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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7815301" data-attributes="member: 16586">I am using the normative case for purposes of analysis. There absolutely is a baseline set of benchmarks for designing a creature of a given level and design process is based on the end result. However, I would not describe the variation between monsters as refinements. Many monsters vary dramatically from the expected baseline in ways that capture how the monster should feel.As an example zombies typically have the hit points of a higher level monster, extremely low Armor Class for a monster of their level, are slow so they only get two actions a turn, have significant weaknesses to positive energy and slashing damage. They are immune to death effects, disease, mental, paralyzed, poison, and unconscious. They are also damaged by healing. They also do above average damage for creatures of their level.Taken together you have a slow, lumbering husk that is easy to hit, but takes a hit and keeps on going. If you can keep away from them you can stop them before they get to you. Still if there is a decent number of them they just keep on coming.A lot of monsters break the rules. The baseline is the starting point, but alterations are made against the baseline to achieve ludo narrative harmony.I feel like the monster design process is definitely based on the feel and narrative role of the monster. They seem willing to deviate from the baseline in some pretty substantive ways. Monsters have specific weaknesses, resistances, and immunities. It does not feel like the benchmarks are overly constraining. I have not seen a monster with better ludo narrative harmony than the Pathfinder 2 hydra which requires you to kill each of its heads to bring it down. It can even spring additional heads if you do not cauterize a head in time.That being said it is very much based on the final result. There is no process for defining the monster's stats, skills, and abilities. When designing a monster you decide how tough you want it to be based on existing bench marks and make adjustments to get the right feel, sometimes some pretty drastic ones. There are no rules for creature types, hit dice, ability score generation or the like. You just give the monster the things you think it needs.I know this is like not your bag, but the monsters are plenty different in my opinion.</blockquote>

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