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Monster Levels and Roles
🕑 Added 2025-04-26 06:50:30 +0000 UTCBelow is a table that breaks down how to balance monsters by level and role for 5e.
Minions are meant to fight in large mobs, four per PC.
Troopers are tougher creatures, two per PC.
Champions are equal to one PC of a given level.
Elites are worth two PCs. They should have one legendary action per round and one use of legendary resistance.
Bosses are worth four PCs. They should have three legendary actions per round and a source of automatic damage, such as an aura or a mechanic that damages anyone who hits them or targets them with a spell. They should have three uses of legendary resistance.
For a high difficulty encounter, spend 4 points per PC. For an easy one, spend 2 points per PC. For a deadly encounter that could TPK the group, spend 6 points per PC.
EDIT TO ADD: Looks like I deleted a paragraph while moving the image around the post. I'll add it back, but to summarize: You have a point budget to spend on monsters. You have 2 points per PC for an easy encounter, 4 points per PC for a tough one, and 6 for a deadly one.
Minions are 1 point each.
Troopers are 2 points each.
Champions are 4 points each.
Elites are 8 points each.
Bosses are 16 points each.
These values are a starting point based on experimentation and playtests I've run so far. I started by figuring out the CR I would need to use to match one monster per PC in a hard encounter. I then quadrupled HP and DPR for a boss and doubled it for an elite. A champion uses those base stats. A trooper has half the hit points and 60% of the DPR. A minion has 20% of the HP and 40% of the DPR. Weaker creatures tend to have a higher than expected share of the base DPR to account for the losses they take as a combat progresses.
For a creature's target saving throw bonus, use its attack bonus. Subtract 4 for minions, 2 for troopers. Add 2 for elites and 4 for bosses.
For Odyssey, and its stretching of levels, I'll generate midpoint stats to capture the levels added in.
These stats are just a starting point, but I'll be using them as a starting point to create Odyssey monsters. Huge thanks to Blog of Holding for doing a lot of analysis on CR and to Teos Abadia, Scott Fitzgerald Grey, and Mike Shea for The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes. Their work was invaluable in this project.
Comments
Frank Moore
This is absolutely brilliant, Mike. Thanks for publishing it!!
Ryan Linderman
This is really cool! Thank you for sharing it! I love stronger monsters / more challenging combat (which my DM excels at). Since the orc playtest, it looks Minion and Trooper HP have been adjusted up and DPR adjusted down. I think that's probably good. I'm guessing it'll help them last a little longer against highly optimized builds, but spreading their dpr over another turn. Am i understanding that correctly? I've been buried at work and haven't been able to keep up very well.
