-attributes="member: 7023887">That is not sufficient for most monsters I make. I do often base monster stat blocks off of an official one, but not always. And even when I do, it usually involves changing the CR, in which case it is necessary to consult the homebrewing monsters table. I recently made a monster that was a Giant Spider that had fed on a Vampire and turned into a vampiric giant spider. Giant Spiders are CR 1, and I wanted the monster to be a decent challenge for 3 level 3 players, so I made it CR 4 and gave it a couple Spidersilk Mummy servants (simply reflavored Zombies with Fire vulnerability). While I could base most of the Spider’s ability’s on the Giant Spider (Web, bite), I changed a lot of the stat block to increase the challenge and fit the flavor (vampiric health drain on the bite, a fly speed, more hit points, damage resistances). I would not have been able to calculate the appropriate amount of hit points and damage without the 2014 5e DMG guidelines. If I had looked at other CR 4 monsters, I would have had to consult several different stat blocks to see the range of health and DPR they had and then try to reverse engineer the guidelines from that. The fight went well because I used the guidelines. It was exactly as difficult as I had wanted it to be. That likely wouldn’t have been true if I had just winged it by using the Couatl stats or something and drastically changing it on the fly to make it work.</blockquote>

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