Monster Advancement and Ability DC's

[Graz]

I wanted to get some opinions on Ability Dc's for monsters and whether or not they would increase with the Monster's advancement.

For example a regular monster that has an ability with a save dc of 15. If you advanced that monster by 10 HD, would it be logical to increase the DC of the ability to some degree.

If you don't do this it seems like the abilities of most monsters become worthless when advancing monsters for higher level play.

Has anybody worked with this type of scenario before and can share some insights or experiences?

Thanks,

Graz

 

[Geoff Watson]

Monsters special ability DCs do increase.

The formula is 10 + (Hit Dice)/2 + (Stat mod).

What stat is used depends on the ability (Con for Poison, Cha for most magic stuff).
They can get a Feat called Ability Focus that increases an ability save DC by 2.

Geoff.

 

[Crothian]

I read this somewhere (or else I dreamed it, at this point I'm not sure ) that maonster abilities have a formula like everything. 10 + 1/2 HD + ability score modifier.

I have no idea if this is right, I can';t seem to find it anything. But I have too many books so finding things is never easy.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

DCs improve! (see MM)

However, I've seen the rule missed many times. For instance, if you look at many of the multiclassed monsters at WotC's fight club, the rule is often broken.

Monte Cook has said many monsters have too low save DCs, so you shouldn't try to make the problem worse.

A few times the DC is fixed (eg save DC of half-dragon breath weapons).

 

[Henrix]

Yes, read the first chapter of the MM.

And remember that sometimes when you give a monster more HD, it's stats change.
So if a poisonous monster goes from medium sized to large, it's constitution increases by 4, which increases the DC by 2 (as the poison DC is 10 + HD/2 + con modifier).

 

[drnuncheon]

DCs improve! (see MM)

However, I've seen the rule missed many times. For instance, if you look at many of the multiclassed monsters at WotC's fight club, the rule is often broken.

My guess on that would be that they only count Hit Dice as the "class levels" of the monster class - that is, character class levels don't increase the DC of natural powers.

Not sure how accurate that is in terms of the MM, but given that they don't increase size, etc it seems a fairly logical assumption to make.

J

 

[Nathan]

A lot of monster have spell-like abilities that they cast at a n-th level sorcerer. Their DCs (10 + spell level + Cha mod) won't increase with HD advancement.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Yes, use the formula above, but remember, only monster HD advance increases the potency of the ability. If you don't use the ECL rules, monster HD are just another form of class level.