Not in the Core Rulebook

Monster Point Buy

Monster Point Buy, submitted for your approval.
Voivode Presents – A Solution to a Problem You Probably Don’t Have! Art courtesy of @RuckeySquad

For as long as I’ve been creating NPCs for D&D 5e, I’ve really struggled with assigning stats. A lot of the time I would modify the stats of an existing creatures to make sure I kept them consistent with published materials. That made me feel like maybe I was just reskinning existing creatures more than I was making up new content. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that what would be great is a monster point-buy system for NPCs like the one that exists for PCs.

So, I scraped some data together, did some calculations and came up with just that: A table that assigns a point value to all possible Ability score values, and an average amount of points for an NPC at a given CR.

Using the Tables Below

When creating an NPC:

  1. First, Determine the appropriate CR for you monster.
  2. Then, use the first table below determine the “Point Buy Budget” for your creature. The budget is the average buget your creature should have. Often celestials have significantly higher stats, while undead significantly lower stats, particularly, intelligence and charisma.
  3. After that, use the second table, “Point Cost for Ability Score”, select the ability scores for your creature. Total the points and compare to the budget for the CR you selected. Adjust scores accordingly.
  4. Note that only Strength and Constitution ability scores will affect the CR calculations as you proceed with creating your NPC.
  5. With those scores determined, you can proceed with the rest of NPC creation as outlined in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide on pages 273-283.

Monster Point Buy – Recommend Point Budget by CR

Challenge Rating (CR)Point Buy Budget
30197
29190
28123
27173
26157
25147
24142
23137
22131
21123
20121
19113
1895
1793
1680
1575
1473
1370
1267
1165
1054
950
845
744
640
537
432
330
225
116
0.513
0.2513
0.1252

Monster Point Buy – Point Cost for Ability Score

Ability ScoreModifierPoint Cost
1-5-7
2-4-6
3-4-5
4-3-4
5-3-3
6-2-2
7-2-1
8-10
9-11
1002
1103
1214
1315
1427
1529
16311
17313
18415
19417
20519
21521
22623
23625
24728
25731
26834
27837
28940
29943
301046

All done with this article? Why not check out some of my nuisance monsters, or you can see some of my favorite published monsters.

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