Advancing 5th Edition Monsters

[SmiloDan]

Hi!

Are there any guidelines for advancing 5th Edition monsters? Besides just rebuilding its AC, hit points, attacks, damages, save DCs, proficiency bonus, for the new desired CR?

For Example:

I want to advance a CR 4 banshee to CR 6 or 7.

Any suggestions?

[SmiloDan]

Actually:

I might just combine the banshee with some shadows (probably replacing the Strength Damage with Incorporeality) and giving the shadows little blood drop necklaces and the banshee a blood-red heart-shaped pendant that heals/grants temporary hit points to the banshee every time a shadow damages a PC.

I'm also considering adding a will-o-wisp to the encounter, but the synergy between the banshee's wail and the will-o-wisp's life drain is pretty severe. Especially since the party lacks a primary healer/breath of life caster.

Unless I can come up with a way for the dead PCs to combat death/Morrigan....

[Four Horsemen—Death]

There are no quick-and-dirty advancement guidelines I'm aware of. It's pretty much down to adding whatever capabilities you want and recalculating average CR.

That said, it's pretty easy to just plug and chug numbers given the chart without messing with it too much (for instance, don't even mess with hit dice, just give it whatever HP within expected range). As long as you're not stacking a ton of offensive/defensive traits and abilities it should work out okay in general.

[Four Horsemen—Death]

Spoiler:

Okay, I kind of love the idea of making the encounter lethal as hell, BUT having a provision for the "dead" PCs to affect the fight, and be save-able after the fact.

Maybe they become disembodied spirits that are able to counteract the shadows in some way. They have a pool of hit points in the form of radiant energy they can either use to grant ablative shields (rather than temp hp which would still be subject to the max hp-drop of life drain effects) to their comrades, or even damage the shadows. So they essentially spend their lingering physical essence to protect their comrades or help damage the remaining foes, fading away more and more as they do. Once the pool is empty, they don't have the strength to actively affect the battle and are gone.

Their souls could be drawn into and held in the aforementioned necklaces and allow for a ritual to return them to their bodies rather than needing full raise dead magic.

[Dustin Ashe]

There's always the option to give them class levels, though it's not always in tune with the flavor of the monster.

[DM Jeff]

If just advancing numbers to make a more powerful version, just find the creature on the CR rating box on page 174 of the DMG and replace it's stats with those listed for a CR 7 creature. It's not perfect but provides a good reference.

[SmiloDan]

Four Horsemen—Death wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

What I was thinking:

Is that there might be a TPK, and then the spirits of the PCs can challenge Death (or Morrigam, this is for a St. Patrick's Day session), and if successful, return to life and complete the session's mission (drive all the snakes from the island).

[Kalshane]

Giving monsters feats or increasing their stats is another good way to boost them quickly and easily. Things like Toughness or Mobility are nice and easy to drop on a monster to make them a slightly bigger challenge without changing the math much.

[SmiloDan]

I'm going to have the battle take place near some Standing Stones in a graveyard, so there will be variable cover, open graves (pits), and the like. Lots of objects for the PCs to run around, and lots of objects for the spirits to run through. ;-)