While the DMG graph is arbitrary and inaccurate, actual monster design shows signs of being very carefully put together.Ī note about CRs below 1: These complicate things. So tidy! It’s almost as if the designers designed it that way! Hint: I think they did. (For comparison, the red line is a plot of the Dungeon Master’s Guide suggested attack bonuses.)Īs you can see, the scatter plot shows us a nice, straight, easily graphable best-fit line.

Here’s a scatter plot of the attack bonuses of all the Monster Manual and Mordenkainen’s monsters. Therefore, we can examine each monster stat separately without having to consider the others at the same time. For instance, you might expect that a monster whose AC is high for its Challenge Rating should have lower hit points, attack bonus, or damage output to compensate. If you prefer everything calculated out, here’s a one-page version with more explanation and an exampleįirst of all, to reiterate what I learned in previous posts:ġ) real monsters have fewer hit points and do less damage than those created by the DMG chart, and are more accurateĢ) there is no significant correlation between any major monster stat (HP, AC, attack bonus) and any other stat. Here’s the finished business card! The rest of this post will explain how we came up with it.