What's appropriate damage for Brute area-effect attacks?

[the Jester]

If I were doing a Monster Vault-ish hellhound I'd probably do:
* Make the aura deal 5 fire for ending in it.
* Bite: +12A/2d8+3 plus 2d6 fire. (18.75 expected, dealing 19 some of which is easily resistable)
* Breath: +10R/3d6+8 fire. (18.75 expected, so 18.5 is close enough)
* I'd also probably up its defenses some, as Fort/Ref/Will are all currently low. Maybe something like Fort 18, Ref 19, Will 19

Honestly, I'd drop the damage about 3 points on the bite because of the aura- while you can't count on it to deal 5 damage every round, you probably ought to factor it into your expected damage to some degree.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, I used to design like that - I'd use a spreadsheet to predict expected damage of a creature, so auras would tilt damage downwards.

But, that's not really the new monster design paradigm (see Monster Vault examples), and the aura is extraordinarily avoidable. If you did want to reduce something, better off reducing the breath though... drop it 3 and that probably has about the right counterbalance to the aura.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, I used to design like that - I'd use a spreadsheet to predict expected damage of a creature, so auras would tilt damage downwards.

But, that's not really the new monster design paradigm (see Monster Vault examples), and the aura is extraordinarily avoidable.

Yeah, the MV designers seem quite happy to stack stuff to well over the nominal "Level+8" in some cases; they've got at-will artillery bursts doing full L+8 damage, and so on.