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I'm working on my chapter 2 conversion for 6 players, and I happened to notice that the Hodag's CR was very low for its large number of Magical Beast HD. Its defences are good, its HP is high and it has a large number of quite nasty attacks- including a bonus on a charge.
Why such a low CR? A magical beast with 8HD is normally a CR higher at CR6. I know thats a general rule and exceptions apply, im just wondering why it was chosen to be a CR5 rather than a CR6.
Creative Director
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I'm working on my chapter 2 conversion for 6 players, and I happened to notice that the Hodag's CR was very low for its large number of Magical Beast HD. Its defences are good, its HP is high and it has a large number of quite nasty attacks- including a bonus on a charge.
Why such a low CR? A magical beast with 8HD is normally a CR higher at CR6. I know thats a general rule and exceptions apply, im just wondering why it was chosen to be a CR5 rather than a CR6.
The number of HD is just a starting place for designing monsters. The REAL things you should use to determine a CR are listed on table 1–1 of the Bestiary; things like hp, AC, average damage, attack rolls, save DCs for abilities, and saves.
HD does not figure into this, really; it's a value you can manipulate to GENERATE hp and attack roll and all the rest to where they need to be. If a monster's ability scores are lower than expected, that'll result in lower hp and attack rolls and all that, which is a relatively common way that higher HD creatures end up at a lower CR than later tables in the monster design chapter might suggest.
Now, all that said: I don't have the hodag's stats right in front of me. There's a chance that it IS too good for its CR, and if those numbers on table 1–1 don't match up (it's normal for ONE number to be high, remember), then there's an error and the hodag should be a higher CR.
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I've been using that table, and now having a closer second look it does seem to fall slap bang in the middle between CR's 5 and 6 lol. Damage on the high attack is too low for CR 6 for example, but when you account in Toss and the sheer number of attacks the Hodag can make the total damage of primary and secondary is probably too low. I think its a great monster, I just think its a little closer to CR 6 than 5 and I was wondering if I was missing something.
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Creative Director
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I've been using that table, and now having a closer second look it does seem to fall slap bang in the middle between CR's 5 and 6 lol. Damage on the high attack is too low for CR 6 for example, but when you account in Toss and the sheer number of attacks the Hodag can make the total damage of primary and secondary is probably too low. I think its a great monster, I just think its a little closer to CR 6 than 5 and I was wondering if I was missing something.
A fair amount of monsters actually ride the line between two CR scores. In that case, we look at the monster as a whole and decide which side of the divide it falls on. For the hodag, we skeweed low because the hodag isn't all that smart, and played properly shouldn't be making lots of awesome tactical decisions and should be easier than, say, a dragon, to trick or befuddle with good tactics.