Intelligent creatures that are reasonably humanoid in shape most commonly advance by adding class levels. Creatures that fall into this category have an entry of “By character class” in their Advancement line. When a monster adds a class level, that level usually represents an increase in experience and learned skills and capabilities.
What happens when you increase a monster’s CR?
As you are increasing the CR of the creature its proficiency bonus will also increase. For a creature between CR5 and CR9 this will be a +3. Don’t use the War Chief and just make a npc based on half-orc racial abilities (Player’s Handbook) reskined as a full orc or the Orc racial traits from Volo’s Guide to Monsters.
How does the ability score increase for monsters?
Ability Score Improvement Treat monster Hit Dice the same as character level for determining ability score increases. This only applies to Hit Dice increases, monsters do not gain ability score increases for levels they “already reached” with their racial Hit Dice, since these adjustments are included in their basic ability scores.
What’s the best way to improve a monster?
Monsters who improve by adding a template, and monsters who improve by increasing their Hit Dice, may use any of the three arrays (standard, nonelite, or elite). Any monster unique enough to be improved could easily be considered elite. The elite array is: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.
When do you make a level adjustment on a creature?
If the level adjustment is greater than +1, this process repeats until the creature’s level adjustment reaches +0. Each time, use the creature’s current level adjustment to determine the point at which the level adjustment can go down by 1.
When does a character’s level adjustment go down?
Once the total of a character’s class levels (not including any Hit Dice from his creature type or his level adjustment) reaches three times his level adjustment, his level adjustment is eligible to be decreased by 1. For instance, a gnoll’s level adjustment is +1.
