Tbh I don't think I've used that table *once* in my entire 6 years as a 5e DM. Over time you just kinda build up a collection of statblocks that worked great (as well as ones to avoid like the plague!), so might as well use them as a strong foundation when developing new monsters. I'd highly recommend this "trial by fire" strategy, it's led to some exceptional boss battles!
I hate how disfunctional the CR and general balance bs in DnD is. It’s enough to make me really want to quit playing it wether my players want to or not
Honestly I look online for a template of something I am looking for and either convert or transcribe it into 5e. I don't even look at the DM table for creating monsters. That said, it just supports your statement that "it's wrong"
CR is pretty bad. The Quick Monster Statblock Table in the DMG is in my opinion better than the published monsters in Wizards of the Coasts books, which are generally underpowered. Although I would say it is smarter to bump the numbers on the DMG table up a bit, not down.
Meanwhile in my game: Simply reskin a monster from the MM because I couldn't be bothered to come up with my own statblock, maybe I switch around some spells if they fit thematically
This tracks. They do tend to give you an idea of how to build stuff for your game, but they hide the details that allow people to know how they make the game, and leave new DMs to assume they just don't know how to get the balance right. Never letting them know that they were given faulty info in the first place.
Interesting. Definitely bookmarking that for future reference. (Had to skip the aboleth bit because in the campaign I'm playing in currently, we just found a note in a rival faction's place saying "there seems to be an aboleth down where we're trying to do our nefarious stuff and it's really causing problems for everyone down there." Which...yeah, ok, do not look at that stat block for the next few months then, just in case.
I like this perspective! You really can't argue with this. Usually the info mentioned about Challenge Rating is just based off of case studies of groups of likely murderhobos that never track anything but their damage per round and are fighting monsters which behave as if deranged (or very much Don't Know What They're Doing to imitate Keith Amman's blog/book title).
I always found the hp of monsters in the manual to be way too low after the stuff characters face at lvl 1-3, so to me finding formulas for getting custom monsters down to similarly inadequate hp seems like a strange goal. To each their own, I guess.
My main problem with CR is the need for 5-8 resource draining encounters per in-game day... I don't know a single DM running 5e that regularly has that many encounters in any game day with the exception of an literal dungeon crawl. If you are running an adventure that mostly focuses on exploration and social situations, CR flat out does not work. It just doesn't... What does seem to work pretty well is using the XP per day budget for the party and just breaking it up in to the number of encounters they are likely to run in to in that game day. This makes almost every combat encounter fit the "Deadly" category according to the CR rules but it actually challenges the party. Example: XP per day budget for a party of 4 at lvl 1 is 1200xp. I expect the party to have two combat encounters that game day. I'm going to make one of them around 500xp and the other around 6-700xp. Battle 1: 3 Kobolds (CR 1/8) and a Kobold Scale Sorc (CR 1). 550 XP. Battle 2: 4 Bandits (CR 1/8) and a Pirate Deck Wizard (CR 1). 600 XP. So we are at 1150 XP. I could even throw in 1 or 2 low dmg traps for the kobolds and still be around the expected XP per day for the party.
I rarely use base MM monsters, once the party a beyond level 5 I'll go with more third party materials for monsters. Newer 5E books have scope creeped player abilities, which cannot easily be calculated into CR ratings .
I feel the need to point out that I pitted my brand new party with several players who had never played, none who had played together, and were completely unoptimised in any way against a CR 1/4 with similar stats (13 AC, 30 hp, Reckless, a Greataxe for a +4 to hit and 8 (1d12+2) damage) along side several typical CR 1/4 monsters (zombies) and not only was it *not* a TPK, but it was a complete stomp in the party's favor. The thing about the DMG guides is that while this monster isn't unbalanced, it's boring. If your party has any source of bludgeoning damage, you'll be chewing through its HP like its made of paper, if not it's a slog until you down it. But the chances of it killing the party before it can do that with a pitiful 8 max damage, 5 average, against any decent frontliner and a healer with healing word is next to 0. At lower levels, glass cannons tend to be funner than damage sponges because of the high risk - high reward ratio. While at higher levels, you'll want beefier monsters because players at those levels are more afraid of monsters they can't blast into oblivion than they are of being killed due to abundant resurrection spells.
Ive always run it as CR is supposed to say a level 8 party should be able to fight one cr8 enemy with low resource cost. A boss will generally be 4 CR over the party
i've tried to get my head around paul's damage budget, and it works well for simple melee foes. but for more complicated foes that have lots of spells i really don't understand it. like, is it just the amount of damage you can do in one turn? so does only the spell that does the most damage count against the budget? but then why in his example are fireball and the cantrip counted together? and then if i have to count every spell against the budget, my spellcaster foe can only know like 2 spells? i feel like i'm misunderstanding some wording surrounding the damage budget somewhere. i just can't work it out :S
A problem with the system is that you can have perfectly balanced monsters, but as soon as players unleash their broken (albeit RAW / legal) characters, it was all for nothing. The said CR19 demilich can be defeated by a party of three lvl 3 characters with no risk involved. Heck, a lvl 2 aarakocra artificer can solo a tarrasque with a simple returning weapon (no bag of holding explosion tricks required). Even some less min-maxy and flavorful abilities can and will ruin encounters, enter conjure animals. You can design fair monsters all you want, but as long as the equation isn't balanced on the PC side as well, the creative guidelines (whether published or reverse-engineered and then reapplied) are pointless.
Wouldn't a graph comparing effective HP be more useful than actual HP? If you don't factor in legendary resistances, damage reductions, etc., then of course the MM monsters seem to have too few HP. The MM still has some monsters that fail to follow the CR guidelines, though. The biggest offenders are true dragons, where it seems the developers either forgot a few steps or deliberately made them overpowered since they are signature monsters. Compare the CR 6 young white dragon to the CR 8 young green dragon.
I never even bother checking cr, if there's a reason this monster would be in this place he's gonna be there. It's the player's job to figure out if they can take on a banshee or not, not mine. I create and animate the world, the players interact with it. Some monsters are weak others strong, it's the players who should decide what to do based on the information they have.
It should be pointed out that wotc have addressed that their CR calculcations don't match their monsters, and that they're addressing that in the 5.5 MM.
The information in this video is pretty solid. However. I hate that the RUclips algorithm pushes creators to use such clickbaity titles and thumbnails. I almost didn't watch this video just because the title. It tells me practically nothing about the content of the video. Literally the only reason I watched this is because I had nothing else to do. So please, do better with your video titles and thumbnails. Why wouldn't you name this video something like "The DMG is wrong about monster creation"? That way I know exactly what to expect when I click on it.
CR is a Major Illusion, alongside any related mechanics.
Maybe the DMG is right and all the monsters are wrong. They are monsters after all. Invented by evil cost wizards.
Tbh I don't think I've used that table *once* in my entire 6 years as a 5e DM. Over time you just kinda build up a collection of statblocks that worked great (as well as ones to avoid like the plague!), so might as well use them as a strong foundation when developing new monsters. I'd highly recommend this "trial by fire" strategy, it's led to some exceptional boss battles!
I hate how disfunctional the CR and general balance bs in DnD is. It’s enough to make me really want to quit playing it wether my players want to or not
Honestly I look online for a template of something I am looking for and either convert or transcribe it into 5e. I don't even look at the DM table for creating monsters. That said, it just supports your statement that "it's wrong"
Just use the table in the Forge of Foes preview or Paul Hughes' monsters in Level Up 5e.
Wotc lying to us? No, they wouldn't do that.
Oh wait, they have in the past, carry on.
CR is pretty bad. The Quick Monster Statblock Table in the DMG is in my opinion better than the published monsters in Wizards of the Coasts books, which are generally underpowered. Although I would say it is smarter to bump the numbers on the DMG table up a bit, not down.
Hold up- what level EIGHT fighter has 43 hit points? With 10 Con, they should have 52 by that level if they're taking averages...
I did say that I was bad at math.
Meanwhile in my game: Simply reskin a monster from the MM because I couldn't be bothered to come up with my own statblock, maybe I switch around some spells if they fit thematically
This tracks. They do tend to give you an idea of how to build stuff for your game, but they hide the details that allow people to know how they make the game, and leave new DMs to assume they just don't know how to get the balance right. Never letting them know that they were given faulty info in the first place.
0:05 by my calculations, a LvL8 Fighter would have, on average, 72.5HP, assuming he has a +3 CON bonus, which I believe is fair.
Interesting. Definitely bookmarking that for future reference. (Had to skip the aboleth bit because in the campaign I'm playing in currently, we just found a note in a rival faction's place saying "there seems to be an aboleth down where we're trying to do our nefarious stuff and it's really causing problems for everyone down there." Which...yeah, ok, do not look at that stat block for the next few months then, just in case.
I like this perspective! You really can't argue with this. Usually the info mentioned about Challenge Rating is just based off of case studies of groups of likely murderhobos that never track anything but their damage per round and are fighting monsters which behave as if deranged (or very much Don't Know What They're Doing to imitate Keith Amman's blog/book title).
I believe a lot of problems with Wild Shape, Polymorph and Shapechange also stem from the poor CR mechanics, not the features and spells themselves.
A...swarm...of... shade-lings? That is nightmare fuel.
I've completely stopped relying on CR and the DMG monster builder guide. I just build and my players either kill it, run, or die.
If I remember the reason health is like that is because of the ressistances and immunities are subtracted from the suggested health
My favorite thing is how even 5E's creators even admit they don't use CR or any of the tools they want to tell you to use.
I always found the hp of monsters in the manual to be way too low after the stuff characters face at lvl 1-3, so to me finding formulas for getting custom monsters down to similarly inadequate hp seems like a strange goal. To each their own, I guess.
My main problem with CR is the need for 5-8 resource draining encounters per in-game day... I don't know a single DM running 5e that regularly has that many encounters in any game day with the exception of an literal dungeon crawl. If you are running an adventure that mostly focuses on exploration and social situations, CR flat out does not work. It just doesn't...
What does seem to work pretty well is using the XP per day budget for the party and just breaking it up in to the number of encounters they are likely to run in to in that game day. This makes almost every combat encounter fit the "Deadly" category according to the CR rules but it actually challenges the party.
Example: XP per day budget for a party of 4 at lvl 1 is 1200xp. I expect the party to have two combat encounters that game day. I'm going to make one of them around 500xp and the other around 6-700xp.
Battle 1: 3 Kobolds (CR 1/8) and a Kobold Scale Sorc (CR 1). 550 XP.
Battle 2: 4 Bandits (CR 1/8) and a Pirate Deck Wizard (CR 1). 600 XP.
So we are at 1150 XP. I could even throw in 1 or 2 low dmg traps for the kobolds and still be around the expected XP per day for the party.
I rarely use base MM monsters, once the party a beyond level 5 I'll go with more third party materials for monsters. Newer 5E books have scope creeped player abilities, which cannot easily be calculated into CR ratings .
I feel the need to point out that I pitted my brand new party with several players who had never played, none who had played together, and were completely unoptimised in any way against a CR 1/4 with similar stats (13 AC, 30 hp, Reckless, a Greataxe for a +4 to hit and 8 (1d12+2) damage) along side several typical CR 1/4 monsters (zombies) and not only was it *not* a TPK, but it was a complete stomp in the party's favor.
The thing about the DMG guides is that while this monster isn't unbalanced, it's boring. If your party has any source of bludgeoning damage, you'll be chewing through its HP like its made of paper, if not it's a slog until you down it. But the chances of it killing the party before it can do that with a pitiful 8 max damage, 5 average, against any decent frontliner and a healer with healing word is next to 0.
At lower levels, glass cannons tend to be funner than damage sponges because of the high risk - high reward ratio. While at higher levels, you'll want beefier monsters because players at those levels are more afraid of monsters they can't blast into oblivion than they are of being killed due to abundant resurrection spells.
Ive always run it as CR is supposed to say a level 8 party should be able to fight one cr8 enemy with low resource cost. A boss will generally be 4 CR over the party
I keep forgetting that there are other editions after the first.
i've tried to get my head around paul's damage budget, and it works well for simple melee foes. but for more complicated foes that have lots of spells i really don't understand it. like, is it just the amount of damage you can do in one turn? so does only the spell that does the most damage count against the budget? but then why in his example are fireball and the cantrip counted together? and then if i have to count every spell against the budget, my spellcaster foe can only know like 2 spells? i feel like i'm misunderstanding some wording surrounding the damage budget somewhere. i just can't work it out :S
Paul is an impressive dude.
A problem with the system is that you can have perfectly balanced monsters, but as soon as players unleash their broken (albeit RAW / legal) characters, it was all for nothing. The said CR19 demilich can be defeated by a party of three lvl 3 characters with no risk involved. Heck, a lvl 2 aarakocra artificer can solo a tarrasque with a simple returning weapon (no bag of holding explosion tricks required). Even some less min-maxy and flavorful abilities can and will ruin encounters, enter conjure animals.
You can design fair monsters all you want, but as long as the equation isn't balanced on the PC side as well, the creative guidelines (whether published or reverse-engineered and then reapplied) are pointless.
Wouldn't a graph comparing effective HP be more useful than actual HP? If you don't factor in legendary resistances, damage reductions, etc., then of course the MM monsters seem to have too few HP.
The MM still has some monsters that fail to follow the CR guidelines, though. The biggest offenders are true dragons, where it seems the developers either forgot a few steps or deliberately made them overpowered since they are signature monsters. Compare the CR 6 young white dragon to the CR 8 young green dragon.
WotC selling something that doesn't do its job so you have to buy other products...that tracks.
We all (should) know that CR calculator is a guideline at best. This is great info.
I never even bother checking cr, if there's a reason this monster would be in this place he's gonna be there. It's the player's job to figure out if they can take on a banshee or not, not mine. I create and animate the world, the players interact with it. Some monsters are weak others strong, it's the players who should decide what to do based on the information they have.
Bah, I've stopped using CR a long time ago xD
Wizards has admitted they screwed up the CR and the whole DMG is useless. This is one of their promises to correct in 6e.
It should be pointed out that wotc have addressed that their CR calculcations don't match their monsters, and that they're addressing that in the 5.5 MM.
Where's the link?
Same, I do not see the link
Fixed
Fixes
@@LunchBreakHeroes Thank you!
I see Stat block...I must click.
The information in this video is pretty solid. However. I hate that the RUclips algorithm pushes creators to use such clickbaity titles and thumbnails. I almost didn't watch this video just because the title. It tells me practically nothing about the content of the video. Literally the only reason I watched this is because I had nothing else to do. So please, do better with your video titles and thumbnails. Why wouldn't you name this video something like "The DMG is wrong about monster creation"? That way I know exactly what to expect when I click on it.
Because this way it gets a click through rate of 8% versus 5%. Perverse incentives plague the industry.
Theres something very wrong with the CR.
End of video