Re-Assigning Monster Feats

[SpikeFightwicky]

If I start changing the usual feat lineup for a monster, should I start worrying about CR changes? The rules say I'm free to play around with them as much as I want (minus bonus feats), but many creatures can be made alot more effective with one or two changes to their feat lineup.

Also, how should I go about this with regards to splatbooks like the 'Complete' series?

Here are some examples:

Bodak: Replace Alertness and Dodge for Ability focus (Death Gaze) and Improved toughness (Ability focus as 1st level feat, Imp. Toughness as 9th level feat). Now we have a creature who functions with similar capabilities, but a DC 17 death gaze and 67 HP (instead of DC 15 and 58 HP). Is this the equivalent of +1 AC against one enemy and +2 spot/+2listen?

Bugbear: Replace Alertness for Toughness. Alertness seems to me more like a guard feat (usefull for bugbear guards, etc...) A 'raider' bugbear might make more sense with toughness or something similar. All in all, it swaps +2 Spot/Listen for +3 HP.

Bulette: Replace Alertness for Multiattack. Again, swapping out the +2 spot/listen for a +3 on its 2 claw attacks.

Hill Giant: Replace Improved sunder and improved bullrush with quick draw and power throw to make a ranged giant. Kind of changes the giant's dynamics, but doesn't lessen combat power, only combat options.

I figure that not every monster should automatically have alertness (or similar skill feat) as a feat... but is it going to affect the CR? Should it?

[tainsouvra]

I'd honestly say to just eyeball it. If your party tends to be a little on the powerful side, then not only is this not going to be harmful, but it's probably a good idea. If your party tends to be a little on the weak side, then toss them a little extra experience or consumable items here and there if you do this. Overall, it's not a big CR difference, but its effect on the players depends a bit on what they run.

[Nostri]

I don't think in the examples listed there would be a change of CR. Improved Toughness will add the ability to soak another hit or two which could completely change the fight but overall I don't think it will add enough to the monster that it'll make the fight harder enough for it to add to the CR or EL.

That isn't to say that no matter what a change in feats won't add to the CR. There are deffinately some feats that would make a monster signifigantly more powerful and thus add to their CR. A good example is a monster from Iron Kingdoms called a Burrow-Mawg that is essentially a pirhanna with legs and the disposition of a disgruntled badger. Since they're Small size and tend to travel in packs adding the Swarmfighting feat to it would increase it's combat effectiveness enough so I that I'd give the CR a bump. Probably only one but it would also be enough to completely change the EL of the encounter.

Sorry about the round-about answer but it's something I've actually looked into when I re-read my books and found the bit that said changing the feats won't add to the CR. (I'd been switching out feats left and right before hand but this was the first time I'd seen anything official on it.)

[SpikeFightwicky]

K, that's kind of a relief. I do it often enough, and it's usually 'behind the scenes', so the players rarely even realize that I've swapped out some feats, but this weekend there was an encounter with a medusa with some blind lackeys (grimlocks with a few NPC class levels --> long story short), and I gave the medusa ability focus instead of weapon finesse, so its save was 17 for the petrification gaze, and one player (who memorized most of the monsters in the MM) failed on a 16 and cried foul (he figured his fort save was high enough to consistently make the usual 15 save that he didn't need to worry about averting his eyes), putting the game on hold whilst I explained that I simply swapped out a feat, and that it was legal to do so. He then complained that I overpowered the monster. Keep in mind that I didn't do this to hose the party, I just wanted a slightly better at petrifying medusa.

[The Glyphstone]

Serves him right for trying to memorize the MM...

[tainsouvra]

one player (who memorized most of the monsters in the MM) failed on a 16 and cried foul (he figured his fort save was high enough to consistently make the usual 15 save that he didn't need to worry about averting his eyes) You're nicer than I am. In my own campaigns, I've been known to change around stats specifically to keep players from that type of hardcore metagaming. Knowing that Kobolds love traps but are cowardly? Most adventurers can know that, so fair game. Knowing something obscure about their deity that would appease a Kobold cleric? It would take a decent Knowledge roll to not screw it up, but it's fair to try. Read the module (pretending I use them) and thus knowing that you have a +11 to a reflex save and that the save is reflex DC 12, so it's perfectly safe for you to walk right through the obviously-trapped hallway? "Hey look, now the hallway has a poison gas trap instead, roll Fortitude (you big cheater)!" ...not only am I unsympathetic to this player, but I would start changing more than feats in order to curb the unfair advantage gained by his metagaming. There need to be limits on how much someone can metagame with impunity or you end up playing a very different sort of game.

[SpikeFightwicky]

The main reason I started doing some swappage is because I was bored with every monster having alertness (I mean, they even list 'Alertness' as a dragon's preffered feat...), despite their role. When I'm a player it's kind of tough to act surprised when the DM uses regular MM monsters (I'm the default DM, so I have way too much knowledge of the MM). It's a way to spice up an old monster with some new flavor. Occasionally I'll give a regular monster a couple of +1 CR abilities to make it unique.

The good thing is that that player was the only one in my group that does that kind of metagaming (and it only really shone through that one time). As a side effect, after he was de-petrified, his character is alot more paranoid, which is kind of fun (it's not him RPing his character, but his character changing attitudes because the player did, but it still seems like an interesting adjustment).

Consequently, that player ususally hates it when I use my own homebrewed monsters thanks to the surprise factor.

[Dubie]

I'm a fan of giving your basic monsters class levels. When the party dices up half a tribe of nomadic orcs, why the hell wouldn't the next warband to go after them be a barbarian battle leader, the tribe sorcerer, the priest and Odd-Job, the bands slightly smarter and more nimble scout?

This tends to be more a more interesting and unexpected take on the same old "War leader, MM page XX, Shaman next paragraph, and a bunch of standard orcs". (I made up the names, not having my MM handy to look up the proper variants of the MM Orcs). I'll even keep a few made up handy for random encounters. Nothing beats running into a couple goblins and having the following happen. "Bah, they're just goblins. Kill them and lets move on...I take how much damage? Sneak attack? He casts what???"

For the "basic" monstor templates, I monkey around with skills and feats all the times. Like you, I get tired of the players having the various books memorized, and we all like when I have a trick up my sleve.

[Quietus]

My players end up fighting a lot of monsters that they aren't exactly sure what to think of, just to prevent that kind of crap. If no one makes their Knowledge checks, then sorry, that is a "creature", "beast", or "enemy". Not a "Half-dragon large sized monstrous spider". Granted, they metagame guessed what it was, not so hard to do when I describe it as having "scale-covered chitinous hide" and black leathery flesh stretched between its legs, which it uses to fly. Oh, and spits acid.

More fun ones are the things I make up off the top of my head, including monkeys that throw fire (Produce Flame), or large plants with glowing, bell-shaped heads (Think giant daffodils, but more bell shaped and weird) that appear identical to the other plants around them... but these ones bite. Started out as Darkmantles, then changed ... pretty much everything about them.

[Mewtarthio]

I've always wondered what would happen if the Tarrasque was built properly. Seriously, why would he want or need Toughness x6? Let's swap one of those out for Improved Toughness (+48 HP in exchange for +3 HP... a no-brainer, really), one for Shock Trooper, one for Leap Attack...

And then there's the fact that, not only does Big T get 17 feats, but also 9 of those are epic feats.

[SpikeFightwicky]

Occasionally I'll re-word or make up my own description of an encounter, but my players seem to be quite visual, and always ask to see the monster pic. Needless to say it kind of spoils the surprise.

@Dubie: Adding levels is something I've been doing. There was alot of shock when they were fighting Kobolds with 4 levels of NPC classes, mostly after they survived 10 damage hits. Helps keep them on their toes. In fact, my only real problem was with the feat swapping.

@Quietus: I sometimes use my own monster creations, but alot of times they appear to be too tough for their CR. To be fair, my party is not very tactical minded (one player thinks that D&D is just table-top Diablo II), so if I strategically play an even CR encounter, I'll probably win. Problem is, I don't feel like dumbing down my own creations (personal attachement I guess...), so I usually play the encounter as if the monsters were my PCs and I didn't want them to get killed through lame battfield tactics. I suppose I may have to do something about that later on when they fight intelligent foes 90% of the time. One such monster was a sort of giant cockroach (small size) that could vibrate its wings to produce a disorientingly high-pitched sound that dazed for 1 round (low fort save DC). It ended up being one of the more memorable encounters the players ever went through.

@Mewtarthio: I usually feel like hurling when I look at the Tarrasque stat block... like you said, somthing as simple as swapping out a toughness for improved toughness can help it out, and epic feats can help too. I find it kind of unfair that the players have access to all the Complete books and other splatbooks, but the core monsters never got 'self-improvement' options (like some kind of article on the D&D site that lists some new feat combinations for old monsters using new splatbooks).

[Quietus]

@Quietus: I sometimes use my own monster creations, but alot of times they appear to be too tough for their CR. To be fair, my party is not very tactical minded (one player thinks that D&D is just table-top Diablo II), so if I strategically play an even CR encounter, I'll probably win. Problem is, I don't feel like dumbing down my own creations (personal attachement I guess...), so I usually play the encounter as if the monsters were my PCs and I didn't want them to get killed through lame battfield tactics. I suppose I may have to do something about that later on when they fight intelligent foes 90% of the time. One such monster was a sort of giant cockroach (small size) that could vibrate its wings to produce a disorientingly high-pitched sound that dazed for 1 round (low fort save DC). It ended up being one of the more memorable encounters the players ever went through.

I like that cockroach idea - I had "sleep moths" that I used, which in-game had been brought over from the Unseelie courts. Combination of low-DC sleep powder and a weak acid spit made them nice low-level enemies, while in a large pack, the thrumming of dozens of wings produced an area/mass daze effect. Never got to use the latter, unfortunately.

I like to think that most of what I homebrew in terms of new monsters is pretty near to appropriately CR'ed, myself. Mostly, that has something to do with the way I do it - I find a monster in one of the books that is similar to what I wanted (Like the earlier mention of Darkmantle when I wanted a face-eating plant), and toy with that as needed. Granted, the book's CRs can be kinda borked, but what're ya gonna do.

[Darkantra]

For the next campaign I'm running I'm making a large roaming pack of undead that are partially covered in bark (+3 to NA, but with vulnerability to fire). While that's a pretty obvious thing for PCs to see, it'll confuse the hell out of them once I start tossing in barked ghasts that have Improved Grapple instead of Toughness (which kind of makes sense for the base creature to have), catch fire really easily but without the vulnerability to fire, and like to bearhug once they've become a big freaking torch.

I've only had a few sessions of experience as DM, but everyone that I play with likes to make their characters work for all that XP. In my last game I had the party fighting three blind owlbears with blindsense in a room with no light. The party hadn't been too clever with their sneaking around so a wizard was on hand for that fight to continually cast Darkness. Luckily they were smart enough to fight defensively in a corner of the room until their wizard's familiar found the mage, and then let them blast him. It was damn challenging for them though.

[SpikeFightwicky]

I like that cockroach idea - I had "sleep moths" that I used, which in-game had been brought over from the Unseelie courts. Combination of low-DC sleep powder and a weak acid spit made them nice low-level enemies, while in a large pack, the thrumming of dozens of wings produced an area/mass daze effect. Never got to use the latter, unfortunately.

I like to think that most of what I homebrew in terms of new monsters is pretty near to appropriately CR'ed, myself. Mostly, that has something to do with the way I do it - I find a monster in one of the books that is similar to what I wanted (Like the earlier mention of Darkmantle when I wanted a face-eating plant), and toy with that as needed. Granted, the book's CRs can be kinda borked, but what're ya gonna do.

Those moths sound quite insteresting. They were 'Vermin' type, right? I usually compare any creations I make to other MM creature to determine CR balance, as you mentioned. It's always satisfying when a player asks (curiously) which book a monster came out of, and you let them know that it's homebrew. Makes the monster seem more legit when your players think it's WotC creation.


For the next campaign I'm running I'm making a large roaming pack of undead that are partially covered in bark (+3 to NA, but with vulnerability to fire). While that's a pretty obvious thing for PCs to see, it'll confuse the hell out of them once I start tossing in barked ghasts that have Improved Grapple instead of Toughness (which kind of makes sense for the base creature to have), catch fire really easily but without the vulnerability to fire, and like to bearhug once they've become a big freaking torch.

I've only had a few sessions of experience as DM, but everyone that I play with likes to make their characters work for all that XP. In my last game I had the party fighting three blind owlbears with blindsense in a room with no light. The party hadn't been too clever with their sneaking around so a wizard was on hand for that fight to continually cast Darkness. Luckily they were smart enough to fight defensively in a corner of the room until their wizard's familiar found the mage, and then let them blast him. It was damn challenging for them though.

Reminds me of an Eberron adventure WotC released. There were a whole bunch of zombie-type monsters who were covered in glass and gained resistances/vulnerabilities as a result. It definately stumped my players. The zombies were resistant to non-bludgeoning weapons (unlike real zombies), but after taking X amount of bludgeoning damage, most of the glass has broken off and they get their regular zombie resistances back.

I usually stay away from owlbears. I was running the Twilight Tomb (I think that's what it's called) FR module, and the level 4 party was ambushed by an owlbear, 2 skeletons and 2 zombies. None of them got out alive... Thing is, the undead dealt alot of damage before the Owlbear even showed up. Cool blind owlbear idea, BTW!

[Tor the Fallen]

I'm a fan of giving your basic monsters class levels. When the party dices up half a tribe of nomadic orcs, why the hell wouldn't the next warband to go after them be a barbarian battle leader, the tribe sorcerer, the priest and Odd-Job, the bands slightly smarter and more nimble scout?

This tends to be more a more interesting and unexpected take on the same old "War leader, MM page XX, Shaman next paragraph, and a bunch of standard orcs". (I made up the names, not having my MM handy to look up the proper variants of the MM Orcs). I'll even keep a few made up handy for random encounters. Nothing beats running into a couple goblins and having the following happen. "Bah, they're just goblins. Kill them and lets move on...I take how much damage? Sneak attack? He casts what???"

For the "basic" monstor templates, I monkey around with skills and feats all the times. Like you, I get tired of the players having the various books memorized, and we all like when I have a trick up my sleve.

I'm a HUGE fan of class levels on goblins and orcs. My players now know that it's never just a goblin.

[Jarlax]

but this weekend there was an encounter with a medusa with some blind lackeys (grimlocks with a few NPC class levels --> long story short), and I gave the medusa ability focus instead of weapon finesse, so its save was 17 for the petrification gaze, and one player (who memorized most of the monsters in the MM) failed on a 16 and cried foul.

LOL i love doing this to PCs. i was infamous for a while for customising every encouter particularly turning PC knowledge against them, to punish them for making assumptions based on the MM.

most memorable time was when they came across a low CR dragon, stated with confidence that it had no SR and proceeded to throw spells at it. that low CR dragon had the spellwarped template. which not only gave it a SR but buffed the dragon each time they failed their caster check.

changing feats out is not worth worrying about CR, unless your seriously optimizing the encoutner (and even then the creature probily needs a few class levels to get full optimization). although the creature may be stronger it probibly still wont be on par with a creature one CR higher.

[deadseashoals]

You will almost certainly make them more powerful by doing so. In some cases, it could be a full CR or more (if the base monster's feats are really bad, and it had a lot of them, or if you're giving them broke-tastic feats like Leap Attack and Shock Trooper), but most of the time it probably won't be. Like the others said, just eyeball it.