The Creature Stat Block

Creature Name

The name of the creature.

Subtitle

The subtitle includes basic descriptive information about the creature.

CR: The Challenge Rating of the creature. Challenge ratings function as the de facto level of the creature and function as a rough estimate of whether the creature will be average difficulty for a party of 4.

Alignment: The typical alignment of the creature of this type (LG, NG, CG, LN, N, CN, LE, NE, CE). Sentient creatures can sometimes vary in their alignment.

Size: The size of the creature. See sizes.

Creature Type (subtype): Creatures fall into fifteen general types, which are useful for categorizing which type of creature you will encounter and because certain spells and abilities affect different types of creatures differently. Some types have certain common resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities, though these are built into the stat blocks below anyway. Subtypes mostly function as aesthetic descriptors of the creatures you encounter. The fifteen creature types are as follows.

Aberration - An aberration has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset or any combination of the three
Animal - An animal is a living, nonhuman creature, usually a vertebrate with no magical abilities and no innate capacity for language or culture.
Construct - A construct is an animated object or artificially constructed creature.
Dragon - A dragon is a reptilelike creature, usually winged, with magical or unusual abilities.
Elemental - An elemental is a being composed of a certain element. Most elemental are made from one of the four classical elements: air, earth, fire, or water.
Fey - A fey is a creature with supernatural abilities and connections to nature or to some other force or place.
Giant - A giant is a humanoid-shaped creature of great strength, usually of at least Large size.
Humanoid - A humanoid usually has two arms, two legs, and one head, or a humanlike torso, arms, and a head. Humanoids have few or no supernatural or extraordinary abilities, but most can speak and usually have well-developed societies. They usually are Small or Medium. Every humanoid creature also has a subtype.
Magical Beast - Magical beasts are similar to animals but can have Intelligence scores higher than 2. Magical beasts usually have supernatural or extraordinary abilities, but sometimes are merely bizarre in appearance or habits.
Monstrous Humanoid - Monstrous humanoids are similar to humanoids, but with monstrous or animalistic features. They often have magical abilities as well.
Ooze - An ooze is an amorphous or mutable creature, usually mindless.
Outsider - An outsider is at least partially composed of the essence (but not necessarily the material) of some plane other than the Material Plane. Some creatures start out as some other type and become outsiders when they attain a higher (or lower) state of spiritual existence.
Plant - This type comprises vegetable creatures. Note that regular plants, such as one finds growing in gardens and subitems, lack Wisdom and Charisma scores and are not creatures, but objects, even though they are alive.
Undead - Undead are once-living creatures animated by spiritual or supernatural forces.
Vermin - This type includes insects, arachnids, other arthropods, worms, and similar invertebrates.

Stat Block: Basics

Senses: The creature's senses, usually followed by a number that indicates the distance of the sense. See Senses.

Speed: Untyped movement rates refer to general land speed. Creatures may also have special movement types.

Burrow - Can tunnel through dirt, but not rock. Generally burrowing creatures do not leave behind tunnels unless they are specifically building a lair.
Climb - Creatures with climb speeds do not need to make Athletics checks when climbing under normal conditions. You still need to make an Athletics check when attempting to Run (i.e. using your standard action to move extra).
Fly - Creatures can fly naturally.
Swim - Creature can swim naturally and do not need to make Athletics checks to swim.
Earth Glide - When the creature burrows, it can pass through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. If protected against fire damage, it can even glide through lava. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other sign of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing the burrowing creature flings it back 30 feet, stunning it for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Con save.

Skills: A select set of creature skills, comparable to those players have. Generally, any skill check can be made by using the saving throw for the appropriate ability score (e.g. a creature without a Stealth skill can make a Dexterity Save instead). The skill listed in the monster stat block are those that differ greatly from the monster's saves. Perception is shown under senses.

Languages: The languages known by the creature, if any.

Defenses: Stats

This block includes basic ability scores and saves, defense-related stats, and resistances and immunities.

Ability Scores: Ability scores with saves are in parenthesis. Some creatures don't have certain ability scores.

INIT: Initiative Score. Roll d20 and add this bonus to determine the order of combat.

CP: Combat proficiency bonus. This bonus is already figured into all attack scores, so this stat is just for reference.

HP (HP Calculation): The average hit point calculation for the creature with the typical hit point roll in parenthesis.

SA: The Spell Attack bonus of the creature, typically equal to the creature's CR + 3.

DC: The DC for the creature's abilities, typically equal to the creature's CR + 13 (or SA + 10)

AC: The standard Armor Class of the creature.

Touch: The touch AC of the creature.

Flat-footed: The flat-footed AC of the creature.

Defenses: Effects

SR: Spell Resistance DC. Creatures with spell resistance have innate defenses against spells and spell-like abilities. When casting a spell that targets this creature, you must make a spell attack check that beats this DC for the spell to be effective.

Vulnerable: Creatures are sometimes vulnerable to certain materials, types of damage, or effect. Every time the creature receives damage from one of these damage sources, it adds a little extra damage. When multiple attacks hit the creature, each attack receives this extra damage. For example, a fey creature with vulnerability Cold Iron 2, takes two extra points of damage each time it is wounded by a cold iron weapon.

Resistant: Creatures sometimes take less damage from certain damage sources. Every time the creature received damage from one of these damage sources, it subtracts damage from the total. Unless certain abilities allow otherwise, this damage is subtracted from each wound separately, so each hit from a full attack would have reduced damage. If the damage from an attack is reduced to 0 or less, then no damage is taken. Some extra damage (like poison) is dependent on a wound to take effect. In such cases, that damage would not take effect if the attack is reduced to 0 damage.

Bypass: A list of damage types or materials that aren't affected by weapon resistance. If you deal this type of damage or use a weapon made from the material listed, then you can ignore any Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing (i.e. Weapon) resistance. For instance, if a creature has weapon resistance 20 that is bypassed by silver weapons, then no damage dealt by silver weapons is reduced.

Immunity: The list of damage types that do not affect the creature.

Effect Immunity: The list of effects and conditions that do not affect the creature, such as stun, sleep, fear, etc.

Creatures might be vulnerable or resistance to certain types of effects, damage, or weapon types. Some common vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities include the following.

Damage Types: Upheaval uses fifteen different damage types (Acid, Bleed, Bludgeoning, Cold, Radiant, Electricity, Fall, Heat, Force, Necrotic, Piercing, Poison, Psychic, Slashing, Sonic). Creatures can have resistances, vulnerabilities, or immunities to any of these.
Weapon Damage: a short-hand notation for Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing damage. A creature with Weapon 5 resistance is resistance to each of these types of damage. Note: weapons made from adamantine are incredibly strong and able to cut through targets with an almost supernatural ability. These weapons ignore all weapon resistance.
Alignment: Most damage is unaligned, even when inflicted by very good or very evil creatures. Some through magical or other means is strongly affiliated with one side of the alignment spectrum and may do damage to creatures with strong, opposing affiliations.
Damage Source: Sometimes regardless of the type of damage (piercing, slashing, etc.) the source of the damage might have a varied impact on creatures. For instance, some creatures are only harmed by damage from ethereal or incorporeal sources. Some are vulnerable to damage from magical sources, regardless of whether that source inflicts fire, cold, or acid damage. Likewise poisons or disease have no effect on certain creatures. And creatures without intelligence (or with very high intelligence) may be immune from mental effects.
Conditions: Some creatures are immune to certain conditions such as paralysis, sleep effects, stun, fatigue, suffocation, starvation, etc.
Weapon Material: sometimes weapons made out of certain materials do extra or reduced damage to creatures. Cold iron (special iron mined from deep sources and worked cold) sometimes is harmful to fey creatures and silver weapons hurt werewolves and other creatures more than usual.

Qualities and Actions

Qualities are abilities or defenses that creatures have that are passive, defensive, or pre-activated. While running combat, the GM should be aware of these even though they will not likely take effect every round. Actions are the list of things a creature can do. In short, this is a list of choices the GM can make about the creature when it is their turn in combat.

The general format for abilities is as follows.

Ability Name (Action Type) (Ability Type, Characteristics) - Description.

If the ability is an action, it may have an action type that describes which type of action is required (standard, movement, bonus, free, full found) to use it. If an action type is missing, the ability is a standard action, by default. The ability also has an ability type, which will be either Extraordinary Abilities (Ex), Spell-Like Abilities (Sp), or Supernatural Abilities (Su). Characteristics help describe the ability in case the target has resistances or immunities to it.

Attacks

Attacks are the most common type of actions. All attacks available to a creature are listed in its attack block, though when making a standard attack you will only choose one to use, regardless of how many are listed.

When making a full-round attack with a weapon, the creature gets all that weapon's attacks. In the example below, the creature has a melee attack with a flaming greatsword that can make 3 attacks. In a full attack, the creature can use all of them. The first attack will be at +17. The remaining two attacks will be at a -5 penalty (+12 each). On a standard attack, the creature would only get one attack at +17.

When making attacks with natural weapons, creatures get their full attacks with no penalties. The example below shows a dragon with six attacks -- one bite, two claws, two wings, and one tail. All of these are natural weapons. On a standard attack, it can pick one of these to use at a +16 to hit. On a full attack, it may use all of them, each with a +16 to hit.

When a creature uses both natural attacks and weapon attacks, use the rules for natural attacks but substitute one of the natural attacks for a weapon. When any of the attacks is natural, none of the weapons used get multiple attacks.

The creature below has five natural attacks (four claws and a bite). It could simply attack with all of these.
If it wanted to wield a sword in one of its claws, it could. Simply substitute one of the claw attacks for a sword attack. All attacks, including the sword, are made at a +13. The creature, however, only gets one attack with the sword.
In the example below, the creature could also decide to attack with only the sword. When doing so, it would get all three of the sword's attacks (the first at +13, the remaining at a -5 penalty), per the weapon rules above.
The creature below is uncommon in that it has four limbs, a melee attack, and a ranged attack. It could feasibly also substitute two of its claw attacks for a ranged bow attack as well. This would give it a bite, a claw, a sword, and a bow attack, each at +13.

The damage for every attack is included in the parentheses. The damage for the short sword above is listed as 1d6+3/19-20. Standard damage is 1d6+3 hp. The numbers after the slash ("19-20") indicate the critical hit range for the weapon. As a sword, this weapon scores a critical hit on a natural 19 or natural 20. If no numbers are listed, assume that the attack only crits on a natural 20.

Other effects are also listed in the parentheses. These usually only apply after the attack scores its initial damage. These effects might add on extra damage ("plus 1d6 fire") or activate a specific ability ("plus grab" or "plus paralysis"). Attack abilities are described at the end of the attack line.

Melee attacks have a reach stat listed that described how far away the creature can be to be successful. Note that in the dragon example above, the bite attack has a reach of 10 feet, while the others are 5 feet. The dragon has the option to stay out of range and attack with the bite or close and attack with all attacks. The bite attack also threatens at 10 feet, so anyone moving from there into 5-foot range will provoke an attack of opportunity. Ranged weapons show the weapons range increments instead of reach.

Description

This section includes a description of the creature, the organization it typically can be found in, and its typical environment. The type of treasure than can be found with it is also included.