I’m working on a creature that has some abilities and an action that require the players make Save DC rolls. I was wonder if there is a rule of thumb when assigning the DC value to said action / abilities for creatures at various CR level or just in general assignment. If there is not any general process what tips would you suggest in assigning a DC.
As a general thing, you could always calculate it with 8+monster’s proficiency+the relevant stat for the ability, so say 8+3+4wisdom would be DC 15. Easy math, but may trend higher depending on the monster. CR can be adjusted in other places if that trends too high or too low though, like monster AC or HP, attack strength, etc. I believe the DM guide also has a table with kind of general rule of thumb chart for CR and DC stuff that’s more on the average range.
Alternatively if you are making it for a specific encounter, you can also look at your player’s stats/stats you’d expect a monster of this caliber to go up against, and skew it in a direction that makes sense there. So for example, level 1 characters who might have lower stats, something between 12-15 might be a good challenge, depending. But for level 6 characters you could push it closer to 17-18. Something supposed to be really hard could have 20+. That’s sort of what I tend to do when re-tooling monsters for my encounters or making new ones from scratch.
I’m working on a creature that has some abilities and an action that require the players make Save DC rolls. I was wonder if there is a rule of thumb when assigning the DC value to said action / abilities for creatures at various CR level or just in general assignment. If there is not any general process what tips would you suggest in assigning a DC.
As a general thing, you could always calculate it with 8+monster’s proficiency+the relevant stat for the ability, so say 8+3+4wisdom would be DC 15. Easy math, but may trend higher depending on the monster. CR can be adjusted in other places if that trends too high or too low though, like monster AC or HP, attack strength, etc. I believe the DM guide also has a table with kind of general rule of thumb chart for CR and DC stuff that’s more on the average range.
Alternatively if you are making it for a specific encounter, you can also look at your player’s stats/stats you’d expect a monster of this caliber to go up against, and skew it in a direction that makes sense there. So for example, level 1 characters who might have lower stats, something between 12-15 might be a good challenge, depending. But for level 6 characters you could push it closer to 17-18. Something supposed to be really hard could have 20+.
That’s sort of what I tend to do when re-tooling monsters for my encounters or making new ones from scratch.
This is how I would do it absent any other circumstances or conditions.
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