D&D (2024) 2025's Ancient Green Dragon Stat Block From The New Monster Manual

The new ancient green dragon from the 2025 Monster Manual was previewed at Gen Con.

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[Thommy H-H]

Completely off-topic, so I will ask there, but why doesn't A5E take those into account?

Because, at the risk of opening a whole can of worms, there is a pervasive belief among some segments of the community that the DMG guidelines for CR don't work even on their own terms, and various hacks of 5E dispense with them altogether for that reason.

In actuality, the DMG guidelines are bang on for 99% of all officially published 5E monsters (dragons are the main exception - their CRs are lower than they should be). A notorious blog post basically misunderstood how the steps were supposed to work, referring solely to the main table in that section completely out of context, and concluding therefore that the numbers were all wrong because no monster in the MM or otherwise fits into those bands. But that's not how that table works - you're meant to start with it and then tweak up and down based on everything else the monster can do.

Now, whether those CRs in and of themselves represent what they're meant to is a separate question. High CR monsters are generally weaker than the encounter guidelines imply, and that appears (judging by this new green dragon's CR) to be something that's at least somewhat remedied for 2024, because that thing hits much harder than its 2014 sibling, and the dragons, as I mentioned, were already out of whack for their CRs!

So, we don't know quite what the guidance for building monsters in the 2024 DMG will look like. By the 2014 numbers, this dragon should be way up the scale (no pun intended), but it might be that they've tweaked the formula to make higher CR monsters tougher.

 

[dave2008]

Completely off-topic, so I will ask there, but why doesn't A5E take those into account?

I don't really want to get into it, but I don't agree with Paul's approach with A5e. If you want a more detailed response DM me

 

[dave2008]

Which interview? Would love to read

I'm sorry I don't remember which thread / interview it was, but it was linked on these forums. If I get time inwill try to find it

 

[Shardstone]

Because, at the risk of opening a whole can of worms, there is a pervasive belief among some segments of the community that the DMG guidelines for CR don't work even on their own terms, and various hacks of 5E dispense with them altogether for that reason.

In actuality, the DMG guidelines are bang on for 99% of all officially published 5E monsters (dragons are the main exception - their CRs are lower than they should be). A notorious blog post basically misunderstood how the steps were supposed to work, referring solely to the main table in that section completely out of context, and concluding therefore that the numbers were all wrong because no monster in the MM or otherwise fits into those bands. But that's not how that table works - you're meant to start with it and then tweak up and down based on everything else the monster can do.

Now, whether those CRs in and of themselves represent what they're meant to is a separate question. High CR monsters are generally weaker than the encounter guidelines imply, and that appears (judging by this new green dragon's CR) to be something that's at least somewhat remedied for 2024, because that thing hits much harder than its 2014 sibling, and the dragons, as I mentioned, were already out of whack for their CRs!

So, we don't know quite what the guidance for building monsters in the 2024 DMG will look like. By the 2014 numbers, this dragon should be way up the scale (no pun intended), but it might be that they've tweaked the formula to make higher CR monsters tougher.

Mearls on his patreon, creator of the system, has said several times cr sucks and has replaced it in his desings with new math. He said they took guidelines from 3.5, edited it s but, and usee it due to time crunch for 5e.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Mearls on his patreon, creator of the system, has said several times cr sucks and has replaced it in his desings with new math. He said they took guidelines from 3.5, edited it s but, and usee it due to time crunch for 5e.

Yes, that's true of the encounter difficulty guidelines. It's not true of the CR calculation for monster creation in the DMG, which is accurate to basically every 5e monster WOTC have published. If that happened by accident, it would be a remarkable coincidence!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Mearls on his patreon, creator of the system, has said several times cr sucks and has replaced it in his desings with new math. He said they took guidelines from 3.5, edited it s but, and usee it due to time crunch for 5e.

Well, he is replacing it with a totally different system: giving monsters levels not CR. That is really something quite different and has nothing to do with the accuracy of the CR calculator and more to do with encounter design. Which are separate things in 5e

 

[Shardstone]

Well, he is replacing it with a totally different system: giving monsters levels not CR. That is really something quite different and has nothing to do with the accuracy of the CR calculator and more to do with encounter design. Which are separate things in 5e

The point of my post is that mearls literally said the old system did not work. His solution being to make a new system doesnt mean the old system worked when he literally did not work.

 

[Thommy H-H]

The point of my post is that mearls literally said the old system did not work. His solution being to make a new system doesnt mean the old system worked when he literally did not work.

Again: he's overhauling the CR system and encounter building system as a whole. This has nothing to do with whether the CR calculation in the DMG is accurate on its own terms or not. I've designed hundreds of monsters during the lifetime of 5E, and picked apart many, many of the officially published ones in the process. The monster creation rules work as described.

For example, if I plug the numbers in from a CR 20 monster into the DMG's formula, I get a result of CR 20. Whether that CR 20 is as much of a challenge as intended, according to the encounter building guidelines, is nothing to do with that math.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

The point of my post is that mearls literally said the old system did not work. His solution being to make a new system doesnt mean the old system worked when he literally did not work.

My point is the CR calculator works and what Mearls is saying is using CR for encounter building doesn’t work. Those sre different things and can both be true.

One is a system for determine a monsters CR.

The other is a system for determining a combat’s difficulty. Which actually uses XP not CR, but related, is dependent on the number of monsters and the number of PC.

 

[dave2008]

The point of my post is that mearls literally said the old system did not work. His solution being to make a new system doesnt mean the old system worked when he literally did not work.

Can you share the whole quote? I ask because I imagine he is talking about using CR to design combat encounters and not about the method to calculate a monster's CR. His use of monster levels in his recent monster design is primarily about fixing how to design combat encounters, not about fixing monster design itself (though he goes into that as well)