Stuff like the Monster Manual On A Business Card is very popular, but I find it just a little too broad. I like monsters to have a little different stats. A demon should be stronger than a humanoid, even if they’re the “same CR” or “same level.” It’s as simple as that. (Obviously, using these stats with “average” stats by CR would mean those stats change a little bit, so ideally I think what happens is you end up wanting to make one generic statblock of each monster type. Maybe that’s where we end up!)
I made a set of the average monster stats by monster type for 5e 2014 in 2022, but with the release of the 2024 Monster Manual, it’s time to update this. To get these averages, I found someone who had put all the monster stats in a spreadsheet, organized by type, and then averaged them all and rounded to the nearest whole number. I didn’t do any degree of accounting for clear outliers or weird situations, just literally every monster of that type that’s in the book. Under the cut, the new averages:
| Aberration | 2 2 2 0 1 0 |
| Beast | 1 1 1 -4 0 -3 |
| Celestial | 4 3 4 2 4 4 |
| Construct | 3 1 3 -3 -1 -3 |
| Dragon | 5 1 4 2 1 3 |
| Elemental | 2 2 3 0 1 1 |
| Fey | 1 2 1 0 1 1 |
| Fiend | 3 2 3 0 1 1 |
| Giant | 6 0 4 -1 1 0 |
| Humanoid | 1 2 2 1 2 2 |
| Monstrosity | 3 1 3 -2 1 -1 |
| Ooze | 3 -2 4 -3 -1 -4 |
| Plant | 1 -1 2 -2 0 -2 |
| Undead | 1 2 2 0 1 1 |
Here’s some interesting differences. Aberrations’ Wisdom went up by 1. Celestials evened out a little bit. Constructs became less average with both greater highs and lows. Dragons went down a little, but there might be more weaker dragon-type enemies in the book. (I deliberately removed the names from the spreadsheet so I don’t even know what stats belong to what individual monsters; only types.) Elementals got a boost. Fey became significantly more varied, probably owing to goblins being Fey now. Fiends got stepped on in the mental stats. Giants had a little movement. Humanoids got a boost. Monstrosities got a nerf, oozes and plants got a buff, undead stayed exactly the same.
Probably what I’ll do for my own personal version of this is take those with higher highs or more variance, and use those. Mix and match as I like. We now have two separate sources of stats we can use for our “default” style monsters. Go ahead and use it!
