Lessons in Monster Design, Part IV: Stat block—statistics & ecology

Part IV of the series discusses some mistakes in the final two parts of the stat block: statistics and ecology. Next time I'll talk about special abilities, and the last part of the series will be about the write-up for the monster.

Ability scores, base attack bonus, etc.

• There should be three odd and three even stats. 
• For non-abilities (e.g. Con for constructs), use the em dash.

Feats & skills

• List the feats in the alphabetical order (like mostly everything should be.)
• Evasion is not a feat.
• Unarmed Combat is not a feat; always check the names of the feats if you're not sure.
• Use existing feats, do not use feats that cannot be found in the allowed sources. Also, special abilities are not feats and may not be listed as feats.
• If your monster has bonus feats, add a superscript B after the feat name. Note that you cannot do that in RPG Superstar where the messageboard sets some limits on how you can format characters, so use an unformatted B there instead.
• Feat And Skill Names Must Be Written With Initial Caps, Always. (A lot of people don't seem to get it right.)
• However, when feats and skills have parenthetical information (such as the various Knowledge skills or Skill Focus feats), the word(s) inside the parentheses are sometimes capitalized, sometimes not. Examples:
• "Knowledge (arcana)" because "arcana" is not a skill or feat name.
• "Spell Focus (evocation)" for the same reason.
• "Skill Focus (Stealth) because "Stealth" is a skill name.

• The parentheses mentioned above may not be square brackets [ ].
• There should be no period at the end of the Skills line.
• All the skill modifiers, if positive, should include the plus sign.
• Hide is not a skill in the Pathfinder RPG.
• Size-related skill modifiers are not specifically called out in the Skills entry.
  
• Racial Modifiers do not have a line of their own in the stat block. They appear after Skills, separated only by a semi-colon.
  

Languages

• All languages are proper nouns and thus have initial caps, e.g. Common.
• Telepathy, however, is not the name of a language and shouldn't be capitalized.
• It's rare (but possible) for a species of creatures to have a language of their own. It's a good idea to consider if your monster as a species really has such a unique language tradition that it deserves a language of its own.

Environment

• It's spelled ”Environment” not ”Enviroment”. 
• There is a fixed number of terrain types you can use. For example, ”village” is not a terrain type – you should use ”urban” instead. Check your monster against existing monsters and don't trust outliers (see the comment about ”tropical” below). 
• Similarly, the climate component of the environment can generally only be "any", or any combination of ”cold”, ”temperate”, and ”warm”. Some old Paizo monsters might have ”tropical” there, but it's not a valid climate type. 
• In any case, do not capitalize any part of the environment except the names of planes, if any (e.g. Plane of Shadow).

Organization

• If the Organization entry, use the en dash (–) to indicate ranges: "pack (7–12)"

Special qualities

• Like all other special ability names, SQs are not capitalized: "SQ shadow weaving"  
• Having any amount of natural armor is not a special quality. Only unusual bonuses such as Charisma to AC need to be called out as special qualities.