How has the power of each monster changed between OD&D and 5e? Which monsters are much harder to defeat now, and which much less of a threat? Aside from historic curiosity, if you are looking to use classic adventures that have not been remade officially into a 5e version with 5e, this can be important: if you just plug in the same named monster from 5e, this might make the adventure massively easier or harder.
You can look at the article on the OD&D monsters, to see the most deadly monsters in OD&D.
In the 5e monster manual, deadliness is supposedly availbale directly from the game system, as the challenge rating provides a measure for it. And CR supposedly would also indicate the number of EHD that the party needs.
The most powerful monsters by CR in the 5e Monster Manual are
- 30 tarrasque
- 24 ancient red or gold dragon
- 23 ancient blue or silver dragon, titan (called "empyrean"), kraken
- 22 anienct green or bronze dragon
- 21 ancient black or copper dragon, lich, solar
- 20 ancient white or brass dragon
- 19 balrog (called "balor")
This is followed by adult dragons, angels, greater devils and demons, greater undead and genies that displace golems, elementals, and basilisk. Other strong monsters like purple worm, beholder, rakshahsa, storm giant, archmage, or roc remain.
Additonal monster books and modules add more very high CR ones, archdevils and demon lords in the 20-30 range, but they are unique creatures, tend to not match OD&D (with exceptions Orcus and Demogorgon) and will not be covered here.
The new world order
If you are just interested in the relative gains and losses, you can rank the monsters by EHD and CR, and see if the monster by CR is far above or far below it's former rank.
There is quite a bit of slack, as the order of monsters within a CR for 5e is random (alphabetical). In particular, there are 24 CR 5 monsters, 17 of CR 2 or 3, more than 10 of the other CRs down to 1/8. So for monsters of those CRs, the ranking may be off by nearly that much. However, for monsters of CR 6 there are only 5, and no higher CR has more than 4, so the high CRs are accurate within 3 spots. I put the monsters for which no EHD could be determined on top of the EHD rankings (wrong for rust monster, lamassu, ochre jelly, green slime, yellow mold and triton), which means that the higest EHD ranked ones in OD&D look like they lost at least 7 spots, even if they did not budge.
Furthermore, challenge ratings are a very inaccurate way to measure monster strength. For example, a CR 5 stone elemental is in power more comparable to some CR 9 creatures. Speculating on order by challenge rating is maybe of interest when it comes to intent of the designers, but does not tell us how the monster power really changed.
Here is the list (see the post on real monster evolution for mapping between OD&D and 5e):
The flop 10 monsters have in common that they often had deadly special attacks like petrification, poison, or paralyzation that have been nerfed.
The top 10 strengthened monsters were quite a surprise to me, from the djinni gaining most, to the doppelganger, berserker, giant boar and were-creatures. Why did the wight gain so much (even after CR bracket fluctuation up at least 20 ranks)?
I likewise was surprised to see the medusa, gorgon, hydra, and wyvern not losing or even gaining ranks. All of them used to be quite deadly due multiattacks, petrification and poison, and in 5e they are no high-end threats at CR 5-6.
Are these rankings correct, or are these artifacts due to CR brackets and inexact CR assignment? We will take a look in another article on how deadly they really are.
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