For the purposes of drawing graphs, think of them as negative numbers instead of fractions: CR 1/2 is really 0, CR 1/4 is -1, CR 1/8 is -2, CR 0 is -3. While the DMG graph is arbitrary and inaccurate, actual monster design shows signs of being very carefully put together.A note about CRs below 1: These complicate things. It works out to almost exactly:So tidy! It’s almost as if the designers designed it that way! Hint: I think they did. (For comparison, the red line is a plot of the Dungeon Master’s Guide suggested attack bonuses.)As you can see, the scatter plot shows us a nice, straight, easily graphable best-fit line. The black line is the best fit line. Therefore, we can examine each monster stat separately without having to consider the others at the same time.Here’s a scatter plot of the attack bonuses of all the Monster Manual and Mordenkainen’s monsters.And, as we’ve proved in previous steps, there is no correlation between high/low attack bonus and any other monster stat. In other words, monster attack bonuses tend to be a little more than one point away from the average. We don’t want to adjust anything later! We’ll just look at our Monster Manual data and see how much variation there tends to be from the average monster accuracy.For our attack bonuses, the average variance (which is a statistical calculation for determining how closely grouped numbers are) is low: 1.22.Did I miss something in my earlier analysis that showed no such correlation?After looking at this graph, I did a more thorough statistical analysis. At high CR, doesn’t it look like there is an inverse correlation between damage and hit points? At CR 19 and 21, for instance, where damage is high, hit points are low. Given the fact that the D&D designers have frequently mentioned three rounds as their target combat length, this seems plausible.I admit, something about the chart above gave me pause. Take a look at this chart where I graph median hit points (blue) and median damage x 3 (red).To me it kind of looks like the average monster’s hit points is intended to be 3x the average monster’s damage (or, to put it another way, each monster should survive exactly three rounds of hits against one of its peers). The remaining values, average damage and hit points, are a bit hairy, because they’re not nice, neat linear graphs.Here’s one interesting thing about hit points and damage: they have a very strong relationship, especially at low level. Therefore, if we say “+-3 AC based on monster concept” we’d be allowing all but a few outliers.I did attack bonus, DC, and AC first because they were the easy ones.Hit points and damage x 3 look pretty damn correlated: The correlation may or may not be intentional, but it’s there. I think we just have to say that, at high levels, our data is sparse and unreliable and we are going to have to be careful not to over-model the ups and downs of the graph.At low levels, though, where we have dozens of monsters per CR (and where D&D play actually happens), I do want to be as faithful to the data as I can.Take another look at the graph above and then listen to my crazy plan. For instance, it just so happens that three low-HP, high-damage monsters are grouped together at that big red spike at level 18. But some of the similar monsters happen to be clumped together. However, some more confident statistician should re-check my values with the Monster Manual dataset, since I’m not really a stats guy, just a guy with access to free web stats tools.In particular, the seeming correlation we see on this chart, high damage to low hit points, does exist but is statistically insignificant: in the monster population as a whole, of the 227 monsters who deal higher-than-median damage, 101 have under-median hit points and 96 have above-median HP: a difference of 5 monsters either way. No correlation was significant to a value of p =.
5E Dmg Monster Creation Manual And MordenkainenConsider Geryon and the ancient green dragon, both CR 22.Geryon: AC 19, HP 300, attack +16, damage per round 97Ancient green dragon: AC 23 (+4), HP 385 (28% higher), attack +15 (-1), damage per round 151 (55% higher)It’s wacky, but it’s how CR currently works. There are plenty of examples of monsters with wildly varying hit points and damage potential sitting next to each other in the same Challenge Rating – without any other attributes which obviously compensate for the differences. Take a look at this damage scatter plot, which sort of explodes into confetti once we get to the airy heights of CR 10.For both hit points and damage, we can say Increase or decrease by up to 50% based on monster concept and get all but a few outliers.Shouldn’t such a big increase or decrease – for instance, bumping a monster from 100 to 50 or 150 HP, or from 30 damage to 15 or 45 damage – change its CR? Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t in the corpus. The data isn’t linear at low CRs, but high CRs are linear enough.Here are the formulae for average damage and hit points:Average damage between CR 1 and 7: 5 + (CR x 5)Average hit points: 3x average damage for that CRUnlike for AC, DC and CR, variance increases quite a bit for hit points and damage as the numbers get bigger. Dota hotkeys mineskeysThere’s one problem with these rules though. Based on the monster concept, the monster’s damage may be dealt in one attack, or be divided between multiple attacks and/or legendary actions.”This encapsulates the rules as described in the DMG. Assume 1) it always uses its most damaging attack(s) or spell which hasn’t yet been exhausted 2) all area attacks target 2 enemies 3) auras and similar traits target one enemy per turn 4) variable-length effects like Swallow last one turn 5) all attacks hit 6) all opponents fail saving throws. This will be hard to explain concisely and clearly, but let’s take a shot at it.Here’s a first draft: “Damage: This is the average damage that a monster can do each round during the first three rounds of combat. Limited-use (daily, recharge, or situational) attacks do 4x the damage budgeted. How about this:Damage: This is the damage budget for all the monster’s attacks. We need the instructions to take a single damage number and turn it into a Monster Manual creature. They’re the instructions to take a Monster Manual creature and turn it into a single damage number. If a monster has several at-will options (such as melee and ranged), the lower-damage options are free.Here’s an example of how you could spend a damage budget on several attacks. All other damage sources are 1 for 1, including at-will and legendary single-target attacks, auras, reactions, and variable-length effects like Swallow. Limited-use multi-target attacks do 2x. You give her a 1/day fireball for 28 damage (spending 14 points of the damage budget) an at-will Fire Blast against one target that does 11 damage (spending 11 damage) and, to round it out, a 3-damage dagger attack (free because it’s an at-will option that does less damage).
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