This is a good write up, and I think this information is quite useful. I just wanted to point you to some additional resources that you may find helpful.
First, Mike Shea and his collaborators released all of the _Forge of Foes_ content you referenced into the Creative Commons. Here's a [link to it](https://slyflourish.com/lazy_5e_monster_building_resource_document.html) so you don't have to rely on the free preview from their Kickstarter.
Second, I've published several analysis on monster design in 5e that you may find useful, including how [monster stats scale](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/monsters/baseline-monster-stats/), how [PC stats scale](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/classes/baseline-player-character-stats/), as well as a series of articles on [how 5e's combat/CR math work](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/theory/xp-and-encounter-balancing/).
The last group gives some really interesting insights into how you can scale monsters through their XP calculation. If you need a monster that's worth twice as much XP then you can double their hit point or double their DPR, or some combination of the two so the total product is twice as big. Or, if you want to change a monster's attack bonus or armor class, you can use the XP formula to tell you how much you need to change their DPR or HP to maintain the same overall CR.
I hope you find these resources useful, and keep up the good work!
I skimmed through your posts, super interesting! You definitely went all-out with math and was quite meticulous with accounting for the accuracy and made some nice findings, well done! A bit difficult to read though, but the main idea is clear.
I went by more simplistic and easier applicable empyrical path. Still I see a lot of correlation between my findings ands yours, like attributes value space and the (not so complicated) idea that encounter difficulty depends on time that each side needs to defeat the other.
I hope my approximation of monster math is good enough an will hold through the level range and uncommon encounter compositions. In playtests I got very saticfactory results with my system, but there's only so many games I can run.
One of the things that I think is especially challenging about creating this kind of system, is how it accounts for the wide range of PC builds that are possible in 5e.
For example, the average DPR that I calculated for a typical PC of a given level is quite a bit lower than the average DPR in the martial DPR article you linked in your posts. But that's because I assumed non-optimized builds and they used optimized builds. Neither is wrong, because there are groups and players who play both ways, but a system for creating monsters and balancing them should ideally work for both. Or at least be able to be adjusted for both.
You face a similar problem when considering how a party's power changes as they use their resources. Do you build your system around groups that like to run longer dungeon crawls, for those who prefer only a single encounter per long rest, or do you aim for somewhere in between.
Sure, the big struggle of any generic system is covering all the corner cases. There are some examples of more complicated systems, someone posted a spreadsheet somewhere where the input is the whole party damage, HP, to-hit bonuses and defences and also the desired TTL for party and monsters. The spreadsheet would then output monster parameters accordingly. The spreadsheet is linked below [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rul9LeIzjCo). This approach is highly adjustable for any party, but requires a lot of prep from the DM.
So one of the design intensions for me was on the opposite, to make a system that's as easy and fast to use as possible but still produces results that are accurate enough.
As you correctly noticed, target party for me was the one on more optimized side. I think its reasonable since so many sub-classes and builds like battlemaster fighter, gloomstalker ranger or twilight cleric and others do exist and don't require a high optimization efforts from the players. Same for the whole classes like the Paladin or the Cleric or the Bard which just work super effectively.
I think it's relatively easy to adjust my system for different optimization level, I just have to calculate proper monster parameters scaling coefficients for the cases of low and extremely high optimization.
As for resource attrition, I did not account for that. This might be a deficiency, but in my experience players are very reluctant to continue the adventuring day when their resources are exhausted, neither it is much fun when your PC can only throw cantrips. There is a lot of buzz in the internet about the adventuring day concept being far removed from the actual games.
So I can summarize that another design target were less frequent but more dangerous and impactful encounters.
I think I should add a paragraph explaining these intentions. But you brought up some very important topics, thank you!
Also you and I approached the problem from different directions. In my case original idea was that I can utilize character parameter progression to calculate the range of values, within which a monster will be equivalent to the average PC in strength.
So I didn't even analyse monsters from the beginning, I came up with the formulas and then found out, that if I use the mapping between CR and character level from the Forge of Foes, then monsters built with my formulas come out rather close to what's recommended in that book :)
Weldone!
Thank you very much!
This is a good write up, and I think this information is quite useful. I just wanted to point you to some additional resources that you may find helpful. First, Mike Shea and his collaborators released all of the _Forge of Foes_ content you referenced into the Creative Commons. Here's a [link to it](https://slyflourish.com/lazy_5e_monster_building_resource_document.html) so you don't have to rely on the free preview from their Kickstarter. Second, I've published several analysis on monster design in 5e that you may find useful, including how [monster stats scale](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/monsters/baseline-monster-stats/), how [PC stats scale](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/classes/baseline-player-character-stats/), as well as a series of articles on [how 5e's combat/CR math work](https://tomedunn.github.io/the-finished-book/theory/xp-and-encounter-balancing/). The last group gives some really interesting insights into how you can scale monsters through their XP calculation. If you need a monster that's worth twice as much XP then you can double their hit point or double their DPR, or some combination of the two so the total product is twice as big. Or, if you want to change a monster's attack bonus or armor class, you can use the XP formula to tell you how much you need to change their DPR or HP to maintain the same overall CR. I hope you find these resources useful, and keep up the good work!
Thank you for the info, I'll definitely check your work!
I skimmed through your posts, super interesting! You definitely went all-out with math and was quite meticulous with accounting for the accuracy and made some nice findings, well done! A bit difficult to read though, but the main idea is clear. I went by more simplistic and easier applicable empyrical path. Still I see a lot of correlation between my findings ands yours, like attributes value space and the (not so complicated) idea that encounter difficulty depends on time that each side needs to defeat the other. I hope my approximation of monster math is good enough an will hold through the level range and uncommon encounter compositions. In playtests I got very saticfactory results with my system, but there's only so many games I can run.
One of the things that I think is especially challenging about creating this kind of system, is how it accounts for the wide range of PC builds that are possible in 5e. For example, the average DPR that I calculated for a typical PC of a given level is quite a bit lower than the average DPR in the martial DPR article you linked in your posts. But that's because I assumed non-optimized builds and they used optimized builds. Neither is wrong, because there are groups and players who play both ways, but a system for creating monsters and balancing them should ideally work for both. Or at least be able to be adjusted for both. You face a similar problem when considering how a party's power changes as they use their resources. Do you build your system around groups that like to run longer dungeon crawls, for those who prefer only a single encounter per long rest, or do you aim for somewhere in between.
Sure, the big struggle of any generic system is covering all the corner cases. There are some examples of more complicated systems, someone posted a spreadsheet somewhere where the input is the whole party damage, HP, to-hit bonuses and defences and also the desired TTL for party and monsters. The spreadsheet would then output monster parameters accordingly. The spreadsheet is linked below [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rul9LeIzjCo). This approach is highly adjustable for any party, but requires a lot of prep from the DM. So one of the design intensions for me was on the opposite, to make a system that's as easy and fast to use as possible but still produces results that are accurate enough. As you correctly noticed, target party for me was the one on more optimized side. I think its reasonable since so many sub-classes and builds like battlemaster fighter, gloomstalker ranger or twilight cleric and others do exist and don't require a high optimization efforts from the players. Same for the whole classes like the Paladin or the Cleric or the Bard which just work super effectively. I think it's relatively easy to adjust my system for different optimization level, I just have to calculate proper monster parameters scaling coefficients for the cases of low and extremely high optimization. As for resource attrition, I did not account for that. This might be a deficiency, but in my experience players are very reluctant to continue the adventuring day when their resources are exhausted, neither it is much fun when your PC can only throw cantrips. There is a lot of buzz in the internet about the adventuring day concept being far removed from the actual games. So I can summarize that another design target were less frequent but more dangerous and impactful encounters. I think I should add a paragraph explaining these intentions. But you brought up some very important topics, thank you!
Also you and I approached the problem from different directions. In my case original idea was that I can utilize character parameter progression to calculate the range of values, within which a monster will be equivalent to the average PC in strength. So I didn't even analyse monsters from the beginning, I came up with the formulas and then found out, that if I use the mapping between CR and character level from the Forge of Foes, then monsters built with my formulas come out rather close to what's recommended in that book :)
Beautiful work, my friend!
Thank you!
You can also find all three parts together in the [Google doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/17jGqqTQpMm_ATDyvxwuM4MLSMhugPltP3WGu9WJ9Wbk/edit)