Level Up (A5E) Monster preview thread!

[dave2008]

Can I ask some more insight regarding how CR is calculated? The Rakshasha is of the same CR in 5e and Level up however the level up has almost +50% hit points and a much more interesting reaction.
TIA.

There will be revised CR / monster creation guidelines in the book. We haven't seen them yet.

EDIT: Also, in this case the CR of the MM Rakshasa is way to high. I did a quick check and it clocks in much closer to a CR 7 instead of a CR 13. I can only guess they thought that its immunity to spells and nonmagical attacks was a huge barrier (and they would be correct if no one had magic items), but magic weapons knock this guy done to a CR 7 at best.

So I think the LevelUp team was correct to beef this one up a bit.

 

[dave2008]

I must say, thanks to @Kozos, I looked over the O5e Rakshasa and it is way underpowered. The LevelUp version is much more CR appropriate.

 

[Faolyn]

There will be revised CR / monster creation guidelines in the book. We haven't seen them yet.

EDIT: Also, in this case the CR of the MM Rakshasa is way to high. I did a quick check and it clocks in much closer to a CR 7 instead of a CR 13. I can only guess they thought that its immunity to spells and nonmagical attacks was a huge barrier (and they would be correct if no one had magic items), but magic weapons knock this guy done to a CR 7 at best.

That's because o5e simply doesn't enough things into consideration when calculating CR. I'm glad to see you guys are fixing the guidelines.

 

[dave2008]

That's because o5e simply doesn't enough things into consideration when calculating CR.

Can you clarify this statement? I can't make sense of it.

 

[Faolyn]

Can you clarify this statement? I can't make sense of it.

Whoops, sorry. What I mean is that 05e, for the most part, doesn't take things like abilities that inflict conditions (other than grappled) when figuring out a creature's CR. The ability to reduce hit point maximum (or do attribute drain) is ignored. The ability to charm or incapacitate a target is ignored. The ability of an undead creature to resist or be unaffected by turning is ignored. In general, spellcasting is ignored, unless it seriously affects the creature's hp or AC. You could make a pixie that can spam wish and it would still be CR 1/4.

 

[dave2008]

Whoops, sorry. What I mean is that 05e, for the most part, doesn't take things like abilities that inflict conditions (other than grappled) when figuring out a creature's CR. The ability to reduce hit point maximum (or do attribute drain) is ignored. The ability to charm or incapacitate a target is ignored. The ability of an undead creature to resist or be unaffected by turning is ignored. In general, spellcasting is ignored, unless it seriously affects the creature's hp or AC. You could make a pixie that can spam wish and it would still be CR 1/4.

That is mostly incorrect IMO. First, the DMG lists a bunch of things that affect a creature's CR beyond AC, HP, attack bonus, & DPR. These include, but are not limited too:

• saving throws
• resistances and immunities (including Legendary Resistance)
• special traits (aggressive, ambusher, avoidance, etc. - 2 pages of them in the DMG).

Regarding spells, anything that causes damage is straightforward as it is part of the DPR calculation. Similarly, the DMG also provides an expected damage per spell level table. Though it is never explicitly stated, I sometimes use this table to convert non-damage combat spells to a damage number for calculating DPR and attack CR. I have not checked to see if this how the monsters in the MM do it, but it seems reasonable. Regardless, the MM clearly modifies CRs based on charms and similar effects. Two examples:

1. The basilisk CR is bumped by at least 1 for its petrifying gaze.
2. The Succubus should be a CR 2 monster per the DMG; however, it has a charm action and it is a CR 4. The only explanation for this jump is the charm and/or hit point max. reduction. Now I will not the DMG doesn't provide a value for Charm, and if I treated like the spell casting it doesn't really bump up the CR much. So the only explanation is the hit point max drain, which at this CR is pretty high (32 HP).

So while every feature is not clarified in the DMG, there are a lot and I would argue the designers of the MM did take into account additional special traits. IMO, they are often to conservative and push up a monsters CR to much.

 

[Faolyn]

That is mostly incorrect IMO. First, the DMG lists a bunch of things that affect a creature's CR beyond AC, HP, attack bonus, & DPR. These include, but are not limited too:

So while every feature is not clarified in the DMG, there are a lot and I would argue the designers of the MM did take into account additional special traits. IMO, they are often to conservative and push up a monsters CR to much.

I have converted a lot of monsters to 5e. Literally hundreds. Only a handful of special traits are actually given rules for affecting CR. Sure, I can eyeball the CR for anything--as I said, I've done a lot of conversion, so I've gotten a good idea of how to do it--but the rules for it don't really exist. It's one of 5e's many "rulings, not rules." Which makes it unhelpful for people who haven't converted tons of monsters, especially when there are some monsters with some really powerful abilities.

 

[dave2008]

I have converted a lot of monsters to 5e. Literally hundreds. Only a handful of special traits are actually given rules for affecting CR. Sure, I can eyeball the CR for anything--as I said, I've done a lot of conversion, so I've gotten a good idea of how to do it--but the rules for it don't really exist. It's one of 5e's many "rulings, not rules." Which makes it unhelpful for people who haven't converted tons of monsters, especially when there are some monsters with some really powerful abilities.

I have converted hundreds as well (I have over 400 monsters posted on these forums), so I know what your talking about. There are still a lot of features that are covered and even more that can be extrapolated from existing ones. There is guidance. Maybe not enough or not updated (obviously quite a lot of monsters have been added since the DMG came out), but there is guidance.

Also, it is really hard, if not impossible to come up with guidelines for every possible trait or ability. Not even 4e did that!

 

[Faolyn]

Also, it is really hard, if not impossible to come up with guidelines for every possible trait or ability. Not even 4e did that!

The problem there is that they quoted specific creature traits, which of course aren't going to be used in future books. What they should have done is something along the lines of "the creature inflicts condition charmed or frightened: increase AC by 1 if it can inflict the condition on 1 target, or by 3 if it can inflict the condition on every target in an area" or "the creature has Innate Spellcasting or Spellcasting, and its highest-level spell is 1st-3rd level, increase per-round damage by 10." Stuff like that. It's certainly more future-proof than what we currently have.

 

[dave2008]

The problem there is that they quoted specific creature traits, which of course aren't going to be used in future books. What they should have done is something along the lines of "the creature inflicts condition charmed or frightened: increase AC by 1 if it can inflict the condition on 1 target, or by 3 if it can inflict the condition on every target in an area" or "the creature has Innate Spellcasting or Spellcasting, and its highest-level spell is 1st-3rd level, increase per-round damage by 10." Stuff like that. It's certainly more future-proof than what we currently have.

Yep, that could be nice (if it works). All I am saying is that they did provide guidance, they didn't give us nothing. What we have now works well enough for me and ultimately, that is what I care about.

I do wonder what type of monster building advice / guidelines LevelUp is going to provide us. I have already started converting my current monster thread to LevelUp (added the bloodied condition and starting using the Elite Trait), but I would like to take it the next step.