CR ratings for customized villains

[Fauxreal]

Hey everyone, first post.

So I've just started DMing and I'm still fairly inexperienced. I'm working on a major villain for the lower level part of my campaign. Currently the party of four has just reached third level and will probably meet her for the first time either next session or the one after. I'm looking for some help with creating a challenging but not unfair adversary that they don't necessarily have to fight immediately.

Anyway, she's a green hag using all the same stats, except with a wisdom of sixteen, and i want to give her five levels of druid. I'm aware that the party almost certainly can't deal with that yet, but she won't be immediately hostile and will give them a quest, preferring to manipulate the party to achieve her goals.

What should her CR be? And does anyone think that five levels of druid is entirely unreasonable?

Thanks.

[Unoriginal]

Have you looked in the DMG for the CR calculations guidelines?

[Fauxreal]

Have you looked in the DMG for the CR calculations guidelines?

I thought about that, but i'm not convinced that it would be an accurate representation. She'll mostly be using her spells to shut the party down. I'm also wanting to add a customized spell that functions like dominate, only the idea is that she causes thorned vines to dig into the victim and manipulate their body. Creatures can make a successful strength check each turn to break out, but take 1-6 piercing damge on each attempt.

[SiCK_Boy]

Well, whether or not using the actual rules is an accurate representation or not is a bit of a moot point. There is only one set of rules to establish monster CR; it's not like there are plenty of optional rules to choose from.

If you don't want to try to use those rules (as imperfect as they are), then you may as well just pick a random number between 1 and 30 and it will be as accurate as anything else you can come up with.

But may I ask why you need to know the CR? The CR is mainly used to determine XP value and help in budgeting/balancing encounters. This is more useful for smaller, recurring monsters. But you've already established that this monster is your BBEG (I would assume most likely unique) and there is no fight coming up at this point, so why even worry about it? Depending on the kind of levelling you use (milestone, XP, other), maybe you could just make sure your players are aware of the monster's abilities (as much as possible) before they get into a fight, let them decide if/when they want to fight it, and give them enough XP to level up after they defeat it without caring about an exact CR?

[Fauxreal]

You know what? That's a really good point. I don't really want them to fight her yet, so I'll be giving them alternatives to fighting her anyway.

She's not actually my big bad, but is one of the major characters with several quests associated with her. I should just grant them an adequately high amount of experience to reflect that, no matter how they deal with her.

Thanks!

My only other concern is making her too powerful for the party to deal with. I've planned for them losing and it not being game over just in case, but I'd rather avoid that completely. Is five caster levels on a CR 2 creature too much against a level three party in that case? I'm thinking i should add an alternative way to defeat her if that's the case.

[Waterdeep Merch]

You know what? That's a really good point. I don't really want them to fight her yet, so I'll be giving them alternatives to fighting her anyway.

She's not actually my big bad, but is one of the major characters with several quests associated with her. I should just grant them an adequately high amount of experience to reflect that, no matter how they deal with her.

Thanks!

My only other concern is making her too powerful for the party to deal with. I've planned for them losing and it not being game over just in case, but I'd rather avoid that completely. Is five caster levels on a CR 2 creature too much against a level three party in that case? I'm thinking i should add an alternative way to defeat her if that's the case.
Depends on what spells she's using and who her allies are. Shut-down spells aren't really worth a CR bump unless she's got allies that can take advantage of them- I'd consider each ally she's got to be worth their CR+1 when budgeting, but wouldn't raise her own. If she's going to rely on damaging spells, I'd calculate the average damage she can put out in three rounds of combat with them, then use that to judge her combat ability as per the DMG and rank her CR accordingly. This way using a single powerful spell that can't be repeated doesn't overly impact her CR calculations. Don't forget to consider defensive buffs if she uses any, and check out the DMG's rules to decide an impact with them.

Like what SiCK_Boy said, the DMG guidelines on CR calculation aren't perfect, but it's a good place to start.