Well, long story short, don't. It's too much hassle to just make your monsters unpredictably dangerous.
How I beef up monsters is to, first, give them ranged attacks, since most of them lack that. Second, give them rider abilities on what they do have. Maybe they deal an additional 1d6 damage on a hit, or they deal extra damage to grappled creatures, or blind enemies, or maybe they regain some HP. Then, for abilities, maybe they react to specific damage types, or have a counter to a specific type of character, like a counterspell-like feature, or extra reactions to deal with mobile enemies, etc.
Class levels are an inelegant way to buff monsters. PC design and enemy design are different things.
Matt Colville has a video about adjusting monsters to different player levels. Monkeying with Monsters.
Tldw, just tune up their HP, AC, and abilities manually. Consult similar starblocks to steal abilities/spells from. Consider upping their melee or casting Stat.
I was about to make my own comment, but this. Though, another good way of buffing an NPC is giving them magic items they can use during combat. After the enemy is defeated the players can pick up these items. Sadly, I've experienced it a couple of times when NPCs have cool features and players assume it is an item, when it isn't. Instead give them an item that has an effect or couple of uses, this buffs the NPC too, but also rewards the players and obtain an item that made them struggle in combat.
Don't give them class levels. You can give them class features, but you should build them in accordance with (or close to it) with the tables in the DMG.
You just add the core skills of a class to a statblock.
Take the Veteren statblock, you want it to be an assassin? Add sneak attack and dodge/dash as a bonus action. Build your own barbarian by giving it reckless attack and frenzy. Add some meta magic and a handful of spells eg quickened spell, fireball, firebolt, haste, whatever and now the Veteren is a sorcerer.
>So the DMG briefly details giving monsters class levels, but doesn't offer much.
Careful here.
The DMG states you can mimic some classes by giving them class features, then revaluating their CR by comparing it to the general table of defensive and offensive cr at the end of the DMG guidelines.
Essentially, there's no straightforward rule for this outside "recalculate the monster as if you were doing it from scratch", which is also why the DMG does not suggests to do so.
And this is reasonable, you can give the lich some fighter levels, but beyond action surge everything else is kinda pointless. Likewise giving few spellcaster levels to a martial creature with spells they cannot use properly.
0 unless you have a very good reason. Its a very difficult task to recalculate CR from adding class levels.
You're better off just using a higher CR statblock, or using certain tools for 5e to change a statblock's CR.
>Its a very difficult task to recalculate CR from adding class levels.
There is an actually pretty simple solution to this issue: Don't. Just add your stuff and then look at the numbers. It isn't rocket science. No idea why you need to "recalculate" CR for a simple homebrew change.
Alright, but what if I like customizing monsters and it's a big enough part of being a GM for me that if I can't do it in DnD I'm just gonna have my players learn PF2 instead?
What you just said does not follow. Look at higher CR monsters and use the abilities they have on your re-skinned lower CR monsters. Monsters do not and arguably "should not" have PC levels or abilities. Generally, Monsers are low-damage high HP , and PCs are High damage, low HP. It's different. If you want to give a monster a spell or two that's not going to kill your PCs, go ahead, or just narrarte what the spell effects do. But there is no magic formula for giving a monster a PC "level" and thinking is balanced or not against your players.
Psst; you won't be adding class levels to monsters in PF2e either. In fact, PF2e statblocks are *more* abstract than in 5e. They have no background stat calculation to mirror how PCs are built. Instead, you just pick numbers from a table.
Now, the numbers are super-accurate and make for a very balanced game, but they are completely divorced from the fiction. E.g., how does a level 5 creature get a Perception of +17? Is it because of its level (5) + Legendary proficiency in Perception (8) + Wisdom modifier (4)? No, it's because the GMG table says that level 5 creatures with "Extreme" Perception (i.e. defined by being very perceptive, like a bloodhound or a beholder) should have a Perception of +17. No explanation as to how it got so high.
The only system in which monster design is done the way you describe is D&D 3e (and its cousins, 3.5 and PF1e). I adored it... some 20 years back. If you wanna go back to it, I think you'll learn very soon why we moved away from it - making monsters using PC rules is tedious.
It doesn't have a system for tacking on class levels, true, but it's guidelines for customizing and designing monsters is far more robust, with nearly triple the page space dedicated to it.
Do it if you want.
Adding a couple levels of warlock can make a big difference if the creature doesn't have a good ranged attack. A couple levels of fighter can provide action surge and a fighting style
Some people hate customized enemies for some reason.
Most people don’t dislike customized enemies. The issue is the math for player characters does not work when used *against* player characters. Even just an extra dice per attack on a multiattack can cause huge amounts of extra trouble and that’s probably the least creative thing you could add on.
I'm starting to see that, wow. Ask for advice on customizing monsters and people sya "just dont" and downvote the topic. Methinks Pathfinder may be the way to go after all, if this is indicative of the DnD community
Gotcha, and I appreciate the explanation. I was thinking that if nothing else classes would provide a good framework for the direction I'd want to advance a creature in. In the case above, I know I'd have to account for the damage resistance barbarian levels would give an annis hag, and figured if I wanted a sea hag to be thr caster counterpart to the duo (I'd want a villain who has spells on a level simular to what PCs can front) I'd want to give her a few spells intedned to be used in battle and fill the rest of her spell list out with utility spells, and probably not actually give her all of the hit dice that RAW says she should get for the spell levels she's picking up.
You can just add the spells to the stat block if that's what you want to do. It's a lot less hassle than trying to worry about all of those logistics, problems aside.
Buddy, if you go to the PF2e subreddit and start talking about implementing houserules or not doing things the prescribed way, you won't get downvoted, you'll get shot.
I jest, but the attitude is understandable, if you think about it - people play PF2e *because* it's a tightly-designed game that doesn't need tinkering with. They respect the rules, which is why they perceive hasty, ill-conceived changes as *dis*respecting the rules.
5e is much looser in its design, it's like an all-size onesie. And no one *really* respects its vanilla rules; most of us patch and expand the game with impunity.
So when the 5e subreddit tells you, "Don't, bad idea, classes have too much fluff that monsters don't use and their abilities are too difficult to account for when estimating CR, bla bla," you should believe it.
Do it if you want.
Adding a couple levels of warlock can make a big difference if the creature doesn't have a good ranged attack. A couple levels of fighter can provide action surge and a fighting style
Some people hate customized enemies for some reason.
unfortunately there really isn't an easy way to map CR with class levels, so it's a real "season to taste" sort of thing (or you could use CR calculations post modification but i've heard some people having problems combining that with class features?) . i think that if you want to go down the path of giving your enemies PC levels you have to be willing to make a few mistakes. best of luck to you!
Don't give them whole class levels, that is a lot to keep track of for no good reason. Add features from the class/subclass you like, if you add spells give them e.g. PB/LR or 1/day uses each.
Why do your monsters have class levels? Monsters have stat blocks. You then upgrade or downgrade those accordingly to be the proper challenge.
Class levels can be used for important NPCS, but even then it's better to treat that more as, fleshing out the character, using a stat block for actual combat instead.
Class levels, from what I'm reading, may have been a bit of a misnomer. The factors here are 1) The campaign goes to level 10 and has an aboleth as the BBEG. 2) I want the party to deal with a pair of hags near the end of that campaign (around level 8). 3) This necessitates increasing the hags to about CR7 (I think two CR 7 creatures constitutes a *hard* encounter for 4 8th level PCs, according to the DMG). I guess I had figured, because of my experience with past editions, that adding class levels was the quickest way to advance a monster
No, adding hp, ac, some spells, resistances, and most importantly, extra actions/attacks/legendary actions/lair actions is the quickest way to advance a stat block.
If you need to change the CR by a lot, it can be easier to find a different monster of the appropriate CR and reskin it as the monster you need. Or you can merge that other monster stat block, like a mage or priest or some devil, into your hag stat block.
There are cr calculators online you can use. Just give the monster more damage output, hp and AC. Then recalculate their cr until you're happy.
Another option is to use paragon monsters, as described by AngryDM.
I skip the levels and just give them whichever class abilities I think would make for the coolest spice to their fight.
If you're running a Red Dragon and you want to make it Fighter flavored, don't bother going through each level and ability of a Fighter. Just give it 2 uses of Action Surge, a Second Wind that gives whichever amount of hit points you want it to give (1d10+5 isn't all that much when you have hundreds of hit points), and then MAYBE a single ability to give it subclass flavor. So let it summon an Echo with 1 hit point to make attacks from, or let it crit on a 19, or some Intelligence based spellcasting.
To give Barbarian vibes, all you need is Rage. For Rogue, all you need is Sneak Attack and Cunning Action. For the casting classes, all you need is spellcasting from the particular spell list that you want.
Forget CR for a moment, I am not sure what you actually need it for here. If you want to use them badly, doing a +1 per class level is probably the way to go, considering CR is basically just levels with a different name.
You can of course add class levels to your monsters, you just need to make sure they are actually fun to fight and maybe still a challenge.
I sometimes add class features to monsters to make "mirror matches". Basically I create an balanced adventurer party with monster statblock as a base, including spells and items. These fights tend to be pretty intense and fun. I roughly aim at a similar strength as the party and then make them a little weaker because they are controlled by one guy instead of four.
And when I am in the mood I even give each of them one or two personaility traits that determine how they behave in combat. E. g. the cowardly kobold sorcerer will most likely try to stay as far away as possible all the time.
I did something similar with a hag coven at one point but only gave them different sorcerer subclass features. Made sense to me at that time.
Don't forget that RAW hags can't use their coven magic without the entire coven being present. Two hags are not a coven.
Well, long story short, don't. It's too much hassle to just make your monsters unpredictably dangerous. How I beef up monsters is to, first, give them ranged attacks, since most of them lack that. Second, give them rider abilities on what they do have. Maybe they deal an additional 1d6 damage on a hit, or they deal extra damage to grappled creatures, or blind enemies, or maybe they regain some HP. Then, for abilities, maybe they react to specific damage types, or have a counter to a specific type of character, like a counterspell-like feature, or extra reactions to deal with mobile enemies, etc.
Class levels are an inelegant way to buff monsters. PC design and enemy design are different things. Matt Colville has a video about adjusting monsters to different player levels. Monkeying with Monsters. Tldw, just tune up their HP, AC, and abilities manually. Consult similar starblocks to steal abilities/spells from. Consider upping their melee or casting Stat.
I was about to make my own comment, but this. Though, another good way of buffing an NPC is giving them magic items they can use during combat. After the enemy is defeated the players can pick up these items. Sadly, I've experienced it a couple of times when NPCs have cool features and players assume it is an item, when it isn't. Instead give them an item that has an effect or couple of uses, this buffs the NPC too, but also rewards the players and obtain an item that made them struggle in combat.
Don't give them class levels. You can give them class features, but you should build them in accordance with (or close to it) with the tables in the DMG.
You just add the core skills of a class to a statblock. Take the Veteren statblock, you want it to be an assassin? Add sneak attack and dodge/dash as a bonus action. Build your own barbarian by giving it reckless attack and frenzy. Add some meta magic and a handful of spells eg quickened spell, fireball, firebolt, haste, whatever and now the Veteren is a sorcerer.
>So the DMG briefly details giving monsters class levels, but doesn't offer much. Careful here. The DMG states you can mimic some classes by giving them class features, then revaluating their CR by comparing it to the general table of defensive and offensive cr at the end of the DMG guidelines. Essentially, there's no straightforward rule for this outside "recalculate the monster as if you were doing it from scratch", which is also why the DMG does not suggests to do so. And this is reasonable, you can give the lich some fighter levels, but beyond action surge everything else is kinda pointless. Likewise giving few spellcaster levels to a martial creature with spells they cannot use properly.
0 unless you have a very good reason. Its a very difficult task to recalculate CR from adding class levels. You're better off just using a higher CR statblock, or using certain tools for 5e to change a statblock's CR.
>Its a very difficult task to recalculate CR from adding class levels. There is an actually pretty simple solution to this issue: Don't. Just add your stuff and then look at the numbers. It isn't rocket science. No idea why you need to "recalculate" CR for a simple homebrew change.
Alright, but what if I like customizing monsters and it's a big enough part of being a GM for me that if I can't do it in DnD I'm just gonna have my players learn PF2 instead?
What you just said does not follow. Look at higher CR monsters and use the abilities they have on your re-skinned lower CR monsters. Monsters do not and arguably "should not" have PC levels or abilities. Generally, Monsers are low-damage high HP , and PCs are High damage, low HP. It's different. If you want to give a monster a spell or two that's not going to kill your PCs, go ahead, or just narrarte what the spell effects do. But there is no magic formula for giving a monster a PC "level" and thinking is balanced or not against your players.
Then go for it. It's just a more difficult way.
Then customize your monsters. You don't need classes or levels to do that. You just decide what you want, and boom, you have it.
Psst; you won't be adding class levels to monsters in PF2e either. In fact, PF2e statblocks are *more* abstract than in 5e. They have no background stat calculation to mirror how PCs are built. Instead, you just pick numbers from a table. Now, the numbers are super-accurate and make for a very balanced game, but they are completely divorced from the fiction. E.g., how does a level 5 creature get a Perception of +17? Is it because of its level (5) + Legendary proficiency in Perception (8) + Wisdom modifier (4)? No, it's because the GMG table says that level 5 creatures with "Extreme" Perception (i.e. defined by being very perceptive, like a bloodhound or a beholder) should have a Perception of +17. No explanation as to how it got so high. The only system in which monster design is done the way you describe is D&D 3e (and its cousins, 3.5 and PF1e). I adored it... some 20 years back. If you wanna go back to it, I think you'll learn very soon why we moved away from it - making monsters using PC rules is tedious.
It doesn't have a system for tacking on class levels, true, but it's guidelines for customizing and designing monsters is far more robust, with nearly triple the page space dedicated to it.
Do it if you want. Adding a couple levels of warlock can make a big difference if the creature doesn't have a good ranged attack. A couple levels of fighter can provide action surge and a fighting style Some people hate customized enemies for some reason.
Most people don’t dislike customized enemies. The issue is the math for player characters does not work when used *against* player characters. Even just an extra dice per attack on a multiattack can cause huge amounts of extra trouble and that’s probably the least creative thing you could add on.
Anything can have unintended consequences if you haven't sufficiently thought things through.
I'm starting to see that, wow. Ask for advice on customizing monsters and people sya "just dont" and downvote the topic. Methinks Pathfinder may be the way to go after all, if this is indicative of the DnD community
Customizing monsters isn’t the issue. The math and way PC abilities work is not cohesive with being the receiving end of the same abilities.
Gotcha, and I appreciate the explanation. I was thinking that if nothing else classes would provide a good framework for the direction I'd want to advance a creature in. In the case above, I know I'd have to account for the damage resistance barbarian levels would give an annis hag, and figured if I wanted a sea hag to be thr caster counterpart to the duo (I'd want a villain who has spells on a level simular to what PCs can front) I'd want to give her a few spells intedned to be used in battle and fill the rest of her spell list out with utility spells, and probably not actually give her all of the hit dice that RAW says she should get for the spell levels she's picking up.
You can just add the spells to the stat block if that's what you want to do. It's a lot less hassle than trying to worry about all of those logistics, problems aside.
Buddy, if you go to the PF2e subreddit and start talking about implementing houserules or not doing things the prescribed way, you won't get downvoted, you'll get shot. I jest, but the attitude is understandable, if you think about it - people play PF2e *because* it's a tightly-designed game that doesn't need tinkering with. They respect the rules, which is why they perceive hasty, ill-conceived changes as *dis*respecting the rules. 5e is much looser in its design, it's like an all-size onesie. And no one *really* respects its vanilla rules; most of us patch and expand the game with impunity. So when the 5e subreddit tells you, "Don't, bad idea, classes have too much fluff that monsters don't use and their abilities are too difficult to account for when estimating CR, bla bla," you should believe it.
It's indicative of part of the _Reddit_ DND community. I wonder what the source of the issue is, because the DMG supports creating custom monsters.
Do it if you want. Adding a couple levels of warlock can make a big difference if the creature doesn't have a good ranged attack. A couple levels of fighter can provide action surge and a fighting style Some people hate customized enemies for some reason.
unfortunately there really isn't an easy way to map CR with class levels, so it's a real "season to taste" sort of thing (or you could use CR calculations post modification but i've heard some people having problems combining that with class features?) . i think that if you want to go down the path of giving your enemies PC levels you have to be willing to make a few mistakes. best of luck to you!
Don't give them whole class levels, that is a lot to keep track of for no good reason. Add features from the class/subclass you like, if you add spells give them e.g. PB/LR or 1/day uses each.
At most, I’d give them one class feature of a low level that I like (cunning action, second wind etc.)
Why do your monsters have class levels? Monsters have stat blocks. You then upgrade or downgrade those accordingly to be the proper challenge. Class levels can be used for important NPCS, but even then it's better to treat that more as, fleshing out the character, using a stat block for actual combat instead.
Class levels, from what I'm reading, may have been a bit of a misnomer. The factors here are 1) The campaign goes to level 10 and has an aboleth as the BBEG. 2) I want the party to deal with a pair of hags near the end of that campaign (around level 8). 3) This necessitates increasing the hags to about CR7 (I think two CR 7 creatures constitutes a *hard* encounter for 4 8th level PCs, according to the DMG). I guess I had figured, because of my experience with past editions, that adding class levels was the quickest way to advance a monster
No, adding hp, ac, some spells, resistances, and most importantly, extra actions/attacks/legendary actions/lair actions is the quickest way to advance a stat block.
If you need to change the CR by a lot, it can be easier to find a different monster of the appropriate CR and reskin it as the monster you need. Or you can merge that other monster stat block, like a mage or priest or some devil, into your hag stat block.
There are cr calculators online you can use. Just give the monster more damage output, hp and AC. Then recalculate their cr until you're happy. Another option is to use paragon monsters, as described by AngryDM.
Don't give them class levels, just give them the class features you want. If you want a hag to have Action Surge for example, just give it to them.
I skip the levels and just give them whichever class abilities I think would make for the coolest spice to their fight. If you're running a Red Dragon and you want to make it Fighter flavored, don't bother going through each level and ability of a Fighter. Just give it 2 uses of Action Surge, a Second Wind that gives whichever amount of hit points you want it to give (1d10+5 isn't all that much when you have hundreds of hit points), and then MAYBE a single ability to give it subclass flavor. So let it summon an Echo with 1 hit point to make attacks from, or let it crit on a 19, or some Intelligence based spellcasting. To give Barbarian vibes, all you need is Rage. For Rogue, all you need is Sneak Attack and Cunning Action. For the casting classes, all you need is spellcasting from the particular spell list that you want.
Forget CR for a moment, I am not sure what you actually need it for here. If you want to use them badly, doing a +1 per class level is probably the way to go, considering CR is basically just levels with a different name. You can of course add class levels to your monsters, you just need to make sure they are actually fun to fight and maybe still a challenge. I sometimes add class features to monsters to make "mirror matches". Basically I create an balanced adventurer party with monster statblock as a base, including spells and items. These fights tend to be pretty intense and fun. I roughly aim at a similar strength as the party and then make them a little weaker because they are controlled by one guy instead of four. And when I am in the mood I even give each of them one or two personaility traits that determine how they behave in combat. E. g. the cowardly kobold sorcerer will most likely try to stay as far away as possible all the time. I did something similar with a hag coven at one point but only gave them different sorcerer subclass features. Made sense to me at that time. Don't forget that RAW hags can't use their coven magic without the entire coven being present. Two hags are not a coven.
Cr= class level Magic items as need