D&D 5E Quick question re: monsters as PCs

[The Crimson Binome]

I'd place it at at least 5th level from all the other capabilities it has; Fire immunity, blindsight, extended darkvision, fast flight, swim speed and water breathing, weakness breath.

Keep in mind that those are its only racial abilities, though. When you compare against a fighter who is also a tiefling, for example, the list seems less impressive.

 

[Tormyr]

I realize I am a bit late to the party, but I did not really have anything unique to offer until now. I would suggest modeling this off of a dragonborn fighter for the number of hit points, breath weapon (both damage and 1/short rest), and number of attacks. Flight, senses, secondary breath weapon, and most everything else can come from the wyrmling stat block.

This lets you have a wyrmling be roughly equivalent to the members of a party regardless of what level they are, and that means you can make your one shot PCs of a level appropriate to what you want them to do rather than balancing them against the wyrmling.

 

[Li Shenron]

This task is difficult. It was hard already in 3e where monsters were designed using a framework similar to that of PCs, it is harder in 5e where they aren't.

If it's for a one-shot game only, I would actually just suggest that EVERY player plays a monster of the same CR, and nobody plays a regular PC. If you don't mix the two, at least it's much easier to have them balanced with each other.

Then, expect that those monster PCs will be poor in out-of-combat abilities. To mitigate this, consider granting them a background, or perhaps 1 level in a class. But then again if it's a one-shot you can just have a combat-focused adventure and don't need to worry about the rest.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

It is really difficult to estimate how the additional abilities of normal PCs (those beyond just dealing and taking damage) should be evaluated vs monsters who have less in the way of such abilities. I’d really like to see a good evaluation of that. The divergence between CR and Level might just be a side effect of the way XP and CR ended up working for their intended role, but there might actually be some significance in the strange curve. Maybe the designers did think CR is approximately equal to level as far as overall character effectiveness across all three pillars goes. Or maybe they didn’t think of this sort of thing at all, but I find that doubtful.

 

[CapnZapp]

Take a look at the PC like humanoid monsters at the back of Volo's Guide.

The Conjurer and Enchanter are roughly modeled after 9th level PCs of those same schools, but are CR 6 and 5 respectively. Similarly, the Diviner is modeled as a 15th level wizard, but is listed as CR 9.

The Champion monster looks to be modeled after a level 15 Champion Fighter, but is listed as CR 9.

The Illusionist is CR 3, but is modeled after a 7th level Wizard.

There doesn't seem to be much of a pattern (they seem to balance based on the combat abilities as opposed to the PC level it was modeled after), but the CRs are always significantly lower than the appropriate PC level.

Spellcasters are exceptional, and can make draw misleading conclusions - their CR is quite high, almost as high as their level. Monsters with no significant magical power almost always have MUCH lower CR than their "level" (mainly hit points) would indicate.



Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

Maybe the designers did think CR is approximately equal to level as far as overall character effectiveness across all three pillars goes. Or maybe they didn’t think of this sort of thing at all, but I find that doubtful.

I think trying to understand what the designers thought is a path to insanity

As many posters have shown CR is NOT equal to level. If I had to peg a single number, I'd go with "half".

But, as you have seen, that can be seen as too generous at low levels and too harsh at high.

My attempt at explaining this has to do with the relative importance of hit points an sheer survivability.

At low levels, a PC is fragile and none of its abilities matter if it's dead. Also, everybody is roughly equal when the d20 means much more than your bonus. So the level to CR conversion is low, because hit points is all you need. For instance level 1 = CR 1/4

At medium levels, all of those worries go away. PCs excel here, having unique and uniquely powerful abilities no monster (that is not a spellcaster) can hope to match.

At high levels, monsters start to catch up simply by being so big and unstoppable and with more and more enviable saves and resistances and abilities a PC can never hope to match. So the level to CR ratio climbs as high as two thirds (or even higher)

(As a foe, high level monsters might not fulfil our expectations, but this is about the monster as a party member. This changes EVERYTHING as it can now expect to use all its might more than once. An ability 1/day is of little consequence for a monster, but might be a game-changer if servicing a party every day of the month)


Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Ganymede81]

Spellcasters are exceptional, and can make draw misleading conclusions - their CR is quite high, almost as high as their level. Monsters with no significant magical power almost always have MUCH lower CR than their "level" (mainly hit points) would indicate.

I really wouldn't say that "CRs are always significantly lower than the appropriate PC level" is misleading.

 

[Nevvur]

I came across this a long time ago on these forums, I'm not sure if the person who made it is still around.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByIKNlh9cuvcN2liUWZBTU90Sms

It's a player level to monster CR conversion chart designed to help build encounters, a substitute for the DMG encounter building system that's supposed to better represent creatures with a wide range of CRs. I never gave it a serious mathematical analysis, but I can attest that I've been using it to good effect.

It doesn't address another underlying problem, though, which is the swinginess that spellcasting creatures bring to a combat. Their effective CR in a given combat is less predictable than their actual CR suggests. I think it's best to just let the averages play out over time. Many NPC spellcasters have lower HPs than other creatures with similar CRs, so their effective CR will generally swing low as they become priority targets. Don't cry for them as they get mowed down. Those times when the NPC's effective CR swings high, it'll be memorably bad for the party.

In any case, I find that chart above sufficient for estimating CR equivalencies most of the time, but I treat it as a tool, not a rule. If the creator is still around I'd like to thank him. It's been part of my tool kit for a long time.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

@CapnZapp

I mostly agree with your assessment (half level might be a bit low). I wonder though, where did the CR numbers come from in the first place? While there is something to the "must be this high to fight" element at lower levels, it quickly vanishes into insignificance. So why are CRs numbered the way they are? Why is the difficulty of an adult copper dragon defined as CR 14 rather than CR 20 or CR 8, or CR ZX-4?

 

[JEB]

Based on my own guesstimate work from looking at the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide NPCS, an average of 3/4 level = CR (round up) seems functional, although realistically it depends on whether your creature is more like a spellcaster (which are lower CR) or more like a fighter (which are higher CR).

Edit: The above is incorrect, I forgot a step in my math. See this later post.

As such, I don't think the Volo's Guide guidelines can really be trusted, which is a pity.

Edit: Still agree on this part, though.