If you wonder why high level is an issue... the fact that level 20 characters can exceed CR 20 could be relevant. For now, I only did two, though I may do more
Barbarian (Polearm)
Build
Base: Human, Str 17, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 10. Tough, Lucky.
Level 4: Polearm Mastery (Str 18)
Level 8: Great Weapon Master (Str 19)
Level 12: Str 20, Wis 13
Level 16: Resilient (Wisdom)
Level 19: Con 16 (we don’t take Str 22 because it doesn’t combine with Primal Champion)
Final: Str 24, Dex 14, Con 20, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 10. Hit points 20d12+140 (285)
Offensive CR
Over 3 turns, use Attack 3x for 6d10+66 (99)
Over 3 turns, use Cleave (Halberd) 2x for 2d10+8 (19)
Over 3 turns, use GWM 3x for +18, use GWM(bonus) once for 1d12+11(17.5)
Over 3 turns, use PAM (offhand) 1x for 1d4+11 (13.5)
Over 3 turns, use PAM (reaction) 2x for 2d10+22 (33)
Reckless Attack would normally be a net neutral in CR math; it’s about +2 offensive CR, -2 defensive CR.
CR math doesn’t know how to deal with brutal critical. I’m going to count it as 10% of all successful hits being critical, which is plausible, and thus count it as +2 damage per attack, or +24 damage.
Overall for 3 turns is 206 (68 dpr). This is a base CR of 10. However, our attack bonus is +13 (6 more than expected) so we increase effective CR by 3 to 13.
The total number of hits that can be affected by a magic weapon is 1, assuming the bonus attack from PAM does not benefit. Thus, a +3 weapon gives us +33 damage (79 dpr, CR 12 base, +16 attack -> CR 16).
Berserker, Frenzy: +14 dpr (roughly +2 CR)
Berserker, Retaliation: +4.5 dpr (no adjustment). Poor synergy with PAM.
Zealot, Divine Fury: +13.5 dpr (roughly +2 CR)
Defensive CR
HP 285
Relentless Rage: we have a Con save of +12, so we’re always going to make the first (40), 90% to make 2+ (36), 58% 3+ (23), 23% 4+ (9), 4% 5 (2). Total extra hit points 110.
HP modifier for resistances: I will use 1.0 for the base
No other hp adjustments. Effective HP 395 = CR 20 (expected AC 19)
AC 17 (half-plate or unarmored)
3 save proficiencies: +2
Lucky: effectively it’s magic resistance, +2.
Defensive CR is 21. +2 magic armor increases it to 22.
Wild Heart, Bear: this gives us a hp modifier for resistances, of 1.25, which increases effective HP to 495 (CR 24).
Total CR
Berserker: 15/21 (18) base, 18/22 (19) with +3 weapon/+2 armor.
World Tree: 13/21 (17) base, 16/22 (19) with +3 weapon/+2 armor.
Zealot: 15/21 (18) base, 18/22 (20) with +3 weapon/+2 armor.
Fighter (Archer)
Build
Base: Human, Str 10, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 10. Tough, Lucky.
Level 1: Archery fighting style.
Level 4: Sharpshooter (Dex 18).
Level 6: Resilient (Dexterity) (Dex 19)
Level 8: Dex 20, Wis 15
Level 9: we use Mastery of Armaments to always have Vex.
Level 12: Resilient (Wisdom) (Wis 16)
Level 14: Con 16
Level 16: Con 18
Level 19: Dex 22
Final: Str 10, Dex 22, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 10. Hit points 20d10+120 (243)
Offensive CR
Over 3 turns, make 20 attacks (4 per attack, 2x action surge) for 20d8+120(210)
DPR is 70 (CR 11), which gives an expected attack bonus of 8.
Attack bonus is +14, +vex, +studied attack. Overall it’s about +17.
Adjusted CR is 15
Total hits which can be affected by a magic weapon is 20, so a +3 weapon is +3 to hit and +20 damage per round, which gets us up to adjusted CR 19.
Battle Master, Superiority Dice: 3d12 (19). Exact maneuver doesn’t matter much, but we are saving 3 dice for evasive footwork. This is worth a bit under 3 CR.
Battle Master, Relentless: 3d8 (13.5). This is worth a bit under 2 CR.
Champion, Heroic Warrior: this basically makes advantage permanent. It’s about 0.5 CR.
Champion, Superior Critical: this buys us about 1.2 crits per turn over the base fighter. It’s about +1 CR.
Eldritch Knight, Fireball: the section on UA updates says ‘level 1 or 2’, but the text doesn’t have any such limitation. We will assume 4 fireballs for 33d6 to 2 targets (+230 damage), but costing 4 regular attacks (-42). That pushes us up to 133 dpr (CR 20 with expected attack +10) or adjusted CR 23. Note that a +3 magic weapon at this point only gives another +2 CR, though.
Defensive CR
243 hp.
Second Wind (3x) for 3d10+60 (76) bonus hp.
Indomitable (3x) is functionally Legendary Resistance (3x) (90 hp)
Adjusted HP 409 (CR 21, expected AC 19)
AC 18 (studded leather, dex)
4 proficient saves (+2)
Lucky (as if magic resistance) (+2)
Adjusted CR 22, or 23 with +2 magic armor.
Battle Master, Evasive Footwork: +6 AC = +3
Champion, Survivor: assumed 1.5 rounds for +13 hp. No effect.
Eldritch Knight, Shield: +5 AC = +3
Total CR
Battle Master: 19/25 (22), or 23/26 (24) with +3 weapon/+2 armor
Champion: 16/22 (19), or 20/23 (21) with +3 weapon/+2 armor
Eldritch Knight: 23/25 (24), or 25/26(25) with +3 weapon/+2 armor.
Level 20 PCs coming in at upwards of CR 20... probably means something is off.
They generally score around a 45 for my system which goes up to 50 (and there are roughly 2 CR's for each PC Level, though that's about to expand to 3 as we bump our CR list up to 60).
And, in fairness, it was the fact we run 20th level games pretty often (cap levels for six different staggered campaigns) that made us opt to create our own set up. It also helped that it let us scale up existing monsters without simply turning them into HP tanks.
in short, this doesn't surprise me. I have dragons that take up a 48' square grid space, and they have to be at minimum on par with a 20tth level character who has been optimized into god killer status. They are the most powerful mortal beings on the planet, and meant to be the bare minimum challenge.
Demon Lords, Arch-Dukes, strongest DAO, et al, all need to be akin to that as well -- and since the NPC's in roles and positions of power are also 17th level and higher, it really does mean I have to be able to have exceptionally potent creatures that can withstand them.
My absolute minimum standard is 1.5 average hit point of the Party, and 1.25 average dpr of the party plus half. For any monster. So we're talking a creature for your barb who has 600 hp, and does 185 damage (average) per round.
That's a Lesser Duke of Hell. WHo never travels alone (usually a force of 66 retainers under 6 or 8 leaders).
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On top of all of this, they likely have a ton of ulta powerful magic items by level 20.
Also, thanks a lot for doing the math! It's fascinating to see the challenge ratings of these level 20 characters and I wonder how they match up to the CR of the creatures that these characters are supposed to face individually and as a party at levels. And everything gets way more complicated when we discuss party chemistry. the CR gaps between various classes and characters, and the fact that the system for creating and rating monsters obviously feels super flawed.
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What surprised me most was how high they rated on defense. Though the fact that I started with a barbarian and a fighter, and at a certain point found myself thinking "no better use for ASIs, might as well get Resilient and Constitution" certainly contributed.
What surprised me most was how high they rated on defense. Though the fact that I started with a barbarian and a fighter, and at a certain point found myself thinking "no better use for ASIs, might as well get Resilient and Constitution" certainly contributed.
it doesnt really work because players and monsters are designed different.
players are designed to be able to survive Monsters hits, Monsters are designed to do damage.
generally a CR 20 monster is supposed to be beatable by a level 20 group of 3-4 players, as a normal fight. Soloable with risk of death.
a CR 20 monster averages +11 attack bonus with its repeatable attack pattern as 130dpr (probably not including miss chance)
"Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or two scary moments for the players, but the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources."
Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat."
Pit fiend lines up with this pretty well, Hold monster + a basic attack pattern is fairly deadly.
I think people just assume a monster of similar CR is supposed to be a threat for a group of 4, its actually not. Its supposed to be a light resource use.
also note, monsters go up to cr30 but players stay at 20, because they know there is a range of challenge for various groups.
I've been making a bunch of NPC "monster" profiles for a campaign, and I usually do this by building characters around level 10, and it makes me appreciate just how simplistic the CR rules really are; if you go purely by the table you're given you can end up with level 10 characters coming out as low as CR 5-6 or as high as CR 12-13, as the table heavily favours raw damage and brute defence. Also if a creature doesn't have any save DC based effects, that can greatly change the calculation as the remaining four factors become even more valuable, and you're basically just left to go with your gut for a lot of adjustments due to various features.
Around level 10 a Barbarian will come out pretty high because since you calculate on the basis of a short fight you're going to just assume Rage is active the entire time (in fact, for monster profiles I usually just bake Rage into the stats as it's much simpler to run that way), but this usually means you want to bump up the defensive CR at least one or two levels to account for the resistances (or more for bear totem since it covers all but one damage type). But I can absolutely see Barbarian falling off towards level 20 since the Barbarian's damage output doesn't increase much into later tiers unless they delay getting Great Weapon Master and/or Polearm Expert. For a monster profile I usually don't bother with critical hit abilities like Brutal Critical, I would just bump their damage modifier a bit so they have higher average damage instead.
Paladin can rate very high if you assume that for a short fight they won't conserve resources; this means you're assuming Divine Smite on every attack, and if they're Oath of Vengeance you can also assume Great Weapon Master attacks with a greatsword with Vow of Emnity to counteract the penalty. This can give you a pretty huge damage per round value, and if you're assuming plate armour their AC is still very high. Conversely if you assume sword and board, or any kind of magic armour, then the AC is beyond what the table gives you CR values for (it stops at AC 19) so that probably needs to be higher, and you probably want to bump it up a bit to account for the Aura of Protection bonus to saving throws.
Full casters are extremely difficult to do; I usually end up limiting a caster to one spell per spell level, with a few extras as appropriate, I also sometimes merge spell effects into a higher level version, or give them a choice of or mixed damage type rather than having two or three different spells that are quite similar. This makes them easier to run, but also a lot easier to calculate a CR for. Even so, if the caster has a lot of control or support abilities it becomes very difficult to factor these in, as faerie fire for example isn't really covered well by the save DC rating, since its effect is to boost all damage by allies, but CR has no way to really cope with that except to bump the CR up a bit, but that's actually incorrect because you could face the creature on its own in which case the effect is far more limited (at best it only boosts its own damage).
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Comparing a barbarian to a Pit Fiend, they lose in most statistical comparisons.
Well, that's because the barbarian is lower CR than the pit fiend. Let's start with a berserker barbarian (+3 weapon/+2 armor), and add a couple items to get CR up to 20. I would go with
Ring of Protection
Potion of Heroism
That should be sufficient. Now, let's math out the solo fight
Fear aura: moot, berserker has mindless rage which makes him immune to fear.
We'll put the fight in an enclosed area so the pit fiend can't just fly out of reach; CR math fails to account for mobility at all.
Resistances: the pit fiend has magic weapons which we'll assume means force damage. The barbarian has magic weapons. Resistances play no meaningful role.
Spells: the only spell that might be worth casting is hold monster, the pit fiend's raw damage output is much higher than spells. Hold monster might be a problem, but we have a wisdom save of +9 +1d4 (bless) and lucky, so we're actually a bit over 80% to make it; the pit fiend should probably use its action for something else.
Pit fiend attack: +14/99 dpr, plus poison. The barbarian has AC 20 but is reckless attacking, so 94% hit chance; count in criticals and it's about 100 dpr. The poison is essentially ignorable, the barbarian has a constitution save of 12 +1d4 with lucky so upwards of 90% to resist, it's contributing around 2 dpr.
Barbarian attack: +16+1d4 for 2d10+28 (40). Missing is essentially moot, he's over 99% to hit. He's going to get frenzy bonus (14). He's going to get great weapon mastery (6). He's probably going to get retaliation or PAM reaction (20). I'm going to just ignore PAM offhand attack. I'm going to ignore brutal critical, though the odds are one or two will happen during the fight. Overall about 80 dpr.
The barbarian will need 4 rounds to beat through 300 hp.
The pit fiend will need 3 rounds to get the barbarian to the point of using relentless rage, and then take an additional round to beat through relentless rage.
Looks about right to me. Honestly, I'm surprised, CR is a really blunt tool so I expect it to be worse.
If you wonder why high level is an issue... the fact that level 20 characters can exceed CR 20 could be relevant. For now, I only did two, though I may do more
Barbarian (Polearm)
Build
Offensive CR
Defensive CR
Total CR
Fighter (Archer)
Build
Offensive CR
Defensive CR
Total CR
Level 20 PCs coming in at upwards of CR 20... probably means something is off.
They generally score around a 45 for my system which goes up to 50 (and there are roughly 2 CR's for each PC Level, though that's about to expand to 3 as we bump our CR list up to 60).
And, in fairness, it was the fact we run 20th level games pretty often (cap levels for six different staggered campaigns) that made us opt to create our own set up. It also helped that it let us scale up existing monsters without simply turning them into HP tanks.
in short, this doesn't surprise me. I have dragons that take up a 48' square grid space, and they have to be at minimum on par with a 20tth level character who has been optimized into god killer status. They are the most powerful mortal beings on the planet, and meant to be the bare minimum challenge.
Demon Lords, Arch-Dukes, strongest DAO, et al, all need to be akin to that as well -- and since the NPC's in roles and positions of power are also 17th level and higher, it really does mean I have to be able to have exceptionally potent creatures that can withstand them.
My absolute minimum standard is 1.5 average hit point of the Party, and 1.25 average dpr of the party plus half. For any monster. So we're talking a creature for your barb who has 600 hp, and does 185 damage (average) per round.
That's a Lesser Duke of Hell. WHo never travels alone (usually a force of 66 retainers under 6 or 8 leaders).
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On top of all of this, they likely have a ton of ulta powerful magic items by level 20.
Also, thanks a lot for doing the math! It's fascinating to see the challenge ratings of these level 20 characters and I wonder how they match up to the CR of the creatures that these characters are supposed to face individually and as a party at levels. And everything gets way more complicated when we discuss party chemistry. the CR gaps between various classes and characters, and the fact that the system for creating and rating monsters obviously feels super flawed.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.What surprised me most was how high they rated on defense. Though the fact that I started with a barbarian and a fighter, and at a certain point found myself thinking "no better use for ASIs, might as well get Resilient and Constitution" certainly contributed.
So, another try, this time paladins. And wow, are high level paladins starved for bonus actions; I had no idea until I tried to do the math.
Paladin (Greatsword)
Build
Offensive CR
Defensive CR
Total CR
it doesnt really work because players and monsters are designed different.
players are designed to be able to survive Monsters hits, Monsters are designed to do damage.
generally a CR 20 monster is supposed to be beatable by a level 20 group of 3-4 players, as a normal fight. Soloable with risk of death.
a CR 20 monster averages +11 attack bonus with its repeatable attack pattern as 130dpr (probably not including miss chance)
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://external-preview.redd.it/yQcoOLPhoo8NFftXmNvYFrXmQxMN2w4BMbLVel0Zp10.png?auto=webp&s=691eebacc3ec65121f06397515f9d0de3823f028
that means in order not to get obliterated, players need a lot of defense.
Also not sure how you are calculating CR.
Comparing a barbarian to a Pit Fiend, they lose in most statistical comparisons.
https://5thsrd.org/gamemaster_rules/monsters/pit_fiend/
+14
damage immunities
much higher base stats, so much higher saves
higher AC, probably (19)
truesight
300hp.
at will fireballs
fear aura with no action economy.
they just have different design paradigms. Monsters are supposed to lose while creating tension.
Also a A CR 20 monster is designed to be deadly(a player character may die) for two PCs. A normal fight for 4 pcs,
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters
"Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or two scary moments for the players, but the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources."
Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat."
Pit fiend lines up with this pretty well, Hold monster + a basic attack pattern is fairly deadly.
I think people just assume a monster of similar CR is supposed to be a threat for a group of 4, its actually not. Its supposed to be a light resource use.
also note, monsters go up to cr30 but players stay at 20, because they know there is a range of challenge for various groups.
I've been making a bunch of NPC "monster" profiles for a campaign, and I usually do this by building characters around level 10, and it makes me appreciate just how simplistic the CR rules really are; if you go purely by the table you're given you can end up with level 10 characters coming out as low as CR 5-6 or as high as CR 12-13, as the table heavily favours raw damage and brute defence. Also if a creature doesn't have any save DC based effects, that can greatly change the calculation as the remaining four factors become even more valuable, and you're basically just left to go with your gut for a lot of adjustments due to various features.
Around level 10 a Barbarian will come out pretty high because since you calculate on the basis of a short fight you're going to just assume Rage is active the entire time (in fact, for monster profiles I usually just bake Rage into the stats as it's much simpler to run that way), but this usually means you want to bump up the defensive CR at least one or two levels to account for the resistances (or more for bear totem since it covers all but one damage type). But I can absolutely see Barbarian falling off towards level 20 since the Barbarian's damage output doesn't increase much into later tiers unless they delay getting Great Weapon Master and/or Polearm Expert. For a monster profile I usually don't bother with critical hit abilities like Brutal Critical, I would just bump their damage modifier a bit so they have higher average damage instead.
Paladin can rate very high if you assume that for a short fight they won't conserve resources; this means you're assuming Divine Smite on every attack, and if they're Oath of Vengeance you can also assume Great Weapon Master attacks with a greatsword with Vow of Emnity to counteract the penalty. This can give you a pretty huge damage per round value, and if you're assuming plate armour their AC is still very high. Conversely if you assume sword and board, or any kind of magic armour, then the AC is beyond what the table gives you CR values for (it stops at AC 19) so that probably needs to be higher, and you probably want to bump it up a bit to account for the Aura of Protection bonus to saving throws.
Full casters are extremely difficult to do; I usually end up limiting a caster to one spell per spell level, with a few extras as appropriate, I also sometimes merge spell effects into a higher level version, or give them a choice of or mixed damage type rather than having two or three different spells that are quite similar. This makes them easier to run, but also a lot easier to calculate a CR for. Even so, if the caster has a lot of control or support abilities it becomes very difficult to factor these in, as faerie fire for example isn't really covered well by the save DC rating, since its effect is to boost all damage by allies, but CR has no way to really cope with that except to bump the CR up a bit, but that's actually incorrect because you could face the creature on its own in which case the effect is far more limited (at best it only boosts its own damage).
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Do UA7 Hexblade. :D
I'm using the rules in the DMG for creating a monster.
Well, that's because the barbarian is lower CR than the pit fiend. Let's start with a berserker barbarian (+3 weapon/+2 armor), and add a couple items to get CR up to 20. I would go with
That should be sufficient. Now, let's math out the solo fight
The barbarian will need 4 rounds to beat through 300 hp.
The pit fiend will need 3 rounds to get the barbarian to the point of using relentless rage, and then take an additional round to beat through relentless rage.
Looks about right to me. Honestly, I'm surprised, CR is a really blunt tool so I expect it to be worse.
I'm using UA6 paladin that needs to spend a bonus action to smite. That's where my comment about starved for bonus actions comes from.
Let's see the monk. :o
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