So I've been reading up on playing monsters smart (Monsters Know What They're Doing, etc) but I'm concerned about making them too strong. Are CR calculations based on the DM playing them out to their full potential, to level of the tips in Monsters, or are they more based off of straight attacks? I want to play monsters tactically, but I don't want to kill my party. If I play monsters that smart, should I use monsters a little under CR for my players or are they designed to be played that way?
CR is based on a creature's combat ability. HP and AC on the survivability side and average DPR over 3 rounds and to-hit bonus or save DC whichever they use most - the amount of damage it can dish out. Nothing in the statblock-as-published will change (CR) unless you change it. If you have grown accustomed to overbuilding your encounters to account for party strength, you might need to re-think your methods some. If you intend to play your monsters "with intent" then I might suggest some Dials of Monster Difficulty-SlyFlourish. Putting a brain in something that wants to kill something else is always dangerous. That's why the PCs have magic and healing potions.
As a complete tangent and admittedly way off topic: I do believe that you might be the first person that I've seen on these, or any other, forum straining against using the CR system from this side. Generally, I see posts about how CR is broken because it creates encounters that are too weak for the party that they were designed for. Personally, my monsters and BBEG are always looking to kill a PC. Life becomes more precious if it can be taken away easily. If my players don't like their PC, I try to provide them ample opportunity to create new ones.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I believe that playing them smart is depnedant on the possible capabilities of the monster. If it has a low intelligence it shouldnt be able to adapt to the different strategies of the party.If it DOES have a high intelligence then sure you should play it like u were the monster yourself. But if a Monster is Obviously unitelligent than yeah u should be able to play it with adaptability
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DM: Ok you encounter a Bugbear.
Newbie: THAT SOUNDS AWFUL! its like a bear bug combo!
Veteran: No actually its-
DM: (scribbling furiously) The Bugbears mandibles click loudly! Roll initiative!
CR is based on how much damage a monster can deal if it uses it's most powerful attacks for the first 3 turns of battle and it's defensive capabilities (HP, AC, Saving Throw Proficiencies, Flight, etc).
Monsters that can hide as a bonus action have higher CR's as it's calculated to assume they attack, move away and then hide. Monsters with flight and ranged attacks gain higher CR because it's assumed they will stay out of reach of melee attacks. Spellcasters are assumed to cast buff on themselves before combat starts and reaction spells during combatif they can, such as Mage Armor or Shield. Monsters with Pack Tactics are assumed to be fighting WITH close to allies at least half of the time. I'm not too sure on this, but I think monsters that can use Darkness and can see through it, also have their CR boosted to account for this.
You'll get to know your party's abilities as they engage in more combat. CR is just a rough idea of the difficulty for the average party. And if you judge poorly, you can always just manipulate the hp and damage of the monster mid battle ;D
Thanks for the tips! This my first time running a homebrew adventure, and I don't want to kill my players because of incorrect calculations. If they get killed doing something stupid, though... less of an issue. :)
If you use the standard DMG encounter generation rules, you will be extremely unlikely to kill the PCs except maybe at first level, because it takes a full adventuring day to really grind the PCs down and if the PCs get badly beat up you can always shorten the day. For a fresh group of PCs, you can spend half the daily budget on a single fight and they'll likely still win, once you reach 2/3 or so you're flirting with a TPK.
Half the time, I think CR is based on Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford having some kind of joint fever dream where an oracle tells them the number.
But if that’s not the case, I’d say it is based on playing monsters to their full potential. It wouldn’t make sense to say well, this creature does low damage, but they’re resistant to all magical and non magical damage, have at will invisibility, can fly and have legendary actions. But it’s low damage, so we’ll call it a low CR. They must be accounting for all abilities when setting CR.
But it can only ever be a rough guide. Terrain alone can make a given monster easier or more difficult. Varying character abilities and gear will also make the same monster easier or harder. I’d just suggest using CR to get you in the neighborhood, then fine tune based on the various factors. The ones I mentioned above, and probably a dozen others I’m not considering.
Thanks for the tips! This my first time running a homebrew adventure, and I don't want to kill my players because of incorrect calculations. If they get killed doing something stupid, though... less of an issue. :)
One thing you might consider doing is calculate the monster's total damage output during an encounter and base it off of the total HP of the party.
It seems like most online CR calculators determine the DPR of a monster on 3 rounds of combat, under the assumption that the monster will use the tactics that does the most optimal, damage-inducing option each round. (And coincidentally, a lot of monsters at the 3-15 CR level deals damage per round that equals a third of the monster's overall HP (on average).)
This isn't exact, of course, but if a monster has 90 HP, then you can expect it to do about 30 pts of damage each round on average, or its full 90 pts total in 3 rounds (120 pts on 4 rounds, if you're being generous).
If the total HP for your party of 4 is, say, 75. Then you might want to consider scaling down the damage a bit.
(Or have the monster make non-optimal decisions. I have a recurring "dumb" ogre that constantly gloats and preens after hitting one character twice in a row. Eventually, the players realized that this "dumb" ogre wasn't really trying to kill them; rather, he was "playing" with them and would follow them around and randomly challenge them. But this was an IN-WORLD way to slow down the damage output until they were level 3. But I digress . . .)
Going back to the example of your your party of 4 with a total HP being 75: that means you can adjust the DPR of the monster they're fighting to 24/round. (Making sure the monster has enough options/attacks to target at least 3 PCs each round.)
Your monster is medium (as an example), so you know you have at least 5d8 (22.5) or 6d8 (27) DPR. So you could divvy up the monsters attacks like:
Multiattack: monster makes claw-claw-bite. claw: 1d8, bite: 1d8, tail swipe: 2d8 (or drop it to 2d6 + impose a condition).
I know this sounds like a lot, but you can start to develop patterns that help you make these sorts of adjustments on the fly. (You can even have a chart that tells you what the average roll is for damages like 1d8 is 4.5 (rounded down to 4) and 3d6 is 10.
You got a CR2 Ogre? well, the party now is CR5 and, guess what? The Ogre leveled up too and is now a CR5 or 6 Ogre! And you automatically know how much damage it needs to do every round (on average) because you know how many HP the party has. If one player can't make it to the game, no worries, because you still know how many HP the party has -- even without the missing player.
At the very least, this shorthand will help smooth out your concerns about potential TPKs and maybe even give you ideas on how to RP the monster.
(You can look at any base CR5 monster -- like the flesh golem -- and see that this kinda pans out. Other CR5 creatures, like the Night Hag, may have a lower DPR than what we'd expect, but their defensive CR may be making up the slack.)
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So I've been reading up on playing monsters smart (Monsters Know What They're Doing, etc) but I'm concerned about making them too strong. Are CR calculations based on the DM playing them out to their full potential, to level of the tips in Monsters, or are they more based off of straight attacks? I want to play monsters tactically, but I don't want to kill my party. If I play monsters that smart, should I use monsters a little under CR for my players or are they designed to be played that way?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
CR is based on a creature's combat ability. HP and AC on the survivability side and average DPR over 3 rounds and to-hit bonus or save DC whichever they use most - the amount of damage it can dish out. Nothing in the statblock-as-published will change (CR) unless you change it. If you have grown accustomed to overbuilding your encounters to account for party strength, you might need to re-think your methods some. If you intend to play your monsters "with intent" then I might suggest some Dials of Monster Difficulty-SlyFlourish. Putting a brain in something that wants to kill something else is always dangerous. That's why the PCs have magic and healing potions.
As a complete tangent and admittedly way off topic: I do believe that you might be the first person that I've seen on these, or any other, forum straining against using the CR system from this side. Generally, I see posts about how CR is broken because it creates encounters that are too weak for the party that they were designed for. Personally, my monsters and BBEG are always looking to kill a PC. Life becomes more precious if it can be taken away easily. If my players don't like their PC, I try to provide them ample opportunity to create new ones.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I believe that playing them smart is depnedant on the possible capabilities of the monster. If it has a low intelligence it shouldnt be able to adapt to the different strategies of the party.If it DOES have a high intelligence then sure you should play it like u were the monster yourself. But if a Monster is Obviously unitelligent than yeah u should be able to play it with adaptability
DM: Ok you encounter a Bugbear.
Newbie: THAT SOUNDS AWFUL! its like a bear bug combo!
Veteran: No actually its-
DM: (scribbling furiously) The Bugbears mandibles click loudly! Roll initiative!
CR is based on how much damage a monster can deal if it uses it's most powerful attacks for the first 3 turns of battle and it's defensive capabilities (HP, AC, Saving Throw Proficiencies, Flight, etc).
Monsters that can hide as a bonus action have higher CR's as it's calculated to assume they attack, move away and then hide. Monsters with flight and ranged attacks gain higher CR because it's assumed they will stay out of reach of melee attacks. Spellcasters are assumed to cast buff on themselves before combat starts and reaction spells during combatif they can, such as Mage Armor or Shield. Monsters with Pack Tactics are assumed to be fighting WITH close to allies at least half of the time. I'm not too sure on this, but I think monsters that can use Darkness and can see through it, also have their CR boosted to account for this.
You'll get to know your party's abilities as they engage in more combat. CR is just a rough idea of the difficulty for the average party. And if you judge poorly, you can always just manipulate the hp and damage of the monster mid battle ;D
Thanks for the tips! This my first time running a homebrew adventure, and I don't want to kill my players because of incorrect calculations. If they get killed doing something stupid, though... less of an issue. :)
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
If you use the standard DMG encounter generation rules, you will be extremely unlikely to kill the PCs except maybe at first level, because it takes a full adventuring day to really grind the PCs down and if the PCs get badly beat up you can always shorten the day. For a fresh group of PCs, you can spend half the daily budget on a single fight and they'll likely still win, once you reach 2/3 or so you're flirting with a TPK.
Half the time, I think CR is based on Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford having some kind of joint fever dream where an oracle tells them the number.
But if that’s not the case, I’d say it is based on playing monsters to their full potential. It wouldn’t make sense to say well, this creature does low damage, but they’re resistant to all magical and non magical damage, have at will invisibility, can fly and have legendary actions. But it’s low damage, so we’ll call it a low CR. They must be accounting for all abilities when setting CR.
But it can only ever be a rough guide. Terrain alone can make a given monster easier or more difficult. Varying character abilities and gear will also make the same monster easier or harder. I’d just suggest using CR to get you in the neighborhood, then fine tune based on the various factors. The ones I mentioned above, and probably a dozen others I’m not considering.
One thing you might consider doing is calculate the monster's total damage output during an encounter and base it off of the total HP of the party.
It seems like most online CR calculators determine the DPR of a monster on 3 rounds of combat, under the assumption that the monster will use the tactics that does the most optimal, damage-inducing option each round. (And coincidentally, a lot of monsters at the 3-15 CR level deals damage per round that equals a third of the monster's overall HP (on average).)
This isn't exact, of course, but if a monster has 90 HP, then you can expect it to do about 30 pts of damage each round on average, or its full 90 pts total in 3 rounds (120 pts on 4 rounds, if you're being generous).
If the total HP for your party of 4 is, say, 75. Then you might want to consider scaling down the damage a bit.
(Or have the monster make non-optimal decisions. I have a recurring "dumb" ogre that constantly gloats and preens after hitting one character twice in a row. Eventually, the players realized that this "dumb" ogre wasn't really trying to kill them; rather, he was "playing" with them and would follow them around and randomly challenge them. But this was an IN-WORLD way to slow down the damage output until they were level 3. But I digress . . .)
Going back to the example of your your party of 4 with a total HP being 75: that means you can adjust the DPR of the monster they're fighting to 24/round. (Making sure the monster has enough options/attacks to target at least 3 PCs each round.)
Your monster is medium (as an example), so you know you have at least 5d8 (22.5) or 6d8 (27) DPR. So you could divvy up the monsters attacks like:
I know this sounds like a lot, but you can start to develop patterns that help you make these sorts of adjustments on the fly. (You can even have a chart that tells you what the average roll is for damages like 1d8 is 4.5 (rounded down to 4) and 3d6 is 10.
You got a CR2 Ogre? well, the party now is CR5 and, guess what? The Ogre leveled up too and is now a CR5 or 6 Ogre! And you automatically know how much damage it needs to do every round (on average) because you know how many HP the party has. If one player can't make it to the game, no worries, because you still know how many HP the party has -- even without the missing player.
At the very least, this shorthand will help smooth out your concerns about potential TPKs and maybe even give you ideas on how to RP the monster.
(You can look at any base CR5 monster -- like the flesh golem -- and see that this kinda pans out. Other CR5 creatures, like the Night Hag, may have a lower DPR than what we'd expect, but their defensive CR may be making up the slack.)