Increasing Monster CR -> Quick And Easy?

[SpikeFightwicky]

Howdy folks,

Quick question: suppose there's a monster that I want to use, but its CR is too low for my needs. For example, I want an Ogre Chief, who is simply a beefier Ogre. Let's say I want him to be a CR 4, so 2 CRs higher. His relevant stats for CR modification are AC, HP, Attack Bonus and Dmg/Rnd. Does the math work if I simply take his current stats and bump them up 2 CR brackets each? For example:

CR 2, AC 11 (CR 0), HP 59 (CR 1/2), DMG/RND 13 (CR 1), Attack bonus +6 (CR 5-6-7, or... 4 bracket difference, so +2 CR overall)
Upping everything by 2 brackets, we have:
CR 4, AC 13, HP 86-100, DPR 27-32, Attack Bonus +7 (4 bracket difference)

So If I play with the numbers, I can get:
Ogre Chief
AC: 13 (Chain shirt)
HP: 94 (9d10+45)
STR: 21 (+5)
DEX: 10 (+0)
CON: 20 (+5)
INT: 11 (+0)
WIS: 9 (-1)
CHA: 13 (+1)
Multiattack: The ogre makes two melee attacks.
Chief's Club: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, 16 (2d10 + 5) bludgeoning damage

Would this be a legit CR 4? It's very vanilla but seems beefy-ish. Also, is this an efficient method, or should I just grab an existing CR 4 and make it cosmetically an ogre?

[Unoriginal]

Howdy folks,

Quick question: suppose there's a monster that I want to use, but its CR is too low for my needs. For example, I want an Ogre Chief, who is simply a beefier Ogre. Let's say I want him to be a CR 4, so 2 CRs higher. His relevant stats for CR modification are AC, HP, Attack Bonus and Dmg/Rnd. Does the math work if I simply take his current stats and bump them up 2 CR brackets each? For example:

CR 2, AC 11 (CR 0), HP 59 (CR 1/2), DMG/RND 13 (CR 1), Attack bonus +6 (CR 5-6-7, or... 4 bracket difference, so +2 CR overall)
Upping everything by 2 brackets, we have:
CR 4, AC 13, HP 86-100, DPR 27-32, Attack Bonus +7 (4 bracket difference)

So If I play with the numbers, I can get:
Ogre Chief
AC: 13 (Chain shirt)
HP: 94 (9d10+45)
STR: 21 (+5)
DEX: 10 (+0)
CON: 20 (+5)
INT: 11 (+0)
WIS: 9 (-1)
CHA: 13 (+1)
Multiattack: The ogre makes two melee attacks.
Chief's Club: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, 16 (2d10 + 5) bludgeoning damage

Would this be a legit CR 4? It's very vanilla but seems beefy-ish. Also, is this an efficient method, or should I just grab an existing CR 4 and make it cosmetically an ogre?

Have you looked at the CR calculation section of the DMG?

Even if you don't want an actual calculation, there's a table telling in which ballpark the AC/HPs/attack mod/dmg of a CR X monster should be.

[Kane0]

Extra 1-2 AC, DC and attack, an extra die or two damage, as many extra hit die as you deem necessary. Should do the trick.

The numbers part is pretty easy, its the fancy things like casting and special abilities that can get tricky

[MaxWilson]

Would this be a legit CR 4? It's very vanilla but seems beefy-ish. Also, is this an efficient method, or should I just grab an existing CR 4 and make it cosmetically an ogre?

That seems like a sound and reasonably efficient method to me. You could run into minor issues when you cross breakpoints (e.g. for changing the way resistances impact effective HP), but since the last step in the CR calculation process anyway is "tweak the numbers until they seem right to you," it shouldn't be a real problem.

One of these days I'm going to analyze CR to see if there are any actual patterns (e.g. is the gap between CR 12 DPR and CR 15 DPR and HP more similar to the gap between CR 4 and CR 5 or to CR 4 and CR 7?), so I can scrap the DMG table entirely. For now though, using the DMG table to bump numbers up two categories seems fine.

[Tanarii]

CR 2, AC 11 (CR 0), HP 59 (CR 1/2), DMG/RND 13 (CR 1), Attack bonus +6 (CR 5-6-7, or... 4 bracket difference, so +2 CR overall)
Upping everything by 2 brackets, we have:
CR 4, AC 13, HP 86-100, DPR 27-32, Attack Bonus +7 (4 bracket difference)

For AC and attack bonus, that won't always work. It's not the brackets difference, it's 2 point difference from the expected based on the HP and damage/round averaged over 3 rounds (not really DPR, that includes hit chance).

So let's look at the numbers.

Original HP are defensive CR 1/2, which comes with AC 13. AC 11 is 2 points lower, changing defensive CR to 1/4 originally.
If you up to CR 2 = 86-100 hps that still comes with AC 13, for a new final defensive CR 2

Original damage/round is 13 offensive CR 1, which comes with +3 to hit. +6 is 2 higher but not 4, so it was offensive CR 2 originally. If you up that to CR 4 = 27-32, you get +5 to hit, then +7 changes that to offensive CR 5.

That's CR (2+5)/2 = 3.5 so close enough. You can even bump the defensive CR up by one more by giving it an AC of 15.

Also note that Ogres are over CRd. By the math, they should be CR 1. I remember reading somewhere they basically just decided to bounce it up one based on play testing.

[Unoriginal]

If you want an easy reskin, maybe you could take the Hill Giant statblock, up the mental stats and the AC, then drop one size category from Huge to Large, with all the consequences it has.

[47Ace]

One of these days I'm going to analyze CR to see if there are any actual patterns (e.g. is the gap between CR 12 DPR and CR 15 DPR and HP more similar to the gap between CR 4 and CR 5 or to CR 4 and CR 7?), so I can scrap the DMG table entirely. For now though, using the DMG table to bump numbers up two categories seems fine.

Have you seen this and all of the articles it links to at the top? http://blogofholding.com/?p=7338 it may save you some time as they went through a bunch of that.

[heavyfuel]

If I want to make a creature slightly stronger I usually just add 2 to every roll it makes and subtract 2 from every roll made against it or its abilities.

No need for more complex math than that.

[Tanarii]

Have you seen this and all of the articles it links to at the top? http://blogofholding.com/?p=7338 it may save you some time as they went through a bunch of that.
Those guys have a basic misunderstanding of the DMG rules. You can't analyze each stat on its own and then try to find correlations between them. That's not how it works.

[MaxWilson]

Have you seen this and all of the articles it links to at the top? http://blogofholding.com/?p=7338 it may save you some time as they went through a bunch of that.

I remember running across that blog and being very, very skeptical of its methodology and conclusions.

I'll take a look and see if they ever analyze the actual DMG table, but the parts I remember were just them doing regression analysis of MM monsters by CR looking for correlations between individual statistics and CR and not finding any, and then coming to incorrect and easily-disproved conclusions like "special abilities don't affect CR."

That's not what I intend to do at all. I'm more interested in quantitative results, e.g. "if a monster is exactly twice as powerful as CR 5, does that result in CR 10 (5 x 2) or CR 7 (5 x sqrt(2)) or is the scaling ad hoc and somewhat arbitrary?" Does the number in CR X even mean anything numeric, or is it just arbitrary and we might as well call it CR A, B, C, D, etc.? Stuff like that.

[47Ace]

That's not what I intend to do at all. I'm more interested in quantitative results, e.g. "if a monster is exactly twice as powerful as CR 5, does that result in CR 10 (5 x 2) or CR 7 (5 x sqrt(2)) or is the scaling ad hoc and somewhat arbitrary?" Does the number in CR X even mean anything numeric, or is it just arbitrary and we might as well call it CR A, B, C, D, etc.? Stuff like that.

OK. I though that as least some of there work could be of use to you and wanted to point it out if you hadn't seen it.

[MaxWilson]

OK. I though that as least some of there work could be of use to you and wanted to point it out if you hadn't seen it.

Yeah, thanks for the tip. Not your fault that I'm not into it. :)

[HolyDraconus]

Is this method described earlier easier than previous editions "add two hit die"?

[Segev]

Is this method described earlier easier than previous editions "add two hit die"?

For beatsticks, yes. It directs you to the raw final numbers to modify.

[Unoriginal]

Is this method described earlier easier than previous editions "add two hit die"?

CR in 5e doesn't mean the same thing as in the editions where you could do that. Adding two hit dice isn't enough to increase the CR for quite a big share of the statblocks.

[HolyDraconus]

For beatsticks, yes. It directs you to the raw final numbers to modify.
I thought as much.

CR in 5e doesn't mean the same thing as in the editions where you could do that. Adding two hit dice isn't enough to increase the CR for quite a big share of the statblocks.

I see that, but to be fair, those hit die gave other things beside just straight hp in other editions. Its one of the reasons, i feel, that it was more or less moored to CR.

[Man on Fire]

Howdy folks,

Quick question: suppose there's a monster that I want to use, but its CR is too low for my needs. For example, I want an Ogre Chief, who is simply a beefier Ogre. Let's say I want him to be a CR 4, so 2 CRs higher. His relevant stats for CR modification are AC, HP, Attack Bonus and Dmg/Rnd. Does the math work if I simply take his current stats and bump them up 2 CR brackets each? For example:

CR 2, AC 11 (CR 0), HP 59 (CR 1/2), DMG/RND 13 (CR 1), Attack bonus +6 (CR 5-6-7, or... 4 bracket difference, so +2 CR overall)
Upping everything by 2 brackets, we have:
CR 4, AC 13, HP 86-100, DPR 27-32, Attack Bonus +7 (4 bracket difference)

So If I play with the numbers, I can get:
Ogre Chief
AC: 13 (Chain shirt)
HP: 94 (9d10+45)
STR: 21 (+5)
DEX: 10 (+0)
CON: 20 (+5)
INT: 11 (+0)
WIS: 9 (-1)
CHA: 13 (+1)
Multiattack: The ogre makes two melee attacks.
Chief's Club: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, 16 (2d10 + 5) bludgeoning damage

Would this be a legit CR 4? It's very vanilla but seems beefy-ish. Also, is this an efficient method, or should I just grab an existing CR 4 and make it cosmetically an ogre?

A lot of the time using max HP instead of an average and giving the monster one more attack can do the trick to increase its CR easily and fast

[MaxWilson]

Is this method described earlier easier than previous editions "add two hit die"?

AD&D uses HD (actually effective HD, after accounting for special abilities) to determine XP rewards, but not to determine difficulty levels. The concept of "Challenge Rating" simply doesn't exist in AD&D, and AD&D doesn't even pretend to care about whether 10,000 XP of Beholders will kill more or fewer PCs than 10,000 XP worth of goblins.

5E pretends to care but its predictions are actually useless.

IMO the AD&D way is better: use CR strictly for calculating XP rewards, and as long as you err in the players' favor when in doubt, you can't go wrong. (Players will not complain about getting "too much XP" if you guesstimate the effect of adding 5 Dragon Sorcerer levels to a Young Red Dragon as +5 to CR, even if the MM would only grant +1 to CR. The actual deadliness goes up by more than that, especially if you use spells like Counterspell and Darkness (with dragon blindsight) and Shield, so players might complain about "too deadly for too little XP", but they'd complain even harder if you followed MM/DMG formulas for calculating CR.)

[5eNeedsDarksun]

AD&D uses HD (actually effective HD, after accounting for special abilities) to determine XP rewards, but not to determine difficulty levels. The concept of "Challenge Rating" simply doesn't exist in AD&D, and AD&D doesn't even pretend to care about whether 10,000 XP of Beholders will kill more or fewer PCs than 10,000 XP worth of goblins.

5E pretends to care but its predictions are actually useless.

IMO the AD&D way is better: use CR strictly for calculating XP rewards, and as long as you err in the players' favor when in doubt, you can't go wrong. (Players will not complain about getting "too much XP" if you guesstimate the effect of adding 5 Dragon Sorcerer levels to a Young Red Dragon as +5 to CR, even if the MM would only grant +1 to CR. The actual deadliness goes up by more than that, especially if you use spells like Counterspell and Darkness (with dragon blindsight) and Shield, so players might complain about "too deadly for too little XP", but they'd complain even harder if you followed MM/DMG formulas for calculating CR.)
Agreed that CR is pretty useless. I've started going on the low side for awarding XP for monsters. Also I tend to think some (many) monsters need something to make them more interesting and challenging. Your example of adding Darkness spells for things like Devils is a common one for me. This allows me to give something for roleplaying and treasure without going up blindingly fast. Still going up in levels faster than I'd like, but 5e is the game we are choosing to play so it is what it is.

[MaxWilson]

Agreed that CR is pretty useless. I've started going on the low side for awarding XP for monsters. Also I tend to think some (many) monsters need something to make them more interesting and challenging. Your example of adding Darkness spells for things like Devils is a common one for me. This allows me to give something for roleplaying and treasure without going up blindingly fast. Still going up in levels faster than I'd like, but 5e is the game we are choosing to play so it is what it is.

If you want to slow down level progression to something like 1 per big adventure, to make them feel more emotionally-significant, you can always use an AD&D-style XP table, with XP requirements roughly doubling every level up to 350,000 XP or so (level 11ish) and then levelling out linearly with another 350,000 XP per level after that.

I've sometimes done that in conjunction with awarding gold for treasure (specifically: allowing gold to be converted to XP offscreen between adventures, by spending them on player-defined goals like buying presents for your lady love if love is what motivates your adventures, or buying arms and equipment to fuel the Resistance against the Tyranocracy if a burning hatred of injustice is what motivates your adventures). I guess I give out enough treasure that it doesn't necessarily slow down advancement all that much from an out-of-game perspective, but it does make advancement more dramatically/emotionally significant: if you ever get to 17th level it comes with e.g. a built-in reputation as the guy who single-handedly fueled the entire Western Front rebellion and led them (offscreen) to victory after victory against the Tyrant's demonic minions. It won't just be "I'm the guy who was a turnip farmer until a month ago when I started hunting dragons."

[SpikeFightwicky]

Oh wow! Thanks so much for all the comments and suggestions! I didn't think there would be this much discussion, but it's all pretty interesting. I find that encounters are strange in 5e, in that most of the times I expect an easy fight, it's a near TPK, and when I expect a hard or deadly encounter, it's very easy. Sometimes it's just rolls, sometimes it's just that some monsters are very effective at their CR. Good to know about the ogre! I always wondered about his CR compared to other CR 2s. The Orog has fewer HP, but seems to be much deadlier.

Also, In many of the published adventures, they do minor and major tweaks to enemies and it doesn't affect their CR (like the Emberhorn Minotaurs and Zegdar in Princes of the Apocalypse). I like the idea of doing tweaks like that, but it feels unfair. Zegdar alone has increased HP, AC, immunity to fire and a 21 damage cone (upping his 3 avg damage over 3 rounds to 85 compared to the 60 of normal minotaur). Even his minion minotaurs have the same damage increase. Like, if I want to use an emberhorn minotaur in my own game, it feels brutal to leave its CR as is.

[MaxWilson]

Oh wow! Thanks so much for all the comments and suggestions! I didn't think there would be this much discussion, but it's all pretty interesting. I find that encounters are strange in 5e, in that most of the times I expect an easy fight, it's a near TPK, and when I expect a hard or deadly encounter, it's very easy. Sometimes it's just rolls, sometimes it's just that some monsters are very effective at their CR. Good to know about the ogre! I always wondered about his CR compared to other CR 2s. The Orog has fewer HP, but seems to be much deadlier.

Also, In many of the published adventures, they do minor and major tweaks to enemies and it doesn't affect their CR (like the Emberhorn Minotaurs and Zegdar in Princes of the Apocalypse). I like the idea of doing tweaks like that, but it feels unfair. Zegdar alone has increased HP, AC, immunity to fire and a 21 damage cone (upping his 3 avg damage over 3 rounds to 85 compared to the 60 of normal minotaur). Even his minion minotaurs have the same damage increase. Like, if I want to use an emberhorn minotaur in my own game, it feels brutal to leave its CR as is.

There's really no downside to just giving your players the extra XP for the increased stats.

Apropos of nothing except keeping the game fun for players...

...one thing I like to do sometimes is tell the players how much XP is on the table at the start of an encounter, not the end of a gaming session. In some games I even award that XP immediately, based on the difficulty of the second-easiest way I can think of for them to win the encounter. (Yes, I encourage them to metagame based on that information. If I tell you that it comes to pass that you're walking down an alleyway, and a couple of punks step out of the shadows and demand your purse, and then I award you 10,000 XP each and ask what you do...

...then I the DM am telling you the player that your (the PC's) instincts are screaming "hidden danger!" and I want you to take this situation seriously! The easiest way to resolve the situation might be to grovel, capitulate, and do anything and everything they or any of their associates ask you to do, and if you don't think you're up for a fight worth 10,000 XP each, maybe you should just take the XP, say goodbye to your stuff, and chalk this up as a learning experience.)

[DarknessEternal]

How did we get this far without mentioning the game already provides tougher and weaker monster templates?

[MaxWilson]

How did we get this far without mentioning the game already provides tougher and weaker monster templates?

I'm not sure what you mean, unless it's the DMG tables.