(3.5) Correcting inaccurate challenge ratings thread

[Biggus]

I've found threads discussing which monsters have the most inaccurate CRs, such as this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?315230-The-most-unbalanced-monsters-for-each-CR-up-to-20-%28or-so%29) one, and I've found ones discussing what the actual CR of specific monsters should be, but I can't find one which lists all the worst offenders and gives estimates of what they really should be, so I thought I'd start one.

Guidelines:

In general, a creature's CR should be off by at least 2 (either higher or lower) to be included. Exceptions: creatures with very low CRs may be worth mentioning if they're off by less than 2, and those with very high CRs may not be worth mentioning unless they're off by 3 or even 4.

Assume a party of PCs with relatively low levels of optimisation. We all know that a well-optimised party can punch well above their weight, especially at high levels, but that's not what this is about.

Don't massively downgrade a creature based on a single exploitable weakness, we're looking for creatures where their overall power level is clearly off. For example, a great red wyrm is not CR 7 because it can be defeated by a Shivering Touch spell with True Casting and Assay Spell Resistance to overcome its SR. Where appropriate, assume that intelligent creatures use spells or items to plug up their most obvious weaknesses, and that social creatures come as a team who protect each other in the same ways PCs do.

EDIT: when you mention a creature, please give an estimate of its actual CR, or if it's difficult to estimate, explain why.

I'll start us off with few of the most notorious examples and my estimates for what they should actually be, please feel free to correct me and suggest additions, I'll add to the list as we go along.


Format: Creature name, source, listed CR, actual CR, footnotes

Clockwork Horror, Adamantine, MM2, L9, A13
Ephemeral Swarm, MM3, L5, A7
Fiendwurm, MM2, L28, A15
Giant, Mountain, MM2, L26, A16
Hellfire Wyrm, MM2, L26, A22
Hobgoblin Warsoul, MM5, L8, A10
Immoth, MM2, L9, A12
Shadow, MM, L3, A4
Steel Dragon, DoF, varies by age category (1)

(1) Steel Dragons have caster levels higher than their CR at most age categories and very high SR, apart from all their other abilities. Given that their CR for Very Young and Young are both 4, it's safe to say something went wrong, but even if you shift their CRs up one age category they're still clearly far too low. At Young age and older, they probably need to be increased by 3-7 points from their listed values, possibly more.


Note that some of the creatures with way-off CRs, such as the Banelar (Monsters of Faerun) or the Monstrous Crab (online (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a)) were later changed to something more reasonable (in the 3.5 update booklet, and Stormwrack, in these particular cases).

[Kayblis]

Not sure at what CR I'd put them, but the Hydras are all under-CRed as hell. I'd say raise them about 2 CR each, as they'd be mostly balanced bruisers instead of the very durable beasts they are. As a bonus, the Pyro and Cryo-Hydras should have more than 2 CR above the normal versions, as most of them can one-shot high HP players even if they have good saves.

[Jowgen]

I feel like the Adamantine Horror from MM2 definitely deserves a mention just for being a ludicrous example. It's HD of 16 alone is 7 lower than it's CR of 9, with the real kicker being Disintegrate, Implosion and Disjunction at will as SLAs. Not to mention its the progenitor of an entire race that takes over planets, always able to make more.

[Jack_Simth]

Not sure at what CR I'd put them, but the Hydras are all under-CRed as hell.They're closet trolls. In favorable (for them) circumstances, you're toast. Those circumstances are: restricted areas. Yes, if you try (or are forced) to melee them, they'll wreck appropriate level characters that aren't 'too optimized'.

In larger areas: They've got a move of 20, low AC, and no DR. You just need to plunk enough arrows into them (while occasionally taking a Withdrawl, double-move, or even run with a move of 30 or better) to overcome their fast healing. A friendly wizard with Haste for the party does wonders for this tactic. As does a friendly Druid with Entangle. Or a rogue with a few tanglefoot bags.

If they're in open terrain, they're easy. If they're in closed terrain, they're hard. This makes them hard to CR.

[magic9mushroom]

Hobgoblin Warsoul (MMV) is allegedly CR 8, but is a 10-HD monstrous humanoid with great stats who casts as a Wiz9 and has 10th-level NPC gear. Clearly this should be CR 10.

Advanced Spell Weavers get ridiculous fast, because they cast as sorcerers of level = HD+2 but they only gain 1 CR per 3 HD.

Someone's going to bring up the Tarrasque, so let me say this: while it is hilariously easy to avoid the Tarrasque due to its inability to fly (or even jump very high) and lack of ranged attacks, killing it is actually pretty hard. There are a couple of cheap tricks which can get around its staggering array of defences, yes, but without metagaming your characters are unlikely to know about them until high level (it's DC 58 Knowledge(arcana) to know even one useful bit of information about the Tarrasque, and "it's not immune to ability drain" wouldn't be the first one I handed out). Moreover, a lot of those methods require high-level spells to access.

On the other hand, the Devastation Beetle is a complete joke at CR 50. If you can fly and have any way of hurting it at all, you can kill it, since it has no fast healing or regeneration. All you need is a way of hurting it that bypasses AC (touch AC is fine), allows no save or deals at least some damage on a successful save, and ignores SR. Melf's Acid Arrow works fine - you just need to cast it a whole pile of times. Wraithstrike + arrows is another way. Dropping alchemist's fire on it is another. These aren't necessarily trivial or obvious (though they're more so than the Tarrasque-killers), but the bar is much higher for something that's allegedly CR 50 than it is for CR 20.

[Âmesang]

From what I recall the Monster Manual V (maybe even IV?) altered the Knowledge check rules regarding monsters, so now the DC is 10 + CR instead of 10 + HD; I imagine the difficulty of learning about creatures such as dragons and the Tarrasque, due to their high HD, necessitated the change.

Basic knowledge regarding particular creature types or sub-types could also be obtained via lower DCs based on weaker specimens; for example just beating a DC based on a wyrmling would get you general information regarding a particular type of dragon, but higher DCs would be required to learn about specific abilities based on age/HD.

[magic9mushroom]

From what I recall the Monster Manual V (maybe even IV?) altered the Knowledge check rules regarding monsters, so now the DC is 10 + CR instead of 10 + HD; I imagine the difficulty of learning about creatures such as dragons and the Tarrasque, due to their high HD, necessitated the change.

Blergh. Yeah. MMV altered the Knowledge DCs. 2007 sourcebooks pig-disgusting.

Still not precisely trivial.

[Biggus]

I feel like the Adamantine Horror from MM2 definitely deserves a mention just for being a ludicrous example. It's HD of 16 alone is 7 lower than it's CR of 9, with the real kicker being Disintegrate, Implosion and Disjunction at will as SLAs. Not to mention its the progenitor of an entire race that takes over planets, always able to make more.

What would you estimate its actual CR to be?


Hobgoblin Warsoul (MMV) is allegedly CR 8, but is a 10-HD monstrous humanoid with great stats who casts as a Wiz9 and has 10th-level NPC gear. Clearly this should be CR 10.

Thanks, I'll add that to the list.


the Devastation Beetle is a complete joke at CR 50. If you can fly and have any way of hurting it at all, you can kill it, since it has no fast healing or regeneration. All you need is a way of hurting it that bypasses AC (touch AC is fine), allows no save or deals at least some damage on a successful save, and ignores SR. Melf's Acid Arrow works fine - you just need to cast it a whole pile of times. Wraithstrike + arrows is another way. Dropping alchemist's fire on it is another. These aren't necessarily trivial or obvious (though they're more so than the Tarrasque-killers), but the bar is much higher for something that's allegedly CR 50 than it is for CR 20.

Yeah, it's reasonable to assume that a level 50 party knows pretty much every trick in the book. Kind of hard to see what the right CR for something like that is as it uses low-CR tactics but has huge stats. Any ideas?

As an aside, kind of funny to think that this is one of the rare cases where a hundred 5th-level characters would be more effective than five 40th-level ones.


From what I recall the Monster Manual V (maybe even IV?) altered the Knowledge check rules regarding monsters, so now the DC is 10 + CR instead of 10 + HD; I imagine the difficulty of learning about creatures such as dragons and the Tarrasque, due to their high HD, necessitated the change.


I didn't know they'd changed that, thanks.

[Bphill561]

Ephemeral Swarm in Monster Manual III have a CR of 5 with 12 HD. Incorporeal, swarm, and undead grant a few immunities. The 1d6 automatic strength drain if they end their move on your square, followed by a DC 20 fortitude check no to be nauseated is not all that friendly either for low level characters. I would not say they are broken, but throwing some of these into an encounter can even be troublesome with higher level characters.


Phaerlin Giant's from Faerun Monster Compendium are also pretty low on the CR chart with a 3 and the number did not change with the 3.0 update. Huge size, 8HD, and an AC of 17. They are pretty great to template out as well or advance by HD.

[magic9mushroom]

What would you estimate its actual CR to be?

The adamantine horror's optimal strategy is to hide (Hide +27, Move Silently +23), open up with Disintegrate from range (+17 ranged touch at max range 240 ft., DC 21 to take 5d6 otherwise 28d6), and then if discovered close in a bit, blast the party with Mordenkainen's Disjunction (60 ft. max range, 40 ft. spread of auto-dispel everything and every magic item makes a DC 24 save vs. disenchantment) and then either Implosion on remaining members or escape (50 ft. move speed) and start trying to hide while Disintegrating again. In melee it really falls down because its Concentration modifier is a big fat +0 and therefore it can't employ its deadly SLAs. To beat it, you either need to throw up an AMF (forcing it to close to 60 ft. to use Disjunction, which even then has only a 14% chance of shattering it) and then kill it with arrows or charging, use a Tanglefoot Bag, Web, or other trick to force Concentration checks, or simply have saves high enough to reliably tank the SLAs and some way of either killing it at range or closing the distance.

I'd ballpark it at CR 12-13.

[peacenlove]

Half of Monster Manual 2 is badly Under CR'ed.
A great example is the Fiend wurm at CR 28 (Greater than a great wyrm red or equal to an NPC lvl 30 wizard), which can't fly, has a terrible AC, no SLA worth mentioning and can summon some cr 12 guys some of the time.
Also kinda fast but a hasted archer can still outmaneuver it.
A G.Red Wyrm can outreach it and one shot it after it has buffed itself.

IF you give him a decent fly speed he becomes CR 15-17.

There is a very informative and in depth thread there about MM2
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/lets-read-d-d-3-0-monster-manual-ii.835366/

[magic9mushroom]

Half of Monster Manual 2 is badly Under CR'ed.
A great example is the Fiend wurm at CR 28 (Greater than a great wyrm red or equal to an NPC lvl 30 wizard), which can't fly, has a terrible AC, no SLA worth mentioning and can summon some cr 12 guys some of the time.
Also kinda fast but a hasted archer can still outmaneuver it.
A G.Red Wyrm can outreach it and one shot it after it has buffed itself.

IF you give him a decent fly speed he becomes CR 15-17.

That's over-CRed, not under-CRed. Also, reduced CR for epic NPCs is technically a variant and dragons are not a good standard for CR comparison (they are basically all under-CRed by 2 or so). The fiendwurm is still hilariously over-CRed, though.

And yes, the MMII is notorious for its bad CRs (in both directions). One common joke is that they rolled a d20 to assign the CRs.

[peacenlove]

That's over-CRed, not under-CRed. Also, reduced CR for epic NPCs is technically a variant and dragons are not a good standard for CR comparison (they are basically all under-CRed by 2 or so). The fiendwurm is still hilariously over-CRed, though.

And yes, the MMII is notorious for its bad CRs (in both directions). One common joke is that they rolled a d20 to assign the CRs.

Sorry was confused, thank you for correcting me, english is not my mother language.

Banshees are another example, CR 17, AC of 16 (!) and they can be rendered mostly harmless (1d8 damage touch attack 1/round) by Death Ward or a Soul Fire armor, both accessible way before level 15.

[Falontani]

There is the Drowned, a cr 8 zombie with massive hd bloat, and a terrifying aura attack.

[Biggus]

Ephemeral Swarm in Monster Manual III have a CR of 5 with 12 HD.

Phaerlin Giant's from Faerun Monster Compendium are also pretty low on the CR chart with a 3



A great example is the Fiend wurm at CR 28 [...] IF you give him a decent fly speed he becomes CR 15-17.

Banshees are another example, CR 17


There is the Drowned, a cr 8 zombie with massive hd bloat, and a terrifying aura attack.

So, anyone care to estimate what the actual CR of these creatures are?


Half of Monster Manual 2 is badly Under CR'ed.

Yes, and the other half is badly over CR'd...


There is a very informative and in depth thread there about MM2
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/lets-read-d-d-3-0-monster-manual-ii.835366/

Wow, 183 pages? Don't think I'll be finishing that any time soon. Thanks though, I'll take a look.

[magic9mushroom]

So, anyone care to estimate what the actual CR of these creatures are?

I'd give the fiendwurm somewhere in the 13-15 range. It can call a bunch of demons, some of which (vrocks) are actually kinda decent, and Death Rift is DC 31 vs. go to hell the Abyss, so that means PCs should probably have Plane Shift before they encounter it.

[Biggus]

A great example is the Fiend wurm at CR 28 (Greater than a great wyrm red or equal to an NPC lvl 30 wizard), which can't fly, has a terrible AC, no SLA worth mentioning and can summon some cr 12 guys some of the time.
Also kinda fast but a hasted archer can still outmaneuver it.
A G.Red Wyrm can outreach it and one shot it after it has buffed itself.

IF you give him a decent fly speed he becomes CR 15-17.


Looking at the Fiendwurm again, I noticed that one of its listed terrains is underground, and it occurred to me that if you encountered in a relatively enclosed underground space where you're not able to fly out of its reach, it'd be a much harder challenge than in the open plains or desert. Still not CR28 or even close to it, but maybe 18 (I sometimes wonder whether for this and the Mountain Giant someone typed a 2 instead of a 1 by mistake and whoever compiled the CR table at the back of the book just copied it without checking).

So I guess this is another like the Hydra which is hard to put an exact number on because it depends where you encounter it (although unlike the Hydra, even if you meet it in the most favourable possible place for it, it's CR is clearly still wrong: any vaguely competent L.28 party would have it for breakfast).

[Blackhawk748]

I feel like the Adamantine Horror from MM2 definitely deserves a mention just for being a ludicrous example. It's HD of 16 alone is 7 lower than it's CR of 9, with the real kicker being Disintegrate, Implosion and Disjunction at will as SLAs. Not to mention its the progenitor of an entire race that takes over planets, always able to make more.

I'd say that the Horror is probably a CR 14 or so. It's SLA's are nasty, but not unreasonable at that level of play.


Ephemeral Swarm in Monster Manual III have a CR of 5 with 12 HD. Incorporeal, swarm, and undead grant a few immunities. The 1d6 automatic strength drain if they end their move on your square, followed by a DC 20 fortitude check no to be nauseated is not all that friendly either for low level characters. I would not say they are broken, but throwing some of these into an encounter can even be troublesome with higher level characters.

I'd probably call that a CR 7. Yes the party has magical weapons at this point so we don't have a Shadow problem here, but its a swarm, so that doesn't even matter. So it's pretty much all on the mage to handle this.

Speaking of Shadows, Shadows are probably under CR'd, though not by much. I usually peg them as a hard CR 4.

[Zaq]

Cranium. Rat. Swarm. Fiend Folio. They’re SO BAD.

Granted, that’s more because they’re horribly designed in the first place, but they’re not even CLOSE to a fair fight at their listed CR. Nothing with 45 HP, immunity to weapon damage, 2d6 autodamage a turn, and 40’ move speed is actually CR 2, and that’s BEFORE accounting for their mind blast (60’ cone of save-or-really-long-stun that doesn’t interfere with them using swarm damage, usable every other round). Also, they’re smart.

Those are the lesser ones. The average ones are arguably worse because they effectively have 135 HP (90 HP and they turn into a lesser pack upon death), a deadlier mind blast, and freakin’ sorcerer casting! That’s not CR 5, no matter what you say!

What CR SHOULD they be? The problem is that immunity to weapon damage is gamebreaking at low levels. Even taking double damage from alchemist’s fire, you need an average of over six hits to kill a lesser swarm, and that assumes that you have six+ flasks distributed among party members able to take actions, which is an extremely nontrivial assumption!

Low-level blasting spells are too weaksauce to chew through that much HP before you run out of slots (the swarm nearly autofails saves vs. AoEs but doesn’t take double damage unless no save is allowed), even if you get enough actions before you succumb to mind blast, distraction, and plain old lack of HP. I legitimately don’t think a level 2 evoker can do enough HP damage to the swarm to kill it before they run out of spells, even prepping nothing but AoE blasts. I don’t even like the odds of a level 2 DFA against the lesser swarm, and the DFA is probably the class best suited to deal with this thing!

We MIGHT have a fair fight if the lesser swarm were closer to maybe CR 5-6 or so? Again, immunity to weapon damage means that you’re either trying to outlast it with grenadelike weapons (hope you brought enough!) or hoping that you have legitimate AoE damage in the party, so I don’t love that in the first place, but at least a prepared party MIGHT have a fighting chance against the HP component. (An unprepared party is still toast.) The giant AoE of action denial is still seriously troubling and means that the swarm has a nontrivial chance of locking down the entire party.

It would be better to redesign the monster from the ground up, of course. Lower HP and/or no immunity to weapon damage, less crazy intense action denial (again, remember that distraction is a no-action save vs. losing your standard action, and swarm damage takes no actions so mind blast doesn’t interfere with it), and so on. Then we can talk about CR 2 or so. As written? I’d still feel dirty sending a lesser pack against a level 5 party that hadn’t specifically prepared.