Troll Lord Games

For tough monsters I use the HD as a bonus to the damage die as well. Mostly if its some creature that is very strong"ogre/giant" or deadly"displacer beast,Vampire".

I have been doing this for a while now on some of my creatures and I just realized I never chatted about it before. Does anyone else do this?

No sir, never. Monsters are hard enough.

~O

I don't necessarily add their HD, but I will give them an extra bonus of some kind when I think they should do more damage.

The whole HD would get into some pretty ridiculous numbers. I'm thinking of my homebrewed Pit Fiend here ... a +20 bonus would result very quickly in some very, very dead heroes.

What I've done, generally is to overhaul the prime system a bit, so that low-level monsters get just one, mid-level monsters get two and powerful ones get three. And then treat those primes as being equivalent to an attribute score of either 13-15, 16-17 or 18, or +1, +2, +3 bonuses. So the Orc gets a +1 to melee attack/damage for having a Strength prime, while the Hobgoblin gets +1 HP/HD for a Constitution prime, and the Goblin gets +1 AC and ranged attack for their Dexterity prime. More powerful monsters get treated as if they have better stats, and the angels, demons, devils, etc always get the +3 bonus.

So my Pit Fiend has a +3 to damage with all of its attacks, but also get a further +3 bonus to damage because their natural weapons are treated as +3 magical weapons, for a total damage bonus of +6.

The monsters with ranger abilities... yes. Others, hell no.

ok well rereading your posts I see I need to add that I only add +1-+6 based on strength score or other damage adds. The guys have yet to make it to higher levels but if so I would limit it to something more like +10 at over 20th level to reflect strength,talents ect..

Take a look at the damage bonuses given to some of the larger, stronger creatures like ogres and giants. I think you'll find some of this has already been worked in for a lot of creatures, and where it isn't, that may be a useful guide when tweaking yourself.