How I convert a monster.

When I first pull up a monster that I want to convert, I think about its fantasy. What is the background and environment of this type of creature? What are the creature’s goals and feelings? Where does this monster live? All of these and more help me start to get into the head of the monster. And sometimes… I just cheat and go look at the official 5e lore and start there, because there’s a lot of good material in it.

Much of that fantasy ends up in the adversary’s motives and Experiences: the aboleth schemes, consumes, and expands its knowledge, while the cockatrice’s Sneaky +2 and the ankheg’s Tremor Sense +2 come straight from how each one hunts. But ultimately, however I get there, knowing not just what the monster is but who it is and how it acts helps me decide where to take the rest of its conversion.

In general, I see the two games’ power curves lining up something like this:

Daggerheart tier	Daggerheart levels	Rough 5e levels	Rough CR
Tier 1	1	1–3	1–4
Tier 2	2–4	4–8	5–10
Tier 3	5–7	9–15	11–16
Tier 4	8–10	16–20	17+

I based this on keeping a single monster, usually a Solo, at either end of a tier’s CR range somewhere between a moderate and a hard 5e encounter. This helps keep things interesting and ideally allows for a wide variety of monsters in each tier. This is, of course, a guideline; some 5e monsters hit well above their CR because of what they can do.

For example, the aboleth is CR 10, but I put it in Tier 3 instead. This is because it has Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions, which in Daggerheart become extra Hit Points and Relentless, more than a Tier 2 Solo has room for. That, plus the healing from Consume Memories, makes it a formidable opponent. Pulling it down to a strong, even very strong, Tier 2 enemy just wouldn’t do it justice from a fantasy or power perspective. I could have just as easily pushed it to Tier 4 so it could be the true BBEG of a campaign, but the cephilith titan already fills that role. So keeping it close to its power level at Tier 3 feels right. A lot of where an adversary ends up comes down to how it feels. Most of that gut check comes from having played TTRPGs as both a GM and a player for so many years.

You may have noticed that Tier 1 starts at CR 1 in the table above. That’s because I handle very low-CR monsters differently: CR 1/2 and lower monsters are ideal as either Minions or Hordes, so that’s usually what I convert them into. Since they keep their own abilities on top of the standard Minion or Horde features, they can be a lot more powerful than a typical Minion or Horde. That makes choosing their tier tricky; it ultimately comes down to how you tune those few abilities and the fantasy of the creature.

Like choosing the tier for a monster, there isn’t a strict way to map a creature to an adversary type. Sometimes more than one fits, and I go with whichever fits the fantasy in my head best.

The adversary types are described like this in the SRD:

• Bruisers: tough, deliver powerful attacks.
• Hordes: groups of identical creatures acting together as a single unit.
• Leaders: command and summon other adversaries.
• Minions: easily dispatched but dangerous in numbers.
• Ranged: fragile in close encounters but deal high damage at range.
• Skulks: maneuver and exploit opportunities to ambush opponents.
• Socials: present challenges around conversation instead of combat.
• Solos: present a formidable challenge to a whole party, with or without support.
• Standards: representative of their fictional group.
• Supports: enhance their allies and disrupt their opponents.

With those descriptions in mind, it’s often much easier to decide what a creature should be. If a creature is already similar to something in Daggerheart, I go with a different type that still makes sense. For example, the ankheg could easily have been a Solo with a few more buffs, but it’s a Bruiser instead. That’s because the acid burrower already exists as a Solo and was likely inspired by the ankheg. To set them apart and make both useful, the ankheg became a Bruiser: still powerful and formidable, but not the centerpiece of an encounter the way a Solo is.

Once I have a tier, I can jump to the Adversary Stat Block Benchmarks. They map the attack modifier, damage dice range, difficulty, and damage thresholds of an average adversary in each tier. This gives me a solid starting point and a range to work within.

Adversary Statistic	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4
Attack Modifier	+1	+2	+3	+4
Damage Dice	1d6+2 to 1d12+4	2d6+3 to 2d12+4	3d8+3 to 3d12+5	4d8+10 to 4d12+15
Difficulty	11	14	17	20
Damage Thresholds	Major 7 / Severe 12	Major 10 / Severe 20	Major 20 / Severe 32	Major 25 / Severe 45

I then think about the type and how it affects the damage dice, the difficulty, and the damage thresholds. For Solos and Bruisers, this means moving toward the top of the range, or just above it. A Standard adversary lands in the middle of the curve. A Skulk usually ends up a bit higher on damage and lower on survivability. The same goes for every other type, depending on the creature’s role and goals.

Going low

The cockatrice is a fragile Skulk, so it stays at the low end of the Tier 1 benchmarks, with its major threshold dropped by 1. The danger it brings is in its features and its hit-and-run tactics to protect itself.

Going high

The aboleth is a Solo, so it sits at the top of Tier 3, with a few extra Hit Points to stand in for Legendary Resistance. This helps make it the fearsome opponent it should be.

This is where things get even trickier. Tuning the numbers is one thing, but converting features that define a creature’s identity and usefulness is harder. For simple damage-dealing abilities, it’s mostly a matter of comparing against other adversaries of the same type and tier to get a sense of how much damage they should deal. For abilities with other effects, I usually need to pick a trait for a reaction roll.

I don’t have a fixed rule for which trait to use, but here’s my rough guide:

• Agility: when being quick can save you.
• Strength: when being strong will help you overcome.
• Finesse: when you need to remain in control.
• Instinct: when you need to stay grounded with what you know.
• Presence: when it has to do with social interactions.
• Knowledge: when it comes to applying the mind or remembering things.

These overlap, and the line isn’t always clear, so I do my best to pick the trait that fits best.

For effects that put conditions on a target, I do my best to keep it simple while staying true to the 5e stat block. Thankfully, Daggerheart helps a lot here, since many effects boil down to just the Restrained or Vulnerable conditions. This simplicity even extends to damage: Daggerheart only has physical and magic damage, so 5e’s many damage types collapse into one or the other. Something natural, like the ankheg’s acid, stays physical, while something supernatural, like the aboleth’s psychic attacks, becomes magic.

What about the difficulty of each feature? Well, going with the default difficulty is always a good choice, but sometimes things deserve adjustment. If a creature already has a lot of powerful abilities, lowering the difficulty on something goes toward helping PCs feel heroic. At the same time, sometimes an ability is iconic enough that it should be scary and have real consequences, so upping the difficulty there can make sense. What I find myself doing most often, though, is looking at where the check’s difficulty lands on 5e’s curve, then placing the feature at about the same spot on Daggerheart’s curve. The cockatrice’s Petrifying Bite has a DC 11 save, just above the standard difficulty of 10. So I mapped it to 12, roughly the middle of the 2d12 curve, preserving that same level of difficulty.

The range of a feature often maps naturally onto Daggerheart’s ranges. This can result in things being slightly larger or smaller, but usually the range an ability falls into is the correct one. For example, the aboleth has a 15-foot reach in 5e, which naturally maps to Close range in Daggerheart. This buffs its range a bit, but it also fits the fantasy of a tentacled monstrosity figuratively getting its fingers into everything with its plots.

The final major consideration for a feature is its cost. If something is very powerful, it should cost resources. If something should only be used a limited number of times during an encounter, then using Stress or Fear makes sense. Stress is generally harder for adversaries to recover, so I like to use it for really big abilities. If something is iconic and powerful, I like to use Fear; this lets it be used as much as the GM can afford without being overly punishing. When a feature is incredibly powerful, I’ll limit it to once per GM turn to prevent snowball effects when the creature has Relentless.

Because of how action economy works in 5e, larger monsters often have Multiattack, Legendary Actions, and Legendary Resistance. These all play a crucial role in enabling the GM to make the monsters threatening to the PCs, particularly at higher levels where PCs have tremendous power and damage-dealing capabilities.

To offset this, Daggerheart gives the GM a turn whenever a PC fails an action roll or rolls with Fear. This lets the adversaries under the GM’s control act more frequently and naturally than just once per round of initiative. This removes much of the need for Multiattack and Legendary Actions. For the dangerous moments that still call for more, the game has the Relentless feature, which lets an adversary act multiple times by spending more Fear from the GM’s pool. Particularly powerful enemies even get Momentum to keep them from running out of Fear. Spending Fear to raise the stakes and build tension is a big part of what makes Daggerheart interesting.

Because there’s no Legendary Resistance, creatures can simply be given more Hit Points as that buffer. Since you can only mark 1–3 Hit Points on a creature at a time (or 4 with the optional massive damage rule), each point goes further. In the worst case for the PCs, a creature with 5 Hit Points survives 5 hits. So a few extra Hit Points add a lot of staying power. The system’s simplicity means you just don’t need Legendary Resistance. It also helps that, compared to 5e’s saving throws, far fewer abilities call for Reaction Rolls from PCs.

The SRD often mentions lairs but doesn’t include them, so I create my own as Daggerheart environments. I’ll often “cheat” and take inspiration from the 5e lair, but I make each one entirely my own, with its own abilities and challenges. This is more fun, and it follows the spirit of what this website is doing anyway: mapping two somewhat compatible games together in a fun and different way.

I don’t always get to test out my stat blocks before sharing them here. I try to share them with my TTRPG friends and see what they think, but most of them aren’t GMs. So I do my best. I take feedback at skeptic.emitter.7m@icloud.com on what went well or terribly at other tables. If something is overtuned or undertuned, sometimes that’s alright; I just note it on my end.

For example, I expect my conversion of the ankheg to be kind of brutal. Bruisers are mean, and I’ve had my players fight three at a time; things can get rough for the PCs. When I get to test it soon, I may go back and add a note that it’s on the harder side of Tier 1. Even then, you could expect a challenging encounter and have your PCs run all over it. Balance is hard and, in many ways, subjective, because so many other elements roll into it.