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</script> <style type="text/css"> img.wp-smiley, img.emoji { display: inline !important; border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; height: 1em !important; width: 1em !important; margin: 0 .07em !important; vertical-align: -0.1em !important; background: none !important; padding: 0 !important; } </style> <link rel='stylesheet' id='orgseries-default-css-css' href='https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/plugins/organize-series/orgSeries.css?ver=4.4.33' type='text/css' media='all' /> <link rel='stylesheet' id='genericons-css' href='https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/_inc/genericons/genericons/genericons.css?ver=3.1' type='text/css' media='all' /> <link rel='stylesheet' id='jetpack_css-css' href='https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/css/jetpack.css?ver=3.9.10' type='text/css' media='all' /> <script type='text/javascript' src='https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.11.3'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=1.2.1'></script> <link rel='https://api.w.org/' href='https://www.blogofholding.com/?rest_route=/' /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" /> <link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" /> <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 4.4.33" />  <style type='text/css'> </style> <style id="custom-css-css">.postit{width:250px;background-color:#FFC;padding:7px;float:right;margin-left:7px;border:1px solid #EEB}table.rolltable{border:solid 0 #000;border-collapse:collapse}table.rolltable td{padding:3px}table.rolltable tr:nth-child(even){background:#ebcec3}table.rolltable tr:nth-child(odd){background:#f0eeee}</style> </head> <body class="archive category category-rpghub category-1"> <div id="page"> <div id="header" role="banner"> <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/"><img src=http://blogofholding.com/images/blogofholdingshort.gif width=455 height=87 alt="Blog of Holding" style="margin-left:50px"></a> </div> <hr /> <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn" role="main"> <h2 class="pagetitle">Archive for the ‘RPG Hub’ Category</h2> <div class="navigation"> <div class="alignleft"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1&paged=2" >« Older Entries</a></div> <div class="alignright"></div> </div> <div class="post-8544 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8544"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to 5e monsters: vulnerability is bad">5e monsters: vulnerability is bad</a></h3> <small>Monday, March 17th, 2025</small> <div class="entry"> <p>One of the more puzzling non-changes in the D&D 2024 edition refresh is that they didn’t make any changes to damage vulnerability.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pok3.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-6361"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pok3.jpg" alt="pok3" width="168" height="300" class="alignright size-full wp-image-6361" /></a>In 5e D&D (both 2014 and 2024), resistance to a damage type means you take half the damage. This is fine. Conversely, vulnerability to damage means you take double the damage. This is too much damage!</p> <p>You know how I know vulnerability is overcooked? <i>The designers don’t trust it</i>. They knew it was a problem when they wrote the 2014 Monster Manual. You can tell because vulnerability is so incredibly rare in 5e. </p> <p>5e is the least vulnerability-happy edition since the mechanic took flight in 3e. The 3e Monster Manual had something like 50 monsters with vulnerabilities; the 4e MM had about 75; and then 5e reduced the trend with about 20. In the 2014 MM, vulnerability exists in a dozen or so CR 1 or lower monsters, like skeletons (bludgeoning vulnerability) and awakened shrubs (fire vulnerability), and then in only 10 monsters of CR 2 or higher: shadow demon, earth elemental, mummy, mummy lord, rakshasa (sort of), salamander, minotaur skeleton, treant, and awakened tree. It’s kind of a weird mechanic in that at low levels it teaches you that you can occasionally target a monster’s weakness, but then it un-trains that mechanic at high levels.</p> <p>Notable high-level monsters are missing obvious vulnerabilities. You’d think that since salamanders have cold vulnerabilities, so would other fire monsters, like fire elementals, red dragons and fire giants, right? and vice versa, cold monsters would have fire vulnerabilities? White dragons, winter wolves, and frost giants don’t. Hey, earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder: so are stone giants or gargoyles or dao or stone golems? No.</p> <p>The lack of vulnerabilities is a problem because it goes against player expectations. New and intermediate players (basically anyone who hasn’t memorized the Monster Manual) tend to make strategic decisions like targeting cold attacks against fire creatures. These are intelligent, cool in-game decisions and they should be rewarded, but they aren’t (unless the DM houserules monsters)! </p> <p>Why are there so few vulnerabilities? Vulnerability is way too powerful! When a monster has a vulnerability, if you have the right damage type available (and, let’s face it, at high levels you probably do), you can trivialize a fight, dealing damage at a 2-for-1 rate. D&D isn’t the type of game, like Pokemon, where the game is tuned around the expectation that you’re frequently hitting vulnerabilities. D&D in fact is not wild about you trivializing fights at all (see Legendary Resistance). Especially at high levels, D&D really wants to avoid anticlimax and high levels of swinginess. You shouldn’t drop that campaign villain in one round. Therefore, no ancient red dragon cold vulnerability!</p> <p>The problem could be tweaked by adjusting the definition of vulnerability. In 3e (and Pathfinder), vulnerability means you take 50% extra damage from your vulnerability. In 4e (and in Pathfinder 2), creatures have a specific number next to their vulnerability: “fire 10” means you take an extra 10 damage when you take any fire damage. Both of these are less extreme than a flat 2x damage.</p> <p>The 2024 edition could have rewritten vulnerability by changing just a few sentences in the core books. They could have used some version of the 3e or 4e rules or come up with something new. Instead, they stayed with what they knew doesn’t work – and continued to push vulnerability under the rug. There are more than a hundred new stat blocks in the 2024 MM, but <i>the same number of vulnerabilities</i>.</p> <p>As monster designers, what are we to do? As the 5e designers know, vulnerability is nigh unusable. What I usually do, in <em>Monstrous Menagerie</em> and other monster books, is add, not a vulnerability, but some other unique interaction with a damage type or other form of damage, similar to WOTC 5e’s Flesh Golem. The flesh golem isn’t vulnerable to fire, but has an Aversion to Fire trait that gives it disadvantage when it takes fire damage. That’s a more interesting mechanic anyway, and I’d be happy to see more like that. If fire doesn’t deal double damage to your fire-weak custom monster, what does it do to them instead? Set an Oil Golem on fire? Send a Wood Golem running amok, or running away? Melt a Snow Golem and temporarily reduce its size? Even if vulnerability is nigh worthless, there are a ton of interesting options beyond vulnerability. But still – I would have liked to see vulnerability rebalanced so it was a useful tool.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8544" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8544" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8544" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8544#respond">No Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8593 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8593"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to 2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card v2: legendary edition">2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card v2: legendary edition</a></h3> <small>Wednesday, February 26th, 2025</small> <div class="entry"> <p>In my post <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469">2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card</a>, where I tried to extrapolate WOTC monster building rules from the 2024 Monster Manual, I have a lot of chart and graphs slicing up the data in various ways, one of which had a key error.</p> <p>When I tried to determine whether there was a big difference in damage output between legendary/dragon and non-legendary monsters, when I set up my graph I accidentally compared, not legendary vs non legendary, but legendary vs all monsters, <i>including legendary</i>. Since at high CR all monsters are legendary, at high levels I accidentally compared A vs A instead of A vs B. Not surprisingly, I found them pretty similar.</p> <p>As I was poking around my charts and doublechecking formulas, I found and fixed this error. This time, I found much more interesting results.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8591"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053-1024x584.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-25 154053" width="450" height="257" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8591" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053-300x171.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053-768x438.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053-1024x584.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-154053.png 1071w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Non-draconic legendary monsters (purple line) and dragons (green line, including both legendary and non legendary) do seem to deal a lot more damage than regular monsters. Like, a lot! In fact, that damage uptick that I identified around CR 20 seems to be entirely due to legendary monsters.</p> <p>I had posited that 2024 damage could be described by two lines: one from CR 0-20, where damage increased by 7.5 per CR, and another from CR 21+, where damage increased by 12.5 per level. But doesn’t it actually look like the data can be described by two lines, 1 for normal and one for legendary/dragon?</p> <p>I re-graphed. This time, I’m combining legendary monsters and non-legendary dragons into one lump, since they seem to be built the same way. And I’ve drawn two best-fit lines: one for normal monsters, one for legendary+. The normal monsters deal 6 dpr per CR, and the legendary+ deal 7.5 dpr per CR (which is the number I settled on for version 1 of my 2024 monster manual on a business card).</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8596"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019-1024x601.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-25 171019" width="450" height="264" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8596" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019-300x176.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019-768x451.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019-1024x601.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171019.png 1072w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>These best-fit lines work extraordinarily well up until that gap at CR 12 (there are no CR 12 dragons/legendaries). Then the legendary monsters “run hot” for a bit between CR 13 and 18, outperforming our best fit line.</p> <p>Before making any further adjustments, let’s take a look at another graph: this one for monster hit points. Again, I’m breaking up monsters into normal and legendary. I’m adding a “best fit” line, which is the same one I used for version 1 of the business card: 15 hp per CR until CR 20, then 50 hp per CR.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8598"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609-1024x607.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-25 171609" width="450" height="267" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8598" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609-300x178.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609-768x455.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609-1024x607.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-171609.png 1071w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>If you take a look at the hp graph, you can see that the best-fit line works very well, except that it “runs cold” between CR 13 and 18 – exactly the same CR band where the damage graph runs hot – <i>and to the same extent</i>. The damage line’s outperformance of the legendary monster best-fit line is a mirror image of the hit point line’s underperformance of the hit point best-fit line.</p> <p>It’s almost like our best-fit lines are right on target, except that, for some reason, the monsters between CR 13 and 18 have a universal skew towards having high damage and low hit points. Why could that be?</p> <p>If we look at the data, we see something special about CR 13-17: that’s the range of adult dragons. Of the 19 legendary monsters in that CR range, 10 of them are dragons – and dragons all have very similar statistics and attack routines. Apart from their damage types, a few abilities, and a few numbers tweaks, they’re virtual palette swaps of each other. So this CR range is, essentially, dominated by approximately the same monster design, adjusted for CR, repeated 10 times. And adult dragons run hot. They have very powerful breath weapons for their CR, and their DPR is generally much higher compared to their hit points than is true for ancient dragons or young dragons. And the rest of CR 13-17 continues this trend, with lots of heavy hitters: revamped vampires and beholders, beefed up to silence all of us whiners who complained they were underwhelming in 2014; a real solid death knight; and so on.</p> <p>And then, at CR 18, we have the demilich. From looking at the graphs above, you can see that the demilich stands out for its lack of hit points (180, on par with lots of creatures of CR 11 or 12 – but don’t worry, it has lots of resistances and immunities) and its very high damage output, standing out even over the murderer’s row of adult dragons. The demilich is designed as a glass cannon, not necessarily representative of what a stock CR 18 monster has to look like. The li’l guy has d4 hit dice and a 10 Constitution for Pete’s sake!</p> <p>This result – that high-damage monsters tend to have low hit points – is not surprising, since my previous analysis showed a high inverse correlation between hit points and DPR: low-hit point monsters tend to hit hard. I think the trend we’re seeing from CR 13 to 18 is related to the specific monsters in the Monster Manual, not a general rule about the stats of monsters of that CR. Again, our biggest problem in this analysis is an extreme scarcity of data, but I hypothesize that when new CR 13-18 monsters are released, they’ll tend to have higher hit points and deal less damage than the ones we’ve seen so far.</p> <p><b>changes to the MM on a business card</b></p> <p>Based on our new understanding of the math, I think some changes are in order.</p> <p>Hit points actually might not need a change: if my theory about glass-cannon mid-level legendaries is correct, it looks like we were right on target for hit points. </p> <p>The big change is in damage output. I had a relatively low linear increase, 7.5 per CR, at low level, and a high increase, 12.5 per CR, at high level, but now I think that was an artifact of the fact that high level is all legendary monsters. I now think that monster damage can be expressed very simply, with a single algorithm and an extra modifier for legendary monsters.</p> <p>“Normal” (non-dragon, non-legendary) monsters deal 6, not 7.5, damage per Challenge Rating – that’s pretty well attested in the damage graph above. That’s just 1 DPR per CR higher than it was in the 2014 MM. </p> <p>Legendary (and baby dragon) monsters get a 25% damage bonus compared to normal monsters, bringing them up to the 7.5 hit points per CR that we observed on the general chart. I’m totally getting rid of the 12.5 DPR boost at high level, which I think now might have been me attempting to overfit the damage curve without taking into account legendary monsters’ low hit points at midlevel. I still might have been right the first time – new data might provide more evidence for the hypothetical big damage spike at high levels – in which case I’ll re-adjust. Right now, though, I think this understanding is the best I have.</p> <p>Here’s an updated 2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card and on a single sheet:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-131957.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8629"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-131957.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 131957" width="416" height="583" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8629" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-131957-214x300.png 214w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-131957.png 416w" sizes="(max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px" /></a></p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wVK4t7fRTwjCXP-XLjG6sur8qLjGa9puFdpbtQXJQmo/edit?tab=t.0" ><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132105.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 132105" width="500" height="600" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8631" /></a></p> <p>I’ll adjust them on the main <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469">2024 MM on a Business Card</a> post too, since that’s probably the main place people will look for it.</p> <p>This has been a cautionary tale in double checking the letter values in your google sheets formulas, but it also brought us to some interesting conclusions! I love the fact that 2024 legendaries get a damage boost, breaking away from the 2014 design philosophy that their statistics have to be in line with non-legendary monsters of the same CR. I <i>don’t</i> like the fact that their hit points are unchanged (and, in many cases, low) until CR 20 or so. Legendaries need a lot of hit points! If it was me, I’d give them, at minimum, 50% extra hit points – now that 2024 has jettisoned the 2014 idea that legendary CR = nonlegendary CR, it’s time to go that extra mile. But I have plenty of opportunities to design monsters the way <i>I</i> want: this project is strictly for figuring out how WOTC designs theirs.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8593" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8593" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8593" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593#comments">5 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8548 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8548"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to looking at offensive and defensive adjustments in the 2024 monster manual">looking at offensive and defensive adjustments in the 2024 monster manual</a></h3> <small>Tuesday, February 25th, 2025</small> <div class="entry"> <p>In my post <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469">2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card</a>, I figured out the average base statistics (HP, AC, damage per round, etc) of 2024 monsters of each Challenge Rating. Using this as a starting point, you can start to design plausible monsters with the most common stats for their CR. But of course, a monster is more than the sum of its numeric stats! What about all of a monster’s exception-based tricks and tactics? if a monster can knock you prone or make an attack with advantage, what’s that worth? What’s it worth if a monster has resistances or immunities? </p> <p>The 2014 <em>Dungeon Master’s Guide</em> had a handy guide that told you exactly what the D&D designers thought every monster adjustment was worth. Well, not <i>every</i> adjustment, of course – not even most, since most monsters have a few completely unique features. But enough that you could gauge the approximate value of an effect. 2024, of course, has no such chart!</p> <p>I’m going to be honest: I’m starting from a place of skepticism regarding the 2014 chart. Its adjustments often seemed to me to offer the illusion of precision, with most features making fractional adjustments to a monster’s offensive or defensive rating that wouldn’t actually affect its final Challenge Rating one way or the other. For instance: Pack Tactics increases a monster’s effective Attack Bonus by 1, which has a sub-50% chance of increasing its Offensive Challenge Rating, which in turn gets averaged with its Defensive Challenge Rating to come up with its CR: a very longwinded way of saying “Pack Tactics is worth about +0.2 CR” – which is a conclusion that I’m very dubious of anyway.</p> <p>The tiny offensive an defensive values assigned to most features in the 2014 DMG make them very hard to test for, as the microadjustments they make to CR are likely to get swallowed up in the general noise and variance of monster statistics. An in fact, when I looked at the 2014 monster stats, I never was able to make much headway in determining much of a change in monster numbers based on their non-numeric features, beyond some big outliers like Damage Transfer.</p> <p>But that was 2014. In 2024, let’s do a spot check to see whether we can figure out how much some offensive and defensive capabilities are worth!</p> <p><b>offensive capabilities</b></p> <p>Analysis of this type relies on a lot of assumptions. First of all, I’m assuming that, as in the 2014 DMG chart, traits that increase a monster’s damage output, like advantage, should reduce its other offensive capabilities, like damage per attack. For instance, Pack Tactics raises a monster’s “effective Attack Bonus;” it doesn’t directly modify a monster’s effective AC or hit points. With that in mind, when it comes to offensive abilities I’m only going to look at their effect on DPR and attack bonus to see if there are measurable effects of offensive traits. </p> <p>I’m also dealing with an extraordinarily small data set, with only 500 total monsters. Filtering that data down to offensive capabilities with reasonable numbers leaves us with almost nothing to look at. I’m going to look at 3 data sets: </p> <li>a) monsters whose entire damage output comes from damage, with no conditions or other non-damage features to speak of (under 200 monsters, which skew toward low CR); <li>b) monsters who don’t fall into a), ie monsters who do something other than damage (300 monsters); <li>and, most tenuous and hardly worth looking at, but what the hell let’s have some fun, monsters with Pack Tactics or some similar easy source of advantage, like Bloodied Frenzy or Blood Frenzy (only 25 monsters, all low level). <p>In a perfect world, we’d expect the all-damage monsters to do a bit more damage than average, since they don’t have to pay for non-hit point effects like imposing conditions. We might expect the Pack Tactics monsters to do a bit less than average damage, since we know they’re paying for one non-damage effect. On the other hand, we know that Pack Tactics monster tend to be pretty simple without a lot of other features, so maybe their offensive stats shouldn’t be that far off average.</p> <p>OK, here’s how it graphs out:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8549"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811-1024x552.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 144811" width="450" height="243" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8549" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811-300x162.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811-768x414.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811-1024x552.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-144811.png 1078w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>As you can see, the data is pretty messy. You can sort of make a case for the pure damage dealer monster dealing more damage that the norm, especially if your eyes are drawn to CRs 6 through 9. But mostly everyone looks pretty tied up until CR 6 or so (except that big pack-tactics damage spike at CR 5: the lone data point, the sahuagin baron, happens to hit like a truck. The perils of drawing conclusions from small data sets!)</p> <p>Let’s zoom in on CR 0 through 6, which is where most of D&D play happens anyway:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8551"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541-1024x560.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 145541" width="450" height="246" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8551" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541-300x164.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541-768x420.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541-1024x560.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-145541.png 1075w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>It looks like everyone is separated by about 1 or 2 points of damage per round here. Even at low level, that’s fairly negligible (remember that one CR is worth about 7.5 damage per round)</p> <p>That’s damage. What about attack bonus? Could offensive capabilities be accounted for with changes to accuracy? Let’s take a look.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8558"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622-1024x596.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 155622" width="450" height="262" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8558" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622-300x175.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622-768x447.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622-1024x596.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-155622.png 1068w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Almost exactly the same story as damage.</p> <p>There are two competing stories we can tell about this offensive capabilities data, and we don’t have enough data points to determine which is correct:</p> <p><b>a) There’s a very small DPR/accuracy boost for monsters whose only offensive trick is dealing damage, or</p> <p>b) The three populations are essentially tied: if there is any difference between them, it is too small to be measurable with the amount of data we have.</b></p> <p>Both statements may be correct! Another few years of monsters from different 2024-compatible books might clear it up, but for now, here’s my conclusion on damage, as unsatisfying as it is: <b>the data neither proves nor disproves an inverse connection between raw DPR and non-damage abilities such as advantage</b>. In short, when designing monsters, there are no real formulae you can abide by to match WOTC’s 2024 house style for the offensive capabilities we tested. <b>Even if a monster has lots of tricks, it can still do lots of damage at the same time – but feel free to give out a small damage bonus to monsters that are pure bruisers.</b></p> <p><b>defensive capabilities</b></p> <p>For defensive capabilities, we have some nice, big datasets: monsters with a lot of saving throw proficiencies; monsters with a lot of resistances and immunities; and monsters with Magic Resistance, which is one of the most common traits (and, according to the 2014 DMG, “raises the monster’s effective AC by two.”</p> <p>First of all, how common are saving proficiencies and immunities? I’ve counted it out on the right. <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-162931.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8561"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-162931-142x300.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 162931" width="142" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-8561" /></a><br /> The first column is the average number of damage resistances per CR. (A damage immunity counts as two resistances.) The second column is the average number of saving throw proficiencies per CR. </p> <p><strong>Resistances:</strong> By CR 1, the average monster has more than 1 resistance. While there are some high numbers in this column, even at high levels lots of monsters have no more than 2 resistances (or 1 immunity). For our purposes, I’ll say that a monster has high resistances if it has more than 3.</p> <p><strong>Saving Throws:</strong> The average monster has less than 1 saving throw proficiency up to CR 5. The number of saving throw proficiencies seems to be more in control than in 2014, with it rarely getting much above 2. I’m considering a monster to have a lot of saving throw proficiencies if it has more than 2.</p> <p>Here’s a graph of monster HP, high-resistance monster HP, high-saving throw proficiency monster HP, and HP of monsters with Magic Resistance.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8564"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247-1024x601.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 164247" width="450" height="264" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8564" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247-300x176.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247-768x451.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247-1024x601.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-164247.png 1087w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Again, none of these effects add up to very much: all the lines are pretty close together. There’s a mild trend for magic resistance monsters and monsters with a lot of resistances to have slightly fewer hit points than average, but this breaks down around CR 7. There’s no discernable trend for monsters with a lot of saving throw proficiencies. Even the areas of strongest correlation – between resistances/hp and magic resistances/HP between CR 2 and 6 – don’t add up to more than a 10-hit point penalty and never rise to the level of being statistically significant.</p> <p>Let’s look at AC:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-174823.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8566"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-174823.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-20 174823" width="991" height="634" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8566" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-174823-300x192.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-174823-768x491.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-20-174823.png 991w" sizes="(max-width: 991px) 100vw, 991px" /></a></p> <p>As we’d expect, there is not much to see here beyond noise (especially considering how much variance there is in AC in general). You could say that creatures with a lot of resistances and immunities seem to have ACs that are a tetch lower than average, and creatures with a lot of save proficiencies have AC that is a little <i>high</i> – but nothing definitive emerges that I’d hang my hat on.</p> <p><b>extreme monsters</b></p> <p>There are two more populations I want to look at before we wrap up: these are the monsters with the most extreme abilities in the game. I’ve put together two small groups of monsters:</p> <p>1) The “save or lose” monsters: monsters where one or two failed saving throws takes you out of the contest regardless of hit points. The monsters we’ll look at are (from low to high CR) cockatrice, harpy, myconid sovereign, carrion crawler, gibbering mouther, intellect devourer, basilisk, grell, chuul, umber hulk, chasme, medusa, mind flayer, cockatrice regent, beholder, and death tyrant. As you can see this is a pretty select list.</p> <p>Here’s how they perform with just their damage attacks and no non-damage effects considered:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-120618.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8570"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-120618-1024x620.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-25 120618" width="450" height="272" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8570" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-120618-768x465.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-120618-1024x620.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-120618.png 1078w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>With the caveat that it’s absolutely irresponsible to be trying to do analysis with numbers this small (around 1 or 2 monsters per CR), you can kinda conclude that they underperform average numbers – but not consistently. There are plenty of Save or Die monsters that can also kill you quite well the old fashioned way. (That weird little flag at CR 13 is the beholder, who seems to be a pleasant surprise damage-wise – I can’t wait to run one and see if it has a better feel than the 2014 one.)</p> <p>What about the defensive juggernauts? I’ve IDed only 3 monsters that can really avoid a ton of damage using their special abilities: ghosts (possession) and cloakers and rugs of smothering (damage transfer).</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-122912.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8572"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-122912.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-25 122912" width="819" height="626" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8572" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-122912-300x229.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-122912-768x587.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-25-122912.png 819w" sizes="(max-width: 819px) 100vw, 819px" /></a></p> <p>Finally, some definitive results – for these three hand-picked monsters! They have noticeably low hit points, in line with the massive modifications suggested for their features in the 2014 DMG (“double the monster’s effective hit points” for all three monsters). The hit point trend line looks like it stands around 2/3 average hit points for these monsters. I think we can take this as the biggest modification you can make to a monster based on some of the most extreme features in the core game.</p> <p><b>Inconclusions</b></p> <p>The correlations we’ve graphed between attack capabilities and statistics and between defense capabilities and statistics are suggestive without really being convincing. To me, what it looks like is this: I bet there’s still a master spreadsheet at WOTC headquarters that monsters get passed through. Defensive and offensive non-numeric capabilities, like effects that assign conditions, all have weightings which are applied to monsters, changing their effective hit points, damage per round, and so on, as in the 2014 DMG – but these weightings are, with a few exceptions, very small and don’t make much of a difference in the final monster’s numbers. That lines up with the fact that most of the monster populations that we’ve looked at are fairly uniform, with average stats that are very close to each other with only minor variations – but the variations tend to break in the direction we’d expect to more often than not (for instance, monsters that only deal damage are slightly more likely to deal a little more damage than average). I think there are correlations here, even if they don’t rise to the level of statistical significance – they’re just tuned very low. How low? Any modifications made for any particular trait is swamped by the general noisiness of the data.</p> <p>Do we need to replicate this while we’re designing monsters? Do we need to make a table of traits and effects, along with miniscule modifications to monster statistics? We could – and it would be satisfying to do so. D&D creators like myself like to have rubrics to follow (witness the fact that I just spent 5000 words over the last two blog posts trying to figure out the 2024 monster design rules!) But in this case I think there’s not enough payoff for the effort of recreating WOTC’s spreadsheet.</p> <p>The fact is that, apart from a few big outlier monsters, most critters have stats that are fairly similar to those of other monsters of their Challenge Rating. Most variations kind of make sense based on a monster’s story: for instance, an ogre has very low AC, very high hit points, and somewhat low damage per round – but the damage is swingy because the ogre has fewer attacks per round than most CR 2 monsters.</p> <p>My conclusion is this: to write 2024-style monsters, <b>vary your monster’s stats based on their story, with minor variations (up 10%) being common and major variations (up to 30% in the most extreme cases) being rare.</b> If a monster is very defensive, with thick armor plates, give them high AC and maybe a bit lower damage to match. If a monster has Pack Tactics, you can take that into account as part of their story: because they’re so effective in a group, maybe you can tweak some other stat down–or not. 2024 monster design is forgiving and the monster will be fun either way. The one thing you shouldn’t do is vary all of your stats <i>up</i>. If you do, you’ve just invented a higher-CR monster! (This is also true for all low-stats monsters, although I’d guess few monster designers feel tempted to err in this direction.)</p> <p>D&D is an exception-based game, and there is really no chart that can capture every monster’s non-numeric gimmicks. We invent new monster powers each time we invent a monster, and their effectiveness is contingent on a thousand things that emerge in actual play at individual tables. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can determine exactly how good Pack Tactics, or anything else, is. Monster design is an art, not a science. Just have fun making art.</p> <p>The above is an almost nihiistic conclusion for a monster designer like me. Do I buy it? I mean, I’m coming around to it more and more: there’s never going to be a list of options you can click to develop a perfectly-balanced monster. But I do think there is some value in trying to figure out the values of various conditions and effects. To do so, I think we’ll have to leave the Monster Manual behind, so that’ll be another post.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8548" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8548" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8548" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548#respond">No Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8469 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8469"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to 2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card">2024 Monster Manual on a Business Card</a></h3> <small>Tuesday, February 11th, 2025</small> <div class="entry"> <p>(v2: edited 2/25/2025 to fix a data error for legendary monsters, <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593">read more here on that fix</a>)</p> <p>The 2024 Monster Manual is out, so we can finally answer all the questions we have: are 2024 Monster Manual monsters tougher than 2014 monsters? How much? How does WOTC design 2024-compatible monsters, and how can I do the same for my home games and publishing projects?</p> <p>It’s up to us to answer these questions, because WOTC doesn’t do so. In the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, WOTC offered charts that listed a monster’s base statistics by Challenge Rating. According to my analysis those DMG numbers didn’t perfectly match published monster statistics, but at least they offered a starting point. In the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide, those guidelines are completely missing. There’s little monster-design guidance beyond “you can reskin an existing monster”, certainly nothing as concrete as a monster’s actual statistics by Challenge Rating. So in this post, I’ll reverse-engineer and share the 2024 monster design guidelines that <i>should</i> have been in the 2024 DMG.</p> <p>This is a long post, and if you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s my conclusion ahead of time: the essential statistics you need to create a 2024-style monster, boiled down to business card size and released under CC BY 4.0. Lots more detailed charts and explanations below.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132439.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8636"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132439.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 132439" width="422" height="584" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8636" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132439-217x300.png 217w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132439.png 422w" sizes="(max-width: 422px) 100vw, 422px" /></a></p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1at1AakgwFct-hzhR0E7wq1D3xo2RCYwccKtSDi-2LTA/edit?tab=t.0">Or grab the google doc!</a><br /> (This is version 2 of the card. For historical reasons, here’s <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024businesscard2.png">version 1.</a>)</p> <p>(Fitting a Monster Manual on a business card is a tradition here at Blog of Holding: here’s one for <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=7338">fifth edition 2014 Monster Manual monsters</a>, and here’s one I made <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512">halfway through fourth edition.</a>)</p> <p>To do this analysis, I plugged in each monster’s statistics from the 2024 Monster Manual into a spreadsheet. The most important statistics, in my opinion, are hit points and damage per round, but we should also consider AC, attack bonus, and effect DC, and we might as well also look at correlations between the various statistics.</p> <p>Before we get into it I want to shout out Teos Abadia (<a href="https://alphastream.org/">Alphastream</a>), who did a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk5SulZGdZk&t=2217s">similar analysis</a>, which was invaluable for me in checking my work. As usual, Teos’s conclusions from that video are spot on.</p> <p>I also want to add a disclaimer: my analysis is just a cursory one, using a monster’s raw numbers. It doesn’t weigh in the balance a monster’s special exception-based features and condition-imposing effects – for instance, I don’t try to judge whether knocking someone prone is as valuable as gaining advantage. (Edit: But for more on that, here’s <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548">a post where I examine a few conditions, traits, saves, and so on!</a>) I specially flagged a few monsters with <i>major</i> offensive or defensive features – the medusa, which can remove a character from play; the rug of smothering, which can share damage; and so on – and left these monsters out of my accounting. For the vast bulk of monsters, I just don’t account for these details. As Teos points out in his video, most monsters have a high-damage attack routine that imposes few conditions, and a lower-damage routine that imposes more conditions and other effects. Presumably the designers balanced these paths, and I’m using the high-damage path for my math. That said, not modeling the full monster’s abilities unavoidably adds some uncertainty into the following equations, but that’s something we’ll have to live with.</p> <p>Ok, let’s get into it! We’ll check each of the monster statistics separately, then we’ll try to put them all together into coherent monster guidelines. Let’s tackle an easy and important one first: hit points per Challenge Rating.</p> <p><b>hit points</b></p> <p>Calculating hit points is easy: I simply plug in the HP of each monster in the book into Google Sheets and graph by challenge rating. Right now we’re concentrating on HP, and not considering other defensive statistics. How do 2024 hit points compare with 2014 hit points?</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8473"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp-1024x622.png" alt="2025hp" width="450" height="273" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8473" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp-300x182.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp-768x467.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp-1024x622.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hp.png 1081w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>There are a lot of little squiggles on this chart, so let’s go over what it means. The most important line to look at is the red line, “hp 50%”. This is the median hit point value at a given Challenge Rating. The other orange and yellow lines allow you to visually get a sense of the “spread” of statistics at a particular Challenge Rating. The “hp 0%” line represents the lowest hit points of any monster at a given CR, the “hp 25%” humber represents the hp of the monster in the 25th percentile for hit points among all the monsters of that CR, “hp 75%” is the hp of the monster in the 75th percentile, and “hp 100%” is the hp of the monster with the most hp. This lets you see whether, for a given CR, most of the monsters had similar statistics, what the outliers looked like, etc. </p> <p>As an example, let’s compare CR 17 and CR 18. Just from looking at the chart, you can see that CR 17 has a wide variance of numbers. The lowest hit point value for any CR 17 monster (the 0% line) is around 200. The highest value (100%) is 350! The median (the monster with the “middlest” hp) is just under 250 – 243, to be exact. Meanwhile, the 25% and 75% bands tell us what average monsters tend to look like. Half of all CR 17 monsters have hit point values between 212 and 283 hit points. When designing monsters, that range, between the orange lines, is what we should typically shoot for, with the outer areas of the chart being saved for exceptional monsters (oozes with high hit points, for instance).</p> <p>Now let’s compare all that information to CR 18! As you can see, all five of those lines come together in one point, at 180 hit points. That’s because there’s only one CR 18 monster in the MM, the demilich, which has 180 hit points. That tells us that we can’t put a lot of faith in that number – it’s only a single data point. (And in fact, compared to monsters of neighboring CRs, the demilich appears to have exceptionally low hit points and high damage output for its challenge rating.) Distrust any data where all 5 lines come together into a singularity – it’s generally based on a single data point.</p> <p>So that’s what the yellow, orange, and red lines mean. What about the green line? That’s the <b>2014</b> hit points formula for a given CR, based on my analysis of 2014 data. If that green line (2014 median) is close to the red line (2014 median) then that means monster design hasn’t changed too much. If those lines are far apart, that means our design rules need adjusting.</p> <p>In this case of hit points, we can see that our 2014 formula is a pretty good match, staying mostly between the orange lines, up until about Challenge Rating 17, where the data starts to get a little noisier (as you’d expect, since each Challenge Rating tends to have a smaller sample size than the one before). Challenge 18 is where things take a nosedive, but I’m not too worried – that’s our friend the demilich. We can’t draw anything meaningful from that datapoint, nor from CR 19 which also has just a single datapoint, the balor. From CR 20 on, though, we can see that hit points pulls away from our 2014 model, rising much faster than it used to.</p> <p>What shape is this data? Hit points doesn’t increase at a linear rate throughout, with each CR increasing by the same number of hit points (like +15 hit points every CR). It’s not a smooth curve either, which is what we’d expect from a geometric progression where each CR was multiplied by a fixed number (like each CR has 110% as many hit points as the last). In fact it looks like <b>two</b> linear increases – one from CR 1 through 20 or so, and a more extreme one from 21+ to 26 (with a lone datapoint out at CR 30, the tarrasque, not quite in line with that linear rate).</p> <p>This graph is a little uglier than the 2014 one, but we judge monsters by playtests, not the elegance of their graphs. For now, let’s come up with an easy-to-remember, business-card-ready formula for calculating a best fit line for 2024 monster hit points. In creating this formula, since I want to be able to use it at the game table without a calculator, elegance <i>does matter</i>: I want to be faithful to the data while at the same time coming out with the simplest possible formula. Here’s my best approximation:</p> <p>CR 0: 3<br /> CR 1/8: 9<br /> CR 1/4: 15<br /> CR 1/2: 24<br /> CR 1-20: 15 hp + 15 hp/CR<br /> CR 21+: 315 hp + 50 hp/cr above 20</p> <p>Here’s that graphed:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8478"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph-1024x614.png" alt="2025hpgraph" width="450" height="270" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8478" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph-300x180.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph-768x461.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph-1024x614.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025hpgraph.png 1067w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>I think that’s a pretty good fit, considering the noisiness of the underlying data, especially at high levels! It overshoots the poor Tarrasque but what can you do. The Tarrasque probably has some HP deducted for its no-doubt ungodly regeneration. What exactly is its regeneration value anyway? It doesn’t have any at all? Huh! </p> <p><b>damage per round</b></p> <p>The damage per round calculation is an extremely involved one, with lots of room for different assumptions and tweaks. For the sake of comparing apples to apples (and because WOTC didn’t provide an updated calculation) I use the calculation WOTC included in the 2014 DMG for calculating a monster’s damage. It uses a number of assumptions: combats always last 3 rounds; monsters use their highest-damage options each round, not prioritizing non-damage effects; attacks always hit; foes always fail their save; area effects always deal damage to 2 foes; etc. To that I’ve added few judgment calls of my own: recharge 4-6 effects trigger twice; Save Ends and swallow effects trigger once; etc. It’s not a perfect representation of a monster’s DPR, since it doesn’t account for miss chance, AoE area, etc, but it does have the advantage of keeping things simple. We’ll use it.</p> <p>Here’s a graph, similar to the hp graph, for damage. We’ve got the same probability bands (yellow 0% and 100% lines for outliers, orange 25% and 75% lines bounding the “most average” half of each CR group; the all-important red line for the median value; and the green line to show the 2014 damage expectation.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024damage.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8481"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024damage-1024x620.png" alt="2024damage" width="450" height="272" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8481" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024damage-768x465.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024damage-1024x620.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024damage.png 1064w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Wow! We can see that damage has gone up a lot since the 2014 edition, when a monster’s damage went up exactly 5 points every Challenge Rating. Now it looks like it’s about 50% higher. In fact, let’s try that – raising damage increase to 7.5 per Challenge Rating. (I’ll round it up to the nearest 5 hit points, because I don’t like fractional hit points and in order to nail the 10-point damage average from CR 1 monsters.) </p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8485"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1-1024x641.png" alt="2025damagetry1" width="450" height="282" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8485" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1-300x188.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1-768x480.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1-1024x641.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry1.png 1055w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Stop me if you’ve heard this one: this fit looks pretty good until around CR 20, when monster damage gets a turbo boost. This is exactly like what we saw with hit points. The damage graph needs to be not one but two linear progressions. Let’s try a gain of 7.5 per level up to level 20, and then a gain of 12.5 for CR 21+.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8487"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2-1024x621.png" alt="2025damagetry2" width="450" height="273" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8487" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2-300x182.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2-768x466.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2-1024x621.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025damagetry2.png 1064w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a> </p> <p>Now that looks like a good fit, and it happens to nail that CR 30 tarrasque damage output. Here’s our formula:</p> <p>CR 0: 2<br /> CR 1/8: 4<br /> CR 1/4: 6<br /> CR 1/2: 8<br /> CR 1-20: 7.5 damage/CR (rounding up to nearest 5 damage)<br /> CR 21+: 150 hp + 12.5 damage/cr above 20 (rounding up to nearest 5 damage)</p> <p>(Edit: This isn’t the final formula I settled on in v2 of the card! Read on)</p> <p><b>Attack Bonus</b></p> <p>With the two heavy hitters – hit points and damage – out of the way, it’s time to nail down some of the other monster stats. Let’s tackle attack bonus first – that’s an easy one. I’m not bothering with all the different range bands here: attack bonus is very regimented.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8490"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab-1024x611.png" alt="2024ab" width="450" height="269" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8490" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab-300x179.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab-768x458.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab-1024x611.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024ab.png 1079w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Attack bonus is virtually unchanged from 2014. The 2014 formula should work perfectly well.</p> <p><b>Armor Class</b></p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8492"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2-1024x611.png" alt="2024actry2" width="450" height="269" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8492" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2-300x179.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2-768x458.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2-1024x611.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024actry2.png 1080w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Here we have all the range bands calculated, showing a lot of variance for AC – it frequently has outliers that dip down low, especially at low CRs, for things like oozes and zombies. But the golden pathway – the area between the orange lines that accounts for 50% of monsters – is fairly tight. </p> <p>On top of that I’ve graphed, in blue, my 2014 guidelines for AC. What do they look like to you? To me they look like they’re exactly 1 point low. In 2024, AC has increased across the board by exactly one point. The Tarrasque AC seems to suggest that AC accelerates more at high levels, but again that’s one data point.</p> <p><b>DC</b></p> <p>Here’s another quick one, graphing the best DC for each monster that has at least one spell or effect with a DC:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8494"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc-1024x601.png" alt="2025dc" width="450" height="264" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8494" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc-300x176.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc-768x451.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc-1024x601.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025dc.png 1077w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>With the 2025 data and the 2014 guidelines on top of each other, we can see no difference. DC is unchanged.</p> <p><b>Is there correlation between statistics?</b></p> <p>According to 2014 monster creation guidelines, when you raise one statistic (or add a special feature or the ability to impose a condition), you lower another statistic accordingly. Therefore, even leaving aside special features and conditions, you’d expect an inverse correlation between a high stat in one area and high stats elsewhere. For example, if a monster has very high hit points, you’d expect <i>something</i> to be lower – damage, AC, etc – to compensate for it. However, my 2014 analysis came to a startling conclusion: <i>there was no statistically significant correlation between high damage, AC, or hit points and low statistics elsewhere</i>. In other words, among the monsters with high hit points, you <i>couldn’t</i> expect lower damage or other stats to compensate. This was an unexpected finding – and seems like a flaw in the 2014 monster manual, with especially high or low scores leading to unbalanced monsters!</p> <p>Does the 2024 Monster Manual fix this problem? Can we expect better balance?</p> <p>This time around, I did regression analysis as for the 2014 data but I also did a binomial distribution calculation, which is easier to demonstrate. They both came to the same conclusions. I want to talk through the binomial distribution, which is something that is easy to see in the data without complex tools.</p> <p>Binomial distribution analysis is the kind of thing you’d use to determine whether your coin flips true (heads and tails the approximate same number of times). It’s used for situations where there are two outcomes you want to test, like heads and tails.</p> <p>My question was: given all the monsters with <b>low hit points</b> (hit point totals less than average for their Challenge Rating), how often do they have corresponding <i>higher</i> than average damage, attack bonus, or AC? In other words, if a monster flips tails for their hit point value, how often do they flip heads for damage?</p> <p>To answer that question, first I ranked every monster, giving it a value of 0 or 1 in damage, hp, ac, and attack bonus, with 0 being below average and 1 being above average. </p> <p>For the analysis, I mostly concentrated on monsters with low hp. (I didn’t need to evaluate monsters with high hp – the values would be exactly inverse.) I compared hp vs damage, hp vs ac, and hp vs damage bonus. Besides hp comparisons, I also throw in a comparison of attack bonus and damage, which I thought would be interesting. For data-cleaning reasons, I ignored outliers/monsters who are the only one in their CR, and exactly-average monsters whose data I don’t care about one way or the other. Data is to the right.<a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-10-124638.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8499"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-10-124638-154x300.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-10 124638" width="154" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-8499" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-10-124638-154x300.png 154w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-10-124638.png 353w" sizes="(max-width: 154px) 100vw, 154px" /></a></p> <p>For each comparison, I counted the number of monsters who are <b>a) above-average in each category, b) below-average in each category, and c) and d) above average in one category and below average in the other</b>. The total of c) and d) I call “correlated monsters”, that is monsters that to me seem properly balanced. The total of a) and b) I call “uncorrelated monsters”, that is to say badly balanced monsters (or monsters whose raw stats don’t tell their whole story).</p> <p>If a particular comparison shows a statistically significant preponderance of correlated monsters, then that’s <b>good.</b> If there is no statistically significant variation (or, worse, a statistically significant preponderance of uncorrelated monsters) that’s <b>bad.</b></p> <p>How does the 2024 Monster Manual measure up?</p> <p>The highest correlation I measured was a <b>good</b> correlation between hit points and damage (the most important category). In other words, high-hit point monsters tend to deal less damage, and vice versa. The count was 236 good monsters vs 134 bad monsters. Great!</p> <p>Correlation between hp/AC and attack bonus/damage were <b>statistically insignificant.</b></p> <p>There was a minor but statistically significant <b>bad</b> correlation between hit points and attack bonus – that is, creatures with above-average hp tended to have above-average ab, and vice versa – with 164 “good”, balanced monsters and 204 “bad”, unbalanced monsters. That’s not ideal, but personally I don’t think attack bonus is the most important stat compared to hp and damage so it could be worse.</p> <p>After regression analysis and binomial distribution, I can say that I think 2024 is better balanced than 2014, but I have a feeling that it’s still not <i>terribly</i> well balanced. However, this kind of analysis hits a wall because we’d really need to be considering all of a monster’s non-numerical abilities to judge their balance. So we’ll just give a tentative thumbs up and move on.</p> <p><b>What about different monster types?</b></p> <p>the 2014 Monster Manual had a quirk: for their Challenge Rating, some creature types tended to have better statistics than others. In particular, dragons and beasts had much better raw stats than you’d expect. For instance, 2014’s CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon really hit like a CR 26 or so creature. This was true across the board.</p> <p>I was curious how dragons and beasts (that is, creatures in the Animals appendix) balanced out this time. In addition, I expanded this analysis to include legendary (non-dragon) creatures and swarms. I graphed the two key categories, hit points and damage.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8622"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245-1024x605.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 091245" width="450" height="266" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8622" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245-300x177.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245-768x453.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245-1024x605.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091245.png 1062w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091136.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8621"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091136-1024x595.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 091136" width="450" height="261" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8621" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091136-300x174.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091136-1024x595.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-091136.png 1075w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p><i>2/25/2025 edit:</i> I found an error in the original HP by Creature Type and Damage By Creature Type graphs above, where the red line originally showed the average monster value for all monsters, instead of the average non-legendary monster value. My conclusion from this was that there wasn’t much difference between any of the lines. Of course there wasn’t, since I was comparing legendary+nonlegendary to legendary! I corrected the graph, and it does change the conclusions drawn from these slides. My original conclusion was “All the values are pretty close to each other”, but now it’s clear that, as in 2014, dragons do indeed run hot, and now other legendary creatures do too. This is especially clear from CR 13 to 17, but the difference isn’t as stark as it looks like. Here’s what I think is happening.</p> <p>The dragons and legendary monsters from CR 0 to 12 have approximately standard hit points (sometimes running a bit low) and deal about 25% extra damage.<br /> The dragons and legendary monsters from CR 13 to 17 have about 20% less hit points than non-draconic and legendary monsters, and they do about 45% extra damage.<br /> Then above CR 17 it’s a mess, with just a handful of legendaries and no normal monsters providing insufficient data for strong conclusions.</p> <p>To me, the above looks like a general rule that could be stated as <b>dragons and legendary monsters deal an extra 25% more damage</b>, with tweaks applied to some monsters, especially adult dragons, to lower their hp and raise their DPR, probably to make room for those massive breath weapons. I get into this more in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8593">this post.</a><br /> <i>end of edit</i></p> <p><b>2024 Monster Guidelines</b></p> <p>OK, now that we’ve run the numbers, we can come up with our official Blog of Holding 2024 monster guidelines, both the mini “business card” size at the top of this post and the maximal “one page” size, below.</p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wVK4t7fRTwjCXP-XLjG6sur8qLjGa9puFdpbtQXJQmo/edit?tab=t.0" ><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-26-132105.png" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-26 132105" width="500" height="600" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8631" /></a></p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wVK4t7fRTwjCXP-XLjG6sur8qLjGa9puFdpbtQXJQmo/edit?tab=t.0">Or grab the google doc!</a><br /> (This is v2 of the guidelines, including the legendary monster adjustments discussed above!)</p> <p>There’s a little monster-building advice on there, about how to vary monster statistics and so on. If you follow the advice, your monsters will for the most part fall within the “orange path” and will rarely be super-huge outliers. Remember, this is all reverse-engineered WOTC monster-building advice, not my own monster building advice (which I’ve given elsewhere, in sources like the Monstrous Menagerie!)</p> <p>This is just the start of any analysis of the 2024 Monster Manual! There’s lots more to say, and more ways that we can slice up the data (now that the hard part, inputting the data, is done). Next, we’ll <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8548">start figuring out the designers’ intent for the costs of various effects and attack riders (how much is advantage worth?)</a> and figure out how monsters stack up against characters. Those will have to be other blog posts.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8469" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8469" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8469" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8469#comments">6 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8463 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8463"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Unofficial D&D 2024 Style Guide (Your Capitalization Questions Answered!)">Unofficial D&D 2024 Style Guide (Your Capitalization Questions Answered!)</a></h3> <small>Tuesday, January 7th, 2025</small> <div class="entry"> <p>When I’m writing rules for D&D 2024, it annoys me not to have an official style guide. In its absence, I made my own style guide so I can quickly answer my own questions:</p> <li>Is it “action” and “bonus action,” or “Action” and “Bonus Action?” (neither, it’s “action” and “Bonus Action”) <li>Am I “knocked Prone”, or do I “gain the Prone condition” or “have the Prone condition”? (All three) <li>“d20 test”, “d20 Test”, or “D20 Test”? (The latter) <p>(There are undoubtedly really good fan-made style guides out there, better than this! But this is what I have for now.)</p> <p>Here is a google doc of <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R4ATjFL3GizCojKhHPS47abTqW78fCpOgc6YX5GTtKE/edit?tab=t.0">v1 of my current unofficial D&D 2024 style guide</a>. It’s set so you can make suggestions! Feel free to add corrections so we can keep this correct.</p> <p>In case you don’t like clicking links, here’s my first draft of the style guide. (In the future I will probably keep the doc up to date but maybe not this blog post!)</p> <h3><strong>Capitalization</strong></h3> <p><strong>Capitalized:</strong> abilities (“Strength”), action type (“Attack action”), “Advantage/Disadvantage”, alignment (“Lawful Good”), area (“Emanation”), armor (“Scale Mail”), armor type (“Heavy armor”), “Armor Class”, attack (“Rend attack”), attitude (“Friendly”), “Attunement”, “Bloodied”, “Bonus Action”, “Challenge Rating”, class (“Barbarian”), class feature (“Cunning Action”), coins (“Gold Piece”), components (“Material”), condition (“Grappled”), cover (“Half Cover”), “Concentration”, creature type (“Beast”), “Critical Hit”, “D20 Test”, damage type (“Piercing”), “Death Saving Throw”, “Difficult Terrain”, “Difficulty Class”, “Dungeon Master”, equipment (“Ladder”), “Exhaustion”, “Experience Points”, “Expertise”, “Heroic Inspiration”, “High Jump”, “Hit Points”, “Hit Point Dice/Hit Dice”, “Immunity”, “Initiative”, lifestyle (“Wretched”), light (“Darkness”, “Dim Light”), “Long Jump”, magic item (“<em>Spell Scroll</em>”), obscured (“Lightly Obscured”), “Opportunity Attack”, “Origin feat”, “Passive Perception”, “Proficiency Bonus”, “Reaction”, “Resistance”, rest (“Short Rest”), “Ritual”, senses (“Tremorsense”) size (“Tiny”), skill (“Investigation”), species (“Human”), “Speed” (“Swim Speed”), spell (“<em>Fireball</em>”), “Spellcasting Focus”, “Stable”, subclass (“Path of the Berserker”), “Unarmed Strike”, “Temporary Hit Points”, “Vulnerability”, weapon (“Dagger”), weapon property or type (“Finesse”, “Melee”)</p> <p><strong>Not Capitalized:</strong> ”ability”, “ability modifier”, “action”, “alignment”, “ally”, “armor training”, “attack roll”, “attack bonus”, attack type (“melee attack”), “attuned”, “aura”, “background”, “burning”, “cantrip”, “character”, “class”, “damage”, “damage roll”, “feat”, “hazard”, “hide”, “hit”, “improvised weapon”, “level”, monster name (“skeleton”) (or perhaps its “<strong>Skeleton</strong>”, it’s inconsistent), “object”, “player”, “proficiency”, “round”, “save”, “saving throw”, “size”, “skill”, “species”, “spell”, “spell slot”, “stabilize”, “surprise”, “teleport” as a verb, “turn”</p> <h3><strong>Usage Examples</strong></h3> <p><strong>Abilities:</strong> “Dexterity modifier”</p> <p><strong>Ability checks and skills:</strong> “Whenever you make an ability check using one of the following skills, you can make it as a Strength check even if it normally uses a different ability” “make a Strength (Athletics) check” “you gain proficiency with three skills”</p> <p><strong>Actions:</strong> “take an action to” “take a Bonus Action” “As a Bonus Action, you can” “you can Influence a creature” “take the Search action” “after you x, you can y as a bonus action” “As a Magic action, you” Actions: Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, Influence, Magic, Ready, Search, Study, Utilize</p> <p><strong>Advantage/Disadvantage:</strong> “You have Advantage on Strength checks” “doing so gives you Advantage” “attack rolls against you have Advantage” “You have Advantage on any saving throw you make to end the Grappled condition” “being within 5 feet of an enemy doesn’t impose Disadvantage on your attack rolls”</p> <p><strong>Areas:</strong> “energy in a 30-foot Line that is 5 feet wide” “radiates from you in a 30-foot Emanation” “Each creature in a 15-foot Cone makes a Dexterity saving throw, taking 3d6 Fire damage on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one.”</p> <p><strong>Armor Class/Armor:</strong> “Your base Armor Class is 10 plus your Dexterity modifier” “You gain training with Heavy armor”</p> <p><strong>Attacks:</strong> “make a melee spell attack” “make a melee attack with a Melee weapon”, “make an attack roll (I think the “attack roll bonus” on PHB 41 is incorrect)” “when a creature is hit by an attack roll” “when you hit a target with a weapon” “if you make an attack roll and the roll misses” “the lion makes two Rend attacks”</p> <p><strong>Bonus:</strong> “(minimum bonus of +1)”</p> <p><strong>Conditions:</strong> “gain the Grappled condition” “gain the Prone condition” “you’re knocked Prone” “causes them to have the Blinded condition” “fall unconscious” “have the Unconscious condition” “on a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition for 1 minute. At the end of each of the Frightened creature’s turns, the creature repeats the save, ending the condition on itself on a success.” “You can cause a Large or smaller creature to have the prone condition when you hit it with a melee attack” “you can’t use this feature if you have the Incapacitated condition” “until you have the Incapacitated condition” “doesn’t give you levels of Exhaustion”</p> <p><strong>Concentration:</strong> When you damage a creature that is concentrating, it has Disadvantage on the saving throw it makes to maintain Concentration”</p> <p><strong>Creatures:</strong> “creature who can see or hear you” “Your enemies in the area have Disadvantage”</p> <p><strong>Critical Hit:</strong> “When you score a Critical Hit”</p> <p><strong>Equipment:</strong> “When you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield”</p> <p><strong>Hit Points:</strong> “Hit Point maximum” “if you have 0 Hit Points” “you gain a number of Temporary Hit points equal to your barbarian level” “you can regain a number of hit points equal to” “you restore x Hit Points to the creature”</p> <p><strong>Initiative:</strong> “when you roll Initiative”</p> <p><strong>Levels:</strong> “When you gain a Bard level” “when you reach level 3”</p> <p><strong>Mastery:</strong> “You can activate the Topple mastery property”</p> <p><strong>Movement:</strong> “You can transport the creature up to 10 feet horizontally” “you can move a creature to an unoccupied space within 5 feet” “you push the target 5 feet from you”<br /> <strong><br /> Opportunity Attacks:</strong> “without provoking opportunity attacks”</p> <p><strong>Proficiency/Expertise:</strong> “You gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws” “you gain Expertise in two of your skill proficiencies of your choice” “you have proficiency in improvised weapons”</p> <p><strong>Rests:</strong> “After you xx in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a Short or Long Rest unless you expend a xx (no action required) to restore your use of it” “you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest”</p> <p><strong>Resistance/Immunity/Vulnerability:</strong> You are immune to the Poisoned condition” “you have Resistance to Poison damage”</p> <p><strong>Saving Throws:</strong> “saving throw” but “Death Saving Throw” “The target must succeed on a Strength saving throw (DC 8 plus your Strength modifier and Proficiency Bonus or be teleported” “if you fail a saving throw” “fails a saving throw against an effect that applies the Charmed condition”</p> <p><strong>Senses:</strong> “You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.” “You gain Tremorsense with a range of 60 feet”</p> <p><strong>Speed:</strong> “your size and Speed” “You can move up to half your Speed” “the target’s Speed is reduced by 15 feet” “the target’s Speed is halved” “you have a Fly Speed equal to your Speed and can hover” “your Speed increases by 10 feet” “your Speed is 0”</p> <p><strong>Spells:</strong> “how many spell slots you have available, how many cantrips you know, and how many spells you can prepare” “Choose your cantrips and prepared spells” “Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your Bard spells” “you can expend a spell slot to” “you learn two spells of your choice” “cast the spell without Material components” “You always have the <em>Telekinesis</em> spell prepared. With this feature, you can cast it without a spell slot or components, and your spellcasting ability for it is Intelligence. Once you cast the spell with this feature, you can’t do so in this way again until you finish a Long Rest.” “You always have that spell prepared. You can cast it once without a spell slot, and you regain the ability to cast it in that way when you finish a Long Rest. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have.”</p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R4ATjFL3GizCojKhHPS47abTqW78fCpOgc6YX5GTtKE/edit?tab=t.0">view as google doc</a></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8463" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8463" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8463" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8463#respond">No Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8432 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8432"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to a quick peek at 2024 Monster Manual math">a quick peek at 2024 Monster Manual math</a></h3> <small>Monday, December 2nd, 2024</small> <div class="entry"> <p>As a monster designer, I’m interested in seeing where the 2024 Monster Manual takes monster design. How compatible are 2014 and 2024 monsters? What are the benchmarks for a monster of a given Challenge Rating, and has it changed? </p> <p>I <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8344">wrote about this before</a> when we had a very small handful of monsters. By now we have a surprisingly large number of 2024-style monster previews – I count about 60 between the PHB, Monster Manual previews, and the free adventures Scions of Elemental Evil and Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn. That’s enough to make some decent educated guesses, especially around Challenge Ratings 1/8 through 6 (I think we only have two monsters that are higher CR than that).</p> <p>First of all, how have monster benchmarks changed? It seems like the biggest changes are to hit points and expected damage. Here are scatter plots of the 2024 hit points and damage numbers (blue), along with my 2014 Monster Manual on a Business Card math (red).</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8439"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e-1024x320.png" alt="mome24e" width="450" height="141" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8439" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e-300x94.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e-768x240.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e-1024x320.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24e.png 1441w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>(As I did for earlier analyses, I use the 2014 DMG rubric for calculating damage: the average damage a monster deals over 3 rounds, assuming every attack hits, every area attack targets 2 foes, etc. I’ve tweaked it a bit for this analysis: for instance, I gave a bonus to an attack that’s likely to gain advantage – but I haven’t made big changes. I’m NOT using any updated formulas from the 2024 DMG because the 2024 DMG doesn’t include any real monster building guidelines beyond “you can reskin”.)</p> <p>As you can see, hit points and damage have changed. Hit points have gone up a fair amount, and damage has gone up a lot. We’re still dealing with a linear increase by level, though.</p> <p>I’m trying out a new formula for monster stats. This is provisional, and will probably change a bit once we get the full Monster Manual. It’s not as nice and clean as the 2014 one – it’s a bit harder for me to do the math in my head – but it seems to be the math they’re using:</p> <p><strong>Hit Points: 9 + 18 per CR</p> <p>Damage: 3.75 + 7.5 per CR</strong></p> <p>In other words, for every CR you get 18 hit points and 7.5 DPR, plus a half-level bump as a bonus.</p> <p>For CRs under 1 I just interpolated some linear values, keeping the 40% ratio between damage and hit points.</p> <p>CR 1/8: 10 HP, 4 damage<br /> CR 1/4: 15 HP, 6 damage<br /> CR 1/2: 20 HP, 8 damage</p> <p>How well does this formula match the data? Let’s draw it:</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8441"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f-1024x318.png" alt="mome24f" width="450" height="140" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8441" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f-300x93.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f-768x238.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f-1024x318.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24f.png 1444w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>Pretty close, though it might be skewed by trying to match those two high-CR data points. Let’s just look at CRs 0 through 6.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8443"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g-1024x316.png" alt="mome24g" width="450" height="139" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8443" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g-300x93.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g-768x237.png 768w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g-1024x316.png 1024w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome24g.png 1443w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" /></a></p> <p>It looks pretty good, although the data is incredibly noisy just because we have so little data to go on (60 monsters is not a lot). So these formulas are all quite provisional, and may change a lot once we see the full Monster Manual.</p> <p>Based on this hypothesis, though, we can draw some conclusions:</p> <p><b>Different Damage Ratio</b></p> <p>One interesting change is that we have confirmed that monsters no longer use the “1 damage-per-round for every 3 hit points” rubric they used in 2014. Instead of a ratio of .33, the new key ratio is .4: 4 DPR for every 10 hit points. This means that 2014 and 2024 monsters have a fundamental incompatibility at their center. You can’t strictly say, for instance, that a 2024 CR 8 monster is equivalent to a 2014 CR 10 monster; it’s not. Its ratio of attack to defense is different.</p> <p>Do I like this change? Yes. As both a player and DM, I like monsters to have more damage capability rather than more hit points. I’d rather have a monster hit hard, and not overstay its welcome, rather than drag out a foregone fight.</p> <p><b>Now 25% Tougher!</b></p> <p>Just as players are tougher in 2024, monsters are too, especially at high CRs. It seems like monsters are roughly compatible up until around CR 3 or 4, and then new monsters pull away.</p> <p>Glossing over the incompatible damage ratio of new monsters, if you’re comparing or swapping 2014-style and 2024 monsters – for instance, using <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii">Monstrous Menagerie 2</a> monsters in a 2024 adventure – you’ll need to know how they stack up in order to make the encounter work. Here’s my provisional formula for doing that:</p> <p>To convert a 2024 monster’s CR into 2014 and A5E-style CR, <b>multiply by 1.25 and round down</b>.</p> <p>That means that monsters up to CR 3 will be unchanged (which matches our findings about their statistics). 2024 monsters of CR 4 to 7 should have their CR increased by +1, which approximately matches what we see in the data. After this, our findings are mostly speculative because of the lack of data. For CR 8 to 11 monsters, add +2 to their CR; CR 12 to 15, +3; CR 16 to 19, +4; CR 20 to 23, +5; and we have no data at all beyond this point. This means that the 2024 CR 22 ancient green dragon is, in 2014 terms, really CR 27 (with the caveat that its hit points will be a little low and its damage will be a little high). </p> <p>Going the other way, to convert a 2014/A5E monster into 2024 CR, <b>multiply by 0.8 and round up.</b> So, for instance, if you use a 2014 remorhaz (CR 11) in a 2024 game, treat its CR as 9 for the purposes of encounter building and determining encounter difficulty.</p> <p>The downside of this rough-and-ready conversion is that a monster’s CR is not just its damage and hit points. The 2024 green dragon might have the damage output and hit points of an old-style CR 27, but it has the AC, save DCs, and attack bonuses of a CR 22 monster. That’s not a huge deal because for the most point these numbers will only be about 1 or 2 points at the very highest CRs, so I don’t think it’s worthwhile making a big conversion effort to fix this. Still, it’s a bit messy.</p> <p>Do I like this change? Not really. If they wanted to challenge players, rather than boosting the power of a monster of a given CR, they could have left the meaning of CR alone and changed the <i>encounter guidelines</i> instead. There are a lot of much-improved 2014-style encounter guidelines out there, including mine and Sly Flourish’s, they could have drawn inspiration from. This would have been a change WOTC could have made on a single page of the DMG rather than on every page of the Monster Manual. I would have been very happy if they had changed monster’s damage-to-hp ratios without also inflating stats in a way that made WOTC’s D&D 5E slightly incompatible with itself. But it’s WOTC’s choice to do whatever they want with their game; it’s our choice whether we want to follow their design decisions or not.</p> <p><b>…but we gotta wait for the full book</b></p> <p>As I said before, all of these numbers will probably get adjusted a little once we see the full book: once I have more data points, my stats for challenge ratings 7 and higher could see big changes. But if, for instance, you’re a monster designer and want to be able to make some provisional 2024 monsters, this might be good enough for now.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8432" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8432" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8432" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8432#comments">3 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8423 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8423"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Monstrous Menagerie 2: Goblin Mode">Monstrous Menagerie 2: Goblin Mode</a></h3> <small>Thursday, November 21st, 2024</small> <div class="entry"> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome2banner.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8425"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome2banner-300x148.png" alt="mome2banner" width="300" height="148" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-8425" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome2banner-300x148.png 300w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome2banner.png 605w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Hey, I’m the lead writer on EN Publishing’s new book, <i><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii">Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes and Heroes</a></i>! It’s on <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii">Kickstarter</a> RIGHT NOW (assuming <i>now</i> is Dec 12 2024 or earlier!)</p> <p>While <i>Monstrous Menagerie 2</i> is mostly composed of brand-new monsters, we did take the opportunity to expand on some classic creatures that we think merit some more consideration. One of the monsters we revisited is the humble goblin.</p> <p>Over the past few years, goblins have taken a real face turn–so much so that a few years ago, Oxford Dictionary named “goblin mode” its <a href=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/goblin-mode-is-oxford-dictionaries-2022-word-of-the-year>word of the year</a>. To Oxford Dictionary, it means “a behaviour that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations,” which seems to me like a pretty negative way to describe staying home to wear sweatpants and eat ice cream.</p> <p>Here’s the thing: the idea of goblins as adorably antisocial little guys is, I think, fairly new. If we look at the history of goblins in fantasy literature, there are some interesting, unexplored through lines.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/deepgoblin.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8428"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/deepgoblin-216x300.png" alt="deepgoblin" width="216" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-8428" /></a>Let’s start with the wellspring of so much of the fantasy genre: Tolkien. Goblins are a major adversary in <i>The Hobbit</i>. Far from being feral little fellows, we find that goblins are high-tech, with what appears to be a well-ordered society. Their leader, the Great Goblin, as he questions the dwarves about their intrusion into his realm, is rather urbane–until a goblin produces Thorin’s sword, Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which understandably throws the Great Goblin into a rage.</p> <p>According to my cursory research, it seems like Orcrist was mostly cleaving goblins around the year 510 in the First Age, while <em>The Hobbit</em> takes place in 2942 in the Third Age. I’m not an expert in Middle Earth chronology but that seems like… a long time. With historical memory like that, these aren’t “Garg Eat Rocks” goblins. Tolkien has lots of bad words to say about goblins—”ugly”, “cruel”, “wicked”, and “lazy”, and with gross flat feet—but he doesn’t deny that they’re historians. (And possessed of a series of national alliances to boot: when Gandalf kills the Great Goblin, in revenge another goblin monarch raises an army of many thousands of goblins.)</p> <p>Prior to Tolkien the history of goblins is a bit muddied: in English-language literature the words for all the fey creatures are often used interchangeably. “Goblin”, “dwarf”, “kobold”, “gnome”, and “fairy” are often the same thing. But there are some books that specifically mark out goblins as a specific species.<em> The Worm Ouroboros</em>, by E. R. Eddison, is a 1922 fantasy classic, admired by Tolkien, in which Goblinland is a mighty nation. The lords and kings of Goblinland, like everyone in <em>The Worm Ouroboros</em>, are characters of towering Shakespearian dignity. And I’m not kidding about Shakespearean: here’s some of the goblin Lord Gro’s dialogue: </p> <blockquote><p>“How shall not common opinion account me mad, so rash and presumptuous dangerously to put my life in hazard? Nay, against all sound judgement; and this folly I enact in that very season when by patience and courage and my politic wisdom I had won that in despite of fortune’s teeth which obstinately hitherto she had denied me: when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I had marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King, who very honourably placed me in his court, and tendereth me, I well think, so dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes.”</p></blockquote> <p>(Imagine running a game of D&D and saying that in character as a goblin!)</p> <p>Now let’s go further back, to George MacDonald’s 19th century <em>The Princess and the Goblin</em> (also admired by Tolkien, and therefore also part of the DNA of modern fantasy literature and fantasy gaming). Unlike <em>The Worm Ouroboros</em> and like <em>The Hobbit</em>, MacDonald presents his goblins as grotesque, bestial, cruel creatures with gross feet. (Typical human propaganda!) However, once again these goblins are technologically adept miners, and they have all the trappings of a strong and sophisticated monarchy. Here’s the Goblin King and his court addressing his people:</p> <blockquote><p>At the other end of the hall, high above the heads of the multitude, was a terrace-like ledge of considerable height, caused by the receding of the upper part of the cavern-wall. Upon this sat the king and his court: the king on a throne hollowed out of a huge block of green copper ore, and his court upon lower seats around it. The king had been making them a speech, and the applause which followed it was what Curdie had heard. One of the court was now addressing the multitude. What he heard him say was to the following effect: ‘Hence it appears that two plans have been for some time together working in the strong head of His Majesty for the deliverance of his people. Regardless of the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when–thanks to His Majesty’s inventive genius–i0t will be in our power to take a thorough revenge upon them once for all, in respect of their unfriendly behaviour.’ </p></blockquote> <p>When we put these three versions of goblins together, what do we get? </p> <li>Goblins are really into their monarchy. <li>Goblins are insular. <li>Goblins have a grudge against everybody else. <li>Goblins sound vaguely Shakespearean. <p>In other words, perhaps accidentally, these three English authors invented a fantasy monster that is extremely English.</p> <p>When original D&D came around, it basically stuck to this script. It didn’t do much to describe goblins except that they hate dwarves and “when in their lair the ‘goblin king’ will be found. He will fight as a Hobgoblin in all respects.” In further editions, goblins descend further and further into ineffective, semi-comic barbarity.</p> <p>I am here for the “Garg eat rocks” goblin, but I sure like the highfalutin, palace-politics goblin too. Why not have both?</p> <p>A first thought might be to use hobgoblins for this type of highbrow goblin. And it’s not a bad thought at all. But hobgoblins have sort of developed their own thing. Whereas the goblins of literature are subterranean miner-monarchists who mostly want to be left alone with their ugly feet, hobgoblins are the expansive and outgoing Roman Empire who covet a surface empire.</p> <p>Here’s my pitch: just as gnomes have deep gnomes and dwarves have deep dwarves, goblins have deep goblins. Surface goblins are the familiar gnaw-on-rocks, battling-to-survive bandits with no social institutions to speak of. They are the heirs to fallen goblin kingdoms, and their small clans are prey to every passing warmonger and adventuring party.</p> <p>Meanwhile, far underground are the kingdoms of the deep goblins. These kingdoms never fell, and their technology and cultures are just as advanced as anyone else’s, or more so. As Tolkien says of goblins, “wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them.” If anyone in your fantasy campaign manufactures firearms and grenades, it’s likely to be the goblins. Furthermore, deep goblins nurse grudges against most other intelligent creatures. They’re perfectly aware of what happened to the surface goblin kingdoms, and how those goblins have been treated since by the humans and dwarves. (And I bet they don’t much care for grimlocks and dark elves either.) With well-equipped armies in the thousands, there’s no reason why the deep goblins couldn’t conquer a lot of the world, except they don’t particularly care for the sunlit parts of it–but don’t press them too far, because they might change their minds if you get them mad enough (as they’ll happily explain to you, in high Elizabethan diction.)</p> <p>This is the route we’re going with goblins in <em>Monstrous Menagerie II</em>. Where <em>Monstrous Menagerie</em> presented the typical hard-luck surface goblins and the “I’ve watched <em>300</em> a dozen times” hobgoblins, <em>Monstrous Menagerie II</em> brings us deep goblins. They’re tough opponents, suitable foils for mid-level, deep-delving adventurers. Their rulers are politically astute and trained in war, ever prepared to defend their realms. Like all <em>A5E</em> goblins, they’re at least a little fey-touched and armed with strange magic. And one dark night, the deep goblins might just venture “Upstairs” to give the world a taste of their power, and then we’ll all be in trouble.</p> <p>That’s my pitch on deep goblins! If that sounds cool, or you want to take a look at the other 300 odd monsters in the book, you can get it all in <i><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii">Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes and Heroes</a></i>. The PDFs fulfill the very moment the Kickstarter ends, and the books and PDFs are on sale afterwards, so you can get your hands on the book real soon.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8423" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8423" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8423" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8423#comments">2 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8406 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-5e-dd category-advice category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8406"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Bastions: And How to Make Them Pay – Maximizing Profits for Bastions in the 5e 2024 DMG">Bastions: And How to Make Them Pay – Maximizing Profits for Bastions in the 5e 2024 DMG</a></h3> <small>Thursday, October 31st, 2024</small> <div class="entry"> <div id="attachment_8408" style="width: 201px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ducks-1.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-8408"><img class="size-medium wp-image-8408" src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ducks-1-191x300.jpg" alt="The late 19th century was all about ducks, but in the early 21st century we know better" width="191" height="300" srcset="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ducks-1-191x300.jpg 191w, https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ducks-1.jpg 360w" sizes="(max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The late 19th century was all about ducks, but in the enlightened age of Generic Fantasy Times we know better</p></div> <p>ANOTHER RORY GUEST POST!</p> <p>(Edited to correct an error with recommending the Gaming Hall at levels 5-8 since it isn’t available until 9)</p> <p>With the release of the 5e 2025 Dungeon Masters Guide, Bastions are official and can be easily acquired at 5th level for any DM who sees fit to include them! Are they a little half baked? Perhaps! Is it mostly useless to recruit defenders and build walls for your Bastion? Yeah, pretty much! Are some of the facilities you can build almost entirely useless? YES (I’m looking at you Armory)!</p> <p>On the other hand… Can Bastions actually make you quite a bit of easy money? Most Certainly! Are there actually quite a few facilities available that provide a host of useful buffs and abilities? Yes… but let’s go back to the easy money thing. Imagine if you will an adventurer motivated by the desire to make fat stacks of gold and platinum. Perhaps this adventurer has a kind heart and wishes to support the local orphanage. Or perhaps they simply want to buy a lot of sweet magic items and throw their money around like it was water, bribing their way to success, wearing the finest clothes, and throwing lavish parties. Either way, money is pretty useful in D&D and it’s no surprise players would want to acquire more of it, especially with the new rules for buying and crafting magic items. I’ve looked through all the special facilities in the new DMG, and below are the most profitable special facilities for each level range:</p> <p>TLDR: Start with 2 different Gardens (Poison + Herb), pick up/swap into a Storehouse, Greenhouse, and Stable at level 9, and then grab a Guild Hall at level 17 for most impactful gains. Much longer explanation below!</p> <p><strong>Levels 5-8: </strong>At level 5 you can choose 2 specialized facilities at no cost. Every week that you spend with some kind of access to your bastion (generally being able to stop by in person at the beginning of the week is enough), you can give special commands to these facilities to make you that sweet sweet lucre. The most profitable at this level are two different gardens:</p> <p><em>Garden – Poison (50 gold/week)</em>: You can make a lot of stuff with a garden, but from a pure profit standpoint selecting Poison is your best bet. You can create two vials of Antitoxin or one vial of Basic Potion a week. If you actually need those items, awesome, you’ve just netted 100 gold of value. If not, the standard rules let you sell those items for half price and net a pretty decent 50 gold.</p> <p><em>Garden – Any Other Option (25 gold/week)</em>: You are allowed to select the garden multiple times just as long as you pick something else to grow. Decorative, Food, and Herb gardens all produce items worth 50 gold pieces, which you can sell at half value (25 gold) using the standard rules. Personally, I would probably go for the Herb garden, which can produce a Potion of Healing each week since there’s a decent chance you’ll actually want to use the potion and thus realize the full 50 gold value.</p> <p><em>Should you enlarge your garden? </em>For a mere (lol) 2,000 gold you can expand the size of your garden to Vast size and effectively maintain two gardens of the same (or different) types instead of one, which would double your weekly profit to 100 gold with the Poison Garden. Probably this isn’t worth it unless you expect to stay in the 5-8 level range for quite some time, as it would take literally 40 weeks to recoup you expenses and turn this into a profitable endeavor. Probably don’t bother.</p> <p><em>Total Profit per Week: 75</em> Gold!</p> <p><strong>Levels 9-12: </strong>At level 9, you unlock 2 more special facilities, increasing your total to 4! More importantly, you unlock some nice options for making substantially more money. Here are the top 4 most profitable facilities at this level:</p> <p> <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406#more-8406" class="more-link">(more…)</a></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8406" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8406" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8406" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=35" rel="category">5e D&D</a>, <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=4" rel="category">advice/tools</a>, <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8406#comments">4 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8402 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-5e-dd category-advice category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8402"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Do the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide XP Tables Work?">Do the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide XP Tables Work?</a></h3> <small>Tuesday, October 29th, 2024</small> <div class="entry"> <p>Rory Guest Post!</p> <p>Arguably one of the most impactful changes in the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide is the new XP Budget table for Combat Encounters. It has three notable changes from the original 5e DMG:</p> <ul> <li>The old table had 4 categories of difficulty for encounters (Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly). The new table drops the old Easy encounters and has only 3 categories (Low, Moderate, High). So effectively, the old Medium is the new Low, the old Hard is the new Moderate, and the old Deadly is the new High. Considering how laughably trivial Easy encounters were, this is a pretty reasonable change.</li> <li>The notorious Encounter Multipliers table for multiple enemies has been removed. This table was designed under the premise that multiple weaker enemies are more difficult than a single high level enemy. While single enemies are uniquely vulnerable to spells like Hold Person and Polymorph, it was a fundamentally flawed premise considering the prevalence of AE spells and abilities such as Thunderwave and Fireball, and it’s removal ensures less burdensome encounter calculations and more realistic difficulties overall.</li> <li>The XP budgets start out the same (once you shift from 4 categories to the new 3), but increase at higher levels. Considering how powerful PCs become at higher levels, this is probably a good thing. For the hardest difficulties, the XP budget increases relative to the original DMG starting at level 9 and is almost double at level 20 (12,700 vs the new 22,000).</li> </ul> <p>All things considered, I would say it’s pretty obvious these are all good changes. My question though, is <em>does it go far enough?! </em>With that in mind, let’s explore some scenarios at various tiers of play using the High difficulty, which is meant to provide a meaningful chance of death for one of more characters. We’ll have to work with the old Monster Manual, so perhaps we can revisit these numbers when the new MM is out:</p> <p> <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402#more-8402" class="more-link">(more…)</a></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8402" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8402" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8402" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=35" rel="category">5e D&D</a>, <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=4" rel="category">advice/tools</a>, <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8402#comments">3 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="post-8398 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-rpghub"> <h3 id="post-8398"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to What level is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms?">What level is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms?</a></h3> <small>Tuesday, October 8th, 2024</small> <div class="entry"> <p>I was reading the back of a Lucky Charms cereal box today (as you do) and I learned some things that were SHOCKING. SHOCKING.</p> <p>Here’s the cereal box in question.</p> <p><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/lucky.png" rel="attachment wp-att-8380"><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/lucky-211x300.png" alt="lucky" width="211" height="300" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-8380" /></a></p> <p>It gives a breakdown of all 8 of Lucky the leprechaun’s marshmallows, and what magical power they give him. I was expecting some wishy washy baloney – this marshmallow gives Lucky the power of friendship! stuff like that – but in fact, nearly all of them are legit magic abilities. In fact, they map onto D&D spells to an astonishing degree, with only a few questions to be cleared up.</p> <p>And not only that, the cereal box ended with a sinister revelation that nearly made me do a spit take. In my opinion, this box strongly implies, if not states outright, that Lucky is a horrific villain that steals mortal children. I mean, that’s par for course for leprechauns – why does Rumplestiltskin want that baby in the Grimm’s story? – but pretty surprising content on the back of a cereal box. We’ll talk more about Lucky’s secret later on, when we get to the final marshmallow.</p> <p>Dark revelations aside, the real importance of the box is this: finally, we can stat up Lucky as a D&D character. Mankind’s age-old quest is finally complete!</p> <p><b>Lucky’s Level</b></p> <p>According to the cereal box, Lucky uses the MAGIC OF THE CHARMS to make his world a more enchanted place! Charms = marshmallows, I guess. There are eight marshmallows: hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, and red balloons, each with their own powers.</p> <p>For the most part, each of Lucky’s powers seem to be arcane spells. Lucky could be a wizard or sorcerer, but you can make a strong case for a warlock – fey pact, obviously. And in fact, I have a guess at his level! Lucky knows 8 spells (or more, if the list on the back of the box isn’t exhaustive). According to the Spells Known column of the Warlock table, that would make him at least a 7th level warlock (with access to 4th level spells).</p> <p> OK, now let’s get to the crux of the issue: what exactly are Lucky’s powers? Let’s take a closer look at that cereal box.</p> <p>“<b>Hearts</b> let Lucky bring objects to LIFE.” OK, this is obviously <em>animate object</em>. And, right off the bat we learn something new. That’s a fifth level spell – just out of reach for a 7th level caster. Is Lucky level 9, not level 7? That would mean he had at least 10 known spells, two of which weren’t listed on the box. What powers does Lucky have that General Mills doesn’t want you to know about? *</p> <p>“<b>Stars</b> give Lucky the power to FLY.” That’s obviously the 3rd level spell <i>fly</i>, no questions there.</p> <p>“<b>Horseshoes</b> help lucky SPEED things up.” That’s <i>haste</i>, another 3rd level spell.</p> <p>“<b>Clovers</b> bring Lucky GOOD LUCK.” This was maybe the toughest call. What spell brings good luck? It can’t be Lucky (a feat) Luck (a halfling trait) or Stone of Good Luck (an item). After racking my brains, I realized that the luck provided by Clovers doesn’t refer to a spell at all: they’re the Leprechaun 1/day magical ability Gift of Luck. After all, Lucky is not just a warlock, he’s a leprechaun too!</p> <p>“<b>Blue Moons</b> make Lucky invisible.” <i>Invisibility,</i> next.</p> <p>“<b>Unicorns</b> bring COLOR to Lucky’s world.” At first glance, this seems like the kind of vague faux-magic I was expecting from Lucky before I realized he was the real deal. Brings color to Lucky’s world? What kind of nonsense is that? But then I thought, maybe this is a euphemistic reference to a combat spell. After all, General Mills can’t say something like “Bone-white fingers allow Lucky to kill you and raise you as an undead!” Even if Lucky had <i>finger of death</i> they’d have to wrap it up in a bow. With that in mind, I think that unicorns either bestow <i>prismatic spray</i>, <i>prismatic wall</i>, or, most likely, <i>Hypnotic Pattern</i>, which uses a “twisting pattern of colors” to incapacitate foes who are trying to steal your Lucky Charms. That’s another 3rd level spell.</p> <p>“<b>Rainbows</b> give Lucky the power of TELEPORTATION.” Ok, hold on. <i>Teleport</i> is super high level – a 7th-level spell – and it’s not even on the warlock spell list? So Lucky’s teleportation is probably some more limited spell. <i>Dimension door</i> is a warlock spell, and it’s 4th level, easily within Lucky’s grasp even if he’s only level 7. The box COULD go on to say that it gives Lucky “the power of TELEPORTATION to a space within 500 feet” and go on to describe the force damage Lucky takes if he teleports into a solid object. But maybe some misguided editor cut that part out.</p> <p>The last spell: “<b>Red balloons</b> give Lucky the power to FLOAT.” I think this is <i>levitation</i> – a little redundant when you have <i>fly</i>, but what are you gonna do. The real story here is not that Lucky has a non-optimal spell choice. The real story is that Lucky</p> <p>     is</p> <p>          Pennywise</p> <p>Or at least extremely closely related to Pennywise. The same species? “We all float down here!” says Lucky, as he clutches his red balloon, and leads kids on a fruitless treasure hunt that leads right to his lair. Where do these kids go? I think we all know the answer. All these child-abducting fey – Lucky, Pennywise, Peter Pan, the Pied Piper – are the same. Dressed in a cartoonishly cheerful guise, they lure victims into their neverland marshmallow sewers, never to return – or, like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and <i>IT</i>‘s Losers Club, to return <i>different.</i></p> <p>So maybe I’m on the wrong track here statting up Lucky as a character. I should be making him as a <i>villain</i> – a Legendary stat block. Kill him and free the children in his clutches. Your reward will be a pot o’ gold filled with all the marshmallows you can eat.</p> <p>* To figure out Lucky’s secret spells, we should probably start by looking at a list of retired Lucky Charms marshmallows. There used to be a crystal ball marshmallow (<i>scrying?</i>) and a pot o’ gold marshmallow (<i>Leomund’s Secret Chest</i> perhaps?) Those are very plausible 9th and 10th spells. Interestingly, there also used to be an hourglass marshmallow, which, according to Wikipedia, let Lucky STOP TIME. That can be no other spell than <i>time stop</i> – a 9th level spell. What gives? Why did Lucky have a spell so much more powerful than the ones he has today? Can a fey warlock patron give a spell – and then take it away? Perhaps what Lucky did with <i>time stop</i> went beyond the pale even for an amoral archfey patron. Once possessing powers rivaling or exceeding those of the mightiest mortal archfey, Lucky is now stripped of most of his powers, haunting the Feywild as a grim reminder of the fate of those whose ambition exceeds their grasp.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-8398" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398&share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-reddit"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="" class="share-reddit sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398&share=reddit" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Reddit"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-8398" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398&share=twitter" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-google-plus-1"><a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-google-8398" class="share-google-plus-1 sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398&share=google-plus-1" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Google+"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted in <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1" rel="category">RPG Hub</a> | <a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=8398#comments">3 Comments »</a></p> </div> <div class="navigation"> <div class="alignleft"><a href="https://www.blogofholding.com/?cat=1&paged=2" >« Older Entries</a></div> <div class="alignright"></div> </div> </div> <div id="sidebar" role="complementary"> <ul> <li id="text-4" class="widget widget_text"> <div class="textwidget"><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii"><center><img src="https://www.blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/mome2.png" alt="Monstrous Menagerie II" width="150" height="194" style="border: 1px solid black"/></center></a> <br><br> <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/monstrous-menagerie-ii"><b>Monstrous Menagerie II</b></a><br>Kickstart my new book! 300 monsters for 5e and A5E! <br><br><br> <a href="https://enpublishingrpg.com/products/level-up-dungeon-delvers-guide-a5e?srsltid=AfmBOopCzSDhDojMWBXDM4WNrSCq4xp2mKpDiEwzOY2xDMe6vHXPiJwG"><center><img src="http://blogofholding.com/images/ddg200.png" alt="dungeon delvers guide" width="150" height="194" style="border: 1px solid black"/></center></a> <br><br> <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/dungeon-delvers-guide-a-sourcebook-for-5e-and-a5e?ref=discovery"><b>Dungeon Delver's Guide</b></a><br>Get 100+ traps, 50+ monsters, and a definitive guide on how to dungeon! <br><br><br> <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376472/Level-Up-Monstrous-Menagerie-A5E?src=hottest_filtered"><center><img src="http://blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2028/09/menageriecoversmall.png" alt="menageriecoversmall" width="150" height="195" style="border: 1px solid black"/></center></a> <br><br> <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376472/Level-Up-Monstrous-Menagerie-A5E?src=hottest_filtered"><b>Level Up: Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie</b></a><br>If you like my ideas on monster design, I wrote the Monstrous Menagerie, a 500+ page bestiary! <br><br><br> <a href="https://battlezoo-bestiary.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/357460"><center><img src="http://blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2028/09/battlezoosmall.png" alt="battlezoosmall" width="150" height="240" /></center></a> <a href="https://battlezoo-bestiary.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/357460"><b>Battlezoo Bestiary</b></a><br>I wrote the 5e monster versions for this bestiary! <br><br><br> <a href=http://blogofholding.com/?page_id=3294><img src=http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/79624/photo-little.jpg?1331100447 style="border: 1px solid black"></a> <br><a href=http://blogofholding.com/?page_id=3294 style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Sans-Serif; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: bold">Buy D&D Posters and Books!</a> If you missed the <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040314005/random-dungeon-generator-as-a-dungeon-map/">kickstarter</a>, you can still get the D&D posters containing new art and old rules for dungeon generation. 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