Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts Log in sign up User account menu 1 5e How is the monster creation system in the DMG compared to the monsters in the MM.

What are your thoughts on this 7 comments share save hide report 67 Upvoted This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast Sort by best level 1 2 points 4 years ago Using the DMG guidelines straight has a tendency to produce monsters that have way too many hit points to be dealt with quickly, but deal way too little damage to be a real threat to players.

The MM monsters took a glass cannon approach: the defensive CR is very low, but then the offensive CR is very high, which then averages out to an on-target CR.

The MM creatures are more swingy than you might expect from their CRs, compared to DMG homebrews.

They still average out correctly, but they usually have really high stats in some areas and really low stats in others.

Continue this thread level 1 2 points 4 years ago 5e wants monsters created by feel, then evaluated for the most part.

As others have said, a nave reading of the DMG instant monster table will produce a high defense, low offense monster relative to the MM, which isnt super interesting.

If you would prefer a baseline stats table that is more in line with the what the MM monsters look like, try surfarchers analysis blog.

Difficulty changes wildly as you give monsters new powers and extra damage.

As you swing a monster towards being more devastating, I suspect they feel you should lower its HP.

They are massaged here and there and balanced with respect to some mathematics we might not be privy too for CR calculations.

Remember, we think these CR numbers are for parties that have 3-4 encounters before a long rest).

Still they are offered as starting points for the DM and we are encouraged to alter as we see fit.

I suspect the DM system for creating monsters is a suggested (and tested) process with mathematics to help us reproduce new monsters that we might want to create ourselves but void of the legacy baggage (either good or bad).

However its only really good for grabbing a decent CR base for the creature or making vanilla creatures.

The main problem is there is no decent way to account for a unique or 1 time effect.

If the creature can do 10 damage on the first attack of combat only, how does that play into it If the creature is immune to many conditions, what happens You still have to balance the CR based on the creatures features manually.

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Dmg Monster Guide Creation 5E