Creating Monsters - Amount of Special Abilities or Qualities?

[Dulenheim]

Hello fellow members of the messageboards, I hope you're having a nice holiday season.

I come here to ask for advice regarding the current rules to create new monsters, found in the bestiaries; I understand all of the rules well enough but the one entry on special abilities (such as Ability Drain or breath weapons) confuses me, as it never states how many abilities can a monster have according to it's CR.

Is there a way to calculate this or an unwritten rule I do not know of, or should I just give my homebrew monsters as many abilities as I see fit?

Thanks in advance for any help or feedback.

[Sissyl]

There are no guidelines as far as I know.

Two things to bear in mind:

First, a creature can't use more than one active ability per round, and if all the available abilities it has are roughly equal in power, the power gain isn't too big. Also, a creature won't, generally, live all that many rounds, which also reinforces this.

Second, The CR of your monster will be affected by what abilities it has, and unless you want that creature to have a glass jaw when confronted in melee, say, you should try to make the ability fit the other statistics of your creature.

[Dulenheim]

I see, so I should just add abilities that "feel right" on a need to use basis. Thanks for the advice Sissyl, I very much appreciate it.