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The Brown Bear seems to be equivalent to a fourth level character with D10 as hit dice. It has STR +4, and thanks to its 'level' a proficiency bonus of +2.

Based on those stats, its to-hit should be +6, not +5.

The often compared Dire Wolf (same level, about the same) has only STR +3, but still to-hit +5. So the proficiency bonus is not based on CR, as I first thought.

Is this a typo? Or just minor balancing applied without correcting the attributes?

Are there any official comments on this?

PS: The Brown Bear is just one example, this comes up multiple times in MM.

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I know this is kind of a generic answer that I have seen a couple of times - and I hope someone can post or add some references/support, but here is my take on this.

All of the creatures in the game are generally based on the normal system for creating anything. However, these monsters are general tweaked to be more appropriate for their encounters (CR). A good example is the linked Ogre (Ogre CR calculation: is it wrong or am I missing something?). It would normally be a CR1, however was bumped to CR2 because it was able to 1-shot most first level characters.

As for official comments - I have not found anything but will update if something if found.

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    \$\begingroup\$ This is interesting. Maybe I need to change my question. Because balancing combat statistics makes a lot of sense - but not changing the attributes / baseline stats doesn't, e.g. why does the Brown Bear NEED to have STR+4, instead of +3 (which would make him conform to generic 5e rules)? \$\endgroup\$
    – 5-to-9
    Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 16:36

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