D&D 5E CR and Proficiency

[ExploderWizard]

I use the monster building rules only as fuzzy benchmark guide. I like to design stuff that I think has statistics to represent what I want in the game world. Then I usually do a quick reverse calculation to see what CR the system rates it.

Remember that the CR guidelines exist primarily to quantify a combat rating. NPCs that are not combatants don't need to be so fleshed out on the combat side of things. Concentrate on stats, skils, and personality and just make them as capable as they need to be.

 

[SkidAce]

95% of my worlds NPCs are listed as things like, 9th level craftsman. In other words, a 1st level peasant with a 9th level's proficiency in crafting, be it a blacksmith or whatever.

There are even a few politicians, with say +6 proficiency in persuasion/diplomacy, but still a 1st level peasants stats.

Some guards, fighters, and a few more esoteric classes get to higher levels as needed.

Basically a divide between combat/adventuring NPCs and "civilians" who are good at stuff.

 

[ProgBard]

95% of my worlds NPCs are listed as things like, 9th level craftsman. In other words, a 1st level peasant with a 9th level's proficiency in crafting, be it a blacksmith or whatever.

I like that approach, which underlines my being of two minds about the tools 5E gives for NPC building. On the one hand, I really dig the simplicity of "figure out stats and hit dice and you're pretty much there," and I'm wicked glad to not have to build every farmer and shopkeeper out of class levels. But I do miss the option of, say, an Expert NPC class to model That Guy Who Knows Everything About $STUFF.

That said, several key encounters appear in my notes as, say, "Noble/Ranger 1" just to give a little edge of PC-class powers to someone without building every significant figure as an ersatz adventurer. It makes sense for some characters to go the make-'em-like-PCs route, but not all by any means. (And, indeed, one of the things that moved me to want to make a bunch of new NPC templates was getting tired of building a new quasi-PC for each noteworthy bard or thief or necromancer the party encounters. If I can reuse the stat block for an orc or a knight, other reusable archetypes might be just as useful....)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

For monsters, I see no reason (other than maybe to speed it up a bit) not to just use the rules as written. The rules as written already tell you to give the monster any stats you want, with the sole exception of proficiency bonus. You determine that at the end. This is probably to avoid people screwing things up by doing a poor job setting it and throwing off the other math.

The circularity of the proficiency bonus/CR determination stood out to me at first, but I realized that it should pretty much always add up. The one annoyance is having to pre-guess a CR ahead of time.

With NPCs with class levels, they are build exactly like PCs and get their full proficiency bonus, etc. If they need a CR for XP, it is their level.

For NPCs without classes, I just use the NPC stats in the MM (with racial adjustments). I like to give them an extra skills or tool proficiencies where appropriate. For someone who is supposed to be really good, give them expertise. And it's perfectly fine to alter ability scores. So let's say your baseline for a sage is a commoner. Give them an Intelligence of 16, give them proficiency in whichever knowledge skills you want, and then give them expertise in one of them. Without a combat presence their proficiency bonus is only +2, but they have a +7 mod with their favored knowledge--better than any low-level adventure.

 

[S'mon]

With NPCs with class levels, they are build exactly like PCs and get their full proficiency bonus, etc. If they need a CR for XP, it is their level.

That looks much too high to me. Just been using a bunch of Rogue-2 NPCs, they look about CR 1/2, and less threatening than many CR 1/2 critters.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

That looks much too high to me. Just been using a bunch of Rogue-2 NPCs, they look about CR 1/2, and less threatening than many CR 1/2 critters.

Sure, mathematically that is correct. But when I'm using an actual leveled character, rather than the simplified NPC statblocks (in which case I'd just use scout or spy or bandit with different proficiencies and max hp), it's probably an important enough NPC that it's okay if the PCs get some extra XP for defeating it.

Now, if I had a bunch of pre-made statblocks with class levels for a variety of levels that I could use instead of the stock NPCs, then I might want them to have CR values accurate to their challenges.

 

[Devilbass]

I understand the frustration with the circular logic behind CR and proficiency bonus in the monster building guidelines, but I don't see it as a huge roadblock. Really, there is nothing stopping you (generic you) from changing things like attack bonus via traits. Let's say you build a monster that is meant to primarily attack with a bite attack, and after stats and proficiency are added up, you end with an attack bonus of +4. Well, there's no reason you can't design a trait which increases its attack bonus with its bite - something akin to a fighting style, perhaps.

That's not to say that you can't just set proficiency where you want, I just suggest using traits to alter this stuff for those who wish to more rigidly follow the guidelines.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I understand the frustration with the circular logic behind CR and proficiency bonus in the monster building guidelines, but I don't see it as a huge roadblock. Really, there is nothing stopping you (generic you) from changing things like attack bonus via traits. Let's say you build a monster that is meant to primarily attack with a bite attack, and after stats and proficiency are added up, you end with an attack bonus of +4. Well, there's no reason you can't design a trait which increases its attack bonus with its bite - something akin to a fighting style, perhaps.

That's not to say that you can't just set proficiency where you want, I just suggest using traits to alter this stuff for those who wish to more rigidly follow the guidelines.

That's a pretty good suggestion.

But honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would want to change the proficiency bonus so it didn't follow the guidelines (other than with the sort of non-combatant expert NPCs we've discussed). I mean, are people really thinking, "I need this proficiency bonus to be 2 points higher than the CR says it should be"?

 

[ProgBard]

I mean, are people really thinking, "I need this proficiency bonus to be 2 points higher than the CR says it should be"?

For monsters, in general, probably not. But it's also not that difficult to imagine some sort of, say, fiend or fey or humanoid that was neither physically impressive nor a dense block of hit points that should also be notably competent with whatever skills and powers it has.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

You can always just give it some special ability like Keen Hearing and Smell in the wolf statblock. I mean, if a bonus to some particular thing doesn't seem like it would affect CR, you really can just write 'Blacksmith: +10 bonus to smithing things' underneath anything else you have written down.