Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
Something is wrong with that chart. The highest possible attack bonus is +19 (unless that have changed things).
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D&D (2024) 5e 2024 − The Monster Math
- Thread starter Yaarel
- Start date
dave2008
Legend
Well, Teos said he actual asked people at WotC if this is how they still do it in 2024) and they said yes. However, the 2014 DMG strongly implies it:
"Overall Damage Output. To determine a monster’s overall damage output, take the average damage it deals with each of its attacks in a round and add them together. If a monster has different attack options, use the monster’s most effective attacks to determine its damage output. For example, a fire giant can make two greatsword attacks or one rock attack in a round. The greatsword attacks deal more damage, so that attack routine determines the fire giant’s damage output.
If a monster’s damage output varies from round to round, calculate its damage output each round for the first three rounds of combat, and take the average. For example, a young white dragon has a multiattack routine (one bite attack and two claw attacks) that deals an average of 37 damage each round, as well as a breath weapon that deals 45 damage, or 90 if it hits two targets (and it probably will). In the first three rounds of combat, the dragon will probably get to use its breath weapon once and its multiattack routine twice, so its average damage output for the first three rounds would be (90 + 37 + 37) ÷ 3, or 54 damage (rounded down).
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Also, if you follow these assumptions, with the rest of the guidelines, the CR calculator works. So, it is pretty clear actually.
mamba
Legend
except for him saying they did it for 2014 and he talked to some employees about whether they do for 2024, which was confirmed (the two targets per AoE, he did not check for the other two bits)
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Once you see the formula for the expected Attack Bonus, one can plug the numbers in for any CR.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
The Monster Math? It was a graveyard Smath!
It's interesting to consider how both the individual monsters have changed and how the encounter guidelines have changed.
This is for 12th level characters.
A hard encounter in 5.5 has 4700 xp of monsters per character. Let's assume a party of 4, for 18,800 xp
In 5e, you'd have 12,000 xp for the same encounter.
If we go with one monster for the encounter (mainly to avoid 5e's rules for adding more creatures to an encounter), we find that:
5.5 Encounter: CR 17 creature
5e Encounter: CR 14 creature
Using the 2014 DMG, that CR 14 creature is projected to do 87 to 92 damage a round. Looking at Teos' numbers, that goes up to 157 for the 5.5 CR 17 critter.
In the 2014 DMG, the CR 14 creature should have about 266 to 288 hit points. I might be misreading this, but looking at the screenshot it looks like a 5.5 creature with CR 17 would have 254 hit points. How is that lower? Weird.
The damage looks much better, but the hit points are crazy low for a creature that has to take on four characters. I watched Teos' video yesterday while working, so I'll need to double back and check it again.
Roughly speaking, there is a fundamental flaw in the math of 5e. Creatures scale poorly.
A relatively high CR creature lacks the hit points and action economy to survive long against a lower level party.
A relatively low CR creature turns into an ineffective bag of hit points against higher level parties, causing encounters to drag out.
I'm curious to see if the revisions fixes this. I was disappointed to see that the DMG encounter guidelines were so thin, because there are ways to slice the existing math without XP or CR to build out encounters (aggregate hit points and damage).
This is for 12th level characters.
A hard encounter in 5.5 has 4700 xp of monsters per character. Let's assume a party of 4, for 18,800 xp
In 5e, you'd have 12,000 xp for the same encounter.
If we go with one monster for the encounter (mainly to avoid 5e's rules for adding more creatures to an encounter), we find that:
5.5 Encounter: CR 17 creature
5e Encounter: CR 14 creature
Using the 2014 DMG, that CR 14 creature is projected to do 87 to 92 damage a round. Looking at Teos' numbers, that goes up to 157 for the 5.5 CR 17 critter.
In the 2014 DMG, the CR 14 creature should have about 266 to 288 hit points. I might be misreading this, but looking at the screenshot it looks like a 5.5 creature with CR 17 would have 254 hit points. How is that lower? Weird.
The damage looks much better, but the hit points are crazy low for a creature that has to take on four characters. I watched Teos' video yesterday while working, so I'll need to double back and check it again.
Roughly speaking, there is a fundamental flaw in the math of 5e. Creatures scale poorly.
A relatively high CR creature lacks the hit points and action economy to survive long against a lower level party.
A relatively low CR creature turns into an ineffective bag of hit points against higher level parties, causing encounters to drag out.
I'm curious to see if the revisions fixes this. I was disappointed to see that the DMG encounter guidelines were so thin, because there are ways to slice the existing math without XP or CR to build out encounters (aggregate hit points and damage).
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I think the mistake DM's make is assuming one creature can stand up to a party regardless of how hard the encounter is expected to be based on CR math. The guidance in the DMG even suggests multiple creatures per character (within reason), and their high level "Hard" encounter example is two Adult dragons AND two Fire Giants.
The design goal is obviously to have groups of monsters so they are not losing on the action economy, and for those monsters to hit very hard but not stay alive more than 2-3 rounds, to make fights faster but also feel more dangerous.
Time will tell if those guidelines along with the new Monsters achieves this, but the design goal seems apparent to me.
Individual monsters have almost never stood a chance unless they have special advantages such as being able to kite the party and avoid damage for rounds at a time.
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