In our last post, which can be found here, we covered the final steps of fleshing out our villain’s personality. Now that we have a background and personality for our villain, we can take the final steps in our villain creation – creating our villain’s stats!

Creating Our Villain’s Stats

In order to create our villain, we have a few steps that we follow while creating the stats and abilities of our villain. This should be a rather fun process, so without further ado let’s begin!

Villain name

According to the steps laid out in the 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, our very first step is to determine a name. We’ve already created a backstory, including the name, so this a very simple step for us. His name is going to be Dworic Battlehammer!

Villain size

Our second step in this process is going to be to determine the villain’s size. If we were creating a monster, we would simple choose one of the following sizes, which is also used to determine hit die in a later step:

Tiny

Small

Medium

Large

Huge

Gargantuan

From what we already know of our villain, our size is going to be a medium creature. This is due to being a dwarf, which makes this step another easy one for us!

Villain type

The 5th edition Monster Manual lists 14 different types of monsters to choose from. Monsters can have multiple types, depending on the concept you are going for. Be sure to choose the types that best fit the concept of your monster. For us however, the monster type of our villain is pre-determined as we are using a dwarf character. That is going to make our monster a humaniod type. We will not add a second type, as we’ve already determined that our villain is a simple mind-controlled dwarf.

Villain alignment

Assigning an alignment to our villain is one of the most important aspects of creation. It helps dictate and explain their actions. In the creation of our backstory for our villain, we gave our villain a Chaotic Neutral alignment which is quite fitting for the actions he is taking. While there are other options available that are equally explainable, the chaotic neutral alignment for our villain can allow for behavioral change based on the Adventurer’s actions.

Ability scores and modifiers

The ability scores and their respective modifiers are the heart of our villain. In keeping with our trend of random creation, I decided to stat our villain using the 4d6 drop the lowest method for score generation. While creating a monster, this is ill advised, I found it rather fitting that we use this method as our villain is a misguided adventurer instead of a monster. Below are the rolls and results I received:

2,6,1,2 -> 6+2+2 = 10

6,5,2,4 -> 6+5+4 = 15

4,5,2,3 -> 5+4+3 = 12

3,4,1,6 -> 6+4+3 = 13

2,2,5,6 -> 6+5+2 = 13

4,1,1,4 -> 4+4+1 = 9

I must say, those stats are not too bad! Now that we have the results, I am going to assign them and apply racial modifiers just like we would for a regular adventurer during character creation! The first thing we need to do, before finalizing his ability scores, is decide on what class we are going to make our villain. I see our villain as a caster, who uses the spell disguise self in an attempt to hide his true identity when out causing chaos. This limits us to the following classes – bard, sorcerer, and wizard. This is a tough decision, but let’s decide on creating a sorcerer. The reasoning is partially based on the background we built, and partially because I really enjoy sorcerers. With that decided, the final stats are below:

Strength: 13 -> +1

Dexterity: 12 -> +1

Constitution: 15 (13+2) -> +2

Intelligence: 10 -> +0

Wisdom: 10 (9+1) -> +0

Charisma: 15 -> +2

Expected challenge rating

This step is a bit tricky, as it will determine how we move forward. The challenge rating (CR) is crucial as it will determine how easy or hard the encounter should be for your adventurers. Keeping in mind that our expected party is a group of 4 level characters, we will make this villain a CR 2. This is technically a deadly encounter for that group, however action economy is important to keep in mind. Balance can happen from testing encounters, later on in the creation process or from the DM adjusting the playstyle of the villain if it ends up too strong. Hopefully that doesn’t end up being the case, but it is something we must keep in mind.

Based on the chart provided in the DMG for expected CR, we have the following base information. Keep in mind while we are going through this process, if your values don’t align exactly with the expected CR values it is OK. These are targets but other factors will affect the final CR rating of our villain.

Proficiency Bonus – +2

Armor (AC) – 13

Hit Points (HP) – 86-100

Attack bonus – +3

Damage/Round – 15-20

Save DC – 13

Armor class (AC)

Now that we have an expected CR picked out for our villain, we can start customizing the base stats from above! We are playing a dwarf sorcerer, so by default we wear no armor. Being a sorcerer though, we do have the ability to choose the Mage Armor spell if we wish. We need to have a fair amount of AC, so we will allow our villain to cast Mage Armor at will. This will give our villain a 14 AC.

Hit points

Hit points are vital to everyone, and does take some thought to figure out. We know that our villain moderate AC, so to compensate we are going to give him a decent amount of HP. We have a two options in front of us – use the medium monster hit die of d8, or use the sorcerer’s hit die of d6. I am going to choose the d8, as we want to beef up our villain a bit.

The expected HP of a CR 2 monster is 86-100, which would equate to roughly 12 hit die factoring in our CON bonus! We aren’t going to beef out villain up THAT much, but we are going to assign him a healthy 9d8 hit die. So his hit points end up being an average of 59 HP. This may end up being too much, but we can always adjust as needed a little later!

Damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities

Now that we have some HP calculated for our villain, let’s work on vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities! We are simply going to give our villain the Dwarven Resilience trait, which will grant him resistance to poison as well as advantage on saving throws against poison. If we were to grant two more resistances and/or immunities to damage types, we would be forced to calculate an effective hit point number. Thankfully, with only poison resistance, we can ignore this step.

Attack bonuses

We know that our villain is a sorcerer, so the attack bonuses we are calculating are going to be based on spell attacks. If we were a melee monster, we would calculate their melee attack bonus. I will include the melee attack bonus, as you never know what will happen, but that will not be used to calculate the final CR of our villain. Based on the proficiency bonus + our casting stat (Charisma), we have an attack bonus of +4, which is a pretty modest attack bonus, with a melee attack bonus of +3.

Damage per round

Determining damage for our sorcerer is going to be a bit of a tricky endeavor. We know that we will be dealing spell damage for the most part, but we must also factor in some melee damage just in case. Just like any other player, our villain will only be able to perform a single spell attack OR a single melee attack. He is going to be considered a second level caster, giving him 3 level 1 spell slots to utilize. I imagine our villain using chromatic orb and firebolt for our main attacks, while if it comes down to melee he will use a warhammer. Since our damage output can vary round by round, we are going to determine the average damage over 3 rounds. We can likely use Firebolt twice, while chromatic orb once in the first 3 rounds – this works out to be (13.5+5.5+5.5)/3 for a total of 8 damage/round, when compared to the normal output from his quarterstaff of 6 damage/round. So it seems either option is going to be viable for our villain!

Save DC

This step is going to be pretty straight forward. If we were to calculate the spell save DC as normal, we would have a DC 12 save. Let’s give him a little better chance and increase that save DC to a DC 14.

Special traits, actions and ractions

This step will be another short one. We aren’t going to grant any special actions or reactions to our villain. We are going to give him the spell casting trait, with 3 level one spell slots to use. We are going to have Sleep, Chromatic Orb, Mage Armor, and Firebolt as his only spells for simplicity. Mage Armor can be cast at will, while the other level 1 spells require spell slots to be available None of these will do more damage than his melee attack, so there is no end effect on his final CR rating.

Speed

For this step we are going to follow the base calculations to determine speed just like we would for player characters. We have a dwarf, which makes our speed 25 feet a round. Not the fastest, but with short legs you can’t really expect too much!

Saving throw bonuses

Once again this step is we are simply going to follow the calculations we would use for any player character. With a proficiency bonus of +2, and proficiency in Constitution and Charisma save, we end up with the following saving throw bonuses:

STR – +1

DEX – +1

CON – +4

INT – +0

WIS – +0

CHA – +4

Final challenge rating

This is the final step in creating our villain’s stats! There are a couple things in here that we have to consider to determine the final CR – Defensive CR and Offensive CR.

Defensive challenge rating

We calculate the defensive challenge rating by determining the CR that our health points fall into, as well as our armor class CR range. To start, our average HP is 59, which lands our CR in the 1/2 CR rating. Our armor class, which is 14, is slightly higher than the 1/2 CR but not enough to raise the CR.

Offensive challenge rating

We calculate the offensive challenge rating by determining the CR that our damage per round, damage bonus, and save DC. Our attack per round damage, using the spell damage as it’s higher, is 8 damage/round. This places us solidly in the 1/2 CR rating. Looking at the expected damage bonus for a 1/2 CR creature, our +4 bonus is not enough to raise the CR rating. Our save DC, which is 14, is also not enough to raise our CR above the 1/2 CR we’ve been working with already.

Final challenge rating

Now that we have the defensive and offensive challenge rating for our villain, we can get our final CR rating! We have a defensive CR of 1/2, and an offensive CR of 1/2. When we get the average of the two CRs, we end up with a final CR of 1/2!

Final thoughts and stat block

We’ve finished creating out villain’s stats! While we didn’t achieve the CR 2 rating we were aiming for, we can now pair this villain with some minions for an epic final battle! I’ve compiled the final stats into a monster stat block, as well as added some minor related skills, for easy reference for later! Thanks for reading, and until next time may your dice roll well.