Expected Attack for Dmg CR: +3 (+0 CR) Offensive CR by Attack: 1 (1) Exp. Save DC for Dmg CR: 13 (+0 CR) Offensive CR by Save DC: 1 (1) Overall CR: 1 (1) What is this, and how do I use it? V.0.9 Known Issues: Sometimes rounds incorrectly for offensive/defensive CRs less than 1. Standard CR reference (use effective stats) CR. So I used the DMG walkthrough for calculating the CR of a modified monster (I think calling it a 'formula' would be too generous, it's very timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly). I took an Abomination Yuan-ti, stuck 10 levels of Death Domain cleric on it, and came up with a CR of 12(ish) from an original of 7.

1. D&d 5e Cr 7 Monsters
2. D&d 5e Point Calculator
3. D&d 5e Cr Chart
4. D&d 5e Dmg Pdf
5. Calculating Cr D&d 5e

Surf gets side-tracked for a while.. But that's a good thing!

Part 3: Construction: CR & Size

OK I want to open this article with a couple of apologies.

First up, some folks felt that 'two introductions' for this series was excessive. I can understand this and I'd normally agree - be assured that I agonised over this when I was writing Before Building. But in the end I decided that a process-oriented build really does demand that the conceptual pre-work be done. It is far, far more important for this kind of build than for a result-oriented build. To those who felt put-out I do apologise and can assure you that it is not how I prefer to write a series of articles, so you shouldn't expect a repeat any time soon.

Secondly, I apologise for the lateness of this article. I originally indicated I'd post it almost a week ago, but as I started writing Part 3 I realised how fundamental CR is to the process. I was faced with a choice - do some quick and dirty analysis to work around it or do some solid analysis. So I chose the latter and disappeared down a rabbit hole for a while.

I think most readers will be happy that I did.. I certainly hope so!

Let's have a look at the two foundational components of a D&D 5e monster - CR and Size. Then we'll use these to fill out some peices of an example monster.

Challenge Rating

So I had committed to leaving Challenge Rating (aka 'CR') analysis until the Monster Manual hit the shelves, but as I dug into 5e monsters I developed a deeper appreciation of something I had previously suspected. While CR clearly is a measure of how appropriate a given creature is for a same-level party to fight, it is also a foundational element in building 5e monsters. When we decide to build an opponent for the PCs, regardless of the approach we use, we have an idea of how challenging it should be. We may or may not have formalised it, but we do have an idea. I starting thinking of this as Target CR in order to differentiate it from the actual final CR.

I came to this realisation as I was doing some analysis to work around using CR when building monsters. Ultimately this lead me to analyze PC data earlier than anticipated. Interested readers might check out this thread on the wizards.com forums where I posted the data I crunched about Classes.

Saddle tramp jane fonda patch download free, software. Several key components of monsters are based directly on Target CR..

A monster's Hitpoints are the result of it's number of Hit Dice, it's size and it's Ability Score modifiers. Craigslist search tool download. But how many hitpoints should my monster have? Target CR yields a Target HP range towards which we can build.

Monster Damage output results from a creature's traits and actions. A combat-focussed creature's damage is influenced by it's Ability Score modifiers, it's size, the weapon it uses, the number of attacks it makes and several other factors. A creature that focusses on casting spells mainly produces damage according to it's caster level. Creatures with other approaches produce their damage output via other methods. But what should this damage output be? Target CR gives us an appropriate range for this.

Proficiency for monsters is indexed directly off the creature's CR. We can simply use the Character Advancement table on page 10 of the Basic D&D v0.1 and use CR instead of level.

Ability Scores also appear to scale based on CR. We'll look at this more closely in Part 4: Construction: Abilities & HP.

Experience Points seem to be tightly bound to CR. While there are a number of gaps the XP rewards for the monsters presented in the Starter Set make it quite easy to fill in these gaps up to level 10 with a reasonable level of confidence. We can estimate values for the missing CRs using the following moderate polynomial:
XP = -0.3553xCR^3 + 60.485xCR^2 + 5.5534xCR + 155.52

It's important to note that our limited sample size makes it difficult to be confident of certain numbers past a reasonable level or CR. In this case we can have a high level of confidence that we are in the right ballpark with these XP numbers. Some of them might be a hundred XP or so out but they'll be pretty close and more than good enough for most uses. We'll revisit these as soon as there's more data, but it's what we have to use for now.

Note that I won't provide tables out past CR10 until we have at least some examples of creatures at these higher levels to analyze.

Prediction: I believe we'll see creatures up to at least CR25 in the Monster Manual, probably out to CR30 and maybe even beyond.

Size

Monster Size partners with Target CR to provide targets for most of the building blocks of a 5e monster, either directly or indirectly.

Size has a direct bearing on Hit Points (via Hit Dice), weapon damage dice and on speed. It may also influence other aspects of monsters.

Page 71 of the Basic D&D v0.1 PDF outlines the appropriate size categories in D&D 5e and Appendix B of the Starter Set shows us the HD size for most of these. Appendix B doesn't tell us the HD size for Huge or Gargantuan creatures, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that these are simply the next dice sizes up from Large.

Speed is normally thought of as an aspect of race - it's listed in the Racial Traits section of the Basic D&D v0.1 PDF, for example. I believe that this is primarily because Size is a component of Race. Note that Speed is not a 'hard' aspect of size, rather it is a starting point that can be modified and tuned to suit the specific creature you are building. Variance up to one size category above or below seems to be quite normal.

Prediction: Because of the relationship between Size and Hit Points I believe monsters of the smaller sizes will become less frequent as CR increases and that creatures past say CR10 will be predominantly Medium or bigger. We'll need the volume of data expected in the Monster Manual to confirm this.

Example: Human Pyromancer

Since this part of my blog focuses on the build-oriented approach to D&D 5e monster creation I thought it would be appropriate to provide some example monsters for illustration purposes. In these examples we'll normally omit parts of the stat block which we have not yet dealt with.

The idea behind the Human Pyromancer is a 'Glass Cannon' ranged attacker with an aracane fire theme. The intent is for this monster to blast the PCs from a distance, while receiving protection from melee type monsters and cover. Once the PCs get up close it should be all over for this guy. With some lower level meat-shield support it could be the central piece of a toughish level 5 or 6 encounter. It should have some longevity out to level 10 or so as lower-end ranged support for higher-CR melee creatures.

From a monster design perspective it will allow us to explore how spellcasting monsters are built in D&D 5e and thus also explore the math associated with casters. It will also allow us to illustrate the flexibility the CR guidelines for HP and Damage support.

WARNING: Math ahead

Recently a listener of my RPG podcast posted a question to our community. Premium. This spawned a discussion of the CR of the neothelid, a monster presented in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

This article shows the process I went through in an attempt to “reverse engineer” the monster and come up with the challenge rating (CR) of 13 given in the book.

Quite a bit of criticism has been leveled at 5th edition’s CR system. Some of this criticism may be valid, however oftentimes these complaints reveal more ignorance on the part of the person complaining than faults of the system. One of the assumptions many/most people who level these complaints seem to make is that the guidelines for determining a monster’s CR given in the Dungeon Master’s Guide represent the entirety of the parameters considered by Wizards of the Coast when determining the CR of a monster. I think this assumption is likely false. First, I’m not sure that Wizards would show us all the secrets of “how the sausage is made”, and second, I think there is a good deal of “art” in the determination of a monster’s CR. Which is to say that it is more than just a math equation and there are numerous judgment calls that are made. The more complex a monster is, and, likely, the higher its CR, the more of these judgment calls come into play.

I learned a valuable lesson when I did a series of episodes on encounter building on my podcast (episodes 136, 137, 138, and 139). When I attempt to reverse-engineer a monster, and I get a CR that is different from what’s in the book, instead of assuming Wizards 'got it wrong' or that the CR system 'doesn't make sense', I first check my math. If my math is right, I then try various permutations of the calculations in an attempt to arrive at the same CR given in the book.

This may seem an odd thing to do, but I have almost always been able to find a way to reach the same CR Wizards did, or at the very least to come close. As I said, I think there’s some art to this, so coming up with a CR 1 or even 2 off from what's in the book isn't a big deal, in my opinion. Surely the folks at Wizards are privy to some guidelines and design philosophies (or just the benefit of experience) that aren't detailed in the DMG.

My assumption is that if the CR I come up with for a monster is different from what's given in the book, it's likely either due to a mistake on my part, or it's due to some judgment call or design element I'm not aware of. To assume, instead, that it's due to a flaw in the system, or that the designers don’t know what they're doing is pretentious and arrogant.

This exercise of reverse engineering a monster trying to get to the CR listed in the book has taught me quite a bit about how Wizards designs monsters and determine CRs, and how different abilities stack up in their eyes. I'm personally distrustful of monsters designed by someone who claims the CRs in the game don't make any sense or don't have any inherent logic or system to them. I doubt such a person has gained the insight needed, or has the humility required, to truly learn the design of the system and gain the level of proficiency needed to create a properly balanced monster.

To illustrate this process, I will use the neothelid from Volo’s Guide to Monsters. I gave a full review of Volo’s Guide on this episode of Game Master’s Journey.

Abbreviations Used in this Article:

AC Armor Class

CR Challenge Rating

DCR Defensive Challenge Rating

DPR Damage per Round

EAC Effective Armor Class

HP Hit Points

OCR Offensive Challenge Rating

The Defensive CR (DCR) of this monster is pretty straightforward. The neothelid has 325 hp, which gives us an initial DCR of 17. It has an AC of 16. However it's effective AC (EAC) would be 20: +2 EAC for having three good saving throws, and +2 EAC for having magic resistance.

(It doesn't matter in this example, but in another monster, I think you could argue not giving it the +2 EAC for the saving throws, because one of those save bonuses is only +1, because the save proficiency is canceling out its intelligence penalty. Good saving throws only affect EAC if there are three or more. But it doesn't matter in this case as the DCR will be the same either way.)

The expected AC for a DCR of 17 is 19, so having an EAC of 20 doesn't have any impact on the DCR, because it only impacts the DCR if it is 2 or more higher than the expected AC. So our final DCR is 17.

The offensive CR (OCR) is where it gets a little tricky. Unfortunately, there are two slightly different ways you could calculate the damage output, and I think both are equally 'right' as far as that goes. It comes down to how a DM would run the monster in combat, so this is an instance where the 'art' of the design comes in.

This monster has three ways of doing damage. First, a tentacle attack, which is super straightforward. It does 33 damage (21 bludgeoning and 13 psychic).

It also has a breath weapon attack. The guidelines state to assume the breath weapon hits two targets, and that they fail their saves, so the damage of the breath weapon is 35 acid damage multiplied by two targets for a total of 70 damage.

When we have a monster like this that has multiple attack forms, it's suggested to figure damage for three rounds of combat, and then average that damage. We should definitely do this with the neothelid.

D&d 5e Cr 7 Monsters

This begs the question, how many times should we apply the breath weapon damage in the three rounds of combat? This isn't spelled out in the DMG, but if we look at the breath weapon recharge, we see it recharges on a 5 or 6 on a 1d6. This gives us odds of 1:3, which means we can assume the monster can use its breath weapon once per 3 rounds of combat.

D&d 5e Point Calculator

The third way this monster can do damage is via its swallow ability. We can find this ability in the monster traits chart (which references a behir, btw). We're told to assume the monster swallows one creature and does two rounds of acid damage to it. The acid damage from the swallow is 35.

There are a few points to make here. The creature doesn't have multiattack, so it can only make one tentacle attack as an action. Using its breath weapon is an action, so on the turn it uses its breath weapon, it can't make a tentacle attack. Finally, a swallowed creature takes the acid damage at the start of the neothelid's turn, so the neothelid doesn't do this damage on the turn it swallows a creature, it does it on the neothelid's next turn.

So this is where some art comes into play, because there are basically two ways this could go.

The first, and most likely (and I think is the one the designers used) is this:

Round 1: Neothelid uses breath weapon. 70 damage (35 damage x 2 targets)

Round 2: Neothelid uses tentacle attack and swallows a creature. 33 damage

D&d 5e Cr Chart

Round 3: Neothelid uses tentacle attack and deals damage to the creature swallowed in round 2. 68 damage (33 tentacle damage, 35 damage to swallowed creature)

Average damage per round = 70 + 33 + 68 = 171 / 3 rounds = 57 DPR

The second way this could go is this:

Round 1: Neothelid uses tentacle attack and swallows a creature. 33 damage

Round 2: Neothelid uses breath weapon and deals damage to creature swallowed in round 1. 105 damage (70 damage from breath weapon, 35 damage to swallowed creature)

Round 3: Neothelid uses tentacle attack and deals damage to creature swallowed in round 1. 68 damage

Average DPR = 33 + 105 + 68 = 206 / 3 rounds = 69 DPR

I think the first scenario is the most likely, and probably the way I would run this monster in combat. But we'll keep the second in mind to see how it impacts the CR.

D&d 5e Dmg Pdf

So we have a damage output of 57 DPR, which gives us a beginning OCR of 9. I too looked at the attack bonus here. The expected attack bonus for OCR 9 is +7, however our neothelid has an attack bonus of +13. We increase the OCR by 1 for every 2 points the attack bonus is higher than expected. This would add 3 to our OCR, giving us an OCR of 12.

(Note: if we used the second damage output (69) calculation, we would've started with an OCR of 11 and would've ended up with an OCR of 14 due to the attack bonus.)

We then average the DCR of 17 and the OCR of 12, giving us a final CR of 15.

(Note: if we used the second damage output (69) we'd end up with a CR of 16 (average of DCR 17, OCR 14.)

So this is only two off of the CR 13 given in the book, but I take a look at what I did, and I see I made an error.

The attack bonus only applies to the tentacle attack. The tentacle attack is only providing 66 of our 171 total damage in those three rounds. The majority of the damage is actually coming from the breath weapon and the acid damage to the swallowed creature. Both of those rely on saving throws. The DMG tells us that if the monster relies more on effects with saving throws than on attacks to do its damage, we should use its save DC to figure the OCR instead of its attack bonus.

So let's return to our OCR calculation. We have a damage output (DPR) of 57, which gives us an OCR of 9. The save DC for OCR 9 is 16. The save DC for the neothelid's breath weapon and swallow damage is 18. So we add 1 to the OCR, because you add 1 for every 2 points the save DC is higher than what's listed for that OCR. That gives us an OCR of 10.

Calculating Cr D&d 5e

We now average the DCR of 17 and the OCR of 10, and we get 13.5. Now, I would think we'd round up to 14 here, but you can see that if we just round down instead, we get the CR of 13 that's in the book.

(Note: if we used the second damage output (69), we'd end up with an OCR of 11 and a final CR of 14.)

So did Wizards make a 'mistake' in rounding the 13.5 down to a CR 13? I don't think so. I think this is another instance where the art of design (or perhaps a design guideline we're not privy to) came into play. I can only guess what that might be, however considering this creature doesn't have multiattack, doesn't have any resistances or immunities, and also considering that if the swallowed creature can do 30 damage to it, it's regurgitated out, I think a CR of 13 is more appropriate than 14 for this creature.