Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating

 Sometimes I convince myself to open up excel and just play around with a few numbers. This time around, I thought to myself that there must be something I can learn if I just play around with the chart found on page 274 of the DMG... - Stephen

Today, we are going on a journey! As usual, I don't typically have much of a clue as to what I'm looking at until the end of the post, and even then it gets a bit rambly, but it's fine... maybe I'll unlock the secrets of the universe... or come up with a few ideas that can be used for something. Then again, maybe I just like the sound of my own voice... or is it the sound of my keyboard?

Anyways, we are looking at the suggested monster statistics per challenge rating found in the DMG. Here's a screenshot of the adjusted numbers, I have attached an excel file that also has this information in case anyone wants to play with the information. 

Quickly going over the columns, we have CR, Proficiency Bonus, Armor Class, Hit Points, Attacks, Damage/Round, Saves, and Hit Points per Damage

CR, Proficiency Bonus and AC are pretty well understood, so let's start with Hit Points and see what new information we can learn about it. Also, this is assuming your numbers line up with the chart.

Looking at hit points, it's a bit all over the place while a monster is below CR 1, but immediately it steadies out that a CR 2 creature will, on average, have 15 hit points more than a CR 1 creature. This trend lasts all the way until CR 21 when it jumps up to 45 hit points more. I find it interesting that it is only 15 hit points, and I would've thought that the hit points would have a boost at CRs of 5, 11 and 16. 

I think what you can draw from this is that the difficulty of a monster is not how many hit points they have, but rather comes from something else. 5e, at least compared to 3e and 4e, wanted to greatly reduce the slog of combat and so while you get a damage spike for characters at set levels, that isn't reflected in a monster's hit points. 

An additional 15 hit points spread across 3 rounds of combat is only an extra 5 hit points, which isn't much. Kind of makes you wonder about characters, maybe they aren't getting as strong between levels as you'd initially suspect. 

As I'm typing this, I also realized this has another effect I hadn't considered. While the damage that a character does won't change much between level 1 and level 4, the monster will have gained about 60 more hit points. So, by that logic, a level 4 character might find combat to be more of a slog than a level 1 character. Also, when a character levels up from 4 to 5, they get a sudden boost in power which means that all of a sudden, that slog of combat goes by so much faster. Maybe a level 4 character would experience about 4 or 5 rounds per combat, and then when they level up to 5th level, their combat rounds then drop back down to level 3.

That not only would provide a sense of power for the players, but also show them in a very real way that they were stronger because combat went by faster due to how much damage they dish out. You then repeat that cycle for level 11 and level 16.

It's kind of like riding a bike up a hill, it gets harder and harder the closer you get to the top, then once you get up there it immediately provides a boost of speed and then you have slog your way up another hill. 

Let's jump over to Damage/Round. 

This also has a similar increase like hit points where the monster only gains a low amount every level, and then that increases suddenly at CR 21. Interestingly, its only a 5 point increase each CR level, which... some of the more observant among you might realize, is the average (rounded up) for a d8 character with no Constitution modifier. This means, that a monster's damage should remain pretty even when compared to a character's hit points. 

I find it very interesting that its only 5 points and not something like 6, which would be the average of a fighter's hit die. I suppose with it being 5 and not 6, a fighter will feel more and more tankier as they increase in levels than someone like a warlock with their d8 hit die. A warlock will always feel like a monster of an appropriate CR is able to hurt them real bad while as a fighter, or especially a barbarian, will notice that they aren't as scared of the monsters as they used to be. Fighters will slowly gain an edge against a monster's damage to a point where a monster just can't dish out enough damage to make a fighter feel endangered, especially if they have some modifiers to their hit points. 

Let's jump over to Attack Modifiers and Save DCs. If you go straight off this chart, we can see the ideal modifiers for monsters by taking their attack modifier and subtracting the proficiency bonus. With that done, we can see that a monster rarely ever has a 20 (+5) in a score for punching their enemies, which I find surprising. At tier 1, monsters have about a +2 in their punch score, tier 2 & tier 3 they have a +3, while tier 4 gives them a +4 to punch score.

It's kind of interesting and I'm not sure that that actually tracks with what is presented in the Monster Manual. By the time my players are in Tier 2, I'm not overly surprised if a monster has a +5 in their top ability, and especially if the characters are in Tier 4, I'd expect the monster to have +6 or better! I wonder if you went through every monster in the Monster Manual and took that information what the result would be on actual monsters. 

We can also do the same for the Save DC, simply subtract the proficiency bonus and 8 to get the modifier for their save DC. This number is actually higher than their attack modifier, which I would've thought would've been the same or even just a bit closer to the attack modifier number. 

Instead, we are immediately looking at a +3 in Tier 1, followed up with Tier 2 being a +4 and Tier 3 & 4 being +5 and Tier 4+ having some +6s. 

How I'm reading this is that spellcasters are going to be stronger in their main ability than martial monsters. I wonder if part of this is because the game assumes that the players have, on average, better ability scores than the monsters do. If the players have higher ability scores, they can hit higher DCs than if their stats were lower. If the players had the same ability scores as monsters, then we could probably expect the Save DCs to follow the same progression as Attack modifiers, though I don't know that for sure. Just conjecture. 

I'm not sure what to make about all the numbers here, but it's given me something to think about... and now I really want to go through the Monster Manual and gather all the same information and really see if these hold up. Luckily, someone has done some of the work, though it is missing Save DCs, Attack Modifiers, and a few others... Maybe in a few weeks I can report what I find and we can discover something new, maybe this chart in the DMG is complete crap... or maybe it is actually really good! 

Regardless of that, is there anything you find interesting in this? Maybe these numbers speak to you in a different way, love to hear your thoughts.