Level Appropriateness

The effects of an ability should be appropriate to the creature's level. For damaging abilities, that means they follow the damage guidelines below. For others, take a look at spells and feats with a similar effect to see if they're level appropriate. For instance, say you're considering giving a 6th-level creature the ability to teleport a short distance. Translocate is comparable—that's a 4th-rank spell, normally cast by a 7thlevel or higher creature. That means 6th level probably isn't too low, but the creature shouldn't be able to use the ability more than once. You can also compare your creature to those in Alien Core to see if the special abilities seem similar in power to those of other creatures of the same level.