The strength of some incorporeal undead might be there to represent the trope of invisible poltergeists moving objects around, making it look like they move on their own

10:40 That's something I can't understand: Brown bear, Allosaurus, Killer Whale, Ogre, all having the same strength modifier. They have massive differences in mass, as well as muscle structure and power utilization.

As a big Dino nerd myself I really appreciated the velociraptor aside. Thank you!

My favorite section in any D&D book is the bit in 3.5 where they describe what it means to have a 0 in each score in that edition. Dex 0: You can’t move. Str 0: You can’t move anything else. Int 0: You can’t think, learn, or remember. Con 0: You’re not alive. Wis 0: You don’t know anything besides you exists. Chr 0: You don’t know YOU exist.

Cool spin on the ‘normal’ kind of creature rankings you do, really into discovering more in the other scores!

I didn't know Esper had such STRONG opinion on this matter. (Roll for charisma check).😅

Please make a video about the other ability scores I would love that. Thank you! This was a great video. Keep up the great work!

More of this! It helps so much when designing homebrew monsters' ability scores.

I really liked this video, seeing how scores actually act in the world

I can't wait to see more of this, especially for the more Abstract Stats like Wis and Cha

Randomly opening youtube, and this show up with 22 seconds since upload, WOOOH

I can’t help but feel like this video would benefit from having the song _Strength of a Thousand Men_ by Two Steps From Hell playing as the background music.

Loved this - looking forward to the next in the series

I would love to see this for the other scores. Please keep it going!

I REAAALYY ENJOYED THIS VIDEO IDEA!!! KEEP IT UP ESPER!!

Thanks for making this video! I'd love to see more about the different ability scores! Encyclopedic comparison and math metric analysing videos are pretty rare and so I'd love to see more of this!

I hope you keep this series going, fun video

Omg I felt so blessed about my DL PR. Thanks Esper!

4:39 City Guard 1: You’ve been to the Chultan Peninsula? Did you see dinosaurs? City Guard 2: Oh yes and they were terrifying yet magnificent, though I was taken aback by the velociraptors. They were still ferocious but much smaller than the tales made them out to be, and they were covered in more feathers than scales. City Guard 3: Ha, you know story tellers, they love to spice everything up for dramatic effect.

This is awesome and I would love to see more of it. Me and my friends have been trying to create our real states and this put some much needed context for me.

Lets go! I really appreciate these kinds of videos

Love all the content Esper The Bard creates! The guy has many talents & puts tons of work into his videos! Big fan of his work!

i didn't know i needed an ability score scaling vid. Great job 🎉 would love the rest of them when you can find the time for them.

Thank you for the PB wishes on my deadlifts at the end 😂😂😂 been a huge fan of your work over the years Esper. Keep living your passion my friend ❤

Really cool concept for a video!!

I want more comparisons as this was very interesting.

This was very interesting video topic keep it coming!

Ah a new ranking series. Excited to see more!

I'm looking forward to seeing this type of video for every stat type.

Great video , keep them coming Esper! (Still working on details of my diceless RPG system, I got busy with other work the past six months , I'll email you the alpha version soon!)

This was a great video. I would love to see more attribute examples, like Dexterity and Charisma.

Nice work on the video!

I assume that ghosts have a bit of a strength score to represent poltergeists that are capable of moving objects like throwing things and whatnot.

I had this idea for a mechanic for one of my evil faction's of my game. Watching this video makes me want begin to rethink it. The roots of new gaia. A cult of evil druids who hate technology (this is a renascence era campaign) and want to return the world to a more natural state by force. They have this narrative only spell "the curse of de evolution," it would rewrite some one's evolutionary path from an inelegant species who can continue to poison the earth a physically powerful animistic monster that can be controlled. The idea was the spell took a point from any mental stat (INT,WIS,CHA) and plases it into any physical stat (STR, DEX,CON) turning people into gorilla monsters the cult can control. It works fine enough for commoners, but if done on someone with adventurer like stats it's game breaking. Well it's not like they don't have dozens of other tools to ruin people's day. Armies of blights planted in peoples crops, exotic poisons, a spore based disease that turns people into plants, man made chimeras, fanatic berserker warriors. These violent tree huggers are built to ruin you're day, and they aren't even the BBEG faction.

Though it's not something new, I really dig this kind of content. It's a great summary and brings some creatures into view I may habe overlooked a bit in the past.

This could be a cool series. Keep it up 👍.

This was a cool video man. Enjoyed it a lot. Good to see you keeping on

Thanks for this video!

Great stuff, these are fun. It's handy too if you have someone newer to the game this kind of stuff could help put the numbers in perspective as well. I agree to the sweet spot is 16 for any top stat you're solid with room to grow but if you'd rather focus elsewhere it's perfectly reasonable. :)

D&D is a game where wild dogs are weaker than the average person, hyenas have the same strength as the average person while also being weaker than wolves, and an allosaurus is roughly on the same tier as a brown bear. I have many concerns.

Very interesting idea for the videos, would like to see more definitively but it would be a lot more interesting imo with more commentary about why some creatures have the score they have. You started with the lower scores and when talking about the spectral type undead, but completely stopped and just presented the creatures after that. I hope you don’t take this wrongly, it’s really meant to be constructive. It would be really interesting to give your insight into why the incubus for example has such low strength although it’s a fiend (well i know it’s more focused on magic than physical fighting). Things like that would make this serie a lot more interesting, especially for people who like to dabble into monster creation Cheers, keep up the good work!

wow that monstrous heroes book looks right up my alley, i might give that a buy on payday.

Great vid!

What an awesome and refreshing perspective on the bestiary of D&D! This certainly puts into perspective the world we immerse ourselves in whenever we play a campaign. I'd totally like to see more of this :)

MAY YOUR ADVENTURES BE MANY ESPER!

More of this please

This really helps put things into perspective. Maybe a force comparison in pounds or kgm/s would help just a bit more, especially with the higher ones. -5 might be lest than a pound, and +10 could be multiple tons. Anyways, love this kind of work.

Id like to see more this. Especially wisdom and charisma.

Took the time to like and comment. So pls more videos like this

Will you do every ability score comparisons too please :D

I like these deep dives

What a (deceptively simple but) great idea! I hope Dex, Con etc will all follow.... please?

Are you gonna go down the line and do dexterity next, or whatever suits you're fancy jump right into inelegance?

You should make videos with bluworm. his style fits your storytelling so well

Funky thing about strength is how sizes affect it in 5e. A Gnome with 20 strength will only be able to lift as much a Goliath with 10.

I love this and want more

Very nice

fun fact. do to how the body works wolverine wouldnt feel pain. over the years his brain would relaize that his mutation is ggoing to heal the damage dealt to him so it wouldnt consider it painful until it didn't heal for some reason. such as leaving a branch in his chest after beig impaled. cant heal while that's theire so pain. but once its removed the pain would quickly subside. it also means he'd be in constant pain while his claws are out.

Can we all agree that the who ever is in charge of assigning strength scores to animals has legitimately no idea how strong real animals are.

Yes please

You should do a Rankin video on dinosaurs

I'd love to see Intelligence. I know the elder brain would be up there, but I wonder if anything surpasses it.

I think you should've included an aside that 24 is the highest natural strength score for any player character could ever have as the cap stone ability of Barbarians is a +4 increase to their Str & Con score and max to put it into better perspective.

"The math of 5e is stable." Me, allowing players & creatures to have scores above 30 without in-depth structuring: *maniacal laughter*

Please do that with the version 3 monsters

They've messed up the Strength scale, which is meant to double woth each +5. A general rule of thumb is that Strength should mirror mass for an average creature. Obesity is an exception. So if we consider an average man at 160 lb for Strength 10 we can see what that scale should look like. A 320 lb black bear should be 15, but most wild animals should be higher than the scale established for "civilized" creatures that typically exhibit neoteny (juvenile characteristics preserved into adulthood). If a middling bugbear were also around 320 lb, then the average would be 15. The bugbears encountered should be warriors who train, so perhaps they don't average 320 lb but have an average Str 15 anyway. At 20 the creature should be around 640 lb. That would include the brown bear and the ogre. However, both grizzly bears and polar bears can grow above 1280 lb that would typify Str 25. Cave Bear skeletons show that they would have far exceeded the 2560 lb for Str 30, even exceeding 5000 lb for Str 35. In 3e, they tried to follow the +5 doubling rule closely for giants. I think +5 doubling only works in proximity to the human-centered datum. Likewise, a large destrier could be 1200+ lb

I remember in 3.5 Thor having such a high Strength score, that he could effortlessly move a mountain on top of you... XD

Can you do a comparison from original d&d to present. Then explain why 3rd and 3.5 epic

Nice

can u do all the abilities plz

Time for a muscle Wizard build

How much weight can a STR 30 lift?

Im a backer for the monsterous heroes... Ordered it specifically for the minotaur and troll

great video for putting things in to perspective. what are air elementals like? Is it something you can befriend and it can carry you around? what's it's consciousness like? is this the same for all elementals? Also, what character do you like to play with the most?

Harry Squatter, rejoice!

If you bring in other books, Halaster increases the top CR for a +0 mod strength to 23.

Intelligence would be fun!

I think strength for ghost is the force behind there possession.

When I was reading the opening quote, I thought; "Oh this is someone who fought Mke Tyson." It's kind of weird to think that your average bandit is as strong as a black bear. I mean, for real? And your level one fighter is as strong as a *LION?*

Do Int next

As one of the very extremely few D&D players who actually respects the concept that the rules (such as encumbrance and social interaction as a viable course of action), do you find that Challenge Rating is more functional than people say? I've very little experience from which to draw myself.

It's a little weird how a normal man in DnD can be stronger than a mule.

The problem is that on a 1D20 roll, an ability modifier only takes effect in 1 out of 20 = 5%. The carryweight, which also accounts for size iirc, gives a much more realistic assessment of a creature's physical power. If an Orc Warrior ( 110 kg, +3) armwrestles an Elf Mage (55 kg, +0) 100 times, the Orc statistically wins only 65 of those contested rolls. That's a really poor representation of reality. The Orc can lift 30 * 16 = 480 lbs, the Elf only 30 * 10 = 300 lbs. It would be better to compare those lift capacities and allow a strength roll to add 1D20 + str - 10 lbs to the result. So the Orc would be able to lift 474 to 503 lbs (480 + 1D20 + 3 - 10) and the Elf 290 to 320 lbs. So there's no way anymore that the linebacker loses every third armwrestle to the cheerleader.

Oh to get a barbarian up to 30 strength and wrestle a terasque to a standstill

The idea for the format is great but please consider changing the transition audio. That pitch screech was barely barable

Kind of shocked by how strong cows are in DND

I would much rather have you return to your roots doing monster and class ranking and giving some perspectives on what they represent conceptually. If you need some inspiration dice of your own, allow me to provide you with some for the abominations. In my opinion, abominations represent our own imperfections given physical form. A hecatoncheires could be seen as the mistake of war and violence, how people can go into boundless slaughter for little reason. Anaxims are the mistakes we make with machines or art, when your trying to craft something or fix something and it just... doesnt work. If undead force us to stare at our own mortality, abominations force us to stare at our own problems

Let's go

I would love to see the fastest

"We should take Bikini Bottom and PUSH IT somewhere else!"

Hi Esper just wondering if you were gonna be doing a druid subclass ranking at all soon?

17:40 Don't think so.

I always find kind of ridiculous that a gnome is able to have 20 strength, the same strength as a Hill giant (that eats gnomes)

Lots of bats are really tiny, 5 to 20 grams, and it is weird to me they have a strength of two.

Wizards really be sleeping on those animals though, CR 1/4? For an Ox?

I wonder what D&D would look like mechanically if the ability scores were a bit more consistent with what we see in real life, at least for creatures that are actually real of course. Edit: Especially when it comes to mental ability scores for some beasts

5E simply doesnt have a good "scale" , stuff just gets more powerful but you dont really FEEL the increase in power. Sure its a +1, but thats just not impressive enough. If something has titantic proportions, the max you can roll in difference is a 1 to 20 , so 19 difference between the worst result and their highest, if you have a +20 modifier no matter the randomness, they cannot beat you, thats when you FEEL they are above your level, you cannot beat them, even with all the luck on your side, you cannot do it.

Wait. A knight has the same str with a manticore? Wtf.

It make me laugh that the creatures designers think that Baboons are weaker than the average person. Apes are terrifyingly strong despite their scrawny and small size, and even a pro fighter would probably get kill by a single baboon.

That's because 5th edition is For Children, while 3.5 is for adults.