Playing Monsters and Level Adjustment

[NotPrior]

Hello there.

I'm going to be running a game where some of the players have said they'd like to try playing monsters. I'm usually up for whatever, but it helps to have some ground rules for this sort of thing so they know what to expect.

On analysing the Monster Manual and the various other books my first instinct is to consider each monster having a level adjustment equal to its hitdice. A CR 3 basilisk with 8 hit dice in a level 10 party for example is therefore essentially a basilisk 8, fighter (or whatever) 2.

The basilisk actually compares quite well with a level 8 fighter. It has lower hitpoints (d8+con rather than d10+con), lower AC (15 instead of 18), and lower damage/round (2d6+2d6+3 instead of 2d6+5+2d6+5). On the other hand it obviously gets its massive paralysing power (or more realistically advantage on literally every attack), but it's also surrendering action surge, indomitable, second wind, and an entire subclass.

I can easily buff a flagging PC up to the level of the rest of the party, but getting people to accept nerfs is much harder. Therefore what I'm mostly worried about is this getting way, WAY out of control from the start.

As far as I can tell there are three obvious issues:


Reistances and Immunities. These, particularly resistance to nonmagical B/P/S, could get absolutely broken incredibly quickly. Not enough monsters have magic weapons and attacks, a Bearded Devil PC has more or less double hp against most of the MM.
Infinite save or suck. The most infamous example is the Intellect Devourer- instant death to most beasts, as well as a lot of monstrosities and aberrations. I'm sure there are others, possibly including the Barbazu above's beard.
Unexpected synergies. Creatures who, if brought onto your side, provide unlimited access to something ridiculous. I'm not sure I can think of any, but I can bet they're there.


Does anyone have any suggestions for things to flat-out disallow, or at least heavily modify?

[Waterdeep Merch]

If you're dead set on doing it, I might try and flatten them into PC's a bit. For example, make them point buy or roll stats as normal (though let them improve stats up to the original's if it breaks 20), don't give them any extra HP outside of their class, and calculate their proficiency bonus and all affected things to match their class level.

After that, try to judge if any player has abilities that might be too overpowered early, like flight, or dragon's breath. Let them have it, but not immediately. Instead, try to judge about what level players might ordinarily have abilities of similar strength. If every player has advantages like this, probably end it at that and let them be a little more powerful than usual. If only a few or one does, perhaps offer to let them have these abilities in exchange for something at the appropriate levels; as a special feat, perhaps replacing a subclass's ability for a level, or whatever else. Conversely, give players that chose weaker monsters something to help close the gap. If you've got an ogre and a dragon in the same party, perhaps start giving the ogre oni advantages, or just extra ASI's whenever the dragon gets a shiny new toy.

This way you can start at level 1 if you want.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Volo's (VGtM) covered monstrous races. If they don't want to be one of those, say no

Longer answer, go ahead and do it, but the monster starts with 0xp and has to earn it all up to the level you think they are equivalent, and THEN they progress towards second level in their class.

Oh, and base your encounters on the level of the monster regardless of the other players races/levels. For the sake of balance.

[PhantomSoul]

Volo's (VGtM) covered monstrous races. If they don't want to be one of those, say no.

And if they wanna be one of those, still consider that answer! :P
(Laughing in Yuan-Ti)

[loki_ragnarock]

You've chosen a tough nut to crack, there.

But hit dice ain't your yardstick.

Take for instance the Ogre; 7 hit dice, sure. But an ogre would fall flat in any meaningful comparison to a heroic class.

[Amnestic]

I wouldn't bother trying to set any sort of common rules based off of HD, CR or anything like that. That seems like a recipe for disaster and way more work for you.

Your players want to play monsters? Get them to pick, so you're only dealing with ~3-6 instead of a monster manual or five. Limit them by CR if you want to, but otherwise have them pick a monster each, tune the statblocks up/down manually so they eyeball as the same CR, then staple class levels on top as they level up.

[NotPrior]

Slightly confused by some of the responses here, perhaps should have been clearer.


Volo's (VGtM) covered monstrous races. If they don't want to be one of those, say no

Longer answer, go ahead and do it, but the monster starts with 0xp and has to earn it all up to the level you think they are equivalent, and THEN they progress towards second level in their class.

Oh, and base your encounters on the level of the monster regardless of the other players races/levels. For the sake of balance.

I think you have the wrong end of the stick here. It's not meant to be a normal PC with a CR 3 basilisk with a level in fighter alongside a CR 1/4 zombie with a level in barbarian and a CR 12 erinyes with a level in warlock. It would be a level 18 PC in a party with a basilisk (8hd) with 10 levels in fighter, a zombie (3hd) with 15 levels of barbarian, and an erinyes (18 hd) without class levels until they collectively leveled up (for example).

Also the monstrous races in Volo's are just humanoids with hats on- amongst other things they're all fundamentally humanoids, as well as basic mortals. They're also wildly varied from awful to fantastic, which is odd. Either way that's really not the point.


You've chosen a tough nut to crack, there.

But hit dice ain't your yardstick.

Take for instance the Ogre; 7 hit dice, sure. But an ogre would fall flat in any meaningful comparison to a heroic class.

Yeah the power level is weirdly all over the place, but it felt like a good point to at least begin with. A lot of monsters seem like at least reasonably solid choices as alternatives, although yeah the ogre would be a terrible mistake and would need a lot of buffing.

Like I said the main thing I'm looking for is stuff that will start off completely broken, instant kill/disable moves without cooldown that should never be allowed to scale or fall into PC hands (eg Intellect Devourer), or flat immunity to most of the setting (eg golems).

[Waterdeep Merch]

It'd be a lot easier to just ask your players what monsters they want to play. You don't have to balance for intellect devourers if no one wants to play an intellect devourer. You won't need to think about upscaling ogres if everyone wants to be a dragon. If everyone's roughly the same CR, it'll be a lot easier on you.

Oh, though speaking of dragons, I'd probably ditch legendary actions and saves outright. They aren't really an iconic part of anything, and balancing them is a nightmare.

[da newt]

Tell your players 'maybe - let's see if we can make it work' and have a sit down to come up with a plan. Depending on your player's desires this could be as easy as Volo's and other races or VERY difficult to balance. I think it would be a fun challenge for a home brew.

[NotPrior]

It'd be a lot easier to just ask your players what monsters they want to play. You don't have to balance for intellect devourers if no one wants to play an intellect devourer. You won't need to think about upscaling ogres if everyone wants to be a dragon. If everyone's roughly the same CR, it'll be a lot easier on you.

Oh, though speaking of dragons, I'd probably ditch legendary actions and saves outright. They aren't really an iconic part of anything, and balancing them is a nightmare.

This may well be sensible, and will probably end up being what I do. It'd be nice to have a system though.

Legendaries are probably going down the toilet, yeah. I feel theyll rapidly suck out challenge and threat no matter what they're fighting.


Tell your players 'maybe - let's see if we can make it work' and have a sit down to come up with a plan. Depending on your player's desires this could be as easy as Volo's and other races or VERY difficult to balance. I think it would be a fun challenge for a home brew.

Well so far we have one guy who wants to be a straight up devil midway through redemption (mostly looking at a bearded) and another who wants to be a pet monster of some description who goes straight barbarian from there, so I don't think the volos folks are cutting it. Looking for a more gonzo, borderline epic level campaign I think.

[loki_ragnarock]

This may well be sensible, and will probably end up being what I do. It'd be nice to have a system though.

Listen, what you're looking at is boutique, handcrafted madness. There's no assembly line for what you're looking to do; there is no mold for those trying to break the mold.

There's maybe some guidelines you can make for yourself, I suppose, but there's so many questions to ask. Are you married to the stats of the form you take? Is that ogre rocking a 19 strength and a 7 charisma and wisdom and a 5 int? Or are you rolling out stats and using the base as a source for adjustment? Are stats over twenty fair game, in either case? Are they taking the average hp as listed in the entry, or are they rolling them bones to see if they got more or less? AC would be largely meaningless; once that Ogre has class features he'll probably be wearing heavy armor. Or casting shield, or the like.

I reckon that hit dice are one important factor, for sure; they play into some key defense metrics. But I imagine if you want to eyeball it, just compare the monster to a roughly equivalent character. The ogre basically reads as a fighter with wretched starting stats who used his ASIs to boost his strength and has zero other class features (save being permanently large) or equipment... so they'd definitely need some features. Just pick some; look through the epic boons and just give some. Or just slap some barbarian or fighter features onto him of a roughly equivalent level to their hit dice.

Meanwhile, Quicklings should make you want to take stuff away; using 3d4 hit die as a guide would severely underplay them. Sure, they're frail but with a dex of 23, a move of 120ft, permanent disadvantage to hit them, evasion, and the same number of attacks as an 11th level fighter? That's gonna wreck all kinds of expectations.

Which means you'll have to do waaaaay more to buff the ogre player should they be in the same game together; maybe ogre specific magic items like an ogre horn of valhalla or an ogre flaming greatclub or an ogre artifact.

So, yeah, find out what your people want. I don't even think you can ballpark it with the extreme levels of disparity on potential, otherwise.