SRD Averages

[Eldariel]

It occurs me most people looking for benchmark might've missed this file so I figured I'd reupload it. This file contains all the monster stat averages (and maximums) on the SRD for each Challenge Rating. Thus, if you ever thought about what kinds of numbers the game would expect you to be able to hit on any given level, it's a pretty useful reference (mind, it's purely down to the SRD entries so buff spells or items might sometimes alter the numbers), at least for what the designers were expecting of each type of character.

SRD Averages (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J7KongPAMxJCKuSlDFIyRKj7YPWsTP2fJUh_tuS16Qs/edit?usp=sharing)

[Inevitability]

Thank you for sharing this, it's sure to come in handy.

[Fizban]

I'm always skeptical of the use of broad averages. The spread of monsters in the book doesn't necessarily match the spread of monsters expected to be used in game (as I've noted with how many monsters are Easy if Handled Properly), and with different monster roles expecting different upper or lower numbers the average result doesn't actually mean anything. Averaged by "category" might be useful, but once you narrow it down to a certain CR there's actually not that many monsters left and its easy to see the handful of each category and just directly compare them. But having it in a table wouldn't be bad.

[weckar]

Using averages like this seems like a bad idea. Plenty of creatures will spike in one area and give up several others, and in no way do these values make clear what the fair 'trade-off' in such respects is.

[Zombimode]

Exactly. The higher the Levels the more pronounced strengths and weaknesses get. Some creatues have Fort Saves of "yes" and Will Saves of "I fail".

[Eldariel]

Be that as it may, the averages aren't "false" as such; though outliers do skew the numbers and median values could be useful, there tend to be instances of creatures at or very close to the average on all CRs, as well as the kind of scaling inherent to the system. For example, it conveniently showcases how Touch AC practically falls as CR increases, and how Reflex is far and away the worst average save, and Fort the best, with Will being very weak on low level monsters but getting stronger higher up. Also how monster average BAB scales much faster than player BAB and thus expectations for what kinds of AC numbers might be useful (of course, the numbers are a bit lowballed due to the mixture of non-warrior monsters).

Any sort of comprehensive listing would be no better than just scrolling through all the monster entries though and particularly for the stacked low CRs with 40+ creatures, that's just unwieldy to the point of uselessness; perhaps a graph for stat spreads of each CR could be informative enough to be worthwhile, but that would of course be more complex to produce into presentation. I'll see if I could do something of the sort. At any rate, this isn't bad far as ballpark figures go though of course, most opponents are generally a tad above or a tad below the average, depending on the enemy type.

Of course it's not something to solely base your character designs on, but it does show trends which are useful to acknowledge and utilise, as they tend to apply for most enemy types even if the campaign is geared towards something in particular (as it often tends to be).

EDIT: And of course, if you want to check the upper bounds, the file contains the "Max" value too. At least for martials attacking AC, being able to hit the highest AC the given CR contains is pretty darn important. Though of course, they tend to be quite high for most of the levels and it's generally more efficient to attack e.g. Azer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/azer.htm) through some other defense than their AC .