D&D 5E Monster Creation in D&D Next

Mike Mearls said:

The minotaur uses the default d10 Hit Die for size Large creatures. Having 10d10 Hit Dice plus its Constitution bonus puts it at 57 hit points (hit points per d10 Hit Die averages to 5.5). As you can see, the Constitution score has a much smaller effect on a monster’s overall hit points. Instead, a tough monster has more Hit Dice and therefore more hit points.

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Ugh. Not only do we still have rolled hit points (taking the average for monsters), but they've made Con pretty much worthless now, at least as far as hp are concerned. It looks like you only add your Con bonus to hit points instead of your score, and you only add it once, no matter what level you are. This is very troubling, as it means 1st level PC hp are going to drop drastically, and I that was one of the things I was spot on in the last playtest.

I am at least glad that the monsters are using the same formula as characters to generate their hp, though. The monster hp in the last playtest seemed to be completely arbitrary, which bugged the hell out of me.

Mike Mearls said:

Rage +5/5: This creature can choose to take disadvantage on a melee attack to gain +5 damage. If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage. The attack still counts as a miss for determining other special effects or abilities.

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This ability is a complete mechanical mess. Disadvantage is a pretty extreme penalty for a +5 bonus to damage, but then they try to compensate by adding a hit-even-on-a-miss feature.

The more I see of the advantage/disadvantage mechanic, the less I like it. Were numerical bonuses/penalties really that bad? I think it's particularly problematic because it doesn't stack in any way. A raging minotaur gives itself disadvantage on its attacks in return for a boon, but then this in turn renders anything the player characters have that inflict disadvantage as a condition worthless against it. Thus, alot of PC abilities are rendered moot when fighting this creature, because they don't stack with the disadvantage that the creature already imposes upon itself.

Mike Mearls said:

Keen Senses: This creature has a +5 bonus to all checks to detect hidden creatures, and the minimum of its d20 die roll on such checks is a 10.

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I really hope this means that skills are going to grant a +5 bonus (instead of +3) now. I'll be pleased if that is the case.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

It could also be "Elite" because in terms of creatures that exist in the world, it's one of the tougher ones. But it is Level 5 and not Level 10 because it is more common (which co-incides with something the players are likely to fight around level 5, rather than something tough and rarer, that they will fight much later in their career).

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It could be. The point is that to me, it's a red flag.

We have three categories, tentatively labeled mook, elite, and solo. A mook is the equivalent of one character, an elite the equivalent of two, and a solo the equivalent of four. You can also think of the categories by size, with mook being the equivalent of the typical Medium or smaller creature, an elite a Large creature, and a solo a Huge or larger creature.

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I don't see how these descriptors are useful additions to the concept of level. If you want to challenge a party of four level 5 characters, you throw four level 5 opponents at them, or one opponent of several levels higher. One arbitrary metagame mechanical description of overall power is already more than enough.

Ahnehnois said:

A minimum of 10 makes it pointless to roll (usually). I'm of the mind that you should have the choice between taking 10/20 or rolling, and if you're going to roll, there should be a chance of doing poorly. It also makes it needlessly hard to sneak. I think the rogue ability to this effect (take 10 + roll) was likewise too generous.

The term "elite" implies that the creature itself is created to fill a specific role (rather than being an exemplar of the minotaur race, which is also a possible meaning of that word). It exemplifies a backwards design philosophy where the monster's presence in one battle is considered before looking at where it came from, which is apparent in reading the article as a whole.

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To me the minion-standard-elite-solo axis of 4e is just another tool that gives me the chance to have a more diversified monster basis for my campaign. But in 4e you have attack and defenses scaling with level pretty fast, so there's a marked difference between a 5th level elite and a 9th level standard even if both have the same XP value. The elite will have more HP and lower defenses/damage, but also an action point.
With D&DN bounded accuracy approach I don't really know what the difference would be.

Minigiant said:

I think you are confused on what HP and AC represent. AC is passive defenses that do not diminish during battle. HP is active defense than diminish. A miss miss is an inaccurate attack that the fighter does not have to do anything to make miss.

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OK, I really don't want to have to distinguish between a miss and a miss miss. That just gets into silly double talk. I'd much rather prefer less ambiguous hits and misses and none of this silly hitting on a miss garbage.

Minigiant said:

I don't get it. If the Minotaur has tough hide, shouldn't its AC be equivalent to hide armor and not chain mail?

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Perhaps it's the difference between a hide and a tough hide?

My most hated article yet. I read that I have to use the skill and armour and ability scores to build monsters again. Hate it. I liked 4e, where you knew hitpoints and ac based just on level and role. I really do Not want to go back to 3e systems for building monsters. Also, not a fan of disadvantage being used all the time to try cool attacks, they will almost never be uses due to ineffectiveness. This whole article made me lose interi for the first time. I am not out, but now I am weary.

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Falling Icicle said:

This ability is a complete mechanical mess. Disadvantage is a pretty extreme penalty for a +5 bonus to damage, but then they try to compensate by adding a hit-even-on-a-miss feature.

The more I see of the advantage/disadvantage mechanic, the less I like it. Were numerical bonuses/penalties really that bad? I think it's particularly problematic because it doesn't stack in any way. A raging minotaur gives itself disadvantage on its attacks in return for a boon, but then this in turn renders anything the player characters have that inflict disadvantage as a condition worthless against it. Thus, alot of PC abilities are rendered moot when fighting this creature, because they don't stack with the disadvantage that the creature already imposes upon itself.

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That might be the point. You do not fireball a fire elemental. Apparently you do not do fancy stuff with a minotaur. It just gets angry.

Zaukrie said:

My most hated article yet. I read that I have to use the skill and armour and ability scores to build monsters again. Hate it. I liked 4e, where you knew hitpoints and ac based just on level and role. I really do Not want to go back to 3e systems for building monsters. Also, not a fan of disadvantage being used all the time to try cool attacks, they will almost never be uses due to ineffectiveness. This whole article made me lose interi for the first time. I am not out, but now I am weary.

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Keep in mind that the rules still tell you what the final values "should be" to be appropriate for its level - that means you can also ignore the simulation step the yput into it, where you make an excuse for how he still got his attack bonus despite his ability score. You and me may find this a little superflous, but it can add some mechanical represented color and is certainly important for people that wanted to know whether a Dragon's AC came from armor, its scales, or magic. And it also allows you to introduce modules that play with this information, so you could hav esomething like flat-footed AC and touch AC.

Ahnehnois said:

It could be. The point is that to me, it's a red flag.
I don't see how these descriptors are useful additions to the concept of level. If you want to challenge a party of four level 5 characters, you throw four level 5 opponents at them, or one opponent of several levels higher. One arbitrary metagame mechanical description of overall power is already more than enough.

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He also mentions that most Large creatures are Elites. That would also be an element of simulation - sure, this is a Level 5 Fighter - but he's a Giant/Minotaur, and such much tougher and stronger than a mere medium size character, so he has twice the hit points (and that's pretty much all that the Elite denomination seems to have been part of.)

That said, there are other reasons to have Elite and Solos and not just higher level NPCs, but they are more based on mechanical reasons and statistics.
Higher Level NPCs can give you extra hit points, better defenses and better attacks and more damage, but they don't give you more actions or attacks. An ability that allows you to grant disadvantage on the enemies next attack roll would be disproportioally effective if the monster you intend to use as Elite can only make a single attack. It gets even worse if you enter the realm of action-denying abilities. Especially with bounded accuracy, you do not have that much leeway to represent a better resilience to such tactics with better defenses. So you can use the Elite/Solo denomination.

It's easier to use a low level Elite as a Mook then use a high level mook as Elite.

I dislike this process, except "Filling in the details". I think that's the only step that really breathes its identity into the monster. Don't care for any of the rest of it.

So many red flags for me. Minotaur's 2d12+4 is 17 average damage. A 5th level wizard who is hit by a Minotaur, will need to spend 7 surges hit dice to heal that up, but he only has 5. Even if he had 12 Con, he would still need to spend all 5 to heal up. How does this make the hit dice/healing mechanic any better? So if a 5th level wizard is hit by a minotaur, he's done for the day, unless either he has a healer or he has magic items, neither of which are assumptions that should affect the system math this drastically. Even if there was a cleric that could use Cure Light Wounds, it takes 2 castings plus the use of one hit die to patch up one hit from the Minotaur. That seems like an awful lot of daily resources to deal with one hit.

I don't really like adding class levels to monsters either, I was glad to be done with that in 4e, but it looks like they are bringing it back. Doesn't matter to me as DM, I can just ignore it, but as player, it annoys me to no end, when a DM builds a character clone that outshines a PC in everything the PC does, using his own powers. I like PC's to be unique. I'm fine with multiple wizards and clerics who share the same powers, running around in the world, but there is something disconcerting about getting outclassed by a DM build of your own class in combat. A DM wizard doesn't care about feather fall, identify, and comprehend languages, he'll just pick whatever is most devastating in combat, and whoop your bee hind.

The more articles I read, the tighter I want to hang onto 4e.

I'm happy to have this kind of insight to the monster design process (mostly because I prefer more information to less), but I found the article lacking because it didn't explain why WotC selected this system. For all the unintended consequences of the 4e design process, the 4e designers were trying to solve specific problems (often successfully).

I think the objective of this system is to maintain what they think are the key parts of 4e monster design (runnable from the stat block, coherent math, xp values tied to actual effectiveness, easy to improvise), while getting back some of the benefits of 3e monster design (stats connected to the in-game fiction, reusable abilities). It would have been nice if this had been explained.

And since this monster design is self-evidently borrowing from 4e, I think this would have been a good opportunity to show a little love for 4e innovations.

And with respect to the minotaur, it definitely needs some kind of "maze/labyrinth" mechanic as a nod to its mythical origin. I always liked the "minotaurs never get lost" ability, because it makes the monster distinctive. It suggests that minotaurs like to locate their communities in mazes or other confusing locations. Otherwise, the monster is just an ogre with a charge attack.

-KS

P.S. Of course, it hard to show love to 4e without generating a lot of internet blow-back. Maybe the "why" of monster design needs a whole L&L column of its own...

Huh. My mathematical intuition failed. The Minotaur is better off raging unless the target is in the 9-13 region to hit (i.e. AC 13-17 or the normal range for an adventuring party) but is still extremely swingy.

Actually, checking my math, if a nat 20 is max damage, a 7 to hit is a statistical tie (i.e. AC 11) and the non-raging minotaur wins against AC 19 so the minotaur is better off not raging against ACs 11-19 (and therefore should only rage against the squishiest of wizards or the tankiest of tanks).

I'm therefore wondering the purpose of rage - is it protection against guardian and debuffs ("I'm already taking Disadvantage so you can't slow me more")? Because except in very rare circumstances it seems to be a bad choice fro the minotaur and add needless complexity. Or is it just fluff that slows the game down and makes it nastily swingy?