Hello there,
I'm a fledgling GM and I am starting a level 5-7 campaign pretty soon where the PC's are going to be dealing with a lot of undead. I was looking through some DND 3.5 books for monster ideas, and in the Fiend Folio I found the Crawling Head (pg 35 for those who care to look it up) which is perfect for my campaign. The problem is, its CR is 20, and while I can certainly save it for later in the campaign, I seriously doubt they're going to make it to 20 before we're through.
So, looking in the Pathfinder Bestiary, I found table 2-1: Monster Advancement in the Appendices (pg 295). Looking in the HP Change column, I see it says going from CR 20 to 19 is a change of 40, 19 to 18 is a change of 30, etc etc. By the time I make it down to CR 7 a monster with 182 HP now is WAY into negative HP. Obviously I am reading the chart incorrectly; even with the other columns, his stats become way too low. Can someone tell me how I SHOULD be reading the chart?
Secondary question-- when dealing with monster death, having never GMed before, I always assumed that monsters were considered dead once their HP reached zero. With PC's the Core Rulebook says you're unconscious at zero and not dead until your HP is at a negative value equal to your CON score. Was I right in my assumption, or is death for monsters the same as PC's?
Thanks for your help!