Monster defences

[Al'Kelhar]

I keep seeing references to monster Fort being high (relative to other NADs) and Will being low (again, relative to other NADs). Inituitively this seems right - on the basis that a sizeable proportion of monsters are melee combatants, and therefore have Str/Con higher than Wis/Cha - but I'm wondering if anyone's done any statistical analysis of the assumption?

If so, by what do each of the three NADs vary from the "monster level + 12" average they're supposed to?

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Jack99]

Yes. It was made for all monsters in the MM1 and MM2.


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[Mr. Teapot]

I think that this is the thread that you're looking for: www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/229092-lots-statistics-monster-manual.html

 

[Stalker0]

I would be curious to know if the trend continued through the MM3 and beyond?

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's pretty consistent that people think of (and therefore design) brutes and soldiers as having high fort and skirmishers as having high reflex. Artillery can be all over the place (I'd say high reflex is most common but it's nothing like the overwhelming ratio of the other three big archetypes as artillery is a mix of archers (reflex), rock hurlers (fort) and spell slingers (will)). The two small archetypes - controllers and lurkers - tend to be high will (especially for controllers - lurkers are often reflex-y) but are much rarer.

And IIRC the WIR Monster Vault on RPG.net counts the number of monsters with fort as the highest NAD. And it fits there too.

Shorter me: Big dumb muscle has high fort. Most monsters-of-the-line are big dumb muscle. Leaders and brains behind the organisation are rare and those are the monsters with high will.

(On a tangent, really low level monsters tend to be small (goblins, kobolds) and therefore high reflex, low fort (and also low will - thought to be stupid)).

Edit: Even shorter me: If the monster is a threat because he's bigger and stronger than the monster designer he has high fort. If it's because he's faster and more agile or skilled he has high reflex. And smarter implies high will. Most people don't write many monsters as smarter than them. And most people remember being kids when everyone was bigger than them, so that's easy to write.

Edit 2: Apparently "Even shorter me" isn't.

 

[keterys]

It's a standard WotC mistake, which can get even worse depending on your DM's selection of critters (for example, if brutes and soldiers are more common than skirmishers and artillery) - home created mobs won't necessarily follow the trend.

I did a study some months back of Monster Vault Defenses and the results were
AC 13.9934210526316
Fort 12.5197368421053
Ref 11.6743421052632
Will 11.0625

So, yeah, it's not a _huge_ difference, but it's still there. I grouched at WotC some about it at the time and I think one of them actually really listened to what I said (I included a spreadsheet plotting every monster whose defenses was out of whack) so I have hopes that newer monster vaults will be better.

Actually, here's a copy of the spreadsheet - note that this was prior to the MV errata (the abyssal ghoul hungerer is off, at a minimum)

Also good for noting that minions tend to get too low defenses (and they're the ones who can least afford it - at least a brute has a hp cushion)