Variance is also the same for DC as it is for attack bonus. In the following scatter plot, blue X’es are DC, and green triangles are attack bonus. In fact, its graph is nearly identical to the attack bonus (nearly every monster’s DC is their attack +7). So we could say, without doing too much violence to the Monster Manual data, something like, “Based on your monster concept, you may add or subtract up to 2 points from the attack bonus without affecting its CR.”ĭifficulty Class is similarly neat. And, as we’ve proved in previous steps, there is no correlation between high/low attack bonus and any other monster stat. In other words, monster attack bonuses tend to be a little more than one point away from the average. We don’t want to adjust anything later! We’ll just look at our Monster Manual data and see how much variation there tends to be from the average monster accuracy.įor our attack bonuses, the average variance (which is a statistical calculation for determining how closely grouped numbers are) is low: 1.22.
How much leeway do we have to adjust the attack bonus up or down based on our concept? The DMG advice is to adjust as much as you want, you can always adjust the CR later. That’s the way that the linear values on the attack graph work out, and the way I’ve graphed it. For the purposes of drawing graphs, think of them as negative numbers instead of fractions: CR 1/2 is really 0, CR 1/4 is -1, CR 1/8 is -2, CR 0 is -3. While the DMG graph is arbitrary and inaccurate, actual monster design shows signs of being very carefully put together.Ī note about CRs below 1: These complicate things. So tidy! It’s almost as if the designers designed it that way! Hint: I think they did. (For comparison, the red line is a plot of the Dungeon Master’s Guide suggested attack bonuses.)Īs you can see, the scatter plot shows us a nice, straight, easily graphable best-fit line. Here’s a scatter plot of the attack bonuses of all the Monster Manual and Mordenkainen’s monsters. Therefore, we can examine each monster stat separately without having to consider the others at the same time. For instance, you might expect that a monster whose AC is high for its Challenge Rating should have lower hit points, attack bonus, or damage output to compensate. If you prefer everything calculated out, here’s a one-page version with more explanation and an exampleįirst of all, to reiterate what I learned in previous posts:ġ) real monsters have fewer hit points and do less damage than those created by the DMG chart, and are more accurateĢ) there is no significant correlation between any major monster stat (HP, AC, attack bonus) and any other stat. Here’s the finished business card! The rest of this post will explain how we came up with it.
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