Monsters and Innate Spells

[daedel, el azote]

I'm just curious: when looking at monsters in the three Bestiaries, I notice several of them have innate spells not heightened to half their level. For example, the winter hag in Bestiary 3 (page 130) has Charm, Fly and Ice Storm heightened to 4th level but Enthrall and Paralyze are heightened to 3th level. Is there a mechanical reason for this that I'm missing?

[HumbleGamer]

Imo, it could be either balance or lore.

Leaving apart the fact that Fly and Ice storm are lvl 4 by default, and that Enthrall doesn't have a heightened version ( though somebody could prepare it using a higher level slot, but this is something apart imo ).

Lvlv 4 charm empowers the spell increasing its duration to 1 day ( until you make your next daily preps ).

As for the paralyze spell, I bet is because of balance ( the incapacitate trait ).

[Aw3som3-117]

The simple answer is because they're not PCs, so the designers aren't limited to that. There are many things about a creature's statblock that wouldn't be the same if it was on a PC. Some that make it stronger, and some that make it weaker.

[Captain Morgan]

Having all spells be heightened to the maximum point would give monsters a big increase in power but wouldn't necessarily broaden the stories you can tell with them. Imagineyiure building a boss monster your players need to track down who has been mind controlling the general populace. It is controlling a lot of people, so you give it at will Charm. But NPCs are largely low level or can have their savings throws hand waved, so you don't necessarily need heightened charm.

And when the players fight the monster, the incapacitation trait keeps them from getting instantly knocked out of a fight. Now if you wanted it to auto heighten, you have made the fight significantly more dangerous.

Basically, monsters should have exactly what they need to do their job. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Cordell Kintner]

daedel, el azote wrote:

I'm just curious: when looking at monsters in the three Bestiaries, I notice several of them have innate spells not heightened to half their level. For example, the winter hag in Bestiary 3 (page 130) has Charm, Fly and Ice Storm heightened to 4th level but Enthrall and Paralyze are heightened to 3th level. Is there a mechanical reason for this that I'm missing?

There's no rule that says Innate spells are automatically heightened. The only rule for auto heightening spells is for Cantrips and Focus Spells. What Innate Spells does say is:

"You also can't heighten innate spells, but some abilities that grant innate spells might give you the spell at a higher level than its base level or change the level at which you cast the spell."