D&D 3.5: You Must Be This Tall to Ride the Ride

[Ziegander]

I just would like to point out that stock values are often misleading. [Rest of post making the point that averages can sometimes give weird results]

Trust me, I know, I know. I just want to use the averages as a starting point for the conversation. Basically, I want to do the really easy work first, because I'm lazy. If that means ignoring dragons for the first run because they don't have completed statblocks, then that's what I'm going to do (we'll talk about whether I should when we get there). I think I said so earlier in the thread, but maybe I was unclear. Doing this "averages test" isn't going to establish any baseline, I know that.

Probably the most useful thing it will do is establish values that we can then compare the statistics of actual monsters of any given CR to. And we can compare the averages to some PC builds as well.

I did a test along similar lines to this once where I ran a party of Healbot, Sword & Board, Thief, and Blaster through a modified version of the Same Game Test to see how capable they actually were. I used what I considered to a party of "averagely optimized (for their concept anyway)" Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard for the challenge and I randomly rolled four encounters from the Level 10 SGT to represent an average day of adventuring for a 10th level party. I figured that the party would get decimated rather quickly, but I was surprised to find that they could pull somewhere around a 50% survival rate over the course of 10 days. Not ideal or optimal by any means, but I would say that such characters could "ride the ride."

However, that's got to be about as low as we can accept. 50% survival means that, on an average adventuring day a member of the party will die. And while that literally happens in real life games all the time, and the game can still go on, it's also a huge part of the reason that real life games never get played beyond a certain character level. After a while, 50% survival rate + cheap resurrection can only get PCs so far. Eventually, their wealth by level gets bled totally dry and PCs are dying in every battle rather than once per day. So maybe we can view 50% survival as the bare minimum, yes, okay, you can play the game at this rate, but it is going to be a bitter, often frustrating struggle. Hopefully you are playing with good friends and a great DM.

[ImperatorK]

When someone is too short for the ride I just lower the bar.

[Kajhera]

Using the SR: The average HP for CR 1 is 12, with the lowest outliers being Animated Object and Grig each with 2 HP (and also DR or hardness but not accounting for that yet), followed by the Nixie with 3 and the highest outlier being the troglodyte zombie with 29HP, followed by the mule and light warhorse with 22hp.

After pursuing this minor bit of effort I've concluded I need to write a program to sort out random data I enter rather than doing it myself. I mean, even finding the mean looks quite annoying, though just looking at things 9, 11 and 13 appear to be the most common HP values.

[Wiggins]

Does anyone do this practically?
Say you've never played a psion before, and you build one at level 9, what situations might you build to test him against solo?
Is it always the same creature/s for level 9, or for high tier level 9?

Have any of you got a list that you use for such tests? In which case that's a standard to work from right there

[Basket Burner]

13 is actually the average at level 1. And given that everything that's not a Whirling Frenzy Barb only has one attack and how HP damage works that means you need OHKOs to do anything. Not that level 1 matters in any case, as it's pure randomness, but that does illustrate the concept well.

[Lars]

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=3472.0 This might be a good place to start.  There was a post a while back that flight was expected by ECL5, the ability to deal with grapplers by ECL7, reach by such and such a point...just the trends.

I think this is important to consider. To often do i see dragons and other monsters that have an advantage give it up to the fact that the groups cant handle it. The most common being flying mobs landing. (yes i have done that as a gm myself and loads of other stupid shit) Even if i do this myself i dont think players benefits from it in the long run.

Is it possible to get a list compiled of what one would need as a group to be viable at every level?(couldnt find the thread)
and what do people think need go on to that list?
flying,etheral,grappeling etc...

And i think its better to list perhaps the top x of a CR instead of averages, would give more meaningful numbers for me atleast.
Just like in sports, you dont compare yourself against the average joe, you try to reach for the best ones.

[Ziegander]

13 is actually the average at level 1.

This much is true.

[Ziegander]

So here's the basic breakdown we need for each CR of stock, SRD monsters:

(click to show/hide)

Hit Points
Minimum Hit Points:
Average Hit Points:
Maximum Hit Points:

Initiative
Minimum Initiative:
Average Initiative:
Maximum Initiative:

Speed
Minimum Speed:
Average Speed:
Maximum Speed:

Armor Class
Minimum AC:
Average AC:
Maximum AC:

Melee Attacks
Minimum Melee Attack Bonus:
Average Melee Attack Bonus:
Maximum Melee Attack Bonus:

Minimum Melee Damage Per Round:
Average Melee Damage Per Round:
Maximum Melee Damage Per Round:

Ranged Attacks
Minimum Ranged Attack Bonus:
Average Ranged Attack Bonus:
Maximum Ranged Attack Bonus:

Minimum Ranged Damage Per Round:
Average Ranged Damage Per Round:
Maximum Ranged Damage Per Round:

Space/Reach
Minimum Space/Reach:
Average Space/Reach:
Maximum Space/Reach:

Saving Throws
Minimum Fortitude:
Average Fortitude:
Maximum Fortitude:

Minimum Reflex:
Average Reflex:
Maximum Reflex:

Minimum Will:
Average Will:
Maximum Will:

Ability Scores
Minimum Strength:
Average Strength:
Maximum Strength:

Minimum Dexterity:
Average Dexterity:
Maximum Dexterity:

Minimum Constitution:
Average Constitution:
Maximum Constitution:

Minimum Intelligence:
Average Intelligence:
Maximum Intelligence:

Minimum Wisdom:
Average Wisdom:
Maximum Wisdom:

Minimum Charisma:
Average Charisma:
Maximum Charisma:

Miscellaneous
Special Attacks:

Special Qualities:

Skills:

Feats:

It is indeed a somewhat staggering array of statistics required of each CR just to cobble together an average expectation for every CR, but all of the information is readily available. I'm actually pretty interested to see what the numbers look like for CR 1, especially in the % chance department that various special attacks, special qualities, and feats show up. CR 1 has 40 creatures to account for and average out, but that number will get smaller as the CR gets higher. It's probably also not a bad idea to do this for CR 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 as well.

[Basket Burner]

Hit Points
Minimum Hit Points:
Average Hit Points:
Maximum Hit Points:

Initiative
Minimum Initiative:
Average Initiative:
Maximum Initiative:

Melee Attacks
Minimum Melee Attack Bonus:
Average Melee Attack Bonus:
Maximum Melee Attack Bonus:

Minimum Melee Damage Per Round:
Average Melee Damage Per Round:
Maximum Melee Damage Per Round:

Ranged Attacks
Minimum Ranged Attack Bonus:
Average Ranged Attack Bonus:
Maximum Ranged Attack Bonus:

Minimum Ranged Damage Per Round:
Average Ranged Damage Per Round:
Maximum Ranged Damage Per Round:

Saving Throws
Minimum Fortitude:
Average Fortitude:
Maximum Fortitude:

Minimum Reflex:
Average Reflex:
Maximum Reflex:

Minimum Will:
Average Will:
Maximum Will:

I fixed that for you by removing the irrelevant statistics. Direct stats such as Str on enemies only matter in the sense of what effects they have on derivative abilities. Speed matters in so few situations so as to not be worth tracking, and in the scenarios it does matter an average of all enemies would be highly misleading. Either they're melee and faster than you, ranged and still faster than you, or their ability to move is irrelevant. The AC part is meaningless because you're going to get numbers all over the place. Some will have literally single digits, others (any monster with the intelligence and resources to buff) will have very high numbers. Between that, and beating enemies not being a primary factor of physical attacks vs AC anyways (they'll at least make touch attacks) trying to draw any form of conclusion from enemy AC is moot.

The melee and ranged sections are only relevant if you only count things based on those attack forms. No caster quarterstaff attacks dragging down melee averages, no Brutal Throwless brute Javelins dragging down ranged averages, etc.

Reach also only matters for melee creatures and space matters even less so I knocked that off.

[SneeR]

I would also be interested to know if monster followed the suggested stats for making monsters based off of player level and CR. You know, in the back of MM1? AFB right now, but those seemed pretty specific, but I recall most monsters didn't follow them. Are those suggested stats good enough to harm unoptimized PCs even at higher levels?

[Kajhera]

13 is actually the average at level 1.

This much is true.

Weird, I thought I only left out a lacedon from the SRD monsters, which distorts the final average by a grand amount of .02.

Ah well, this is why less fallible algorithms.

*defines function in Ruby, inputs numbers*

... Er, sorry guys, still coming out to be 12.0465. We're either using different numbers, talking about something other than the mean, or you did something about outliers. That, and I seem to have 3 listed monsters you don't, but notsure that makes as much a difference as you'd expect.

13 is the most common HP value, with 11 instances; followed by 11 with 9 instances and 9 with 8 instances. (Out of 43 HP values for CR 1 creatures in the SRD.)

CR 1 HP
Minimum: 2
Average: 12
Maximum: 29
Mode: 13
Median: 11 (skew: upward)
Population Standard Deviation: 5.25

CR 1 Initiative
Minimum: -5
Average: 1.6279
Maximum: 7
Mode: 2
Median: 2 (skew: downward)
Population Standard Deviation: 2.10

CR 1 Melee Attack Bonus
Minimum: -2
Average: 2.78
Maximum: 6
Mode: 2
Median: 3 (skew: downward)
Population standard deviation: 1.77
Incalculable (2): Shrieker and Spider Swarm (no attack, and no attack needed respectively)

CR 1 Ranged Attack Bonus
(out of 9/43 CR 1 monsters having a ranged attack)
Minimum: 0
Average: 2.11
Maximum: 6
Mode: 1
Median: 1 (Skew: Upward)
Population standard deviation: 1.79

(Forgive me forgetting how significant figures work by the way...)

[Basket Burner]

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

[Bozwevial]

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

Which, off the top of my head, draws on other Monster Manuals, yes? That's probably the reason for the confusion, Kajhera.

[Basket Burner]

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

Which, off the top of my head, draws on other Monster Manuals, yes? That's probably the reason for the confusion, Kajhera.

Actually, I think it's just core. Non core if anything would raise the numbers.

[Kajhera]

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

Which, off the top of my head, draws on other Monster Manuals, yes? That's probably the reason for the confusion, Kajhera.

Ah, yeah, that would do it. I'm doing SRD since that's what was requested.

...Just writing all the number lists is the hard/annoying part. Calculating things is easy. (obviously, hence why I added 3 unneeded statistics to everything I've grabbed, just because it's simpler and more fun than the whole writing numbers out thing.)

[Agita]

Optimization by the Numbers is core-only. Whether it's based on the SRD or on the Monster Manual I escapes me at the moment (off the top of my head, I believe it's actually both).

[Kajhera]

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

Which, off the top of my head, draws on other Monster Manuals, yes? That's probably the reason for the confusion, Kajhera.

Actually, I think it's just core. Non core if anything would raise the numbers.

Well, my HP average is lower than what you gave so it appears such happened. Possibly the MMI has a great number of high-HP CR 1 things that didn't make it into the SRD... 

[lans]

You sure you didn't just miss the troglodyte zombie? Edit- Actually theirs a lot more monsters in the cr 1 range than I remembered, so that wouldn't cover it.

[Ziegander]

Well, the minimum value of 2 you're using comes from the CR 1/2 animated object not the CR 1 animated object which has 15 hp.

[lans]

Actually 2 is for the grig

Who also seems to be the+6 ranged attack for 1 pt of damage. Should we exclude numbers like this or maybe make it so that damage is tied to each specific attack bonus, and/maybe number of attacks?

edit And unless I missed something its also the source for the+6 melee attack bonus for 1 pt of damage.

BB  has a point about including caster monsters attack and damage bonuses for these sort of lists. Granted its attack bonus seems to be 1 higher than anything else, 1 pt of damage with out any sort of rider is pretty much nothing, even against level 1 blind entangled creatures.