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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SlyFlourish" data-source="post: 9448267" data-attributes="member: 54840">Just catching up on this thread. When developing <a href="https://shop.slyflourish.com/products/forge-of-foes" target="_blank">Forge of Foes</a>, we thought a lot about what GMs actually need to run a monster – not from the standpoint of a published monster but an improvised monster. How important are specific saving throws or skills? How much can you make up on the fly?Lots of GMs have different needs but I've found I really don't need much. I was really taken by how simple monsters can be in Numenera and Cypher – pick a number between 1 and 10 and you have everything you need.We have a table in Forge of Foes called the "monster stats by CR" table. More and more, I just whip up monsters from those stats and then improvise a mechanic or often just rely on flavor.I even worked out a macro on my laptop where I can type "fof12" and I get CR 12 AC/DC 17 HP 175 Atk/Prof +9 DPR 77 Atks 4 × 1d6 + 16.In my game notes, I often just type:Child of Ibraxux Cult Fanatic CR 2 AC/DC 13 HP 45 Atk/Prof +5 DPR 17 Atks 2 × 1d6 + 6and that's what I run with.For more professional stat blocks, I really love the stat blocks from Tales of the Valiant which simplify a lot of things I just don't use in my games:[ATTACH=full]378413[/ATTACH]You'll notice that this Black Flag cult fanatic hits way harder and has a lot more hit points than our Forge of Foes one. Monster Vault monsters definitely have sharper teeth. This seems to be mostly at lower CRs.Here's an example at CR 9:Forge of Foes:CR 9 AC/DC 16 HP 145 Atk/Prof +8 DPR 59 Atks 3 × 1d6 + 19CR 9 Bone Devil from Monster Vault:[ATTACH=full]378415[/ATTACH]The core stats are almost exact.For me, The Monster Vault stat block is superior to the one in D&D 2024 where they packed 18 numbers into a table at the top when I really only need six.BTW, you can get a creative-commons-released version of our Monster Stats by CR on our <a href="https://slyflourish.com/lazy_5e_monster_building_resource_document.html" target="_blank">Lazy GM Monster Builder Resource Document</a>.</blockquote>

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