Typically, when I want to increase a monster's CR, I grab the base stats from another monster. But this requires me to jump between tabs. Is there a tool that could make increasing CR easier?
Another easy method is to just increase the hit dice the creature has, because the more health it has the more chances it gets to use its innate abilities. Outside of playing with stats the only other thing I could suggest would be to give it at-will spell like abilities. Like maybe you have an Allosaurus that has a mutation that allows it to spit acid, so you make it have the an at will spell like ability to cast Melf's Acid Arrow. Because it is spell-like it can't be countered since it is an ability that imitates a spell, rather than an actual spell, and it isn't legendary since it can only use it on its own turn. Whether or not it had a recharge roll or not would also dictate how powerful it was.
More or less I use the above to spruce up powerful elementals and stuff, since my go to is to give them Melf's Minute Meteor's as an at-will spell like ability with the damage type corresponding to the elemental's type...plus an elemental lobbing spheres of its element is thematic as hell too.
EDIT: Also, I sort of missed your point in asking for a tool so my apologies...I think that you are going to have to either use a template or make a personal brew for your use.
Sometimes all you have to do is instead of using the HP listed, give them the max die roll. Example: Goblins. The list gives 7 HP, but you can easily give them 12 instead. Put them in studded leather or hide for an increase in AC. Just those simple steps will greatly increase the difficulty.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
If you want to increase the challenge rating (and thus xp) then the MM offers a guide of how, but I admit its not a simple cut and paste. If you wanted to make a fight more challenging, consider symbiosis of opponents, a goblin is great, but sometimes you want a goblin wolf rider. A hobgoblin Devastator is nasty but one riding a Manticore or Chimera is a fight your group could be reminiscing about for a while.
There are a whole bunch of creatures that can make an encounter more memorable fighting as a tandem creature. Insect swarms (flesh eating beetles usually) living on skeletons, or bee swarms on an awakened tree or tree man. Then there are the old school Matryoshka options, an enemy within an enemy. Killing a creature and it becomes a revenant, a large or huge+ creature that dies and its puppeteering cursed blood (stats as water elemental) erupts and tries to drown then puppet a party member. Elementals being freed from golems and going on a rampage. Cloakers attached and threatening or working in partnership with a humanoid shaped ally.
Whatever you end up with, enjoy your game and remember, moon druids never sleep.
If you want to increase the challenge rating (and thus xp) then the MM offers a guide of how, but I admit its not a simple cut and paste. If you wanted to make a fight more challenging, consider symbiosis of opponents, a goblin is great, but sometimes you want a goblin wolf rider. A hobgoblin Devastator is nasty but one riding a Manticore or Chimera is a fight your group could be reminiscing about for a while.
There are a whole bunch of creatures that can make an encounter more memorable fighting as a tandem creature. Insect swarms (flesh eating beetles usually) living on skeletons, or bee swarms on an awakened tree or tree man. Then there are the old school Matryoshka options, an enemy within an enemy. Killing a creature and it becomes a revenant, a large or huge+ creature that dies and its puppeteering cursed blood (stats as water elemental) erupts and tries to drown then puppet a party member. Elementals being freed from golems and going on a rampage. Cloakers attached and threatening or working in partnership with a humanoid shaped ally.
Whatever you end up with, enjoy your game and remember, moon druids never sleep.
I believe the guidelines for increasing the CR of a creature is in the DM's guide, not the MM.
CR is nice if you're just beginning. It gives a safe guideline. As in you know that you have a certain CR budget to spend on monsters. Similar to the XP budget in 4E. However I find that using this just limits you and makes the job for a DM to difficult.
First off I'd stop worrying about balanced encounters. Just create a scene that you think would fit your story/setting. Then make it believable enough. A highly protected merchant doesn't have 2 high CR guards and nothing more. He has a couple guards of varying abilities. You can also throw in a bunch of 1hp cannonfodder opponents that have the same damage output as regular opponents. But those are there just as minions to the leading figures...plus they're great for those with AoE spells in your group.
After that its up to the players to figure out how to approach the situation. Will they go straight in and fight or observe and find alternate ways to deal with it.
When it comes to high HP... Just use max suggested HP at all times. It isn't a lot to begin with. Often times your players, even at lvl 1, can just decimate an opponent. Problem isn't the HP, but the AC chance to hit that makes the fight difficult. From lvl 3+, when players get some nice skills to use, I find that even max suggested HP of most opponents just isn't enough. For regular fights in between the epic moments its ok. But the more meaningful encounters should have something extra like environmental hazards/lair actions.
As said the difficulty is lays more with your players being able to hit opponents reliably. The suggestion to have them in, believable, better armor and protective gear helps a lot. It increases the AC and thus become more difficult to hit. Resulting in them being able to get additional rounds to do their attacks...which hurt. Especially later on increasing AC becomes important since your players will be getting a ton of bonuses and increments to their chance to hit. At that stage you also need to add more Lair actions and such to assist the baddies.
I've learned its more important to increase the AC and other defenses of opponents instead of adding more and more enemies to fight. Too many enemies just draws out a fight to excessive, tedious lengths. Which doens't help with player engagement.
Increasing CR often also just means increasing a level. Just like with a player that means the baddie gets an extra spellslot to cast...if you even apply that sort of thing to them. They gain 1 or 2 additional spells as well to cast which can make things interesting. They get a certain dice roll additional max HP. then focus on their kind of equipment that could increase their defenses. Or in case of a monster does its hide get more difficult to destroy ... increasing its AC with 1 or 2.
When it comes to high HP... Just use max suggested HP at all times. It isn't a lot to begin with. Often times your players, even at lvl 1, can just decimate an opponent. Problem isn't the HP, but the AC chance to hit that makes the fight difficult. From lvl 3+, when players get some nice skills to use, I find that even max suggested HP of most opponents just isn't enough. For regular fights in between the epic moments its ok. But the more meaningful encounters should have something extra like environmental hazards/lair actions.
Raising HP absolutely increases CR, because it forces the party to expend more resources to finish the encounter...the players ability to decimate an encounter isn't the only thing CR represents after all, but rather the expected amount of resources that will be used to complete an encounter when following the recommended amount of encounters per adventuring day, and the chances that the party can overcome the challenge at all. So basically if your bosses don't have enough on their own to make a battle difficult, throwing more minions at the party prior to that encounter will have very similar efficacy as hazards and lair actions, while the actions you mentioned imo should be used more as a narrative device if that makes sense.
EDIT: What I meant by the latter part is that I think that sometimes it makes more sense taking a bottom-up design in crafting encounters, meaning that sometimes I take all the narrative components and things I want to be a part of a battle and combine them to get a final result and stick with that, versus starting with the combat that I want to occur and reducing it down to the specific things needed to make that encounter occur a specific way...so when it comes to environmental hazards and lair actions I feel that those should exist because they would have a reason to exist when looking at the rest of the context rather than having it be something added on solely to increase the challenge.
You still talk from the premise as if CR has any meaning to begin with. While even the designers from WOTC don't even use it since its horrendous. Same for the premise of having a set amount of encounters for any given day. Since both are meaningless its pointless to use them when it comes to the context of encounter design. So what if my adjustment increases the CR. I make the adjustment to make the encounter more difficult for my players. Couldn't give a rats ass if it increases CR. Thinking about CR is, after all, pointless and has no proper context at all when designing encounters.
You still talk from the premise as if CR has any meaning to begin with. While even the designers from WOTC don't even use it since its horrendous. Same for the premise of having a set amount of encounters for any given day. Since both are meaningless its pointless to use them when it comes to the context of encounter design. So what if my adjustment increases the CR. I make the adjustment to make the encounter more difficult for my players. Couldn't give a rats ass if it increases CR. Thinking about CR is, after all, pointless and has no proper context at all when designing encounters.
It is literally a metric that allows you to easily compare your parties resources to a creatures to dictate the expectations of an encounter. AC, Hit Die, literally every ability a monster has is boiled down into said metric....if such an abstraction was entirely unnecessary, there would be no reason for the designers to have included it, and is as ridiculous as someone saying that Hit Points are meaningless for PCs since something couldn't feasibly be stabbed or slashed multiple times and not bleed out immediately. The only thing that makes it "meaningless" is that sometimes bad or overly good rolls can make said metric not be a guarantee...but that same logic could literally be applied to every other thing in the game, and it'd be an equally incorrect way to look at said rules as what you just stated.
But by all means, go and throw a CR 10 creature at a party of 4 level 2 characters...just don't be mad at the players that the statistics are going to heavily favor that CR 10 creature over the party.
It isn't a metric at all. Nowhere is there a break down of the calculations behind this "metric". We don't know what makes up the actual value of this "metric". Nowhere does it say that x amount of statistics means that an opponent suddenly goes from CR 1 to 2 for example. All we have are opponents in the manuals from which we need to make our own conclusions of what we think would define a specific CR range. There are too many variables at play that it is impossible to make a correct assumption/calculation using this flawed metric. That is why more experienced DM, as well as the designers of WOTC themselves, have stated many times that they don't even bother using the CR mechanic. It isn't just with 5e either. The XP budget in 4e was the same. The CL in 3 and 3.5 was the same....they're all useless and convoluted and incomplete.
The only reason to use CR is when you are an inexperienced and new DM. For them using the CR can be an ok guideline, but only for the earlier levels of their adventures/campaign. Most monsters in the manuals are lower level. Your players don't have access to magical gear, jumps in skills and other things that causes their difficulty to increase exponentially. For low levels you can copy and paste monsters and throw them at a lvl 1-3 party. When you get to lvl 5-6 and higher just get rid of the CR entirely. The break down of the CR isn't there and it sure as hell isn't taking into account the skills a monster or the player it fights has. There are CR 1/2 monsters that possess skills that can be really challenging to that CR 10 you mentioned. In fact 4-5 of those CR 1/2 can tear that 1 CR 10 to pieces. Low level monsters vs low lvl players are often just face to face straight up bashing contests. Pitting stats against each other in such an environment is easy. Once you develop encounters later you get all sorts of tactical situations, elevations, patrols, reinforcements, multiple ways to approach a situation, your players have tons of really powerful moves and various resources. In such a situation there are too many variables for the CR to take into account for it to be worthwhile and useful. And the designers realized this as do the more experienced DM's. This is one of many reasons they advise not to use CR.
So many variables also show that you can NOT trust the rating system of CR when it says an encounter is easy, challenging or outright deadly. An easy fight can turn out a deadly scenario given the many variables + the monsters having certain skills/abilities that would let them tear up far higher level players. Same way a deadly encounter can be a walk in the park if your players take the time to prepare, manage to use some tactics and turn the scenario to their advantage in some way. Especially at lvl 7-8+ where the players start getting some really powerful abilities that the monster CR doesn't even take into account.
That is also why you don't look at the CR. You look at the stats of a monster and those of your players. You know what level they will be for a certain piece of content. You will know what kind of proficiences, magic weapons and other statistics they have. You know that you can adjust the monsters defenses to be inline with your players chances to hit (attack rolls). If your players got +5 to attack you won't throw opponents with 20AC at them, because that would be stupid. Once they got a +12 to attack you will go beyond that 20AC if it fits with the type of opponent. Same for other defenses of the monster vs your players attacks. Same for the HP. The suggested max HP for monsters in the manuals are way to low. Giants that are a CR deadly encounter get torn to shreds instantly. So instead look at your players average damage output and skills and use that to adjust the monsters HP and counter measures. Which will result either in a short easy fight or a lengthier deadlier fight. Same when you decide to add extra's to the encounter if it fits the scenario. You don't use the CR to decide how to dress up the fight... You make the fight and don't bother with what the CR at the end might be or not. My party could, unknowingly, be fighting a CR 6-7 fight at 4 lvl 3's and they made it out barely from this intense boss fight. They would've never had such a fun fight if I had used the CR as my "budget" system.
Then again... your example of throwing a single CR 10 vs a party of lvl 2 characters is just stupid. Use some common sense ... Of course you don't pit such a huge difference of opponents versus each other. Unless it is a bad guy making a cameo to foreshadow future events.I don't need a CR to tell me that...in fact the CR doesn't tell me that. When I look at the stats of the opponent it tell me my players can't hit it sufficiently enough to take it down for example. Unless that CR10 is weak to magic and doesn't have that great skills...then I might give it a shot. However if i design an encounter. Then, just for the heck of it, put it in a calculator to see all the enemies/traps/hazards add up to a total of CR10... then so be it. Players can handle it depending on how they approach the scenario. In short... CR is an after thought, not the starting point...if you're even bothered to use it at all.
Because the CR doesn't take nearly as much into account as Atlastar claims, combined by the many variables that make up a decent encounter.... it is impossible for there to be CR calculators that let you increase monsters by a single CR. Once again there is no material stating that x increments means the monster is suddenly in x CR range.
The idea of a balanced fight is a flawed concept as well. but that is a whole different discussion.
Darn it, I appreciate the sentiment inside Giblix commentary that CR is a guide, and that you should assess if the unique properties of your party and the encounter gel before letting them meet. It made me a little uncomfortable with the comments about no CR calculators, there isn't a calculator but there is a guide within the DMG. No it is not a happy thing, it requires time, evaluation and raising a lowering sliders on statistics for a critter before you ultimately assign a provisional rank to it. I assumed Giblix has been fortunate enough to play with a long term group and knows their limitations and so can custom design encounters for them with precision and so for them this argument makes perfect sense, but if you are jumping in to cover for a friend who is away, starting out a new game with people, have a revolving door of players or any less than static group then you simply cant know what will work and falling back on a guideline isn't a bad shout under these or similar circumstances.
How you choose to plan an encounter is an individual decision, lets try not to assign a right or wrong way of doing that, but instead help with advice. The question here was are there tools for easily increasing Monster CR? The answers given were using another creatures stats (by Gaminghusbands themselves) Homebrew, which under the circumstances I believe meant modify it on the fly and use your own judgement. Add legendary actions. Maximise hitpoints. Symbiosis fights. Increase AC (and defenses) Referring to the DMG is a place to start in judging if your adjustments deserve altering the CR and by how much ( or have confidence in your judgement).To these I would add fighting a creature in an environment specifically aiding it that is dangerous to the players may be worth increasing the challenge of the fight, fighting a fire giant is one thing, fighting it around flowing magma that it sprays around as it walks, allowing it to retreat and use healing or outlast spell duration's wasting casters efforts can be entirely another.
You don't need a group you know to make it work. My current group has never played DnD. They're far from min-max and very unpredictable. Still mechanically their characters are very predictable. You know when you, as a DM, give them certain items that increases their AC, Attack Rolls etc. You know at which point they get proficiency/skill increments. As for raw damage output it can vary. But having 35hp opponents at lvl 3 is just way too low since they'll burst right through that in 1 round. While an opponent with 65hp is quite a handful. So you just guestimate somewhere in the middle of that. I don't custom design encounters with precision. Once again, a balanced encounter does not exist. You just create plausible/believable situations. So what if that means you throw 3x as many opponents at the group. Its for them to figure out how to deal with the situation.
However if a large amount of those 20 opponents are just henchman then they of course have lowered HP so they die fast, especially if you got someone with a moonbeam or another AoE. I love using the Minion rules from 4e for that...same damage output as regular units, but only 1-5hp hehe. However this is more to do with pacing of the combat sequence then difficulty ratings. If you have to roll for 20 opponents, even if you have 3-4 guys going with the same 1 dice roll.... it'll take ages. It'll mean your players get less time to do their thing and just too much waiting for their turn. So having a lot of low hp guys really helps to clean it up and keep a nice pace going as well. While still maintaining the threat of pain if they do manage to connect. If you happen to make the combat too easy... that is fine too. Let the players enjoy their power when they roflstomp those guards. It'll make them feel good and confident...maybe even over confident. You as the DM then learn from it and decide in the next batch of guards they have some more stats accordingly and ramp it up as the players proceed. Learning, observing and improvising on the spot is important. It is much easier to do when you don't use a rigid flawed CR system.
As said this comes with experience. That is also why CR can be a good guideline for new DM's up to a certain point. Like training wheels until you learn the game, the mechanics and get a feeling of the flow/pace.
I admit I fail to see the advantage in having minion creatures, unfortunately it was one of the many 4th'isms that made me avoid it. Perhaps it makes a great story, where the heroes (magic aoe) is a swathe of destruction and their enemies fall like scythed wheat. My feeling is that again if that's all your group play then its wonderful.
Now my concern is with two things. First as people play and gather experience with the game they will naturally get a gist ( or exact recall ) of a creatures capabilities. This allows a threat assessment and hopefully will encourage some planning before attempting to stomp an encounter that is challenging. Minioning makes this nonsensical and I have had some experiences where players have seemed shocked that (in this case skeletons) didnt just fall dead to a hit from a dagger after they charged into them. It wasnt a good day but I learnt there are definitely some 4th ed GM aficionados out there who have brought back minioning. Even the Dead in Thay adventure (TotYP) has a lesser form of this reduction of effect. It can lead to overconfidence and death later, or at least a sense of a DM out to kill when a creature doesn't seem to die as easily. Minor chance but still. The second is with these minions are you doing away with the experience awards entirely and just going with a milestone award? because I can see that working but otherwise awarding full xp for a bag of potato chips with teeth may lead to players who havent needed to explore what they can and cant do. In the terms of this thread and modifying CR though, do you assign experience for a minion creature?
I'm not a 4e aficionado. Only thing it did well were the minions and skill challenges. Then I also occasionally copy some monster abilities over. Like a hobgoblin commander that, on a bonus action lets out a warcry allowing allies in x radius to move a few additional tiles. Other then that 4e was meh. I'm of the 3.5 generation players/dm's.
Next to that the threat assessment. Just because players expect something doesn't mean it should happen. Always the same monsters with predictability becomes boring. That's why we, as DM's, make adjustments. Instead of just a standard skeleton there are many variations, with varying armor and weapon load outs, different abilities. Some sturdier then others. So having a few minions in the mix won't even be that noticeable in the overall flow of the narrative and combat. If you have players expecting a monster to be exactly as in the MM or like the hundreds you had before... you got a bigger problem to address. When my group slaughtered goblins at lvl 1-3 and encountered a few goblins at lvl 8.... doesn't mean the lvl 8 goblins were sudden push overs. Different tribe, different gear... etc. Personality/culturally I still don't see a goblin becoming a master tactician so he'll still be lacking in that department when roleplaying it, but his strengths/defenses/hp are not similar to that of a lvl 3 goblin.
Only times a DM feels as if he's out to kill players is... well... I'm also playing in a campaign. That DM seemed to constantly make sudden changes, alter initiatives etc. Opponents suddenly have new attack moves. It really felt, to more of us players, that he was out to kill us instead of just having fun. As long as you, as a DM, are clear and transparent to the players as to what they're facing. And not just switch it up on the fly to **** them over. There shouldn't be a problem. As long as players can gather information, prepare and trust the information given to be accurate they should be fine. If they expect a skeleton to be just a skeleton.... while it is magically enhanced by the necromancer, wears heavier armor, has support from something else, maybe some protective/buffing wards in the area... well then its the fault of the players for having a certain prejudice. The surprise when the player sees the skeleton not going down from 1 dagger attack... That should be turned into a dramatic moment when the character realizes there is something not quite right. Good narrative development right there. Instead of always the same boring predictable stuff happening.
Having underlings as minions isn't that farfetched. They're supposed to be weaker and die easier. Unlike the leading figures/captains etc of the pack. If you describe everything to be like the same thing. Then you, as a DM, need to work on how you describe and narrate so your players have the information in order to differentiate between the opponents. Just because I got Bandits as well as Bandit Minions in the same encounter doesn't mean they get described the same way. Since 4e fluff and mechanics have been very separated. You're free to describe anything to be whatever you imagine it to be.
You might find this blog post "5e Monster Manual on a business card" useful. (I don't have anything to do with that blog or author; I just found it useful!) There's a little chart there that relates your target CR to the core stats and some data analysis on how they got to that scheme. It's really pretty straightforward, because CR is (like the Pirate Code) really just a guideline.
I don't use CR that much, but I have an idea. You could 'raise' the monster's level. Such as if you were fighting an evil mage, you could give it the proper spells and give it more health. Of course this doesn't only apply to evil mages. You can always raise the health according to its CON modifier. Also, you can give it a wider range of attacks. These attacks don't have to be real. If you wanted to raise the CR of a dragon, you can give it homebrew spels.
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Typically, when I want to increase a monster's CR, I grab the base stats from another monster. But this requires me to jump between tabs. Is there a tool that could make increasing CR easier?
under the homebrew section on beyond you can pick a monster to be the base template for your homebrew and then modify it as needed.
Just add legendary or lair actions
As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!
Pretty much this.
Another easy method is to just increase the hit dice the creature has, because the more health it has the more chances it gets to use its innate abilities. Outside of playing with stats the only other thing I could suggest would be to give it at-will spell like abilities. Like maybe you have an Allosaurus that has a mutation that allows it to spit acid, so you make it have the an at will spell like ability to cast Melf's Acid Arrow. Because it is spell-like it can't be countered since it is an ability that imitates a spell, rather than an actual spell, and it isn't legendary since it can only use it on its own turn. Whether or not it had a recharge roll or not would also dictate how powerful it was.
More or less I use the above to spruce up powerful elementals and stuff, since my go to is to give them Melf's Minute Meteor's as an at-will spell like ability with the damage type corresponding to the elemental's type...plus an elemental lobbing spheres of its element is thematic as hell too.
EDIT: Also, I sort of missed your point in asking for a tool so my apologies...I think that you are going to have to either use a template or make a personal brew for your use.
Sometimes all you have to do is instead of using the HP listed, give them the max die roll. Example: Goblins. The list gives 7 HP, but you can easily give them 12 instead. Put them in studded leather or hide for an increase in AC. Just those simple steps will greatly increase the difficulty.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
If you want to increase the challenge rating (and thus xp) then the MM offers a guide of how, but I admit its not a simple cut and paste. If you wanted to make a fight more challenging, consider symbiosis of opponents, a goblin is great, but sometimes you want a goblin wolf rider. A hobgoblin Devastator is nasty but one riding a Manticore or Chimera is a fight your group could be reminiscing about for a while.
There are a whole bunch of creatures that can make an encounter more memorable fighting as a tandem creature. Insect swarms (flesh eating beetles usually) living on skeletons, or bee swarms on an awakened tree or tree man. Then there are the old school Matryoshka options, an enemy within an enemy. Killing a creature and it becomes a revenant, a large or huge+ creature that dies and its puppeteering cursed blood (stats as water elemental) erupts and tries to drown then puppet a party member. Elementals being freed from golems and going on a rampage. Cloakers attached and threatening or working in partnership with a humanoid shaped ally.
Whatever you end up with, enjoy your game and remember, moon druids never sleep.
I believe the guidelines for increasing the CR of a creature is in the DM's guide, not the MM.
Cheers Grand! you are correct.
Aww...5th doesn't have Lurker Above...
I guess you have to go with Trapper Floor and Trapper Ceiling...
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
CR is nice if you're just beginning. It gives a safe guideline. As in you know that you have a certain CR budget to spend on monsters. Similar to the XP budget in 4E. However I find that using this just limits you and makes the job for a DM to difficult.
First off I'd stop worrying about balanced encounters. Just create a scene that you think would fit your story/setting. Then make it believable enough. A highly protected merchant doesn't have 2 high CR guards and nothing more. He has a couple guards of varying abilities. You can also throw in a bunch of 1hp cannonfodder opponents that have the same damage output as regular opponents. But those are there just as minions to the leading figures...plus they're great for those with AoE spells in your group.
After that its up to the players to figure out how to approach the situation. Will they go straight in and fight or observe and find alternate ways to deal with it.
When it comes to high HP... Just use max suggested HP at all times. It isn't a lot to begin with. Often times your players, even at lvl 1, can just decimate an opponent. Problem isn't the HP, but the AC chance to hit that makes the fight difficult. From lvl 3+, when players get some nice skills to use, I find that even max suggested HP of most opponents just isn't enough. For regular fights in between the epic moments its ok. But the more meaningful encounters should have something extra like environmental hazards/lair actions.
As said the difficulty is lays more with your players being able to hit opponents reliably. The suggestion to have them in, believable, better armor and protective gear helps a lot. It increases the AC and thus become more difficult to hit. Resulting in them being able to get additional rounds to do their attacks...which hurt. Especially later on increasing AC becomes important since your players will be getting a ton of bonuses and increments to their chance to hit. At that stage you also need to add more Lair actions and such to assist the baddies.
I've learned its more important to increase the AC and other defenses of opponents instead of adding more and more enemies to fight. Too many enemies just draws out a fight to excessive, tedious lengths. Which doens't help with player engagement.
Increasing CR often also just means increasing a level. Just like with a player that means the baddie gets an extra spellslot to cast...if you even apply that sort of thing to them. They gain 1 or 2 additional spells as well to cast which can make things interesting. They get a certain dice roll additional max HP. then focus on their kind of equipment that could increase their defenses. Or in case of a monster does its hide get more difficult to destroy ... increasing its AC with 1 or 2.
Raising HP absolutely increases CR, because it forces the party to expend more resources to finish the encounter...the players ability to decimate an encounter isn't the only thing CR represents after all, but rather the expected amount of resources that will be used to complete an encounter when following the recommended amount of encounters per adventuring day, and the chances that the party can overcome the challenge at all. So basically if your bosses don't have enough on their own to make a battle difficult, throwing more minions at the party prior to that encounter will have very similar efficacy as hazards and lair actions, while the actions you mentioned imo should be used more as a narrative device if that makes sense.
EDIT: What I meant by the latter part is that I think that sometimes it makes more sense taking a bottom-up design in crafting encounters, meaning that sometimes I take all the narrative components and things I want to be a part of a battle and combine them to get a final result and stick with that, versus starting with the combat that I want to occur and reducing it down to the specific things needed to make that encounter occur a specific way...so when it comes to environmental hazards and lair actions I feel that those should exist because they would have a reason to exist when looking at the rest of the context rather than having it be something added on solely to increase the challenge.
You still talk from the premise as if CR has any meaning to begin with. While even the designers from WOTC don't even use it since its horrendous. Same for the premise of having a set amount of encounters for any given day. Since both are meaningless its pointless to use them when it comes to the context of encounter design. So what if my adjustment increases the CR. I make the adjustment to make the encounter more difficult for my players. Couldn't give a rats ass if it increases CR. Thinking about CR is, after all, pointless and has no proper context at all when designing encounters.
It is literally a metric that allows you to easily compare your parties resources to a creatures to dictate the expectations of an encounter. AC, Hit Die, literally every ability a monster has is boiled down into said metric....if such an abstraction was entirely unnecessary, there would be no reason for the designers to have included it, and is as ridiculous as someone saying that Hit Points are meaningless for PCs since something couldn't feasibly be stabbed or slashed multiple times and not bleed out immediately. The only thing that makes it "meaningless" is that sometimes bad or overly good rolls can make said metric not be a guarantee...but that same logic could literally be applied to every other thing in the game, and it'd be an equally incorrect way to look at said rules as what you just stated.
But by all means, go and throw a CR 10 creature at a party of 4 level 2 characters...just don't be mad at the players that the statistics are going to heavily favor that CR 10 creature over the party.
It isn't a metric at all. Nowhere is there a break down of the calculations behind this "metric". We don't know what makes up the actual value of this "metric". Nowhere does it say that x amount of statistics means that an opponent suddenly goes from CR 1 to 2 for example. All we have are opponents in the manuals from which we need to make our own conclusions of what we think would define a specific CR range. There are too many variables at play that it is impossible to make a correct assumption/calculation using this flawed metric. That is why more experienced DM, as well as the designers of WOTC themselves, have stated many times that they don't even bother using the CR mechanic. It isn't just with 5e either. The XP budget in 4e was the same. The CL in 3 and 3.5 was the same....they're all useless and convoluted and incomplete.
The only reason to use CR is when you are an inexperienced and new DM. For them using the CR can be an ok guideline, but only for the earlier levels of their adventures/campaign. Most monsters in the manuals are lower level. Your players don't have access to magical gear, jumps in skills and other things that causes their difficulty to increase exponentially. For low levels you can copy and paste monsters and throw them at a lvl 1-3 party. When you get to lvl 5-6 and higher just get rid of the CR entirely. The break down of the CR isn't there and it sure as hell isn't taking into account the skills a monster or the player it fights has. There are CR 1/2 monsters that possess skills that can be really challenging to that CR 10 you mentioned. In fact 4-5 of those CR 1/2 can tear that 1 CR 10 to pieces. Low level monsters vs low lvl players are often just face to face straight up bashing contests. Pitting stats against each other in such an environment is easy. Once you develop encounters later you get all sorts of tactical situations, elevations, patrols, reinforcements, multiple ways to approach a situation, your players have tons of really powerful moves and various resources. In such a situation there are too many variables for the CR to take into account for it to be worthwhile and useful. And the designers realized this as do the more experienced DM's. This is one of many reasons they advise not to use CR.
So many variables also show that you can NOT trust the rating system of CR when it says an encounter is easy, challenging or outright deadly. An easy fight can turn out a deadly scenario given the many variables + the monsters having certain skills/abilities that would let them tear up far higher level players. Same way a deadly encounter can be a walk in the park if your players take the time to prepare, manage to use some tactics and turn the scenario to their advantage in some way. Especially at lvl 7-8+ where the players start getting some really powerful abilities that the monster CR doesn't even take into account.
That is also why you don't look at the CR. You look at the stats of a monster and those of your players. You know what level they will be for a certain piece of content. You will know what kind of proficiences, magic weapons and other statistics they have. You know that you can adjust the monsters defenses to be inline with your players chances to hit (attack rolls). If your players got +5 to attack you won't throw opponents with 20AC at them, because that would be stupid. Once they got a +12 to attack you will go beyond that 20AC if it fits with the type of opponent. Same for other defenses of the monster vs your players attacks. Same for the HP. The suggested max HP for monsters in the manuals are way to low. Giants that are a CR deadly encounter get torn to shreds instantly. So instead look at your players average damage output and skills and use that to adjust the monsters HP and counter measures. Which will result either in a short easy fight or a lengthier deadlier fight. Same when you decide to add extra's to the encounter if it fits the scenario. You don't use the CR to decide how to dress up the fight... You make the fight and don't bother with what the CR at the end might be or not. My party could, unknowingly, be fighting a CR 6-7 fight at 4 lvl 3's and they made it out barely from this intense boss fight. They would've never had such a fun fight if I had used the CR as my "budget" system.
Then again... your example of throwing a single CR 10 vs a party of lvl 2 characters is just stupid. Use some common sense ... Of course you don't pit such a huge difference of opponents versus each other. Unless it is a bad guy making a cameo to foreshadow future events.I don't need a CR to tell me that...in fact the CR doesn't tell me that. When I look at the stats of the opponent it tell me my players can't hit it sufficiently enough to take it down for example. Unless that CR10 is weak to magic and doesn't have that great skills...then I might give it a shot. However if i design an encounter. Then, just for the heck of it, put it in a calculator to see all the enemies/traps/hazards add up to a total of CR10... then so be it. Players can handle it depending on how they approach the scenario. In short... CR is an after thought, not the starting point...if you're even bothered to use it at all.
Because the CR doesn't take nearly as much into account as Atlastar claims, combined by the many variables that make up a decent encounter.... it is impossible for there to be CR calculators that let you increase monsters by a single CR. Once again there is no material stating that x increments means the monster is suddenly in x CR range.
The idea of a balanced fight is a flawed concept as well. but that is a whole different discussion.
Darn it, I appreciate the sentiment inside Giblix commentary that CR is a guide, and that you should assess if the unique properties of your party and the encounter gel before letting them meet. It made me a little uncomfortable with the comments about no CR calculators, there isn't a calculator but there is a guide within the DMG. No it is not a happy thing, it requires time, evaluation and raising a lowering sliders on statistics for a critter before you ultimately assign a provisional rank to it. I assumed Giblix has been fortunate enough to play with a long term group and knows their limitations and so can custom design encounters for them with precision and so for them this argument makes perfect sense, but if you are jumping in to cover for a friend who is away, starting out a new game with people, have a revolving door of players or any less than static group then you simply cant know what will work and falling back on a guideline isn't a bad shout under these or similar circumstances.
How you choose to plan an encounter is an individual decision, lets try not to assign a right or wrong way of doing that, but instead help with advice. The question here was are there tools for easily increasing Monster CR? The answers given were using another creatures stats (by Gaminghusbands themselves) Homebrew, which under the circumstances I believe meant modify it on the fly and use your own judgement. Add legendary actions. Maximise hitpoints. Symbiosis fights. Increase AC (and defenses) Referring to the DMG is a place to start in judging if your adjustments deserve altering the CR and by how much ( or have confidence in your judgement). To these I would add fighting a creature in an environment specifically aiding it that is dangerous to the players may be worth increasing the challenge of the fight, fighting a fire giant is one thing, fighting it around flowing magma that it sprays around as it walks, allowing it to retreat and use healing or outlast spell duration's wasting casters efforts can be entirely another.
You don't need a group you know to make it work. My current group has never played DnD. They're far from min-max and very unpredictable. Still mechanically their characters are very predictable. You know when you, as a DM, give them certain items that increases their AC, Attack Rolls etc. You know at which point they get proficiency/skill increments. As for raw damage output it can vary. But having 35hp opponents at lvl 3 is just way too low since they'll burst right through that in 1 round. While an opponent with 65hp is quite a handful. So you just guestimate somewhere in the middle of that. I don't custom design encounters with precision. Once again, a balanced encounter does not exist. You just create plausible/believable situations. So what if that means you throw 3x as many opponents at the group. Its for them to figure out how to deal with the situation.
However if a large amount of those 20 opponents are just henchman then they of course have lowered HP so they die fast, especially if you got someone with a moonbeam or another AoE. I love using the Minion rules from 4e for that...same damage output as regular units, but only 1-5hp hehe. However this is more to do with pacing of the combat sequence then difficulty ratings. If you have to roll for 20 opponents, even if you have 3-4 guys going with the same 1 dice roll.... it'll take ages. It'll mean your players get less time to do their thing and just too much waiting for their turn. So having a lot of low hp guys really helps to clean it up and keep a nice pace going as well. While still maintaining the threat of pain if they do manage to connect. If you happen to make the combat too easy... that is fine too. Let the players enjoy their power when they roflstomp those guards. It'll make them feel good and confident...maybe even over confident. You as the DM then learn from it and decide in the next batch of guards they have some more stats accordingly and ramp it up as the players proceed. Learning, observing and improvising on the spot is important. It is much easier to do when you don't use a rigid flawed CR system.
As said this comes with experience. That is also why CR can be a good guideline for new DM's up to a certain point. Like training wheels until you learn the game, the mechanics and get a feeling of the flow/pace.
I admit I fail to see the advantage in having minion creatures, unfortunately it was one of the many 4th'isms that made me avoid it. Perhaps it makes a great story, where the heroes (magic aoe) is a swathe of destruction and their enemies fall like scythed wheat. My feeling is that again if that's all your group play then its wonderful.
Now my concern is with two things. First as people play and gather experience with the game they will naturally get a gist ( or exact recall ) of a creatures capabilities. This allows a threat assessment and hopefully will encourage some planning before attempting to stomp an encounter that is challenging. Minioning makes this nonsensical and I have had some experiences where players have seemed shocked that (in this case skeletons) didnt just fall dead to a hit from a dagger after they charged into them. It wasnt a good day but I learnt there are definitely some 4th ed GM aficionados out there who have brought back minioning. Even the Dead in Thay adventure (TotYP) has a lesser form of this reduction of effect. It can lead to overconfidence and death later, or at least a sense of a DM out to kill when a creature doesn't seem to die as easily. Minor chance but still. The second is with these minions are you doing away with the experience awards entirely and just going with a milestone award? because I can see that working but otherwise awarding full xp for a bag of potato chips with teeth may lead to players who havent needed to explore what they can and cant do. In the terms of this thread and modifying CR though, do you assign experience for a minion creature?
I'm not a 4e aficionado. Only thing it did well were the minions and skill challenges. Then I also occasionally copy some monster abilities over. Like a hobgoblin commander that, on a bonus action lets out a warcry allowing allies in x radius to move a few additional tiles. Other then that 4e was meh. I'm of the 3.5 generation players/dm's.
Next to that the threat assessment. Just because players expect something doesn't mean it should happen. Always the same monsters with predictability becomes boring. That's why we, as DM's, make adjustments. Instead of just a standard skeleton there are many variations, with varying armor and weapon load outs, different abilities. Some sturdier then others. So having a few minions in the mix won't even be that noticeable in the overall flow of the narrative and combat. If you have players expecting a monster to be exactly as in the MM or like the hundreds you had before... you got a bigger problem to address. When my group slaughtered goblins at lvl 1-3 and encountered a few goblins at lvl 8.... doesn't mean the lvl 8 goblins were sudden push overs. Different tribe, different gear... etc. Personality/culturally I still don't see a goblin becoming a master tactician so he'll still be lacking in that department when roleplaying it, but his strengths/defenses/hp are not similar to that of a lvl 3 goblin.
Only times a DM feels as if he's out to kill players is... well... I'm also playing in a campaign. That DM seemed to constantly make sudden changes, alter initiatives etc. Opponents suddenly have new attack moves. It really felt, to more of us players, that he was out to kill us instead of just having fun. As long as you, as a DM, are clear and transparent to the players as to what they're facing. And not just switch it up on the fly to **** them over. There shouldn't be a problem. As long as players can gather information, prepare and trust the information given to be accurate they should be fine. If they expect a skeleton to be just a skeleton.... while it is magically enhanced by the necromancer, wears heavier armor, has support from something else, maybe some protective/buffing wards in the area... well then its the fault of the players for having a certain prejudice. The surprise when the player sees the skeleton not going down from 1 dagger attack... That should be turned into a dramatic moment when the character realizes there is something not quite right. Good narrative development right there. Instead of always the same boring predictable stuff happening.
Having underlings as minions isn't that farfetched. They're supposed to be weaker and die easier. Unlike the leading figures/captains etc of the pack. If you describe everything to be like the same thing. Then you, as a DM, need to work on how you describe and narrate so your players have the information in order to differentiate between the opponents. Just because I got Bandits as well as Bandit Minions in the same encounter doesn't mean they get described the same way. Since 4e fluff and mechanics have been very separated. You're free to describe anything to be whatever you imagine it to be.
You might find this blog post "5e Monster Manual on a business card" useful. (I don't have anything to do with that blog or author; I just found it useful!) There's a little chart there that relates your target CR to the core stats and some data analysis on how they got to that scheme. It's really pretty straightforward, because CR is (like the Pirate Code) really just a guideline.
I don't use CR that much, but I have an idea. You could 'raise' the monster's level. Such as if you were fighting an evil mage, you could give it the proper spells and give it more health. Of course this doesn't only apply to evil mages. You can always raise the health according to its CON modifier. Also, you can give it a wider range of attacks. These attacks don't have to be real. If you wanted to raise the CR of a dragon, you can give it homebrew spels.