Without going into details about how all these creatures have found their way into an arena I have the following questions:
1) Once again I need a second set of eyes to see if these creatures are too difficult for a 5th level character going solo. I want it to be a challenge since there will be a fair amount of gold riding on this fight?
2) For those who have done arena fights what type of creatures have you included as foes?
If you want it to be difficult, I personally would bump it up to a CR 4, maybe even CR 5, depending on how powerful your player is. You could also have multiple fights. Slowly ramping up the difficulty each time to get an idea of how far you can push it. If your player is finding the CR 4 or CR 4 creature too much you can always reduce its health on the fly. Your players shouldn't know how much health creatures have without meta gaming so this should be fine.
You could also go for a CR 6 but put in a noticeable weakness. Your player has to go after the weakness to win. Perhaps the environment is more advantageous for your player than the enemy which means the player can use that to win.
I do like to homebrew stuff for big fights. You can almost turn it into a puzzle for something like that.
Okay, let's do some modeling: I'll assume a monk that started with Dex 16, Con 12, Wis 16, and put an ASI into Dex (other builds are possible. This means, at level 5, without magic items:
Attack (staff) +7/1d8+4, (unarmed) +7/1d6+4. Will be attacking 3x/turn, because stunning strike is a better investment than flurry of blows.
AC 17, HP 33
Save DC against powers is 14.
Going up against a Minotaur, hit chance is 70% (91% with advantage) so overall expected DPR is ~18 without advantage, ~23 with advantage, and the fight can be expected to last four rounds. The Minotaur typically only gets in 1-2 attacks in that time and only hits half the time, so the average result is the monk taking around 10 damage, but it's realistic for the minotaur to get lucky; it only needs two hits to drop the monk. Magic items can help quite a bit.
The Hell Hound is both lower damage and easier to kill, it gets its CR from fire breathing that will not be super effective against a monk.
I would note that monks are really good at one on one at this level because of stunning strike, so most CR 3 creatures will fare poorly unless they can stay out of melee (a Manticore would be really annoying) or have enough con save to be resistant. A lot of CR 4 creatures I would expect to win, though, unless the PC is very well equipped. In general you should be aware that 5e combat can be very swingy, both 'crushed in one round' and 'flawless victory' are well within the plausible range of outcomes, so I would avoid doing something like this unless you're prepared to deal with the PC losing.
One of the largest variables here is the player. One type might spend one point on Stunning Strike each round, another might forget about the feature entirely because they just got it, and another might decide they want to "save their ki in case they need it later." Their subclass and stats also have a decent impact here, so it's really hard to say that any level 5 monk can take a CRX creature - and that's not even accounting for how useless CR is as a measure of challenge.
I think what you have looks fine. I agree though that you should definitely be ready for the possibilities of a flawless monk victory as well as a crushing defeat. 1v1 is a crapshoot.
A series of battles with no time for a short rest between them is a good idea, slowly ramping up the danger. Have the arena have clerics on hand who step in to avoid death.
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Setup: 5th Level Monk enters an arena to fight against one of the following foes. (Random 1d4)
Deep Scion
Hell Hound
Minotaur
Forlarren
Without going into details about how all these creatures have found their way into an arena I have the following questions:
1) Once again I need a second set of eyes to see if these creatures are too difficult for a 5th level character going solo. I want it to be a challenge since there will be a fair amount of gold riding on this fight?
2) For those who have done arena fights what type of creatures have you included as foes?
If you want it to be difficult, I personally would bump it up to a CR 4, maybe even CR 5, depending on how powerful your player is. You could also have multiple fights. Slowly ramping up the difficulty each time to get an idea of how far you can push it. If your player is finding the CR 4 or CR 4 creature too much you can always reduce its health on the fly. Your players shouldn't know how much health creatures have without meta gaming so this should be fine.
You could also go for a CR 6 but put in a noticeable weakness. Your player has to go after the weakness to win. Perhaps the environment is more advantageous for your player than the enemy which means the player can use that to win.
I do like to homebrew stuff for big fights. You can almost turn it into a puzzle for something like that.
I hope this helps.
Okay, let's do some modeling: I'll assume a monk that started with Dex 16, Con 12, Wis 16, and put an ASI into Dex (other builds are possible. This means, at level 5, without magic items:
Going up against a Minotaur, hit chance is 70% (91% with advantage) so overall expected DPR is ~18 without advantage, ~23 with advantage, and the fight can be expected to last four rounds. The Minotaur typically only gets in 1-2 attacks in that time and only hits half the time, so the average result is the monk taking around 10 damage, but it's realistic for the minotaur to get lucky; it only needs two hits to drop the monk. Magic items can help quite a bit.
The Hell Hound is both lower damage and easier to kill, it gets its CR from fire breathing that will not be super effective against a monk.
I would note that monks are really good at one on one at this level because of stunning strike, so most CR 3 creatures will fare poorly unless they can stay out of melee (a Manticore would be really annoying) or have enough con save to be resistant. A lot of CR 4 creatures I would expect to win, though, unless the PC is very well equipped. In general you should be aware that 5e combat can be very swingy, both 'crushed in one round' and 'flawless victory' are well within the plausible range of outcomes, so I would avoid doing something like this unless you're prepared to deal with the PC losing.
One of the largest variables here is the player. One type might spend one point on Stunning Strike each round, another might forget about the feature entirely because they just got it, and another might decide they want to "save their ki in case they need it later." Their subclass and stats also have a decent impact here, so it's really hard to say that any level 5 monk can take a CRX creature - and that's not even accounting for how useless CR is as a measure of challenge.
I think what you have looks fine. I agree though that you should definitely be ready for the possibilities of a flawless monk victory as well as a crushing defeat. 1v1 is a crapshoot.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
A series of battles with no time for a short rest between them is a good idea, slowly ramping up the danger. Have the arena have clerics on hand who step in to avoid death.