Monster Classes: Reworking Types/Subtypes, HD, etc from the Ground Up

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I think we agree on the importance of not rating individual abilities by CR, and the fact that these classes are more like designer training wheels rather than true PC classes. I'll only follow up on the stuff that I disagree w/you on.

Also, just for the purposes of keeping the language clear, since we're kind of using "class" interchangeable for a handful of things, I'd like to refer to these as:

• Your solution: pseudoclass, or maybe astral construct guideline (ACG)? (referring to the abilities that get called out at each level)
• My solution: pseudobuild, or maybe row based guideline (RBG)? (referring to the idea that you only read a single row of the table)
• The general idea of meatbags / masterminds / etc: monster guidelines
• A DM-approved ACG or a reverse-engineering RBG: monster class

The key thing for me is that the petrifying gaze shouldn't be available at 4 HD just because it's available at CR 4, because then you can make dumb 4-HD meatbags at CR 2 and so forth, and at some point you do reach a floor where a certain ability is inappropriate for monsters of a given CR. Granted, the boundaries are fuzzier at low levels since you can die or be removed from play for pretty much everything, but the principle gets to be more important at mid levels when a difference of a few points of CR or HD can mean the difference between "The party cleric has the removal spell for this condition, he can rest and have you fixed up tomorrow morning" and "We gotta go back to Waterdeep and spend a bunch of time and gold to get this taken care of."

If having 4 HD makes that encounter a more interesting experience for PCs then I don't have any problem with it. I can certainly imagine that an encounter with a basilisk guarding a treasure could be solved by scouting out the basilisk, sleep-bombing it, and walking around it. Some abilities are inappropriate at some CRs, sure, but we can already solve that problem by telling designers not to put petrifying gaze on creatures when if their CR < 4.

I didn't mean to imply that monster classes would literally be one feature every other level, just that those specific abilities would progress at those levels. I didn't write in any sort of "And at this level it gets something related to natural armor or energy resistance" since it wasn't germane to the example and might have led to bikeshedding.

This won't solve the problem, though. There is still an enormous delta between "NatArmor + ER + some stats" and "death gaze". Giant difficulty bumps are going to exist in your pseudoclass / ACG if CR 3-4 monsters have slowing gazes and CR 5-6 monsters have death gazes. Stat boosts rarely measure up to the kinds of encounter-altering abilities that puzzle monsters tend to have.

I'm down with your average designer being able to look over a list of 10-20 appropriate [monster type here] abilities and select the ones that they think fit best for the creature's CR. But the idea of generic features like DR or +Stats doesn't seem useful, because some of those are purely good for meatbags and others are purely good for masterminds. I see no value in giving designers the option of granting non-meatbag features to meatbags. I would simply rather see the relevant bonus stats baked into the meatbag class. More on this at the bottom of the my post.

The problem with that is that, quite frankly, most DMs are bad at designing custom opposition even within the normal system constraints, much less homebrewing something. Most DMs' first homebrew class or monster is terrible and unbalanced, most DMs' first BBEG is built like a player instead of like a good boss and either wrecks the party or dies like a chump, and most DMs are scared of letting random other peoples' homebrew into their games--even when that homebrew is by "known good" 'brewers and endorsed by people they know--because they're not confident in their ability to judge its balance.

No amount of guidelines that end up saying "...and then fiat something here, we're sure you've got this!" are going to turn out as well as hard mechanics that a new, uncertain, or just bad-at-design DM can follow explicitly, if only due to the fact that a single DM's design chops pale in comparison to the collective design experience and confidence of the folks in this thread. And while obviously it's not like this is a product to be sold and we need to think about thousands of DMs using it, it's certainly the case that this is intended to be used by DMs who can't do it themselves or we wouldn't need either explicit mechanics or guidelines.

Naturally, DMs will not make good homebrew in their first several goes, and should not be told to fiat things without guidance. I wrote as much several posts ago:

Guidelines can do this too. If you have a document that says "At level X, your monster should usually have features A, B, and C" and then there's a list of possible features, an inexperienced designer can follow those instructions. Monster design may even be easier for an inexperienced DM this way, because guideline tables can have rows like "Recommended Total HP" and "Recommended Save Bonus" which novices can copy/paste into a stat block instead of picking a Constitution score. Guidelines also make it easier to experiment, because now there is no mandate that Stone Gaze is a Menu C (level 6+ only) ability when a Basilisk with stone gaze is fine at CR 4.

An RBG can provide novice designers with the same kind of menu-based monster building experience that an ACG can. I believe that "DMs who can't do it themselves" can succeed without hard level-based guidelines, and I have even argued that they can do better when given a good alternative.

I'm not saying to actually give all monsters the same stat array, I'm saying that if you're going to have tables of average-[whatever]-by-HD it should be based on the real numbers you get by doing things the long way, not just numbers pulled out of the Ethereal Plane with no relation to HD, ability scores, and so forth like 4e did. A simple note for each table along the lines of "The minimum, maximum, and average HP values in this table assume a d8 HD, a starting Con of 14, and an average of +1 Con per 6 levels" would suffice, so a new DM strictly following the table can give his 6-HD critter a 15 Con and be assured that all the math works out while someone more experienced can use that as a quick reference and then bump it up by 18 HP because he's giving his 6-HD critter a 20 Con instead.

I think there is a lot of space between pulling something out the ethereal plane and locking attributes within tight bands. I believe the way we should handle monster attributes can fit comfortably between those 2 extremes. For example, here are various ways that monsters can get their HP-esque defenses:

• High Con
• Extra HD
• DR
• Fast Healing / Regeneration

Or any combination of those. A given monster guideline could suggest something like a Con score of 16 + (2 x CR) by itself, 15 + (1 x CR) with some DR or extra HD, or 12 + (1/2 * CR) with high fast healing. Novice designers can trust that the math works out, and experienced designers can experiment with different combinations. Like say a Kyton with 15 Con, but instead of high fast healing they get Regeneration 2 and DR 5/(silver or good).