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### Building the better monster - Monster Difficulty

Difficulty is one of the hardest things to balance in the game of NWN. Challenge ratings are supposedly based upon a party of 4-6 attacking that creature, and how many HD, on average, should be able to defeat it.

It gets slightly unbalanced though - creature hides, by value, boost the CR so much, the CR can go over the HD by a lot.

But don't rely upon the Bioware calculated CR. Think about how many classes there are - imagine what levels as well. Mages at low levels get killed by goblins, under thier HD, but in a timestop, can defeat powerful dragons much over thier HD.

This means, you must always test the difficulty. Do they have the required Base Attack Bonus to even touch you? Do they get killed instantly by mages just because of one spell? Do they Crush you in a couple of hits? If so, either test it with higher/lower levels, or try and make it easier/harder.

A good selection of feats, spells, and weapons makes a decent monster. Giving a mage 3 fireballs and no elemental protections, means toast for everyone. Perhaps giving some Fire elementals some fireballs will work better.

Giants and Dragons might utilise knockdown for greatly improved attack bonuses with them. Some elementals may have an improved critical for thier creature weapon, while some may have specific weapon feats.

If you want creatures to be worse, especially if the PCs have low HP, remember there are slings, daggers, and shortswords, that all do lower damage. A halberd that may kill them in one hit is not a good idea, for the monster to get one lucky hit and strike down the PC, unless you are mean :-)

Lastly variety is a key to difficulty. It is easy to run though a dungeon if it is all similar monsters. Use mages, or monsters with abilities, with fighters and archers, along with some healers, makes it a lot harder.