Oof, i meant sharpshooter feat when i said sniper. Someone also commented on me saying Xanathar's Guide to Monsters lol, again this is what happens when I don't script xD
Also a good thing to note is the demilich should have 128 hit points. 80 is its average hp but (and I understand anyone missing it since it doesn't mention it in the stat block) but instead mentions below it "So great is a demilich’s will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points." (it's found at the end of the undead nature section under the stat block in case anyone was curious) *added ()
The Demilich stats have a big mistake! More specifically it’s an oversight in its hp. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right. However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.” Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 HP (32x4). Top that with its damage resistances, it’s effective HP becomes 256, yeah it’s rough.
Sorry to bother, i am interested in the other planets of realmspace (anadia, coliar...) but the wiki is a bit lacking. Do you have any plans to touch the subject in future videos?
I'm curious as to whether I should make homebrew spells for an Astral Dragon over 30k years old. After all with possibly millions of years of practice they could be able to do almost anything. Shifting into the space around the main gith city and wiping it off the map in a matter of seconds. Also if Anubis is trying to keep the God's corpses intact how is said gith city still around?
Also remember that most monster HP, as written in the books, is an average of what could be rolled for those Hit Dice. Another quick fix is to just calculate the HP as closer to, or at, the possible maximum for those Hit Dice.
@@matthewdancz9152 extra hp should absolutely be used when a party is larger than average or higher level than really intended, as the party’s damage per turn increases dramatically. This should definitely be used in conjunction with other methods, but if damage per turn for the monster is adequate as is, and you just want to allow combat to last more than one round, by all means take the HP to the higher end of the bell curve.
@@denimator05 It really really does, lol. If you roll first, you basically have it in the bag. If the dragon rolls first... pray to lady luck your DM rolls low
Reminder that nothing's stoping you from giving monsters Tasha's sidekick levels, if not legitimate class levels. Everybody thinks dragons wind up being easy prey until they pull Quickened Fireball on them.
If you're DMing you can always just give them any ability you want. The players will never notice (unless they're rules lawyering) and you can tweak it however you like. Players gonna use macimized fireballs on everything? These skeletons have evasion as a rogue because they were a band of thieves. Players have too much AC and HP? They have sneak attack too and know how to flank.
Dragons deserve spellcasting levels. Nothing was as terrifying as the Red Dragon that could cast Greater Invisibility. The only way the players could tell it's size was by the size of the ships it could ignite in a single breath.
@@treeross I would say that's even better against rule lawyers. If you're experienced in the game, you would be able to know if you're able to win or loose a fight just looking at the monsters' stat blocks. With homebrew variants, you don't know what to expect.
@@treeross by far this is the most useful tool I've found for DMing. It builds the world with unique monster encounters while also making a default bandit or zombie have some flair.
Except that some systems can handle CRs well enough for monsters to be pretty much right off the tables and just what players can handle, while 5e cannot make ends meet. As much as they are guidelines, guidelines can actually be good.
Serious problem though, 5e CR ratings directly corelate to experience gains. Advancement is intricately linked to combat and the CR of the enemies faced. It is the silliest oversight to the entire game.
As a reliable rule-of-thumb, I pretty much always double the HP modifier for non-boss monsters. (5d8+20 HP becomes 5d8+40 HP). Its just enough to let monsters survive long enough to actually pose a threat and require a bit of strategy and teamwork from an appropriately leveled party, but not so much that the party can't get lucky with a few crits for an epic fast kill.
When I run a second edition dnd, the 4 figthers party faces a Tarasque. 2 fighter in very bad shape, 1 fighter close to death and the last one decent shape with a Tarasque dead in less of 2 rounds. I never saw a carnival of crit in a row. Both side rolling 20s with high dmg rolls..... each side swinging 24-36 dmg each hit.
I would prefer to have my monsters operate in groups except for the completely anti-social monsters like White Dragons. Otherwise a better way to have monsters survive is to have them start preferring ranged attacks and hiding behind cover.
In my game, I have seriously considered giving ALL monsters the same benefits as 1st Edition monsters had... Need +1 to hit, +2 to hit, +3 to hit... Etc. If your weapons are one level less, you do half damage. If your weapons aren't that good, (2 or more levels removed from what you need) you only deal ONE HIT POINT of damage per hit.
For what's worth, I thought you did well enough talking off the cuff that it didn't strike me as rambling at all. I mean it's a topic that no one ever covers, when you're clearing a path, you're bound to catch a branch or two in the face.
Challenge rating: am I a joke to you? My DM, making a lich based encounter for our 7th - 8th level 4 person party (which, using a very powerful item, we won): yes.
@@larsjuh13vk the lich had minions, they were just inside her tower. The fight happened right outside it, since she came out to investigate our Leomond's Tiny Hut. She did turn one of us into a wight (though we managed to resurrect him later) and also tried to teleport into the tower, but the dragon we summoned with the item mentioned above started destroying it until she came back out. This wasn't a normal lich, it was some kind of homebrew with a lot of reactions and ghost magic. She did, however, have about as much health as a typical lich; that is to say, not much as long as you can hit her. The fight wasn't easy by any means. The dragon (also a powerful homebrew) lost her wings and almost got disintegrated. The lich isn't truly dead, either. The storm giant court is just keeping her under a shitton of wards to keep her trapped.
Thank you for reminding me of the encounter my level 5 party had against a lich. We defeated the lich, but we lost the warlock, cleric and druid on the process
@@maid_of_heart3261 yeah, fighting a lich will definitely kill a few characters at lower levels. Our rogue died and became a wight, which then killed our fighter and almost killed our cleric.
@@thestoopidiot870 It was a... really intense session. After that, the wizard, the rogue and I (a sorcerer) took a short rest and left the haunted mansion. And we had to fight a group of 15 ghouls & wights that had gone rogue upon killing the lich that was controlling them :). I still have no clue on how we managed to survive
My party ( 6 players on Level 7) rushed a Gorgon and two Mindflayers. But struggled for 2 hours against 5 Soldiers (CR 1/2) creaturs. So yeah ... what is calculation?
@@dominiklange8382 what you roll during combat matters a lot. Even the creatures with the highest to-hit modifiers can still roll a 1, and even a peasant can roll a 20.
no, not really. a certain subset you might say had a common theme in hit points being key, but the issue with 5e draws from bounded accuracy and other elements in the design that basically mean that you can't effectively make up for poor hitpoints or can't overcome excessive hitpoints without very extreme measures example of non hp games is stuff like old world of darkness (idk about new wod) where characters often had identical or very similar amounts of HP through entire careers, cypher system/numenara where 'hit points' are also currency for actions, call of cthulhu where hp doesn't really matter as if a throwdown happens you'll be dying in very short order no matter what
I really like 2e and earlier editions for this reason. Monsters and PCs both had really low hit points, making encounters quick and decisive for both sides... When they hit. Hit chances were also a lot lower. Mostly it ended up with people fencing for a few rounds and then someone would land a solid blow and kill their opponent lol
@@Syenthros 2e, seen a group of four 1st-level characters bull rush a 9th-level fighter in full plate with their wizard dog crawling behind the 9thlvlFtr for a trip attack. End result, the guy got wrap up in his two layer noble cloak. Armor doesn't protect you from touch grapple attacks, and lucky dice rolls.
I myself have always been aware of this table and have used it in my games from time to time as I like to crunch numbers. I also like to understand the mechanics of where all the numbers come from. Most other people don't share my love for numbers so it is truly awesome that mrRhexx takes his time to try to explain how this table works. This table is really usefull, good luck everyone in your games!
My two favorite D&D channels in one video: The Dungeons of Drakkenheim Campaign live stream was an absolute blast and i was so sad i wasn't able to back the Kickstarter, throw a MrRhexx video in after the promotion?! Beautiful. i'm in Nerdvana.
Back in the old days, in 1st edition, you *did* get XP for gold treasure, at the rate of 1 XP per 1 GP you found. Even the weight of equipment items was measured in gold pieces, or the purposes of the game's encumbrance system.
AD&D had similar mechanics. Additional xp based on the gold value of treasure. The problem is a company that handles CCGs is not equiped to properly balance a TTG. The expansion books show the power creep in a bad way. (Not that AD&D was immune to said power creep, however it wasn't nearly as pronounced. Psionics could be pretty OPed though -grin-)
@@merlintym1928 Since Wizard's has gotten their hands on the licensing, the game's systems have been completely reinvented 3 times. Excluding the "0.5" renditions. I clearly misunderstand what "balancing" means. I always thought "balancing" meant taking the source and removing or adding snippets to fix one aspect being more powerful or far weaker then the others. ...Not gutting the source of all but it's name and creating everything over with a new vision.
@@martithdurel3974 You are correct, you don't know what balancing is. It's not patching, it's part of the design process. You also don't understand that the different editions of dnd are not improvements of eachother - they are seperate games. Seperate games that need to be designed and balanced - something WOTC has been doing almost as long as TSR, and thanks to the success of 5th edition, they will certainly outlast them in the next few years.
Might be wrong but sometimes there really is only so much detail in the game. With how thorough rhexx is you can usually expect he gives you everything important. Any more detailed you just need to buy/download the books and see for yourself.
Rhexx actually already has a video on Chronus, I believe it’s called “strongest monster in all of DnD” or “highest challenge rating in DND”, something like that
Hi Mr. Rhexx. Thanks for another great video. I wanted to suggest something I adapted when my PCs got 14+. I took Monsters AC and gave them two AC's. For example Adult Red Dragon you mentioned ~19 AC AND ~25 AC. 19-24 on hit = half damage, 25+ full damage. Also, I give all of my monsters a resistance, think rock paper scissor. Every (high level) monster should resist either piercing, bludgeoning or slashing, and yes, magical. Also an element if needed. Then of course, throw in extra abilities that allow them to heal or throw the party a curveball via lair actions or mutations. Good stuff!
The way I've seen the demi-lich handled was/is the most an attack could ever do to it in a single attack was 2 damage.......makes that 90HP seem like 900. If you manage to hit the thing. your only ever going to do 1 to 2.....using this mechanic, demi-liches are rough. One of the hardest encounters I've ever seen (DM'ed) was a demi-lich inside an adamantine golem (wearing it like a mech), controlling it telepathically, and minions....lots of minions. That was brutal. 3.5 of course......5th is a pale comparison.
The Demilich stats have a big mistake! More specifically it’s stats are wrong. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right. However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.” Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 (32x4). When you take the above point in consideration, I would say 5e demilich is pretty powerful.
@@speedingspoon262 yea but the monster manual for demilich stat block lists it hit dice as 20d4, which maxed out would be 80. So I don't see any mistakes here.
@@jesseruiz9315 might be your monster manual is out of date. In 2018 there was an Errata to the monster manual. In this Errata, the demilich hit dice was changed from 20d4 to 32d4. Source: media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/MM-Errata.pdf Using 32d4 maximised would make the demilich effective HP more in line with what a CR 18 should have.
i love drakkenheim! the creators' livestream of this setting was brilliant in the steady escalation of pace, urgency and consequences with an amazing culmination which leaves as many questions as answers. the factions follow archetypal ideologies that fit perfectly in the fantasy horror background.
I just make sure to make the fight meaningful. On my setting, "Supremacy", I made sure to properly set that by the mere fact that there's only a handful of monster roaming the world, but then, they are absolutely capable of wiping out most 10th level parties with relative ease, thus, that's why they weren't hunted to extinction.
Possibly because it would break the laws of physics if he posted a video that is not both after one game and before the next game. That's kinda just how time works lol.
I use the golf swing principle. Take a monster, then look at Min hp ------ avg given ------ max hp Then adjust on the fly depending on how you want the combat to go
I've converted poison to a DoT effect in my game. Feels better on both sides, and makes it more.....of a realistic concern that, if ignored, can lead to grave circumstances. My game:. If poisoned, healing is halfed and applies a DoT based off of the severity of the poison used. Every poison effect requires a CON save, if successful no DoT is applied and the initial poison attack is at half damage as is normal. Edit: once poisoned, one must require healing via restorations, medication, antidotes. Depending on the poison, and the relevance of narrative.
The more powerful my party is the more ridiculous I make the HP, I had my party melt through about 700 HP in about three rounds, which is why at the time that creature had about a thousand HP
@@TheFuriousBrother yeah at this point that's pretty much what I do, I am like yeah this ability sounds cool for them, they're going to have this much HP and they're going to be able to do this
I typically give any boss monster max hp for it's HD, and usually some sort of extra attack, frequently in the form of minions. Makes things feel more epic.
Yep, then if things are going surprisingly badly for the PCs, you can always NERF the boss's hp a bit and let them squeak by, or have minion antics somehow sabotage their own side. It's harder to convincingly dial UP the difficulty of a boss encounter in the middle of the fight than it is to dial it down a bit.
I can’t thank you enough for making this video. This makes balancing my game much MUCH simpler rather than trying to thread the needle between overpowered and underpowered enemies.
As a DM of originaly 3.5 edition noticed right away that MrRhexx gave the best posible advice again. The monsters are nerfed and the players will feel the lack of challenge to a disappointing frustration. Rhexx solution is by far the best thx man 👌
A TLDR on this video and also an explanation of why this is a thing; CR is calculated based on a *very* specific party comp and by people playing entirely by the book with little to no creativity. There is an old equation game companies use for working out CR and it's basically a way to fairly average their stats and abilities then compare them to a party's average numbers calculated the same way. This formula is obviously static, as it's derived from the math of the game. This means the formula for CR assumes a party of a Wizard, a Rogue, a Cleric, a Fighter, and a Ranger. Because not all classes are equal in power (how could they be?) swapping out even one class from this basic formula means everything is out of balance already. If most or all of those classes are swapped for other classes then everything is extremely out of balance. Note that we have not deviated from playing strictly by the book. We're acting like a computer and simply choosing other vanilla options, but otherwise playing exactly as intended and the math is now all bad so the CR ratings are useless. Naturally no humans play that way, so merely by being human players, even if you kept the CR Calc's Party Comp, you'd throw things out of balance. Obviously game companies would fix this if they could, but it's not relay possible to do a balance equation for all party comps you could have, average it, and still have usefully metrics for any given party. It would be off. So they stick to the broken system. You as a DM simply need to know your players, know your house rules, the game rules, and the characters. Once you do, you play things more by ear. Treat those goblins as a little lower in CR for XP, make sure monsters that can bypass high AC are doing their tactical jobs of nuking the fighter, when building monsters remember that while your party is level 8, they can pull clever plans out of their but and punch way above their weight class so a real threat to them is a CR 12 encounter, not a CR 7 encounter. It sounds way harder than it really is. All you really do is work out a difficulty offset and make sure the monsters are being strategic with what they have.
Love this Chesterton's Fence approach to CR. If CR seems nonsensical to you, you probably shouldn't mess with it. Once you understand where the numbers come from, you're much more empowered to change what actually needs changing.
I tend to overcome these issues with environmental aspects. Fighting a monster in a small room is usually easy enough - but try fighting one that's flying in the air, or standing on top of a fortification, or in a marshy forest. I've had a single Drider stalking a party through a forest from high in the branches, raining arrows down on them and forcing them to chase it into the trees or get a lucky shot to bring it down. I've had a Black Dragon ambush a party crossing a river ford by surging out of the water like a crocodile, causing some of them to struggle not falling into the water as they tried to engage it. Or a Mindflayer levitating above a doorway in a crypt who grabbed the weakest party member as they passed through (no-one looked up, they didn't make that mistake again) and almost sucked their brains out. I love ambushing the party, because it doesn't give them time to perfectly plan out an assault and use the same tactics over and over again. I never throw more at them then I think they can handle, I just give them a solid challenge to overcome each time. And if I accidentally overtune it I'll adapt on the fly to give them an advantage to recover - such as friendly reinforcements coming to the rescue, or a cave in happens to their advantage, or I ask a party member to take a skill check that gets them a reminder/hint as how to proceed (either reminding them they have an item that would be useful and their character suddenly remembers, or divine intervention of some kind).
What people have to realize is that if you only have 1-3 encounters a day, all at challenge rating equal to the party's level. It's going to be pretty easy for them. Challange rating is based on having 6-8 medium-hard encounters a day. My party just finished a 10 session multi day dungeon dive. And using challange rating made it easy and balanced for the party. And it worked effectively. Btw the party is consisted of 2 Paladins, a cleric, a druid and a rogue.
I learned this a while ago and switched to a modified version of the "gritty realism" system provided in the dm's guide (short rests are a night's sleep, long rests are 24 hours) as much as people bash that system online, it's genuinely helpful for a non-combat focused campaign with fewer daily encounters. We've also made an exception that long periods of combat like a dungeon allow normal short/long rest rules. There are a few complications to work around, but overall I think many dms and players overlook that as a solution because it's too gritty/realistic and too harsh. Ironic that the system works best for very harsh/deadly campaigns and for the exact opposite with more lighthearted campaigns with little combat but not in between.
6 to 8 encounters a day, the fuck? Official mini adventures, which tend to take one or two sessions, have 3 at *most*, counting the big bad at the end.
@@ginger-ham4800 My experience is that you end up running the game in almost real time: one four hour session to get from sunrise to lunchtime, a second session to get from lunch to dinner, and then at the end of the third session you take your first long rest. Your party finishes the average dungeon in a single three day weekend.
Luke over at DM Lair I think said something in a video a few months ago that if your monsters are getting steamrolled, put their initial HP at MAX possible. Not "bumped", but maxed. I commented about this the other day on some FB group, and another poster said, "Yeah, almost all 5e DMs are doing that these days." It's definitely helped, especially now that my party is level 13. Also, Luke said give them an "enrage" type attack like you see in video games......where they do MAX damage dice. It SERIOUSLY gets players attention when you do that. I did that right after his video. I had a couple of gith show up on young red dragons, and the players thought they were bad asses because they rolled over one dragon. Well, these dragons were a mated pair, and so the male was PISSED......and his breath did max damage. I think I almost killed the fighter, the monk, and SERIOUSLY put a dent in the barbarian. That, and the commoners and orphans they were trying to "rescue"? Almost all were incinerated. The fighter was carrying four kids in his arms. It was a sobering moment for the party.
Yeah. If you want to see a game that got CR right, try out Starfinder. They managed to make the challenge consistent through the whole level progression.
I remember getting almost tpk'd by a young green dragon encounter at lvl 3. My despair when my lvl 3 wizard still gets to 0 hp even after succeeding the saving throw from it's breath weapon.
The Demilich stats have a big mistake! More specifically it’s stats are wrong. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right. However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.” Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 (32x4).
I had this problem back a few years ago and I too was puzzled as to why some of my player's characters were able to nearly solo certain encounters. That's when like you, I read up on the section about CR and how the math works. Thats when I realized; the system works and it makes sense, but you need to keep in mind a few things; 1) The CR assumes that the player power is at the expected level. When you start throwing in stuff like little power boosts, or magic items, the balance of power is going to start to tip in favor of the players over the monsters. 2) The CR is a guide to the monsters -average- power. It does not tell you how chunky a monster is, and it does not tell you how deadly the monster is. It only gives you a general -guide- to these things. 3) At higher levels (Lvl 8+) there is the assumption that players will be doing some intel gathering to learn about the dangerous foes they expect to face, and prepare accordingly. As a result, you end up with the HP variance pointed out in the video. A demi-lich being a prime example. 80 HP isn't appropriate for a level 18 wizard or sorcerer, never mind a CR 18 boss fight. My recommendation? The player characters won't want to fight alone, so why should a boss? Sprinkle in a few kobolds rushing to aid their dragon mommy and/or daddy. Give the demilich some zombie meat shields. Don't over do it, obviously, but give that wizard in the back something more to think on than just casting disintegration.
Remember that CR is based on three assumptions: 1. The group has no magical items 2. The CR is supposed to be a medium encounter, which means resources are expended but no one goes down. 3. The group is fighting upwards of 6 battles a day.
@@demonzabrak I think they may have assumed that players would regularly spend multiple sessions on the same in game day. In the game I'm currently running the players have taken on six combats in a day, but a day takes three sessions to get through.
@@nicholascarter9158 oh for sure, some groups do it like that, but some groups, given the chance, will do a single fight and then rest. I didn’t mean to imply that it never happens, just that it’s foolish to assume it will always happen. The concept of “6 per day” is likely an artifact from the OG D&D, where things were just done very differently. It makes the power curve really unimmersive to me having that many fights a day, you could level almost 4 times in a week at that rate. It takes you years of life and training and experience to start at level 1, and then after a month of messing about in dungeons you can be almost max level. Madness.
In AD&D, every gold piece that the party looted counted towards XP -- of course the XP needed to go to the next level was much higher than it is today in 5E.
I remember banishing a Beholder because it rolled a nat 1 on his charisma saving throw (I didn't know back then that beholders have a high bonus on their charisma saving throw). The was like, "*sigh With a flash of blue light a pooping sound the beholder disappears. Returning to from whence it came." With this trauma, he made the BBEG fight in his homeplane and made him immune to being shifted to another plane unless willing (because I got a staff that lets me cast planeshift)
Beholders in lore: 200 IQ ultra-paranoid isolationist psychopaths with versatile magical abilities that have played nearly every possible encounter with intruders into their minds Beholders in game: get one shoted by int: 3 Barbarian's power attack because they lost the initiative roll.
yep. I kept thinking the whole time he was talking about letting players take extra feats and giving them oodles of cash to buy/hire whatever/whoever they wanted how badly that was throwing the balance of the game out of whack. The more power you give your players, the more you allow them to min/max, the more you need to do the same with monsters to raise overall CR ratings. Or use improved tactics, buff up lair abilities, etc. If you don't, the players are going to steamroll everything. That's just common sense.
The end to that tomb messed me up so bad! I was a cleric and became insanely frustrated trying to destroy that damn undead! Only after I died did I realize that it was not undead.
Some of the third edition and 3.5 edition gave a better in-depth of monster creation and CR level ratings and creating certain monsters on your own. Personally I've enjoyed 3.0 and 3.5 more than I have any other addition
Me when monster stats are too easy: "Fine, I'll do it myself." I've homebrewed SO many enemies, a personal favorite being a CR 28 Lich who is an absolute BEAST. He's the final boss of my campaign, and my players at Level 18 still absolutely DREADING fighting this dude, Homebrew is just the solution.
Once upon a time, in a Star Wars RPG after 5 or 6 sessions I gave my players something like 10mi Imperial credits. They went into a shopping spree and after some time, they didn't have any idea of what to do. So they just did as always, joined the Rebellion to fight the Empire.
Buy a war/ cargo ship, crew year's worth of pay roll. Work uniforms, basic ship supplies and fuel. Maybe create a secret shipyard. Random player," Hey man I got into RPG so I don't have to think about money or politics, for me this is just a table top first person shooter mental video game. " Big Star Wars gamer myself, start with WEG back in the early 1990's.
@@akiragomes When WotC came out with there D&D/ Star Wars, both of my game shops had to transplant rules/ systems from WEG into the new game for better effect. Two skill checks in one round, just half your skill ranks. No need to waste using a Feat. Also we more or less did away with CP character points you can mostly only gain in combat and just went with Basic Training Time to Learn a Skill. End result we recalculation Vader's force dice and found base on his age he would hade less dice in most of his force/ skills. For D&D style, XP bench marks .. to train a soldier in todays military compare that to a SW 1st-level Soldier class. long story short, a character can train for two to three class levels per years. Dark Horse comics from the early 2000's when the Prequals came out and novels. Jedi padawans build their first lightsabers at around 13 yo & they are 4th-level Jedi. D&D3e really redefine Xp level gain vs PC's age on Padawan to Jedi knight master. 2.) As campaign side note, my gaming shop groups always ran Vader chilling with the 5O1st units on his down time. Even replacing his helmet and armor to go out as a heavy storm commando. It started off out as we had a late comer to the group and as a side joke they gave the new player Vader's skill stats and had him run a bounty hunter and later a storm trooper. After a few games of him playing a bounty hunter & trooper the DMs revealed his PC to be Vader. Then they had him PC Vader on multiple times cause he played like a 1980's action movie anti hero on Over Drive. Vader natural skill level in piloting was so advance after 20 years of imperial service was a D&D at 12 ranks + dex + Enhance Ability/ dex = + 18 to 20 base, not to mention his WEG dice, only the best of the 5O1st could keep up with him. 3.) We broke canon, by having Vader leak high level imperial information to the Rebels so his son can kill off his political rivals. Also Leia was classified as " Ghost," first she seem to always wear white, she is from a dead world, and we ran a few games of a random player ran a female PC cleaning out/ ghosting a pirate raider warehouse and Force Stealth evading Vader as she killed of the troopers.
@@akiragomes My game shops took two section out of the WEG books and over ran with them, .. 1.) Explosives .. once to know how much you need to destroy a target, you no longer need to roll for damage. 2.) Space Travel Time, the average travel time to a planet to it's nearest moon is 30 minutes. After a few minute of math that comes close to 107km/sec. Then you have starship/ fighter Space Unit travel speed. Which lead to the math needed for kinetic impact weapon math damage. Long math in short, basic earth to space at 12km/sec a T/I navigation deflectors and structural integrity field hitting a speck of iron 1miligram of space dust has twice to kinetic energy of the anti tank ammo of the wort hog A10. 3.) Concussion missiles of the Ywing is of the mass it can hold a 70lb suite case nuke swan device which has the yield of 1 to 5 kiloton fusion thermal warhead. "Now what kind of kinetic impact rod equals to that ?" Sorry, .. I and we under stand the nature of the story that Lucas was telling with Star Wars, but .. as a table top wargame treated as a word math dice game. The Skywalker story was not needed. Dark Horse comic series " Crimson Empire, " the Emperor was brought down by his own body guard corrupting his clones.
Due to WotC D&D sytle Star Wars, stating that " Skywalkers " had an extra +3 level adjustment to roll on Force dice rolls .. funny since in the novel of New Hop at the DS trench run, Vader view Luke with the power of a full fledge Jedi knight. And Luke was a 2nd-level Fringer. ( +5 level adjustment) So other than playing the key movie characters, there are no other " Skywalkers " from Vader, ... or was there ? The Emperor's cloning tech ? Any children created from Vader during blood/ tissue samples from medical check ups are just regarded as " Bio - weapons." Interesting note from the novel " Darksaber," musing from the Death Stars designer that was repeated killed, clone, and Soul Transform back to life by the Emperor. " Was Vader original, or did the Emperor ever killed him and brought him back in another cyborg cripple body ?"
I remember the best piece of info a dm gave me. Calculate monster hp by the number of hits a monster can take. A monster with 40 hp could be taken down with 2 fireballs. A monster that can take 3 hits will survive 3 fireballs. Its not perfect but is great for minion monsters or fights you want to take a a bare minimum of rounds
Page 136 of Xanathar's there's a side note about magic items. Basically characters and monsters are designed to face each other without any magic items, just the abilities they get as part of their class or whatever. Encounters are designed to use an average of 25% of the PCs resources (hp, spells, etc) When you add magic items it tips the scales. But realistically who plays with no items, this needs to be considered when choosing the monsters. In the example Res to non magic weapons increase hp by x1.5 or whatever. If you give out items just take that into account and increase hp accordingly.
DMing for over 20 years by now, i've NEVER had issues with my encounter CRs, even in a game i prepared, specifically for munchkins. All i learnt that game, was how to use monsters correctly. The second battle with the same monsters, was completely different. All i did was some tactics.
I second this. Only been DMing for about 5 years though (at 3x sometimes 4x a week though I've gotten a lot of hours in) Funnily enough my players are wary of fighting 6 orcs (actually modified berserkers), even though they absolutely bodied Yeenoghu a couple of sessions ago. Why would you be scared of a CR 12 encounter when you don't bat an eye when fighting a demon lord? Well the orcs have this thing called a brain, their brains might not work as well as humans or elves do but they are still there. Meanwhile Yeenoghu's tactics are little more than "kill, Rend, and Maim"
40 minute video can be summed up in one sentence: Go to the DMG and look up the creating quick monster stats table & use the HP charts there instead of the ones given to the monster after CR5. You're welcome.
And also appreciate that Mr. Rhexx gave us a 40 minute video. It’s his time he’s spending to bring us this info, in a deep dive way. It’s kinda what his channel is about.
@@denniskucyk6621 I like most of his content and this was good too, but even he admitted that he was rambling. Not his best work, which, I think is absolutely allowable. He's human, after all.
It would be nice if the stat blocks reported offensive and defensive CR independently - like for that red dragon if you listed the CR as "17 (12/22)", you'd get that it's CR 17 that hits like a truck and goes down fast. In turn, this might help inform how to effectively use a monster: A dragon like that, if in an open environment, would likely rely on its air superiority, flying high above and breathing fire down on the party, swooping down to make a bite attack as it starts to level out, raking at you with its claws as it passes, then hitting you with its tail on the way out. (This is, by the way, how you make dragons as terrifying as they should be - they're more mobile than your party is, and most of them are of smart-to-genius level intelligence, and they've been flying their entire lives, there's no way a dragon with an open sky is just gonna plonk its ass down in front of an adventuring party and let them beat it to death. And oh god, can you imagine feeling like the mouse being hunted by a hawk? That's what this will make your players feel.) (If you've got a player who's fought in a war where the enemy had a decent air force, maybe don't do this or check with them first - those are memories best not tapped into accidentally.) Conversely a monster who rates the opposite - CR 17 (22/12) is very likely to sit there, let the adventurers beat on it to their heart's content, confident in its ability to outlast any threat.
Suggestion: No difference in defensive CR and offensive CR greater than 4. Because the red dragon example makes for a coin flip engagement; either the dragons dies “immediately” or the party does, and the opposite engagement will happen when defence is way greater than offence; no damage will be dealt on either side making a “boring” grind. Introducing the restriction of no CR gap greater than 3-5 makes the monsters more reliable when using CR to determine engagements, and using the red dragon example again; just up the HP to increase the defensive CR this decreasing the gap between offensive and defensive CR. Note: I don’t play or DM any games, but I’m a game and math enthusiast, and love balancing games 😊
My DM has decided to start using more dragons toward the end of our campaign for this reason. We (lvl 14) fought an adult red dragon, and it was the closest my fighter has gotten to death since about level 6.
25 years ago, back in the last days of AD&D2ndE, my first game shop had a house rule, if you can dead lift a given weight, then that equal your PC strength score. Which gave most players PC's Str of 12 to17. Some reason a lot of light weight skinny people are stronger than they look. Also the shop had a 15 ft long home made sand bag scale size Large .. juvenile red dragon/ young adult green dragon dummy. Which weight around 600 lbs and took a few people to pick up and move. So any arm chair warrior shooting off their mouths thinking they .. know .. combat. There was a 10 second beat down with foam larp weapons and being jumped and wrestling with the house shop " dragon." Dragon attack on the new players to the shop. Four guys holding up the weight of the dragon dummy and brace it on the new guys' shoulder. Then let them have all the weight. Once the guy hit the floor, a six year old girl mounts the dragon and starts beating the guy with a foam short sword to represent rapid claw attacks like a over size cat. Dragon tactics, jump/ pin target to ground, then make .. touch .. hit grab attack to get a hold of weapon arm, then apply pressure crushing damage. Along with shoulder socket dmg. Lay on the target's chest to restrict breathing as the dragon paws the targets face/ head till it quits moving. With pinning tactics 1d4+1 dragon wrymlings can cripple a PC party quickly. So one or many or any regards, CR system is unbalance or doesn't work very well at times.
A good way to neuter a cheesy archer build is items or spells that make you immune from normal missile attacks. Suddenly +40 damage is actually 0, because most players don't have magical ammunition on hand, or if they do, they don't have much of it. Even then, there are protective effects that can ignore damage from some magical weapons, so +1/+2 arrows could also prove to be ineffective.
I tend to only kill big monsters when the momnet feels right. I had a young black dragon that would have just died after a few rounds to a fair low level party (5 or something), but I waited instead and the next round, the ranger who had had fly cast on him flew under it and shot it in both eyes at once. This is of course a much better way to end the encounter than "oh it just died". HP is more of a guide line to me. My final BBEG of that campaign was Tiamt (1-20 Campaign). Looking at the stat block for her, she has 650 HP (I think). My players when supernova and did this in 2 rounds. Luckly, I had pre-emptively upped it - to 2000. Believe it or not, this was the perfect amount of HP. Tiamat died on the very last turn she could have. If she had had another round, she would have tpked the party. The moment was awesome as well, and using my DMing intuition, I let her die. It was great. She also had 2 ancient dragons with her so thats even more health on the table. The fight went amazingly. We did have a level 20 life cleric as well and she did about 1500 points of healing throughout the fight so that will have changed things. TLDR: HP is just a guide line imo. Let monsters die when the moment is right and the HP suggest that it's time
I agree so much. My players loved combat because of this. They always were on the edge and feeling threathened, while at the same time getting successes and feeling competent. They had to work together and use their skills and not just one-trick blast all monsters.
I know this video is kinda old but if it helps one person this is a useful comment but whenever building a big bad in particular don’t forget about the demonic boons in Mordenkainen’s. This is especially useful for monsters like hags who fit very well thematically with the boon from Orcus or an evil druid with a boon from baphomet. Definitely a game changer when your hag coven leader can raise undead who cant be turnt by paladins and clerics
I love my DM friend who didn't know the mechanics of those tables, but he manually playtests and re-adjusts HP of the monsters he throws at us. He also makes notes on when the monster uses certain skills just so the battle is challenging. Never has it once that his battles end in one turn. Sometimes DMs gave us too many tools and they forgot how powerful those items can be or how they will stack; most DMs just use the monster blocks without adjusting at all. Thanks for sharing the least accessed information in the DMG. Now I know how much effort my DM friend actually puts in to create a whole system on his own without those tables 😂
I’ve just finished watching most of the videos in this playlist and the last one was storm king’s thunder. I have to say what I end up doing a majority of the time with the modules is easy homebrew . Storm kings thunder. Bam zelda style adventure that uses all the premade content and moves them onto a custom map. What I really think wotc should do with their books if they want replay ability is to make modular dungeon sections so they can be customizable each time and a greater focus on characters and villains within the adventure. Strahd does a greater focus on these aspects and I think that is why it is my favourite so far. Anyway cheers dude. Hope you guys like this idea.
There's one note in the Dungeon Master's guide section on monsters that you didn't cover that I feel needs stating. All of the numbers assume that feature "counters" the party. I believe in the flying section, it mentions that you should reevaluate the numbers based on if the party has ways of effectively dealing with flying creatures (their own flying, for example.) Basically, not all CR is created equal, and you have to take into account the party that you're trying to lovingly maul. As someone that makes a lot of monsters, one of the things you notice is that the Monster Manual tends towards glass cannon monsters - low Defensive CR and high Offensive CR. For some, like the Demi-Lich you mentioned, it actually assumes that you have some countermeasures set up before the party shows. Like casting defensive spells before the battle begins, or having traps laid out on the battlefield. For others, it's simply because it assumes that the monster counters the players, defensively: A Fire Elemental for your fire-loving wizard, for example. Either way though, it's not ideal. Rather than adjusting up the HP, however, I typically adjust down the CR for my table. Both have their own problems, but my players typically like being put on the ropes so the high damage is less of a problem than it would be for others. Typically, I treat the Final CR as 1 lower for every 2 the Defensive CR is below it. For creating your own monsters, try to shoot for balancing the Defensive CR to be around the CR you want the monster to be, and just make a well-rounded monster. It'll be more fun than something that either kills the party in one round or is immediately killed itself.
I have always made a single item that is tailored to each player. Usually it starts as a minor magic item/weapon, or even non-magic. And over time as they level up the item also levels with them, slowly, getting stronger or gaining new abilities. My players have enjoyed that. My hope is that if one ov them dies then their personal item will become legendary, eventually maybe even a relic if picked up by others to become even stronger. One ov the items, a cloak, has become a intelligent item over a full year and a half ov gaming thru one long adventure. Always fun when retelling stories with friends about those crazy shenanigans.
Two other important parameters are the environment and tactics. An ambush from the monster for example tremendously increase their power. Clever use of terrain can easily shift the balance of power too. Also, adding weak monsters can greatly increase the threat of the powerful one, and if they are too low in CR compared to the main one, they are not considered in the xp balance of the encounter. And very importantly, CR and balance is based on a lot more than one encounter per day. Actualy, suggested xp for an encounter is based on a basis of 4 hard encounters in a day, or 8 average encounters in a day.
After several session running the game as a DM, i quickly noticed your point and i completly agree with it. I see monster with high rank and only 100 hp can just be destroyed by a level 5 full power party in 1 round on one on one fight. It doesn't bother me for minions but it feel wrong and anticlimatic for a true boss to die too quicly. So i started homebrewing monster and that's when i also found the table in the DMG but also the creation process of a monster and the trouble associated with resistance to calculate CR you talk about. Once i figured that out, i didn't use HP in a monster stat block as straight forward information but as a guideline you have to adjust depending on your player's party in some circonstances. So when choosing a monster now, first thing i do is looking how many HP (and resistance or regeneration) it has and compare to how much damage and type my PC can deal in a full round and i estimate how much it will last. After a while, you have a "feel" of the destructive power of a party depending on its composition. Next i either increase the HP of the monster (and change it during the battle if necessary) or add low ranking minions in the fight. Also, thank you MrRhexx for the amazing job and effort you put in this channel ;)
I stopped using CR when my party fought 15 Ghouls and a Wight(very unluck random encounter that had me roll twice and apply both encounters, which I had intended to be a 3 way battle, until I rolled both Ghoul teams on my list. XD) They won, in 3 turns, and if I remember right, they took no damage. Turn 1 was 2 very well placed Shatter spells from the Warlocks. Turn 2 was focussing down the surviving Ghouls after a previous encounter had managed to lock down half the party with paralysis. Turn 3 was just the Wight, who was supposed to have been a mini boss fight for my 4 level 4 players.
I feel a lot of the difficulties are not playing creatures smart. A demilich is a powerful mage. They can hover out of reach while summoning, they can have protective magic items, definitely traps in the room they are in, permanent illusions over pits. If monsters are played smartly it changes the entire encounter without having to change their stats. Give a troll a potion of fire resistance, have the big bad evil priest surround themselves with children, have the red dragon that the party prepared for polymorph themselves into an equivalent white dragon. Remember, many of these creatures have ridiculously high intelligence. They are most likely smart enough to learn any information the DM knows about the players.
*tactics* --- *think in 3d space* A demilich can flay and is only a head (with 20 int.) It will choose a battle ground that is advantageous to itself (IF it wants to fight.) That means high ceilings, lots of things to break line of sight and places to hide. It should be dark, it has 120' of true sight - more than almost any PC/class. Heck, a huge pool of dark water - it doesn't need to breathe. If the players can hit it - they deserve to be able kill it in that round. It feels like a lot of DMs just waddle their monsters out onto a flat open surface to play rockem-sockem-robots with the PC's. The PC's have the advantage in this scenario, even against "deadly encounters." I mean, a dragon can fly, why fight on the ground? fly by grapple attack, drop PC from 200' OR fly by with a coupe of boulders to follow up after the breath attack. It can fly around out of range until its breath weapon recharges -oh and the cone shape becomes radius when pointed down >8) check out Sly Flourish and "the monsters know what they are doing" Oh and 5e is designed for little to NO magic items, those are built into the classes. Don't give out anything beyond +1 anything. go for cooler effects and abilities.
I appreciate the info in this video. Have you ever thought about creating monsters the old fashioned way? step 1: decide how long you want the monster to live. Let's say, 5 rounds. Step 2: figure out the PCs attack bonus and pick an AC for your monster that will give them a desired probability to hit. Example, If I have a +5 to hit, I can hit a creature with an AC of 16, 50% of the time. Step 3: figure out the PCs damage per hit; Let's say each PC does about d10+3 for an average of 8 damage per hit. Step 4. Figure out how much damage the PCs can do per round. 5 PCs with 7 attacks doing 8 damage each, for example, means 56 damage per round. Step 5. Figure how how much damage PCs will do based on their probability to hit: 50% hit rate * 56 damage is 28 damage per round. Step 6. Figure the monsters HP. We decided we want the monster to survive for 5 rounds, so 5 * 28 is 140. Pro-tip: Use rough estimates and averages; it's fine. The players may do a bit extra hits or misses because dice will be dice. It's fine. If you want the PCs hitting more because it makes them feel good, you'll give the monster a lower AC but higher HP.
The problem you'll run into is that these guidelines are meant to be used when you're creating creatures for groups that haven't done character creation yet, so there's no way of knowing what the party's statistics are.
@@nicholascarter9158 That's silly. If you know 5e, everyone has a +5 to their attack rolls at level 1. Prof bonuses increase at fixed levels (5, 9, 13, 17). They'll likely improve an ability score at level 4 so that they have a +4, and max out an ability score by level 8 for a +5. A level 6 fighter will always have a +7 to hit unless the player chose Con for hit points or has made a sub-optimal creative build. You can always guess and be close enough to make a monster that they can take.
Important note on the resistances: you're *supposed* to only account for them in the effective HP if the resistances are for damage types that your players focus on, only if it would actually affect the fight. If you throw something that resists non-magic BPS against an all-martial party with no magic weapons, you should increase the effective HP. If they have magic weapons and those resistances don't mean anything to them, then you are not supposed to increase the effective HP. WotC didn't have this knowledge of course, and insists on supposedly balancing without magic items, so they make assumptions that often don't bear out thanks to the sheer variety of actual play. And then on to of that, important note on CR, the CR is not "this is the level at which the party should face this", it is "this is the level at which a generic party of four can be reasonably predicted to *consistently kill 6-8 of these per day,* in individual cage matches, with two short rests a day, without any characters dying for good"
9:00 - Come now, that's an easy thing to counter. A couple levels in Monk or Rogue for Bonus Dash, zip into melee. (Monk would be a better counter with Deflect Missile.) The archer is at disadvantage in melee. Have the Sentinel Feat. They now have to attack at Disadvantage or either Disengage (and get no attack) or move away and provoke Opportunity Attacks that then reduce movement to 0 and forcing them to stay in melee.
No worries on the non-scripted video, I liked it! Scripts are a little too rigid sometimes, I think an off the cuff video every now and again is refreshing
Fun thing about older editions, experience WAS based on the treasure you got, as you leveled not from learning in battle but from buying tutelage from teachers. Half the issue at higher levels was even finding someone that you could even learn from, as orders like monks and druids had singular figures in the hierarchy that you had to learn from and sometimes defeat in order to earn the level they are at, sometimes even needing to go on a quest in order to be deemed worthy of the attempt. Also, while monster HP is usually calculated with average die result of their HD, you're more than welcome to boost or nerf their HD "rolls" for their total HP and be within bounds of the statblock. Speaking as someone whose level 10 barbarian is a CR 10 creature on account of Rage resistances, magic armor boosts, and rolling VERY high on HD every level, or had an Orc War Chief have max HP so he doesn't die to two level 5 fighters with Sharpshooter that happened to roll lucky during character creation.
Something that I do with my monsters and bosses is I'll take there health and calculate its statistical max. So say it's like 20d12+60 so I'd go through do the math to give it more health.
I do the same thing. I also give about half of my monsters some kind of extra DR. It’s been a solid balance: monitors usually last 4 rounds, and at least one PC goes down in a fight
I think the reason behind why monsters have lower health than they should is: 1). Immunities and Resistances 2). The Monsters in the Monster Manual have been playtested and tweaked many many times. Thats why the Ogre variants are almost all CR 2. The base Ogre stat block, number wise, should be CR 1, so giving it a bit more health are damage output won't change its CR.
When fighting liches or high level wizards in their own domain. DM should try to think. If you had up to 9th level spells and decades or centories to prepare you inner santum, how would it be protected. If you get near his santum, he will know you are there. He will have made items/enchantments on his guards so he will know when you cut them down. So when you encounter the Lich it is likely not even the guy himself, but a illusion double giving the lich time to put on the last protections and having the players waste their resources and lose their short time protections. Also imagine the entire floor is a teleportation circle, covered by dust, and when he is ready it will teleport everyone in the room to a special place he has made ready for the fight. Like the inside of a vulcano, or a place with constant negative energy or any other place where a flying lich will have a massive advantage.
One of the big issues on CR being based on what's essentially a rough draft of two different sets of number crunching, is that it also doesn't really take into effect things like: special abilities (technically there's a chart with every single ability in the monster manual and how they effect CR, but this is pretty rough and doesn't help homebrew creatures with unique abilities), actions that don't do damage, and workarounds to those numerical averages (which differs from party to party, but evasion, stunning the monster, attacks having advantage for any number of reasons, etc) Just using the HP on the table is a good tip for most creatures in 5e, but a very offensively stacked creature with lots of these abilities that aren't calculated by the chart are gonna become a LOT stronger than their predicted CR. Not that it would matter all that much anyway, given most of balancing is done behind the scenes tailored to your party's strengths and what you know they can do, but just a small word of caution. TPK's are hard to avoid given most of this system that isn't roleplay is rolling math rocks that sometimes makes an encounter that should be "easy" turn into a catastrophic mess of death and panic just because rolls aren't rolling high enough. Point actually being, CR hasn't ever really been more than a guideline, and it's fine to balance things on the fly. It's all about having fun, after all. No one's gonna blink an eye or know if you just add HP behind the screen, or on the other side of balancing, say that the monster was slain by that attack after a long, dangerous, and gruelling fight (within reason, obviously. Players will know and can tell if fight after fight it feels like you're avoiding TPKs like the plague and they always miraculously win the fight right before one) It's not counting cards, especially with homebrew. No one's gonna know what HP something had, even if they memorised the monster manual. That specific monster in this specific fight had more HP. Having the fights be fun is the important thing, not "accurate" to a stat block in a game where the main rule is "it's okay to change things for your own group's fun" I lost the plot in my rambling. Oh well. Balancing works both ways and just adding HP to everything won't always fix that, so be cautious. I think was the point, lmao
The hp is key. These are the things I have done for bosses. 1. Two more legendary resistances. 2. At least triple HP (certain creatures dont fit this) 3. Lower the CR by 1 per PC when magic items get involved (lvl 17 would be 14 with 3 PCs) 4. Lower damage output by half. My players remember every boss. BIG TIME! Not only that, I treat humans like you would a PC. (Similar health, attack, ect.) Rather than using humanoid character sheets for tougher enemies.
The ever illusive issue. Too little HP can make the fight lame, Too much and you can make the enemy feel like a sandbag. It is effectively impossible to Maths all the possible combinations in DND. So official profiles and DMG tools need to be catered to the players. For each party that slays a Dragon in 1 round, there is that party getting destroyed by rats in a bar cellar.
I have a party of 4 lvl 12PCs, dripping with magical items. I don't hesitate to slap extra HP onto the Max just to make the combat feel accurately challenging. I also adjust saves and attack bonus with appropriate proficiency. I find a creature with 13 hit dice will only have a proficiency bonus of 3 or 4 maybe instead of +5 like the players would. Sometimes I'll even out some of the odd numbered ability scores to bump up their modifiers, especially important ones that involve their "strengths" (physical attacks, AC, HP, spellcasting, etc) Lastly, I don't shy away from using lair actions, and legendary actions/resistances. Also adding in a minion or two (summoned or otherwise) just to spread the PCs out a bit.
Worth mentioning that AC is a major factor with monsters. Most big bad monsters have a high AC, dropping their HP to balance for the CR. A +2 to AC can easily drop 50+ average hit points from a creature. If I only have one big bad (rare since I love my minions), I have a rule of thumb to add 50 hp for each player. Seems to balance things out
I also have an artificer in the party I DM with an AC of 26 plus shield and absorb elements and a fighter who when in an instance of PVP with our barbarian came up it took 1 round with an action surge to reduce him to zero. Players can be absurdly powerful and making a challenge for them is hard.
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A very interesting video sir, it's been an age since I played D&D, (like I played when TSR was still the publisher) and things were very different back then. :) I remember having parties as a GM that would just curb stomp everything, I threw at it when I began as well, I learned over time that as the GM I could just alter the monsters to be whatever I wanted. I was never really aiming at killing my party, but certainly making it fun and a challenge for them. Back then it was just making it up on the fly, just make it make sense. I sort of wish I had a table like that CR table because it would have been a huge help. I love D&D but I started playing more White Wolf games like Vampire the masquerade, Werewolf the apocalypse and Mage the assentation because my gaming group really loved those games and the real-world idea of Dark urban fantasy. Those games being more Storytelling than the mechanics of D&D, (there are absolutely mechanics to those games as well, but Dice rolls take a back seat to the story sometimes) I really enjoy all your videos because I would love to play again if I could find a good group and all. but it's just great fun to hear about all the changes in the game and listen to the things the monster manual does not tell us. great work sir! I will keep watching as you make videos for sure.
Dude... That homebrew of gold granting ability increases, feats, and level ups is insanely cool and I love it. It's going straight into my game right now.
In reference to fighters with the archery fighting style. The fighting style itself is supposed to counteract the idea that if someone is standing between the archer and the target they grant cover.
Take a low CR monster and give it's some class levels. Not only does it bee them up, it makes for a fun BBEG. That Gibbering Mouther that the party fled from instead of killing went on to eat a wizard, and now it knows magic.
A lot of this comes down to the DM's control of the monsters too. A demilich or someone like Strahd are good examples. They're not dragons, they're fairly fragile in combat but they would know this, right? They wouldn't go toe to toe with a heavily armed high level group of players. They would send swarms of minions, do drive by attacks to weaken them while keeping out of their range and finish them one by one when they see weakness.
Why the hell is a t-rex a cr8 creature? My level 4 party killed it in one turn and it was supposed to be an encounter that was a deadly reminder that they wont win every fight
Balance typically ceases being an issue when both sides play highly intelligently. Then again: the dragon retreating after firebreathing the sleeping PC's for the fourth time in a single night might cause... some frustration.
It's easy to be confused, but Monster's CR is calculated for a naked group level, which means you can rise up a notch when you have a well equipped party. Also, there's nothing to balance a game as to have them face NPC with class, build and gear equivalent to your party. Villains are better than Monsters. Also, i try to follow that rule as a DM, you get what you can kill. So i would adjust a monster to the equipment it can wear or the buff it can get/use. Another thing, you need to pull on your knowledge of the party to balance the encounter, low wisdom rogue get charmed/hypnotized or feared easy, low charisma get banished, etc... Remove some pieces and the encounter will be menacing, use the environment, a well prepared party is obviously a force to be reckon with, but how do they fare in a surprise environment, water filling the room ? There's a lot of way to balance the encounter easier than raw data. Multiple Shadows underwater are a deadly encounter. I rarely put people in an arena party vs 1 boss.
A few good ways to go is give them a max dam taken per turn. Or meet some goal like break the runes or crystals in the room. Give the main boss regeneration and give them a few tanks that is linked to the bosses hp regeneration so they must kill the others to reduce the bosses power.
I think you referenced a sniper perk that allows you to have a -5 to hit, but a +10 to damage. I believe the perk is called sharpshooter! It also ignores cover.
Gold pieces gave xp in older editions. So did finding magic items. A thief in second edition could gain levels just from pickpocketing or robbery. Every use of a thieving skill got xp as well.
I appreciate the info and page reference in the DMG. I am running a 5-man party and I have to DRASTICALLY increase the HP numbers of every creature I put them up against. I have a part of a Paladin/Sorcerer, a Hexblade Warlock, a Druid, a Ranger, and an Artificer. I've been pretty low key with the magic items and let me tell you the damage they bring to bear is INSANE. There are problems with the math inherent in 5E and it's twofold. First is the math itself. The numbers do not take into account player skill...they are effectively designed so that a Fighter with a +1 or +2 to his strength or dexterity modifiers will hit on a 10. Consider this...the table says a CR 14 monster should have an 18 AC. The aforementioned level 10 archery Ranger has +4 proficiency, +5 dexterity, the Archery fighting style for another +2 and a +1 magic weapon for a total of +12, meaning he hits on a 6. A properly engineered high level fighter with unfettered access to equipment could have an attack of +19...meaning on a roll of a 2 or better they hit ANYTHING on that table, Heck a level 20 Devotion Paladin with the unfettered access to equipment could potentially have an attack bonus of +24 and only use 2 attunement slots. And even the average level 20 character without lots of magic items will still have a +11 at bare minimum to hit...STILL only needing to roll a 7 on the d20 The second problem is that the game assumes players will NOT max out their most important ability score...when nothing could be further from the truth. Most players will have a stat maxed out by level 12, and it's possible as early as level 4. The game, I believe, ALSO assumes there will not be magic items to boost a players Attack rolls. I circumvented these shortcomings in two ways. First I will always ALWAYS maximize a monster's HP. Second, I routinely add MULTIPLE class levels to a monster. And by doing those experiments I learned something crucial: CR is WAY more a function of Proficiency Bonus than anything else. That party I mentioned above just hit level 10, the boss fight that got them there was a CR 14 based upon Proficiency Bonus ALONE: She had OVER 500 HP 21 AC, could attack 3 times and hit for close to 50 damage when she hit.
Back in the day a second edition Mr. Rex almost everything was Home bew. You could buy campaign sets or perhaps more than some stuff out of dragon magazine. Besides that man all home made stuff. It was fun.
Oof, i meant sharpshooter feat when i said sniper. Someone also commented on me saying Xanathar's Guide to Monsters lol, again this is what happens when I don't script xD
potato = potato, dude
Also a good thing to note is the demilich should have 128 hit points. 80 is its average hp but (and I understand anyone missing it since it doesn't mention it in the stat block) but instead mentions below it "So great is a demilich’s will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points." (it's found at the end of the undead nature section under the stat block in case anyone was curious)
*added ()
The Demilich stats have a big mistake!
More specifically it’s an oversight in its hp. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right.
However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.”
Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 HP (32x4).
Top that with its damage resistances, it’s effective HP becomes 256, yeah it’s rough.
Sorry to bother, i am interested in the other planets of realmspace (anadia, coliar...) but the wiki is a bit lacking. Do you have any plans to touch the subject in future videos?
I'm curious as to whether I should make homebrew spells for an Astral Dragon over 30k years old. After all with possibly millions of years of practice they could be able to do almost anything. Shifting into the space around the main gith city and wiping it off the map in a matter of seconds. Also if Anubis is trying to keep the God's corpses intact how is said gith city still around?
Also remember that most monster HP, as written in the books, is an average of what could be rolled for those Hit Dice. Another quick fix is to just calculate the HP as closer to, or at, the possible maximum for those Hit Dice.
demilich uses max hp of roll
@@Wolfbane971 no it doesnt. A demilich has an average of 80, but to roll for hp its 32d4 which is at maximum 128
When a DM has to adjust a challenge, by literally doubling the number of hits the monster can take, there is a fundamental problem with the system.
I run all my encounters at max Monster HP for a party of six PC
@@matthewdancz9152 extra hp should absolutely be used when a party is larger than average or higher level than really intended, as the party’s damage per turn increases dramatically.
This should definitely be used in conjunction with other methods, but if damage per turn for the monster is adequate as is, and you just want to allow combat to last more than one round, by all means take the HP to the higher end of the bell curve.
Dragons aren't hard to kill. They're hard to survive.
It comes down to who rolls higher on initiative
@@denimator05 It really really does, lol. If you roll first, you basically have it in the bag. If the dragon rolls first... pray to lady luck your DM rolls low
Imo celestials are harder to survive and also hard to kill, especially those at higher level such as Planetar and Solar.
@@cussundriakneal9904 Yep, reminds me of my level 9 paladin/hexblade who dealt 140 damage in 1 turn (with the help of haste).
And that's why I like the alert feat. +5 and unable to be surprise attacked is great for me who has trash luck.
"you think it's a ballanced encounter, but, then, a Dragon uses their breath weapon" (MrRhexx)
true, man.
Reminder that nothing's stoping you from giving monsters Tasha's sidekick levels, if not legitimate class levels. Everybody thinks dragons wind up being easy prey until they pull Quickened Fireball on them.
If you're DMing you can always just give them any ability you want. The players will never notice (unless they're rules lawyering) and you can tweak it however you like.
Players gonna use macimized fireballs on everything? These skeletons have evasion as a rogue because they were a band of thieves. Players have too much AC and HP? They have sneak attack too and know how to flank.
Dragons deserve spellcasting levels. Nothing was as terrifying as the Red Dragon that could cast Greater Invisibility. The only way the players could tell it's size was by the size of the ships it could ignite in a single breath.
@@treeross I would say that's even better against rule lawyers. If you're experienced in the game, you would be able to know if you're able to win or loose a fight just looking at the monsters' stat blocks. With homebrew variants, you don't know what to expect.
In the DMG pg 283 (Monsters with Classes) says that before Tasha's. Most people don't seem to have read that.
@@treeross by far this is the most useful tool I've found for DMing. It builds the world with unique monster encounters while also making a default bandit or zombie have some flair.
Cr’s, like the Pirates of the Caribbean series stated once, function “more like guidelines”
Except that some systems can handle CRs well enough for monsters to be pretty much right off the tables and just what players can handle, while 5e cannot make ends meet. As much as they are guidelines, guidelines can actually be good.
@@user-qd8yy9lc4g of course! That’s why I said guidelines rather than light suggestions 😂
Serious problem though, 5e CR ratings directly corelate to experience gains. Advancement is intricately linked to combat and the CR of the enemies faced. It is the silliest oversight to the entire game.
This.
The vibe I get is CR is so rough because milestone leveling has been the primary level system.
As a reliable rule-of-thumb, I pretty much always double the HP modifier for non-boss monsters. (5d8+20 HP becomes 5d8+40 HP).
Its just enough to let monsters survive long enough to actually pose a threat and require a bit of strategy and teamwork from an appropriately leveled party, but not so much that the party can't get lucky with a few crits for an epic fast kill.
When I run a second edition dnd, the 4 figthers party faces a Tarasque. 2 fighter in very bad shape, 1 fighter close to death and the last one decent shape with a Tarasque dead in less of 2 rounds. I never saw a carnival of crit in a row. Both side rolling 20s with high dmg rolls..... each side swinging 24-36 dmg each hit.
I would prefer to have my monsters operate in groups except for the completely anti-social monsters like White Dragons.
Otherwise a better way to have monsters survive is to have them start preferring ranged attacks and hiding behind cover.
In my game, I have seriously considered giving ALL monsters the same benefits as 1st Edition monsters had...
Need +1 to hit, +2 to hit, +3 to hit... Etc.
If your weapons are one level less, you do half damage.
If your weapons aren't that good, (2 or more levels removed from what you need) you only deal ONE HIT POINT of damage per hit.
For what's worth, I thought you did well enough talking off the cuff that it didn't strike me as rambling at all. I mean it's a topic that no one ever covers, when you're clearing a path, you're bound to catch a branch or two in the face.
Wow I love that metaphor - I'm definitely going to use that in the future!
Challenge rating: am I a joke to you?
My DM, making a lich based encounter for our 7th - 8th level 4 person party (which, using a very powerful item, we won): yes.
Didn't the lich have any minions? Or did you cheese it somehow? Or did the Dm run it horribly? Really curious, do tell
@@larsjuh13vk the lich had minions, they were just inside her tower. The fight happened right outside it, since she came out to investigate our Leomond's Tiny Hut. She did turn one of us into a wight (though we managed to resurrect him later) and also tried to teleport into the tower, but the dragon we summoned with the item mentioned above started destroying it until she came back out.
This wasn't a normal lich, it was some kind of homebrew with a lot of reactions and ghost magic. She did, however, have about as much health as a typical lich; that is to say, not much as long as you can hit her.
The fight wasn't easy by any means. The dragon (also a powerful homebrew) lost her wings and almost got disintegrated. The lich isn't truly dead, either. The storm giant court is just keeping her under a shitton of wards to keep her trapped.
Thank you for reminding me of the encounter my level 5 party had against a lich. We defeated the lich, but we lost the warlock, cleric and druid on the process
@@maid_of_heart3261 yeah, fighting a lich will definitely kill a few characters at lower levels. Our rogue died and became a wight, which then killed our fighter and almost killed our cleric.
@@thestoopidiot870 It was a... really intense session. After that, the wizard, the rogue and I (a sorcerer) took a short rest and left the haunted mansion. And we had to fight a group of 15 ghouls & wights that had gone rogue upon killing the lich that was controlling them :). I still have no clue on how we managed to survive
CR is always hard to calculate, where DM's can really succeed in making things difficult for the party is through abilities
My party ( 6 players on Level 7) rushed a Gorgon and two Mindflayers. But struggled for 2 hours against 5 Soldiers (CR 1/2) creaturs.
So yeah ... what is calculation?
@@dominiklange8382 alot is in that initiative roll. If you got first, the gorgon didn't get to gaze and the mind flayers didn't mind blast.
@@dominiklange8382 what you roll during combat matters a lot. Even the creatures with the highest to-hit modifiers can still roll a 1, and even a peasant can roll a 20.
@@Aplesedjr Yupp. Nat 1s were flying in the "easy" fight. Nat 20s in the "hard" fight
This is why I prefer enemy NPCs over monsters. They are almost always more challenging thanks to their options when it comes to their features.
After half a dozen sessions with my first character I dubbed 5e as “hit points: the game” and I stand by that to this day
Isn't that bacsically ALL TTRPG
no, not really. a certain subset you might say had a common theme in hit points being key, but the issue with 5e draws from bounded accuracy and other elements in the design that basically mean that you can't effectively make up for poor hitpoints or can't overcome excessive hitpoints without very extreme measures
example of non hp games is stuff like old world of darkness (idk about new wod) where characters often had identical or very similar amounts of HP through entire careers, cypher system/numenara where 'hit points' are also currency for actions, call of cthulhu where hp doesn't really matter as if a throwdown happens you'll be dying in very short order no matter what
I really like 2e and earlier editions for this reason.
Monsters and PCs both had really low hit points, making encounters quick and decisive for both sides... When they hit. Hit chances were also a lot lower.
Mostly it ended up with people fencing for a few rounds and then someone would land a solid blow and kill their opponent lol
@@Syenthros 2e, seen a group of four 1st-level characters bull rush a 9th-level fighter in full plate with their wizard dog crawling behind the 9thlvlFtr for a trip attack. End result, the guy got wrap up in his two layer noble cloak. Armor doesn't protect you from touch grapple attacks, and lucky dice rolls.
I myself have always been aware of this table and have used it in my games from time to time as I like to crunch numbers. I also like to understand the mechanics of where all the numbers come from.
Most other people don't share my love for numbers so it is truly awesome that mrRhexx takes his time to try to explain how this table works.
This table is really usefull, good luck everyone in your games!
My two favorite D&D channels in one video: The Dungeons of Drakkenheim Campaign live stream was an absolute blast and i was so sad i wasn't able to back the Kickstarter, throw a MrRhexx video in after the promotion?! Beautiful. i'm in Nerdvana.
Back in the old days, in 1st edition, you *did* get XP for gold treasure, at the rate of 1 XP per 1 GP you found. Even the weight of equipment items was measured in gold pieces, or the purposes of the game's encumbrance system.
AD&D had similar mechanics. Additional xp based on the gold value of treasure.
The problem is a company that handles CCGs is not equiped to properly balance a TTG. The expansion books show the power creep in a bad way. (Not that AD&D was immune to said power creep, however it wasn't nearly as pronounced. Psionics could be pretty OPed though -grin-)
@@martithdurel3974
Why wouldn't wizards be able to balance a tabletop game - they've been doing it for 25 years
@@merlintym1928 Since Wizard's has gotten their hands on the licensing, the game's systems have been completely reinvented 3 times. Excluding the "0.5" renditions.
I clearly misunderstand what "balancing" means. I always thought "balancing" meant taking the source and removing or adding snippets to fix one aspect being more powerful or far weaker then the others.
...Not gutting the source of all but it's name and creating everything over with a new vision.
@@martithdurel3974
You are correct, you don't know what balancing is. It's not patching, it's part of the design process.
You also don't understand that the different editions of dnd are not improvements of eachother - they are seperate games.
Seperate games that need to be designed and balanced - something WOTC has been doing almost as long as TSR, and thanks to the success of 5th edition, they will certainly outlast them in the next few years.
Btw can u make a more detailed vid on the Titans and chronus I thought they were cool
He already did?
If you would like something that's even greater detail, you can see if AJ Pickett has a video on them. His videos are usually an hour or longer.
Might be wrong but sometimes there really is only so much detail in the game. With how thorough rhexx is you can usually expect he gives you everything important. Any more detailed you just need to buy/download the books and see for yourself.
Rhexx actually already has a video on Chronus, I believe it’s called “strongest monster in all of DnD” or “highest challenge rating in DND”, something like that
Hi Mr. Rhexx. Thanks for another great video. I wanted to suggest something I adapted when my PCs got 14+. I took Monsters AC and gave them two AC's. For example Adult Red Dragon you mentioned ~19 AC AND ~25 AC. 19-24 on hit = half damage, 25+ full damage. Also, I give all of my monsters a resistance, think rock paper scissor. Every (high level) monster should resist either piercing, bludgeoning or slashing, and yes, magical. Also an element if needed. Then of course, throw in extra abilities that allow them to heal or throw the party a curveball via lair actions or mutations. Good stuff!
This is a wonderful video explaining challenge ratings, I've been wondering about chromatic metallic dragon hybrids myself.
Challenge Rating;
Where everything is made up and the points don't matter.
The way I've seen the demi-lich handled was/is the most an attack could ever do to it in a single attack was 2 damage.......makes that 90HP seem like 900.
If you manage to hit the thing. your only ever going to do 1 to 2.....using this mechanic, demi-liches are rough.
One of the hardest encounters I've ever seen (DM'ed) was a demi-lich inside an adamantine golem (wearing it like a mech), controlling it telepathically, and minions....lots of minions.
That was brutal.
3.5 of course......5th is a pale comparison.
The Demilich stats have a big mistake!
More specifically it’s stats are wrong. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right.
However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.”
Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 (32x4).
When you take the above point in consideration, I would say 5e demilich is pretty powerful.
Wow, that's so cruel and heartless ... my DM heart is bursting with pride for you!
Poor 2H weapon fighters.
@@speedingspoon262 yea but the monster manual for demilich stat block lists it hit dice as 20d4, which maxed out would be 80. So I don't see any mistakes here.
@@jesseruiz9315 might be your monster manual is out of date.
In 2018 there was an Errata to the monster manual. In this Errata, the demilich hit dice was changed from 20d4 to 32d4.
Source:
media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/MM-Errata.pdf
Using 32d4 maximised would make the demilich effective HP more in line with what a CR 18 should have.
i love drakkenheim! the creators' livestream of this setting was brilliant in the steady escalation of pace, urgency and consequences with an amazing culmination which leaves as many questions as answers.
the factions follow archetypal ideologies that fit perfectly in the fantasy horror background.
I just make sure to make the fight meaningful. On my setting, "Supremacy", I made sure to properly set that by the mere fact that there's only a handful of monster roaming the world, but then, they are absolutely capable of wiping out most 10th level parties with relative ease, thus, that's why they weren't hunted to extinction.
How do you manage to make the exact video I need, either after a session or while I'm planning my next session?
I have been spying on your sessions O.O
The Greater God of Lore is so for a reason... it is extremely rare for his senses to be blocked. 😳
Things that the monster manual doesn't tell you about Michael Gomez.
Possibly because it would break the laws of physics if he posted a video that is not both after one game and before the next game. That's kinda just how time works lol.
He lives inside your walls
I use the golf swing principle.
Take a monster, then look at
Min hp ------ avg given ------ max hp
Then adjust on the fly depending on how you want the combat to go
I blame poison damage! not only it is useless, because everyone is resistant or immune to poison, but apparently it screws up the entire CR sistem
I've converted poison to a DoT effect in my game. Feels better on both sides, and makes it more.....of a realistic concern that, if ignored, can lead to grave circumstances.
My game:. If poisoned, healing is halfed and applies a DoT based off of the severity of the poison used.
Every poison effect requires a CON save, if successful no DoT is applied and the initial poison attack is at half damage as is normal.
Edit: once poisoned, one must require healing via restorations, medication, antidotes. Depending on the poison, and the relevance of narrative.
20:00 well, the numbers are completely unreliable now, XGtE and Tasha's have given the players way more power...
The more powerful my party is the more ridiculous I make the HP, I had my party melt through about 700 HP in about three rounds, which is why at the time that creature had about a thousand HP
@@fatalfury66 I just completely homebrew monsters. It's a big time investment but tailored to perfectly fit what I want for the party
@@TheFuriousBrother yeah at this point that's pretty much what I do, I am like yeah this ability sounds cool for them, they're going to have this much HP and they're going to be able to do this
I typically give any boss monster max hp for it's HD, and usually some sort of extra attack, frequently in the form of minions.
Makes things feel more epic.
Yep, then if things are going surprisingly badly for the PCs, you can always NERF the boss's hp a bit and let them squeak by, or have minion antics somehow sabotage their own side. It's harder to convincingly dial UP the difficulty of a boss encounter in the middle of the fight than it is to dial it down a bit.
I can’t thank you enough for making this video. This makes balancing my game much MUCH simpler rather than trying to thread the needle between overpowered and underpowered enemies.
As a DM of originaly 3.5 edition noticed right away that MrRhexx gave the best posible advice again. The monsters are nerfed and the players will feel the lack of challenge to a disappointing frustration. Rhexx solution is by far the best thx man 👌
A TLDR on this video and also an explanation of why this is a thing; CR is calculated based on a *very* specific party comp and by people playing entirely by the book with little to no creativity. There is an old equation game companies use for working out CR and it's basically a way to fairly average their stats and abilities then compare them to a party's average numbers calculated the same way. This formula is obviously static, as it's derived from the math of the game. This means the formula for CR assumes a party of a Wizard, a Rogue, a Cleric, a Fighter, and a Ranger. Because not all classes are equal in power (how could they be?) swapping out even one class from this basic formula means everything is out of balance already. If most or all of those classes are swapped for other classes then everything is extremely out of balance.
Note that we have not deviated from playing strictly by the book. We're acting like a computer and simply choosing other vanilla options, but otherwise playing exactly as intended and the math is now all bad so the CR ratings are useless. Naturally no humans play that way, so merely by being human players, even if you kept the CR Calc's Party Comp, you'd throw things out of balance. Obviously game companies would fix this if they could, but it's not relay possible to do a balance equation for all party comps you could have, average it, and still have usefully metrics for any given party. It would be off. So they stick to the broken system.
You as a DM simply need to know your players, know your house rules, the game rules, and the characters. Once you do, you play things more by ear. Treat those goblins as a little lower in CR for XP, make sure monsters that can bypass high AC are doing their tactical jobs of nuking the fighter, when building monsters remember that while your party is level 8, they can pull clever plans out of their but and punch way above their weight class so a real threat to them is a CR 12 encounter, not a CR 7 encounter. It sounds way harder than it really is. All you really do is work out a difficulty offset and make sure the monsters are being strategic with what they have.
Love this Chesterton's Fence approach to CR. If CR seems nonsensical to you, you probably shouldn't mess with it. Once you understand where the numbers come from, you're much more empowered to change what actually needs changing.
TLDW: monster CRs are balanced around a meta that doesn't exist so need an injection of HP to keep up.
I tend to overcome these issues with environmental aspects. Fighting a monster in a small room is usually easy enough - but try fighting one that's flying in the air, or standing on top of a fortification, or in a marshy forest. I've had a single Drider stalking a party through a forest from high in the branches, raining arrows down on them and forcing them to chase it into the trees or get a lucky shot to bring it down. I've had a Black Dragon ambush a party crossing a river ford by surging out of the water like a crocodile, causing some of them to struggle not falling into the water as they tried to engage it. Or a Mindflayer levitating above a doorway in a crypt who grabbed the weakest party member as they passed through (no-one looked up, they didn't make that mistake again) and almost sucked their brains out.
I love ambushing the party, because it doesn't give them time to perfectly plan out an assault and use the same tactics over and over again. I never throw more at them then I think they can handle, I just give them a solid challenge to overcome each time. And if I accidentally overtune it I'll adapt on the fly to give them an advantage to recover - such as friendly reinforcements coming to the rescue, or a cave in happens to their advantage, or I ask a party member to take a skill check that gets them a reminder/hint as how to proceed (either reminding them they have an item that would be useful and their character suddenly remembers, or divine intervention of some kind).
What people have to realize is that if you only have 1-3 encounters a day, all at challenge rating equal to the party's level. It's going to be pretty easy for them.
Challange rating is based on having 6-8 medium-hard encounters a day.
My party just finished a 10 session multi day dungeon dive. And using challange rating made it easy and balanced for the party. And it worked effectively.
Btw the party is consisted of 2 Paladins, a cleric, a druid and a rogue.
I learned this a while ago and switched to a modified version of the "gritty realism" system provided in the dm's guide (short rests are a night's sleep, long rests are 24 hours)
as much as people bash that system online, it's genuinely helpful for a non-combat focused campaign with fewer daily encounters. We've also made an exception that long periods of combat like a dungeon allow normal short/long rest rules. There are a few complications to work around, but overall I think many dms and players overlook that as a solution because it's too gritty/realistic and too harsh. Ironic that the system works best for very harsh/deadly campaigns and for the exact opposite with more lighthearted campaigns with little combat but not in between.
6 to 8 encounters a day, the fuck? Official mini adventures, which tend to take one or two sessions, have 3 at *most*, counting the big bad at the end.
@@ginger-ham4800yep
@@ginger-ham4800 My experience is that you end up running the game in almost real time: one four hour session to get from sunrise to lunchtime, a second session to get from lunch to dinner, and then at the end of the third session you take your first long rest. Your party finishes the average dungeon in a single three day weekend.
I love homebrewing. Like... making stories up is part of the major attraction of d&d to me.
Luke over at DM Lair I think said something in a video a few months ago that if your monsters are getting steamrolled, put their initial HP at MAX possible. Not "bumped", but maxed. I commented about this the other day on some FB group, and another poster said, "Yeah, almost all 5e DMs are doing that these days." It's definitely helped, especially now that my party is level 13.
Also, Luke said give them an "enrage" type attack like you see in video games......where they do MAX damage dice. It SERIOUSLY gets players attention when you do that. I did that right after his video. I had a couple of gith show up on young red dragons, and the players thought they were bad asses because they rolled over one dragon. Well, these dragons were a mated pair, and so the male was PISSED......and his breath did max damage.
I think I almost killed the fighter, the monk, and SERIOUSLY put a dent in the barbarian. That, and the commoners and orphans they were trying to "rescue"? Almost all were incinerated.
The fighter was carrying four kids in his arms. It was a sobering moment for the party.
I finally understand the logic behind CR!
Also, the system is broken in early levels.
Yeah. If you want to see a game that got CR right, try out Starfinder. They managed to make the challenge consistent through the whole level progression.
I remember getting almost tpk'd by a young green dragon encounter at lvl 3. My despair when my lvl 3 wizard still gets to 0 hp even after succeeding the saving throw from it's breath weapon.
@@MeepChangeling Not really. That game can be completely broken
@@MeepChangeling i like PF2es way better
Rambling? No sir. You showed us the cheat code that was under our noses the whole time. Thank you.
The Demilich stats have a big mistake!
More specifically it’s stats are wrong. The stats in 5e list it’s hit points as 80, monsters hp is calculated from taking the average of their hit dice. So you would do 32d4 (2.5 x 32) for 80. Using this rule on paper the stats do look right.
However, in the info for the demilich specifically it’s “undead nature” it lists this “So great is a demilich's will to survive that it always has the maximum number of hit points for its Hit Dice, instead of average hit points.”
Therefore, instead of having 80 hit points, a demilich should have 128 (32x4).
I had this problem back a few years ago and I too was puzzled as to why some of my player's characters were able to nearly solo certain encounters. That's when like you, I read up on the section about CR and how the math works. Thats when I realized; the system works and it makes sense, but you need to keep in mind a few things;
1) The CR assumes that the player power is at the expected level. When you start throwing in stuff like little power boosts, or magic items, the balance of power is going to start to tip in favor of the players over the monsters.
2) The CR is a guide to the monsters -average- power. It does not tell you how chunky a monster is, and it does not tell you how deadly the monster is. It only gives you a general -guide- to these things.
3) At higher levels (Lvl 8+) there is the assumption that players will be doing some intel gathering to learn about the dangerous foes they expect to face, and prepare accordingly. As a result, you end up with the HP variance pointed out in the video. A demi-lich being a prime example. 80 HP isn't appropriate for a level 18 wizard or sorcerer, never mind a CR 18 boss fight.
My recommendation? The player characters won't want to fight alone, so why should a boss? Sprinkle in a few kobolds rushing to aid their dragon mommy and/or daddy. Give the demilich some zombie meat shields. Don't over do it, obviously, but give that wizard in the back something more to think on than just casting disintegration.
Remember that CR is based on three assumptions:
1. The group has no magical items
2. The CR is supposed to be a medium encounter, which means resources are expended but no one goes down.
3. The group is fighting upwards of 6 battles a day.
Point 3 is by far the most foolish assumption by the game designers. Which is strange considering how foolish point 1 is in a game about magic.
@@demonzabrak I think they may have assumed that players would regularly spend multiple sessions on the same in game day. In the game I'm currently running the players have taken on six combats in a day, but a day takes three sessions to get through.
@@nicholascarter9158 oh for sure, some groups do it like that, but some groups, given the chance, will do a single fight and then rest. I didn’t mean to imply that it never happens, just that it’s foolish to assume it will always happen. The concept of “6 per day” is likely an artifact from the OG D&D, where things were just done very differently. It makes the power curve really unimmersive to me having that many fights a day, you could level almost 4 times in a week at that rate. It takes you years of life and training and experience to start at level 1, and then after a month of messing about in dungeons you can be almost max level. Madness.
In AD&D, every gold piece that the party looted counted towards XP -- of course the XP needed to go to the next level was much higher than it is today in 5E.
I remember banishing a Beholder because it rolled a nat 1 on his charisma saving throw (I didn't know back then that beholders have a high bonus on their charisma saving throw). The was like, "*sigh With a flash of blue light a pooping sound the beholder disappears. Returning to from whence it came." With this trauma, he made the BBEG fight in his homeplane and made him immune to being shifted to another plane unless willing (because I got a staff that lets me cast planeshift)
Beholders in lore: 200 IQ ultra-paranoid isolationist psychopaths with versatile magical abilities that have played nearly every possible encounter with intruders into their minds
Beholders in game: get one shoted by int: 3 Barbarian's power attack because they lost the initiative roll.
This is what happens when they make a game around no magic items and feats then add them in
yep. I kept thinking the whole time he was talking about letting players take extra feats and giving them oodles of cash to buy/hire whatever/whoever they wanted how badly that was throwing the balance of the game out of whack. The more power you give your players, the more you allow them to min/max, the more you need to do the same with monsters to raise overall CR ratings. Or use improved tactics, buff up lair abilities, etc. If you don't, the players are going to steamroll everything. That's just common sense.
The end to that tomb messed me up so bad!
I was a cleric and became insanely frustrated trying to destroy that damn undead!
Only after I died did I realize that it was not undead.
Some of the third edition and 3.5 edition gave a better in-depth of monster creation and CR level ratings and creating certain monsters on your own. Personally I've enjoyed 3.0 and 3.5 more than I have any other addition
3.0 and 3.5 was also too bloated and nearly killed off D&D. But go you
Me when monster stats are too easy: "Fine, I'll do it myself."
I've homebrewed SO many enemies, a personal favorite being a CR 28 Lich who is an absolute BEAST. He's the final boss of my campaign, and my players at Level 18 still absolutely DREADING fighting this dude, Homebrew is just the solution.
Great Video!! I definitely needed to know about that table in the back of the DM book. Guilty about not reading the whole book just parts of it lol.
Once upon a time, in a Star Wars RPG after 5 or 6 sessions I gave my players something like 10mi Imperial credits. They went into a shopping spree and after some time, they didn't have any idea of what to do. So they just did as always, joined the Rebellion to fight the Empire.
Buy a war/ cargo ship, crew year's worth of pay roll. Work uniforms, basic ship supplies and fuel. Maybe create a secret shipyard.
Random player," Hey man I got into RPG so I don't have to think about money or politics, for me this is just a table top first person shooter mental video game. "
Big Star Wars gamer myself, start with WEG back in the early 1990's.
@@krispalermo8133 WEG was the best SW RPG!
@@akiragomes When WotC came out with there D&D/ Star Wars, both of my game shops had to transplant rules/ systems from WEG into the new game for better effect.
Two skill checks in one round, just half your skill ranks. No need to waste using a Feat.
Also we more or less did away with CP character points you can mostly only gain in combat and just went with Basic Training Time to Learn a Skill. End result we recalculation Vader's force dice and found base on his age he would hade less dice in most of his force/ skills.
For D&D style, XP bench marks .. to train a soldier in todays military compare that to a SW 1st-level Soldier class. long story short, a character can train for two to three class levels per years.
Dark Horse comics from the early 2000's when the Prequals came out and novels. Jedi padawans build their first lightsabers at around 13 yo & they are 4th-level Jedi. D&D3e really redefine Xp level gain vs PC's age on Padawan to Jedi knight master.
2.) As campaign side note, my gaming shop groups always ran Vader chilling with the 5O1st units on his down time. Even replacing his helmet and armor to go out as a heavy storm commando.
It started off out as we had a late comer to the group and as a side joke they gave the new player Vader's skill stats and had him run a bounty hunter and later a storm trooper. After a few games of him playing a bounty hunter & trooper the DMs revealed his PC to be Vader. Then they had him PC Vader on multiple times cause he played like a 1980's action movie anti hero on Over Drive.
Vader natural skill level in piloting was so advance after 20 years of imperial service was a D&D at 12 ranks + dex + Enhance Ability/ dex = + 18 to 20 base, not to mention his WEG dice, only the best of the 5O1st could keep up with him.
3.) We broke canon, by having Vader leak high level imperial information to the Rebels so his son can kill off his political rivals.
Also Leia was classified as " Ghost," first she seem to always wear white, she is from a dead world, and we ran a few games of a random player ran a female PC cleaning out/ ghosting a pirate raider warehouse and Force Stealth evading Vader as she killed of the troopers.
@@akiragomes My game shops took two section out of the WEG books and over ran with them, ..
1.) Explosives .. once to know how much you need to destroy a target, you no longer need to roll for damage.
2.) Space Travel Time, the average travel time to a planet to it's nearest moon is 30 minutes. After a few minute of math that comes close to 107km/sec.
Then you have starship/ fighter Space Unit travel speed. Which lead to the math needed for kinetic impact weapon math damage.
Long math in short, basic earth to space at 12km/sec a T/I navigation deflectors and structural integrity field hitting a speck of iron 1miligram of space dust has twice to kinetic energy of the anti tank ammo of the wort hog A10.
3.) Concussion missiles of the Ywing is of the mass it can hold a 70lb suite case nuke swan device which has the yield of 1 to 5 kiloton fusion thermal warhead.
"Now what kind of kinetic impact rod equals to that ?"
Sorry, .. I and we under stand the nature of the story that Lucas was telling with Star Wars, but .. as a table top wargame treated as a word math dice game. The Skywalker story was not needed.
Dark Horse comic series " Crimson Empire, " the Emperor was brought down by his own body guard corrupting his clones.
Due to WotC D&D sytle Star Wars, stating that " Skywalkers " had an extra +3 level adjustment to roll on Force dice rolls .. funny since in the novel of New Hop at the DS trench run, Vader view Luke with the power of a full fledge Jedi knight. And Luke was a 2nd-level Fringer. ( +5 level adjustment)
So other than playing the key movie characters, there are no other " Skywalkers " from Vader, ... or was there ?
The Emperor's cloning tech ?
Any children created from Vader during blood/ tissue samples from medical check ups are just regarded as " Bio - weapons."
Interesting note from the novel " Darksaber," musing from the Death Stars designer that was repeated killed, clone, and Soul Transform back to life by the Emperor.
" Was Vader original, or did the Emperor ever killed him and brought him back in another cyborg cripple body ?"
I remember the best piece of info a dm gave me. Calculate monster hp by the number of hits a monster can take. A monster with 40 hp could be taken down with 2 fireballs. A monster that can take 3 hits will survive 3 fireballs. Its not perfect but is great for minion monsters or fights you want to take a a bare minimum of rounds
Page 136 of Xanathar's there's a side note about magic items. Basically characters and monsters are designed to face each other without any magic items, just the abilities they get as part of their class or whatever. Encounters are designed to use an average of 25% of the PCs resources (hp, spells, etc) When you add magic items it tips the scales. But realistically who plays with no items, this needs to be considered when choosing the monsters. In the example Res to non magic weapons increase hp by x1.5 or whatever. If you give out items just take that into account and increase hp accordingly.
DMing for over 20 years by now, i've NEVER had issues with my encounter CRs, even in a game i prepared, specifically for munchkins. All i learnt that game, was how to use monsters correctly. The second battle with the same monsters, was completely different. All i did was some tactics.
Flank...terrain preparation...Ect.... 😀
I second this. Only been DMing for about 5 years though (at 3x sometimes 4x a week though I've gotten a lot of hours in)
Funnily enough my players are wary of fighting 6 orcs (actually modified berserkers), even though they absolutely bodied Yeenoghu a couple of sessions ago. Why would you be scared of a CR 12 encounter when you don't bat an eye when fighting a demon lord? Well the orcs have this thing called a brain, their brains might not work as well as humans or elves do but they are still there. Meanwhile Yeenoghu's tactics are little more than "kill, Rend, and Maim"
40 minute video can be summed up in one sentence:
Go to the DMG and look up the creating quick monster stats table & use the HP charts there instead of the ones given to the monster after CR5.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
But for better understanding and context, watch the video
And also appreciate that Mr. Rhexx gave us a 40 minute video. It’s his time he’s spending to bring us this info, in a deep dive way. It’s kinda what his channel is about.
@@denniskucyk6621 I like most of his content and this was good too, but even he admitted that he was rambling. Not his best work, which, I think is absolutely allowable. He's human, after all.
It would be nice if the stat blocks reported offensive and defensive CR independently - like for that red dragon if you listed the CR as "17 (12/22)", you'd get that it's CR 17 that hits like a truck and goes down fast.
In turn, this might help inform how to effectively use a monster: A dragon like that, if in an open environment, would likely rely on its air superiority, flying high above and breathing fire down on the party, swooping down to make a bite attack as it starts to level out, raking at you with its claws as it passes, then hitting you with its tail on the way out. (This is, by the way, how you make dragons as terrifying as they should be - they're more mobile than your party is, and most of them are of smart-to-genius level intelligence, and they've been flying their entire lives, there's no way a dragon with an open sky is just gonna plonk its ass down in front of an adventuring party and let them beat it to death. And oh god, can you imagine feeling like the mouse being hunted by a hawk? That's what this will make your players feel.) (If you've got a player who's fought in a war where the enemy had a decent air force, maybe don't do this or check with them first - those are memories best not tapped into accidentally.)
Conversely a monster who rates the opposite - CR 17 (22/12) is very likely to sit there, let the adventurers beat on it to their heart's content, confident in its ability to outlast any threat.
Suggestion: No difference in defensive CR and offensive CR greater than 4. Because the red dragon example makes for a coin flip engagement; either the dragons dies “immediately” or the party does, and the opposite engagement will happen when defence is way greater than offence; no damage will be dealt on either side making a “boring” grind.
Introducing the restriction of no CR gap greater than 3-5 makes the monsters more reliable when using CR to determine engagements, and using the red dragon example again; just up the HP to increase the defensive CR this decreasing the gap between offensive and defensive CR.
Note: I don’t play or DM any games, but I’m a game and math enthusiast, and love balancing games 😊
Muchkins are always gonna exist, so I'll let the them handle the power gaming and instead make something both interesting and useful.
My DM has decided to start using more dragons toward the end of our campaign for this reason. We (lvl 14) fought an adult red dragon, and it was the closest my fighter has gotten to death since about level 6.
25 years ago, back in the last days of AD&D2ndE, my first game shop had a house rule, if you can dead lift a given weight, then that equal your PC strength score. Which gave most players PC's Str of 12 to17. Some reason a lot of light weight skinny people are stronger than they look.
Also the shop had a 15 ft long home made sand bag scale size Large .. juvenile red dragon/ young adult green dragon dummy. Which weight around 600 lbs and took a few people to pick up and move. So any arm chair warrior shooting off their mouths thinking they .. know .. combat. There was a 10 second beat down with foam larp weapons and being jumped and wrestling with the house shop " dragon."
Dragon attack on the new players to the shop.
Four guys holding up the weight of the dragon dummy and brace it on the new guys' shoulder. Then let them have all the weight.
Once the guy hit the floor, a six year old girl mounts the dragon and starts beating the guy with a foam short sword to represent rapid claw attacks like a over size cat.
Dragon tactics,
jump/ pin target to ground, then make .. touch .. hit grab attack to get a hold of weapon arm, then apply pressure crushing damage. Along with shoulder socket dmg.
Lay on the target's chest to restrict breathing as the dragon paws the targets face/ head till it quits moving.
With pinning tactics 1d4+1 dragon wrymlings can cripple a PC party quickly.
So one or many or any regards, CR system is unbalance or doesn't work very well at times.
A good way to neuter a cheesy archer build is items or spells that make you immune from normal missile attacks. Suddenly +40 damage is actually 0, because most players don't have magical ammunition on hand, or if they do, they don't have much of it. Even then, there are protective effects that can ignore damage from some magical weapons, so +1/+2 arrows could also prove to be ineffective.
I tend to only kill big monsters when the momnet feels right. I had a young black dragon that would have just died after a few rounds to a fair low level party (5 or something), but I waited instead and the next round, the ranger who had had fly cast on him flew under it and shot it in both eyes at once. This is of course a much better way to end the encounter than "oh it just died". HP is more of a guide line to me.
My final BBEG of that campaign was Tiamt (1-20 Campaign). Looking at the stat block for her, she has 650 HP (I think). My players when supernova and did this in 2 rounds. Luckly, I had pre-emptively upped it - to 2000. Believe it or not, this was the perfect amount of HP. Tiamat died on the very last turn she could have. If she had had another round, she would have tpked the party. The moment was awesome as well, and using my DMing intuition, I let her die. It was great. She also had 2 ancient dragons with her so thats even more health on the table. The fight went amazingly. We did have a level 20 life cleric as well and she did about 1500 points of healing throughout the fight so that will have changed things.
TLDR: HP is just a guide line imo. Let monsters die when the moment is right and the HP suggest that it's time
I agree so much. My players loved combat because of this. They always were on the edge and feeling threathened, while at the same time getting successes and feeling competent. They had to work together and use their skills and not just one-trick blast all monsters.
I know this video is kinda old but if it helps one person this is a useful comment but whenever building a big bad in particular don’t forget about the demonic boons in Mordenkainen’s. This is especially useful for monsters like hags who fit very well thematically with the boon from Orcus or an evil druid with a boon from baphomet. Definitely a game changer when your hag coven leader can raise undead who cant be turnt by paladins and clerics
I love my DM friend who didn't know the mechanics of those tables, but he manually playtests and re-adjusts HP of the monsters he throws at us. He also makes notes on when the monster uses certain skills just so the battle is challenging.
Never has it once that his battles end in one turn. Sometimes DMs gave us too many tools and they forgot how powerful those items can be or how they will stack; most DMs just use the monster blocks without adjusting at all.
Thanks for sharing the least accessed information in the DMG. Now I know how much effort my DM friend actually puts in to create a whole system on his own without those tables 😂
I’ve just finished watching most of the videos in this playlist and the last one was storm king’s thunder. I have to say what I end up doing a majority of the time with the modules is easy homebrew . Storm kings thunder. Bam zelda style adventure that uses all the premade content and moves them onto a custom map. What I really think wotc should do with their books if they want replay ability is to make modular dungeon sections so they can be customizable each time and a greater focus on characters and villains within the adventure. Strahd does a greater focus on these aspects and I think that is why it is my favourite so far. Anyway cheers dude. Hope you guys like this idea.
There's one note in the Dungeon Master's guide section on monsters that you didn't cover that I feel needs stating. All of the numbers assume that feature "counters" the party. I believe in the flying section, it mentions that you should reevaluate the numbers based on if the party has ways of effectively dealing with flying creatures (their own flying, for example.) Basically, not all CR is created equal, and you have to take into account the party that you're trying to lovingly maul.
As someone that makes a lot of monsters, one of the things you notice is that the Monster Manual tends towards glass cannon monsters - low Defensive CR and high Offensive CR. For some, like the Demi-Lich you mentioned, it actually assumes that you have some countermeasures set up before the party shows. Like casting defensive spells before the battle begins, or having traps laid out on the battlefield. For others, it's simply because it assumes that the monster counters the players, defensively: A Fire Elemental for your fire-loving wizard, for example. Either way though, it's not ideal.
Rather than adjusting up the HP, however, I typically adjust down the CR for my table. Both have their own problems, but my players typically like being put on the ropes so the high damage is less of a problem than it would be for others. Typically, I treat the Final CR as 1 lower for every 2 the Defensive CR is below it. For creating your own monsters, try to shoot for balancing the Defensive CR to be around the CR you want the monster to be, and just make a well-rounded monster. It'll be more fun than something that either kills the party in one round or is immediately killed itself.
I have always made a single item that is tailored to each player. Usually it starts as a minor magic item/weapon, or even non-magic. And over time as they level up the item also levels with them, slowly, getting stronger or gaining new abilities.
My players have enjoyed that.
My hope is that if one ov them dies then their personal item will become legendary, eventually maybe even a relic if picked up by others to become even stronger.
One ov the items, a cloak, has become a intelligent item over a full year and a half ov gaming thru one long adventure.
Always fun when retelling stories with friends about those crazy shenanigans.
Two other important parameters are the environment and tactics. An ambush from the monster for example tremendously increase their power. Clever use of terrain can easily shift the balance of power too. Also, adding weak monsters can greatly increase the threat of the powerful one, and if they are too low in CR compared to the main one, they are not considered in the xp balance of the encounter.
And very importantly, CR and balance is based on a lot more than one encounter per day. Actualy, suggested xp for an encounter is based on a basis of 4 hard encounters in a day, or 8 average encounters in a day.
After several session running the game as a DM, i quickly noticed your point and i completly agree with it.
I see monster with high rank and only 100 hp can just be destroyed by a level 5 full power party in 1 round on one on one fight.
It doesn't bother me for minions but it feel wrong and anticlimatic for a true boss to die too quicly.
So i started homebrewing monster and that's when i also found the table in the DMG but also the creation process of a monster and the trouble associated with resistance to calculate CR you talk about.
Once i figured that out, i didn't use HP in a monster stat block as straight forward information but as a guideline you have to adjust depending on your player's party in some circonstances.
So when choosing a monster now, first thing i do is looking how many HP (and resistance or regeneration) it has and compare to how much damage and type my PC can deal in a full round and i estimate how much it will last.
After a while, you have a "feel" of the destructive power of a party depending on its composition.
Next i either increase the HP of the monster (and change it during the battle if necessary) or add low ranking minions in the fight.
Also, thank you MrRhexx for the amazing job and effort you put in this channel ;)
I stopped using CR when my party fought 15 Ghouls and a Wight(very unluck random encounter that had me roll twice and apply both encounters, which I had intended to be a 3 way battle, until I rolled both Ghoul teams on my list. XD)
They won, in 3 turns, and if I remember right, they took no damage. Turn 1 was 2 very well placed Shatter spells from the Warlocks. Turn 2 was focussing down the surviving Ghouls after a previous encounter had managed to lock down half the party with paralysis. Turn 3 was just the Wight, who was supposed to have been a mini boss fight for my 4 level 4 players.
I feel a lot of the difficulties are not playing creatures smart. A demilich is a powerful mage. They can hover out of reach while summoning, they can have protective magic items, definitely traps in the room they are in, permanent illusions over pits.
If monsters are played smartly it changes the entire encounter without having to change their stats. Give a troll a potion of fire resistance, have the big bad evil priest surround themselves with children, have the red dragon that the party prepared for polymorph themselves into an equivalent white dragon. Remember, many of these creatures have ridiculously high intelligence. They are most likely smart enough to learn any information the DM knows about the players.
*tactics* --- *think in 3d space*
A demilich can flay and is only a head (with 20 int.) It will choose a battle ground that is advantageous to itself (IF it wants to fight.) That means high ceilings, lots of things to break line of sight and places to hide. It should be dark, it has 120' of true sight - more than almost any PC/class. Heck, a huge pool of dark water - it doesn't need to breathe. If the players can hit it - they deserve to be able kill it in that round.
It feels like a lot of DMs just waddle their monsters out onto a flat open surface to play rockem-sockem-robots with the PC's. The PC's have the advantage in this scenario, even against "deadly encounters."
I mean, a dragon can fly, why fight on the ground? fly by grapple attack, drop PC from 200' OR fly by with a coupe of boulders to follow up after the breath attack. It can fly around out of range until its breath weapon recharges -oh and the cone shape becomes radius when pointed down >8)
check out Sly Flourish and "the monsters know what they are doing"
Oh and 5e is designed for little to NO magic items, those are built into the classes. Don't give out anything beyond +1 anything. go for cooler effects and abilities.
You should do a video on the Elder Evils Rhexx.
I appreciate the info in this video. Have you ever thought about creating monsters the old fashioned way?
step 1: decide how long you want the monster to live. Let's say, 5 rounds.
Step 2: figure out the PCs attack bonus and pick an AC for your monster that will give them a desired probability to hit. Example, If I have a +5 to hit, I can hit a creature with an AC of 16, 50% of the time.
Step 3: figure out the PCs damage per hit; Let's say each PC does about d10+3 for an average of 8 damage per hit.
Step 4. Figure out how much damage the PCs can do per round. 5 PCs with 7 attacks doing 8 damage each, for example, means 56 damage per round.
Step 5. Figure how how much damage PCs will do based on their probability to hit: 50% hit rate * 56 damage is 28 damage per round.
Step 6. Figure the monsters HP. We decided we want the monster to survive for 5 rounds, so 5 * 28 is 140.
Pro-tip: Use rough estimates and averages; it's fine. The players may do a bit extra hits or misses because dice will be dice. It's fine. If you want the PCs hitting more because it makes them feel good, you'll give the monster a lower AC but higher HP.
The problem you'll run into is that these guidelines are meant to be used when you're creating creatures for groups that haven't done character creation yet, so there's no way of knowing what the party's statistics are.
@@nicholascarter9158 That's silly. If you know 5e, everyone has a +5 to their attack rolls at level 1. Prof bonuses increase at fixed levels (5, 9, 13, 17). They'll likely improve an ability score at level 4 so that they have a +4, and max out an ability score by level 8 for a +5. A level 6 fighter will always have a +7 to hit unless the player chose Con for hit points or has made a sub-optimal creative build. You can always guess and be close enough to make a monster that they can take.
Important note on the resistances: you're *supposed* to only account for them in the effective HP if the resistances are for damage types that your players focus on, only if it would actually affect the fight. If you throw something that resists non-magic BPS against an all-martial party with no magic weapons, you should increase the effective HP. If they have magic weapons and those resistances don't mean anything to them, then you are not supposed to increase the effective HP. WotC didn't have this knowledge of course, and insists on supposedly balancing without magic items, so they make assumptions that often don't bear out thanks to the sheer variety of actual play.
And then on to of that, important note on CR, the CR is not "this is the level at which the party should face this", it is "this is the level at which a generic party of four can be reasonably predicted to *consistently kill 6-8 of these per day,* in individual cage matches, with two short rests a day, without any characters dying for good"
9:00 - Come now, that's an easy thing to counter. A couple levels in Monk or Rogue for Bonus Dash, zip into melee. (Monk would be a better counter with Deflect Missile.) The archer is at disadvantage in melee. Have the Sentinel Feat. They now have to attack at Disadvantage or either Disengage (and get no attack) or move away and provoke Opportunity Attacks that then reduce movement to 0 and forcing them to stay in melee.
No worries on the non-scripted video, I liked it! Scripts are a little too rigid sometimes, I think an off the cuff video every now and again is refreshing
Fun thing about older editions, experience WAS based on the treasure you got, as you leveled not from learning in battle but from buying tutelage from teachers. Half the issue at higher levels was even finding someone that you could even learn from, as orders like monks and druids had singular figures in the hierarchy that you had to learn from and sometimes defeat in order to earn the level they are at, sometimes even needing to go on a quest in order to be deemed worthy of the attempt.
Also, while monster HP is usually calculated with average die result of their HD, you're more than welcome to boost or nerf their HD "rolls" for their total HP and be within bounds of the statblock. Speaking as someone whose level 10 barbarian is a CR 10 creature on account of Rage resistances, magic armor boosts, and rolling VERY high on HD every level, or had an Orc War Chief have max HP so he doesn't die to two level 5 fighters with Sharpshooter that happened to roll lucky during character creation.
Something that I do with my monsters and bosses is I'll take there health and calculate its statistical max. So say it's like 20d12+60 so I'd go through do the math to give it more health.
I do the same thing. I also give about half of my monsters some kind of extra DR. It’s been a solid balance: monitors usually last 4 rounds, and at least one PC goes down in a fight
I think the reason behind why monsters have lower health than they should is:
1). Immunities and Resistances
2). The Monsters in the Monster Manual have been playtested and tweaked many many times. Thats why the Ogre variants are almost all CR 2. The base Ogre stat block, number wise, should be CR 1, so giving it a bit more health are damage output won't change its CR.
When fighting liches or high level wizards in their own domain.
DM should try to think.
If you had up to 9th level spells and decades or centories to prepare you inner santum, how would it be protected.
If you get near his santum, he will know you are there.
He will have made items/enchantments on his guards so he will know when you cut them down.
So when you encounter the Lich it is likely not even the guy himself, but a illusion double giving the lich time to put on the last protections and having the players waste their resources and lose their short time protections.
Also imagine the entire floor is a teleportation circle, covered by dust, and when he is ready it will teleport everyone in the room to a special place he has made ready for the fight.
Like the inside of a vulcano, or a place with constant negative energy or any other place where a flying lich will have a massive advantage.
The demilich in Pathfinder 1E is a real carnage making undead .... Love your videos even If i dont play D&D 5E !!! Keep up the great work !!!!
One of the big issues on CR being based on what's essentially a rough draft of two different sets of number crunching, is that it also doesn't really take into effect things like: special abilities (technically there's a chart with every single ability in the monster manual and how they effect CR, but this is pretty rough and doesn't help homebrew creatures with unique abilities), actions that don't do damage, and workarounds to those numerical averages (which differs from party to party, but evasion, stunning the monster, attacks having advantage for any number of reasons, etc)
Just using the HP on the table is a good tip for most creatures in 5e, but a very offensively stacked creature with lots of these abilities that aren't calculated by the chart are gonna become a LOT stronger than their predicted CR.
Not that it would matter all that much anyway, given most of balancing is done behind the scenes tailored to your party's strengths and what you know they can do, but just a small word of caution. TPK's are hard to avoid given most of this system that isn't roleplay is rolling math rocks that sometimes makes an encounter that should be "easy" turn into a catastrophic mess of death and panic just because rolls aren't rolling high enough.
Point actually being, CR hasn't ever really been more than a guideline, and it's fine to balance things on the fly. It's all about having fun, after all. No one's gonna blink an eye or know if you just add HP behind the screen, or on the other side of balancing, say that the monster was slain by that attack after a long, dangerous, and gruelling fight (within reason, obviously. Players will know and can tell if fight after fight it feels like you're avoiding TPKs like the plague and they always miraculously win the fight right before one)
It's not counting cards, especially with homebrew. No one's gonna know what HP something had, even if they memorised the monster manual. That specific monster in this specific fight had more HP. Having the fights be fun is the important thing, not "accurate" to a stat block in a game where the main rule is "it's okay to change things for your own group's fun"
I lost the plot in my rambling. Oh well. Balancing works both ways and just adding HP to everything won't always fix that, so be cautious. I think was the point, lmao
The hp is key.
These are the things I have done for bosses.
1. Two more legendary resistances.
2. At least triple HP (certain creatures dont fit this)
3. Lower the CR by 1 per PC when magic items get involved (lvl 17 would be 14 with 3 PCs)
4. Lower damage output by half.
My players remember every boss. BIG TIME!
Not only that, I treat humans like you would a PC. (Similar health, attack, ect.) Rather than using humanoid character sheets for tougher enemies.
The ever illusive issue. Too little HP can make the fight lame, Too much and you can make the enemy feel like a sandbag. It is effectively impossible to Maths all the possible combinations in DND. So official profiles and DMG tools need to be catered to the players. For each party that slays a Dragon in 1 round, there is that party getting destroyed by rats in a bar cellar.
I have a party of 4 lvl 12PCs, dripping with magical items. I don't hesitate to slap extra HP onto the Max just to make the combat feel accurately challenging.
I also adjust saves and attack bonus with appropriate proficiency. I find a creature with 13 hit dice will only have a proficiency bonus of 3 or 4 maybe instead of +5 like the players would.
Sometimes I'll even out some of the odd numbered ability scores to bump up their modifiers, especially important ones that involve their "strengths" (physical attacks, AC, HP, spellcasting, etc)
Lastly, I don't shy away from using lair actions, and legendary actions/resistances. Also adding in a minion or two (summoned or otherwise) just to spread the PCs out a bit.
Worth mentioning that AC is a major factor with monsters. Most big bad monsters have a high AC, dropping their HP to balance for the CR. A +2 to AC can easily drop 50+ average hit points from a creature. If I only have one big bad (rare since I love my minions), I have a rule of thumb to add 50 hp for each player. Seems to balance things out
I also have an artificer in the party I DM with an AC of 26 plus shield and absorb elements and a fighter who when in an instance of PVP with our barbarian came up it took 1 round with an action surge to reduce him to zero. Players can be absurdly powerful and making a challenge for them is hard.
A very interesting video sir, it's been an age since I played D&D, (like I played when TSR was still the publisher) and things were very different back then. :) I remember having parties as a GM that would just curb stomp everything, I threw at it when I began as well, I learned over time that as the GM I could just alter the monsters to be whatever I wanted. I was never really aiming at killing my party, but certainly making it fun and a challenge for them. Back then it was just making it up on the fly, just make it make sense. I sort of wish I had a table like that CR table because it would have been a huge help. I love D&D but I started playing more White Wolf games like Vampire the masquerade, Werewolf the apocalypse and Mage the assentation because my gaming group really loved those games and the real-world idea of Dark urban fantasy. Those games being more Storytelling than the mechanics of D&D, (there are absolutely mechanics to those games as well, but Dice rolls take a back seat to the story sometimes) I really enjoy all your videos because I would love to play again if I could find a good group and all. but it's just great fun to hear about all the changes in the game and listen to the things the monster manual does not tell us. great work sir! I will keep watching as you make videos for sure.
Dude... That homebrew of gold granting ability increases, feats, and level ups is insanely cool and I love it. It's going straight into my game right now.
In reference to fighters with the archery fighting style. The fighting style itself is supposed to counteract the idea that if someone is standing between the archer and the target they grant cover.
Take a low CR monster and give it's some class levels. Not only does it bee them up, it makes for a fun BBEG. That Gibbering Mouther that the party fled from instead of killing went on to eat a wizard, and now it knows magic.
A lot of this comes down to the DM's control of the monsters too. A demilich or someone like Strahd are good examples. They're not dragons, they're fairly fragile in combat but they would know this, right? They wouldn't go toe to toe with a heavily armed high level group of players. They would send swarms of minions, do drive by attacks to weaken them while keeping out of their range and finish them one by one when they see weakness.
This is the kind of “nuts and bolts” Content I’m looking for. I am enjoying your lore videos, but more system videos please.
Why the hell is a t-rex a cr8 creature? My level 4 party killed it in one turn and it was supposed to be an encounter that was a deadly reminder that they wont win every fight
Balance typically ceases being an issue when both sides play highly intelligently.
Then again: the dragon retreating after firebreathing the sleeping PC's for the fourth time in a single night might cause... some frustration.
It's easy to be confused, but Monster's CR is calculated for a naked group level, which means you can rise up a notch when you have a well equipped party. Also, there's nothing to balance a game as to have them face NPC with class, build and gear equivalent to your party. Villains are better than Monsters. Also, i try to follow that rule as a DM, you get what you can kill. So i would adjust a monster to the equipment it can wear or the buff it can get/use.
Another thing, you need to pull on your knowledge of the party to balance the encounter, low wisdom rogue get charmed/hypnotized or feared easy, low charisma get banished, etc... Remove some pieces and the encounter will be menacing, use the environment, a well prepared party is obviously a force to be reckon with, but how do they fare in a surprise environment, water filling the room ? There's a lot of way to balance the encounter easier than raw data. Multiple Shadows underwater are a deadly encounter.
I rarely put people in an arena party vs 1 boss.
A few good ways to go is give them a max dam taken per turn.
Or meet some goal like break the runes or crystals in the room.
Give the main boss regeneration and give them a few tanks that is linked to the bosses hp regeneration so they must kill the others to reduce the bosses power.
I think you referenced a sniper perk that allows you to have a -5 to hit, but a +10 to damage. I believe the perk is called sharpshooter! It also ignores cover.
uh oh, yeah that's what i meant
Gold pieces gave xp in older editions. So did finding magic items.
A thief in second edition could gain levels just from pickpocketing or robbery.
Every use of a thieving skill got xp as well.
I appreciate the info and page reference in the DMG. I am running a 5-man party and I have to DRASTICALLY increase the HP numbers of every creature I put them up against. I have a part of a Paladin/Sorcerer, a Hexblade Warlock, a Druid, a Ranger, and an Artificer. I've been pretty low key with the magic items and let me tell you the damage they bring to bear is INSANE.
There are problems with the math inherent in 5E and it's twofold. First is the math itself. The numbers do not take into account player skill...they are effectively designed so that a Fighter with a +1 or +2 to his strength or dexterity modifiers will hit on a 10. Consider this...the table says a CR 14 monster should have an 18 AC. The aforementioned level 10 archery Ranger has +4 proficiency, +5 dexterity, the Archery fighting style for another +2 and a +1 magic weapon for a total of +12, meaning he hits on a 6.
A properly engineered high level fighter with unfettered access to equipment could have an attack of +19...meaning on a roll of a 2 or better they hit ANYTHING on that table, Heck a level 20 Devotion Paladin with the unfettered access to equipment could potentially have an attack bonus of +24 and only use 2 attunement slots. And even the average level 20 character without lots of magic items will still have a +11 at bare minimum to hit...STILL only needing to roll a 7 on the d20
The second problem is that the game assumes players will NOT max out their most important ability score...when nothing could be further from the truth. Most players will have a stat maxed out by level 12, and it's possible as early as level 4. The game, I believe, ALSO assumes there will not be magic items to boost a players Attack rolls.
I circumvented these shortcomings in two ways. First I will always ALWAYS maximize a monster's HP. Second, I routinely add MULTIPLE class levels to a monster. And by doing those experiments I learned something crucial: CR is WAY more a function of Proficiency Bonus than anything else. That party I mentioned above just hit level 10, the boss fight that got them there was a CR 14 based upon Proficiency Bonus ALONE: She had OVER 500 HP 21 AC, could attack 3 times and hit for close to 50 damage when she hit.
Even NPC glass cannons need tank support to survive.
Back in the day a second edition Mr. Rex almost everything was Home bew. You could buy campaign sets or perhaps more than some stuff out of dragon magazine. Besides that man all home made stuff. It was fun.