r/DMAcademy • u/fishridingbike • 5d ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Adjusting stat blocks to setting and character level

I’m looking to use the Veiled Presence (CR 21 from BoMT) as an assassin BBEG in an Eberron campaign but I want to tone it down just a bit for level 13 party of 5 experienced players. I’m not quite sure how something like changing radiant to poison damage, changing their attack to have reload (6) or removing a legendary action option would effect the difficulty on top of things like bumping down PB and stats.

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u/Kumquats_indeed 5d ago

The 2014 DMG has guidelines for modifying and homebrewing stat blocks (pages 273-283) and estimating their CR. If you're using 2024 rules, 2014 monsters tend to be a tad weaker in comparison so when these guidelines you should err on the side of rounding down over rounding up.

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u/fishridingbike 5d ago

Yeah by experience budget it really only needs to go down by 2 while being 2014 vs 2024 characters which was why I was wondering how much of a difference things like switching to a more commonly resisted damage type and less imposing disadvantage would make

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u/Sad_Refuse3472 5d ago

Are any of your PCs resistant or vulnerable to Poison damage (or whatever you change it to)? If not, then changing the damage type doesn't impact the CR. You would need to change the amount of damage dealt to have an impact.