D&D (2024) Why No Monster Creation Rules in D&D 2024?

[Minigiant]

So, I didn't buy it because it was missing Mknster Creation Rules and because I found the Bastion rules very lacking (waste of space in its current form way worse than the 2014 monster creation rules) and had no interest in 40 pages of planes or Greyhawk as a setting ...
Like, literally, except for the Bastion rules there is nothing in the 2024 DMG that an experienced DM needs and it lacks so many of the variant rules and customisation options that the 2014 DMG had. It is 60 pages longer but has less rules and creation guidelines content than the 2014 DMG.
It is like a dumbed down version.

Well congratulations.

The 2014 DMG was almost exclusively for old DMs so you can buy that.

Between the 2 books you have a near perfect Voltron DMG. Just need the 4e ones to form the feet and legs.

Dadada dadadaaaaa.
Dadada dadadaaaaa
Dun
Dun
Dun

 

[DEFCON 1]

So, since XP is specifically tied to CR, what, then, do you suggest?

If it really matters that much, find a monster close to what you just made, see what they give as XP, and then give your monster that.

I mean unless you are designing these monsters to be published... then anything you do for your home campaign does not need some sort of precision of any sort. Your players don't know about and don't care about what the CR levels the encounters are that you throw at them, nor do they care about the precise XP each individual enemy had in the fight. You throw some monsters at them, they defeat them, they earn some random total of XP. That's all they care about. How everything is set up "behind the screen" does not matter to them, so there's no reason for any DM to lose sleep over it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

A monster's proficiency bonus is derived from their CR. How should one deal with that?

Choose one. It's gonna be between a +2 and +6 so just choose one to use. Or look at some other monsters that have basically the same amount of power you are making and copy that. It doesn't really matter. Your players are not going to care what the monster's attack bonus is, nor how that number got generated (via PB, ability modifier, and any other bonuses you might have given it). All they will care about is getting hit and then hitting back. Precision is not at all necessary for your home game because how the sausage is made is of no concern in the middle of a fight.

Now if you are creating monsters to publish... then sure, a bit more precision might make for better monsters that don't bother the purchasers. But if that's the case... you're better off finding multiple different sources that have tried to reverse engineer all the math so you have multiple ways to check and double-check everything, rather than expecting to just rely on whatever monster building info WotC might have or might have not provided. But in truth? I am willing to bet that anyone who wants to buy your monster book will do so more because of the originality, art, and "special mechanical abilities" of the monsters you create, moreso than going over your math with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything "lines up".

Because at the end of the day... a monster's math is only a very small part of how easy or difficult an encounter is and how "balanced" it is compared to your PCs due to all sorts of other considerations. After all... all you need to do is throw a supposedly balanced encounter against the party at the end of a long adventuring day when they've used up almost all of their assets (for whatever reason it was) to turn this "balanced encounter" (at the time you designed it) into a slaughter. So what good did the CR of this encounter end up doing for you? Seemed balanced at the time 24 hours earlier when you wrote it down... but wasn't balanced at all when the party's feet hit the ground.

 

[Remathilis]

So I am looking at the "Creating a Creature" section of the DMG, which is basically a guide to reskinning. Useful in its own way, especially for new GMs, but definitely not what it says on the tin.

But what struck me was the number of things noted as not having any impact on CR -- size, type, senses, damage types, etc. I wonder: if these things have no impact on CR, why do they exist? Outside of fluff, I mean.

They do impact the game in other ways, just not ones that change raw damage numbers. Type affects what spells affect a creature, but being immune to charm and hold person doesn't affect you CR. Size matters for how many squares you fill on the map, but not what you AC or HP are. The type of damage you do affects resistance, but not your DPS unless your whole party is unaffected by that element.

Look are the 2 page 2014 DMG "list of traits" and see how few affect CR. To WotC, only those that affect DPS and defense affect CR. Which is why the 10 other pages of monster creation focus on those two parts and tell the DM to figure it out for everything else.

 

[Reynard]

They do impact the game in other ways, just not ones that change raw damage numbers. Type affects what spells affect a creature, but being immune to charm and hold person doesn't affect you CR. Size matters for how many squares you fill on the map, but not what you AC or HP are. The type of damage you do affects resistance, but not your DPS unless your whole party is unaffected by that element.

Look are the 2 page 2014 DMG "list of traits" and see how few affect CR. To WotC, only those that affect DPS and defense affect CR. Which is why the 10 other pages of monster creation focus on those two parts and tell the DM to figure it out for everything else.

I usually use the LevelUp monster design rules if I am creating something from scratch, and those rules at least try and incorporate non HP/DPS elements into the CR calculation -- or, rather, some attempt at using those things to adjust the HP and/or DPS budget. Definitely more art than science, still.

 

[Maxperson]

Then any monster creation system would also be broken. Since you build the monster to a given CR and CR is broken, how can you have a viable monster creation system?

Note, I think @I'm A Banana has the right of things here. But, @Maxperson is insisting that the CR system is broken, then how can they possibly make a monster creation system?

I mean, you keep ignoring me when I tell you, so why do you keep asking? I'll answer you a final time on this. It gives a baseline guidance system to help with the creation of monsters. It doesn't need to be perfect to give guidance. Guidance > no guidance. At least with guidance you have some help out there rather than being left to twist in the wind.

 

[Maxperson]

It's easy to have expectations of CR that the CR presented in the game can't possibly meet. True "Difficulty" or "Challenge" is such a squirrelly target in a TTRPG.

The mechanic of CR in 5e really just compares 2 things: HP vs. Damage. For each side.

That's all CR is really made to do: this monster won't one-shot or two-shot a given PC, and a given PC party won't one or two shot this monster, ending the encounter before anything interesting happens. It's a mechanic that paces a fight more than anything else, and that's just a measure of HP lost for each side over rounds. That translates into a "challenge" in that it creates a kind of timer for the fight, where if the monster isn't taken out quickly, its damage begins to have a chance of knocking a PC down to 0 hp and starting a death spiral for the party. So there is a bit of a "skill floor," below which the tension rises.

Luck can sway that. Clever play can sway that. Battlefield conditions can sway that. Binary abilities like hold person can sway that. Expectations sway that, too - some folks are like "If this monster can't get a TPK on a party of this level, is it REALLY a challenge of that level?"

But, CR has never been an exhaustive measure of every factor that could go into challenging a party. It's not trying to be. It's not "broke" in that way.

None of that influences Challenge Rating because those are all valid strategic plays that deeply depend on the context of the fight. If you are fighting on a tall bridge and you can knock a monster off of the edge in 1 round, that's fine. That's good play. That makes the fight easier, but the CR is a method for rewarding XP, so it's almost like getting a little XP bonus for being smart and using your environment, which is great. An optimal party is an "efficient" party, with a good XP to action ratio. And the CR formulas delivered a situation where good play like that was rewarded - you just vastly over-performed your damage expectation for the round.

It's understandable that people expect more from the mechanic, because it's called CR after all, but it boils down to something very simple: HP vs. Damage.

So when I tune encounters, I follow Xanathar's recommendation for a "hard" encounter (I assume +50% PCs, so this typically means more monsters). Hard in practice means that the monsters start out a fight with a pretty notable advantage in terms of the damage they deal (more critters, more actions, more dpr), and the party's damage output doesn't outpace monster HP for another round or two. This means that my party has really started to value defensive abilities - if they can weather the initial onslaught, either through proactive protection, or through healing, they are still likely to be victorious. But, they can't ignore their defenses much. If they do, they usually enter a situation where someone's down to 0 hp and they've still got a critter or two out there that they have to deal with.

That's not "hard" in the sense that it is difficult to overcome. It's just a little more hostile, a little more risky, demanding a little bit more of the players to meet that skill floor. It's not particularly difficult for a player to do that, but the do need to pay attention a bit more than "average."

This design naturally punishes more "reckless" characters and more "reckless" play. A flat-out damage monster of a barbarian would actually be a pretty weak character in my game, since a lot of their damage would be overkill (most encounters have multiple monsters), and they'd drop pretty quick if the party didn't try and prop them up.

I'm OK with all this - it is actually very on brand for the vibe I'm going for. A game inspired by a Fromsoft title should absolutely reward cautious play and value defensive abilities and punish those who just try and hammer the attack button as hard as they can.

But, if a player really liked big damage numbers, they might feel like my encounters are too hard ("I always drop in round 1 or 2, that can't be the intent!"). Measured in PC's dropped to 0 hp, my encounters are fairly "deadly" (roughly a 1 dropped character per 2 fights ratio), but measured in TPKs or actual PC deaths, my encounters are a cakewalk (doesn't happen, not MUCH of a real risk, though there have been a tough moment or two).

Because my group's excited for 2024, I'm letting them weave in the new rules, but this also means that the monsters I'm making aren't going to be hitting as hard as they should. I ride that line of "just enough to make them squirm." They won't be squirming as much now, making my encounters easier on average, and really damaging the vibe I'm going for.

But, like, WotC never did a great job of clearly defining the boundaries and expectations of CR. And, to be fair, understanding those bits is VERY designer-wanky. Casual DMs probably don't need to apply. Even experienced DMs like the folks here are surprised to learn that CR doesn't actually care about 6-8 encounters per day or that CR doesn't need to worry about size or energy type or specific subclass power levels.

And add to this that the actual math of the damage to hp ratio was off at higher CR's (monsters at higher CR's did not hit as hard as they "should" - I gather this mostly from interviews, since most of my campaign is pretty low-level)....

CR is broken, just not in the way that most people assume it is broken.

That's a really good post. I do think CR plays a greater role in the 6-8 encounters per day and in relation to party make-up than you are giving it credit for, but I also agree that it isn't intended to take absolutely everything into consideration.

 

[Oofta]

End of the day the only real answer to this is that "They decided it wasn't worth it." There probably wasn't a huge demand, whatever tools they currently use likely only serve as a starting point. If they use a complex spreadsheet it may be considered proprietary software by the legal department.

I'd like a chart that shows averages by level because sometimes I upgrade monsters a CR level or 3, but most custom monsters are bits and pieces of other monsters of approximately the same CR thrown together with the fluff changed.

But I think people are asking the wrong question when they ask "How much does a drow levitate add to CR?" because it's far too granular and the wrong question. The real question to me is "Am I adding something that will significantly increase damage potential or survivability." Often that's just a judgement call.

 

[Stormonu]

I've literally made two books of mostly from-scratch monsters (and working on a 3rd). Not having the monster creation rules in the 2024 DMG - and it looks like not in the 2024 MM either - is beyond disappointing.

Sure, I can use the 2014 guidelines, but then that doesn't incentivize me to buy the 2024 version (though I did get it for the Bastion and Greyhawk portion, but overall it turned out to be a really big letdown. I don't feel like I can retire my 2014 version, like when I shifted from 3E to 3.5E or even Pathfinder).

 

[Maxperson]

I've literally made two books of mostly from-scratch monsters (and working on a 3rd). Not having the monster creation rules in the 2024 DMG - and it looks like not in the 2024 MM either - is beyond disappointing.

Sure, I can use the 2014 guidelines, but then that doesn't incentivize me to buy the 2024 version (though I did get it for the Bastion and Greyhawk portion, but overall it turned out to be a really big letdown. I don't feel like I can retire my 2014 version, like when I shifted from 3E to 3.5E or even Pathfinder).

It also means that if you do use the 2014 guidelines, you will be doing it wrong since they changed monster balance for 5.5e. They upped damage, modified hit point, altered racial abilities, and yet kept the CR the same.