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<blockquote data-quote="Tobold" data-source="post: 7049748" data-attributes="member: 6691663">While I have been playing and DMing Dungeons &amp; Dragons for 35 years, I am relatively new to 5th edition and haven't run any adventure yet as DM. Now I am planning to do so for the first time, and I am having trouble with balancing my end boss villain, an evil sorcerer. By that point the players should be level 3, so a challenging combat encounter using the sorcerer and a few minions to protect him should mean that the sorcerer should have a challenge rating of CR3. How do I get from that information to a stat block?Looking at the caster NPCs at the end of the Monster Manual, it appears that caster level should be around 1.5x to 2x the CR, which would give me a level 5 or 6 sorcerer. The &quot;Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating&quot; suggest that CR3 monster should have 101-115 hit points and deal 21-26 points of damage per turn with an attack bonus of +4. But most monsters in the Monster Manual, compared to table, use a lower defensive CR and a higher offensive CR. And calculating the offensive CR of a spellcaster is really tricky, because it is hard to predict how many people will be caught in his spells. A sorcerer of that level could have a fireball spell, and a group of level 3 heroes hit by an 8d6 fireball might be a round 1 total party kill. Spells deal a lot of damage in 5E, compared to weapons. What caster level would you suggest for CR3? I tried to Google &quot;5E NPC generator&quot;, but that doesn't give you stat blocks, because NPCs that fight are considered as monsters. And &quot;monster generators&quot; appear to work better for real monsters than for NPCs, especially spellcasters. So how do I create a spellcaster villain that gives the player a good fight?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tobold, post: 7049748, member: 6691663"] While I have been playing and DMing Dungeons & Dragons for 35 years, I am relatively new to 5th edition and haven't run any adventure yet as DM. Now I am planning to do so for the first time, and I am having trouble with balancing my end boss villain, an evil sorcerer. By that point the players should be level 3, so a challenging combat encounter using the sorcerer and a few minions to protect him should mean that the sorcerer should have a challenge rating of CR3. How do I get from that information to a stat block? Looking at the caster NPCs at the end of the Monster Manual, it appears that caster level should be around 1.5x to 2x the CR, which would give me a level 5 or 6 sorcerer. The "Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating" suggest that CR3 monster should have 101-115 hit points and deal 21-26 points of damage per turn with an attack bonus of +4. But most monsters in the Monster Manual, compared to table, use a lower defensive CR and a higher offensive CR. And calculating the offensive CR of a spellcaster is really tricky, because it is hard to predict how many people will be caught in his spells. A sorcerer of that level could have a fireball spell, and a group of level 3 heroes hit by an 8d6 fireball might be a round 1 total party kill. Spells deal a lot of damage in 5E, compared to weapons. What caster level would you suggest for CR3? I tried to Google "5E NPC generator", but that doesn't give you stat blocks, because NPCs that fight are considered as monsters. And "monster generators" appear to work better for real monsters than for NPCs, especially spellcasters. So how do I create a spellcaster villain that gives the player a good fight? [/QUOTE]

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