D&D 5E 5e: the demystification of monsters?

Steely_Dan · Oct 5, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
1: You said "an" ogre. "An ogre" is one ogre.

Okay, fair enough, I was drinking, "ogres" are still a threat to a 10th level party.

Even one can cause some problems (that does not mean fighting just one, it could be in a group of mixed creatures).

Neonchameleon · Oct 6, 2012

Steely_Dan said:
Okay, fair enough, I was drinking, "ogres" are still a threat to a 10th level party.

Even one can cause some problems (that does not mean fighting just one, it could be in a group of mixed creatures).

The problem here is that quantity has a quality all of its own. Enough dice and some will hit. And enough monsters and you have enough of an overlap to either force the PCs into the bottleneck and then hang back and use ranged combat or splat the wizard. And what's causing the problems is the quantity rather than anything much to do with what the quantity is of.

GameDoc · Oct 7, 2012

Li Shenron said:
Drow in particular, they should really be characters, thus having a 1st-level Drow is OK as soon as the DM can control their true level of difficulty by adding class levels.

I would not use this approach for savage monsters... they should be naturally a tough challenge, without any training or "education" into a class. But Drow really... what makes them scary is that they have excellent warriors, assassins and spellcasters.

If you design a Drow (base version, with no class level) already being equivalent to a mid-level PC, then you're shooting yourself in the foot when you want him/her to be also a high-level Wizard or Cleric and realize that you have to keep their class level lower than the PC party or the end result is too much for the same party to fight against.

This is an EXCELLENT point that I think got buried amid the Great Ogre Debate...

It also got me thinking about the use of monsters as NPCs and the use of "people" (humans and other PC races) as mooks. It seems like you can make monsters more mysterious at lower levels by having them be rare. Say your first adventure as 1st level characters is clearing out a gang of human bandits from the forest, trying to remove a curse inflicted on the local magistrate by an eleven witch whose minions are adventures charmed by her magic, or the like. Now pepper in monsters sparingly. The bandit captain has a pet owlbear that you have to deal with as he tries to flee. The witch summons a lesser demon when you finally infiltrate her lair. Or maybe no monsters at all until 2nd level.

Conversely, maybe an ogre can be a character. Maybe the one you face at 1st level isn't evil, just neutral and ill-tempered. But he'd be a good ally for helping you complete your quest. Help us clear out that goblin warren and you can have the lair and any food they've stored for yourself.

I think these are all possible with Next any prior addition of D&D. I 've seen less devoted to it by WotC than was done by TSR (but that could be faulty memory on my part). I do know, that after having spent several years in 4e, it's been hard to break my group from the idea that all monsters are there to kill and loot and that they might ought to avoid a fight from time to time.

Hopefully, with the focus on allowing different settings and play styles, as well as the general goal of recapturing the feel of older editions in Next, monsters as more than things to attack might get some more page space.

Neonchameleon · Oct 7, 2012

Li Shenron said:
Drow in particular, they should really be characters, thus having a 1st-level Drow is OK as soon as the DM can control their true level of difficulty by adding class levels.

Agghhh! No! Class levels for an entire race? You want to bring back one of the big reasons 3.X was incredibly unwieldy. Templates, perhaps. But an NPC should not need to be created to the same detail as a PC.

GameDoc · Oct 7, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Agghhh! No! Class levels for an entire race? You want to bring back one of the big reasons 3.X was incredibly unwieldy. Templates, perhaps. But an NPC should not need to be created to the same detail as a PC.

Woops - I meant to emphasize Li Shenron's suggestion that they are (or can be) characters in the sense that not all are alike and you can roleplay with them. Didn't catch that "class level" comment when I quoted (not that I oppose his preference for this).

I liked the way 4e approached monsters with guidelines to level them up or down and adding templates instead of giving them a class with a full complement of feats, skills, and powers. I got satisfactory NPCs, both allies and adversaries with this.

Of course, most of the humanoid monsters (like drow) also provided stats for use as a character race so you could also build them with a full class if desired.

Li Shenron · Oct 7, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Agghhh! No! Class levels for an entire race? You want to bring back one of the big reasons 3.X was incredibly unwieldy. Templates, perhaps. But an NPC should not need to be created to the same detail as a PC.

You're never going to need to do that, if the MM contains sample characters. They don't need to be many, and they don't need to be for all humanoid creatures. For example, a sample 5th-level Drow warrior and a sample 7th-level Drow priestess, and you already have what you want: two versions of ready-playable Drow "monsters" (if it were for me, I'd also add a 6th-level Drow Wizard in between).

But with the monster entry in the MM also containing a description of the Drow race (and BTW, races ARE templates!), all the applications I described previously (using Drow as PC, creating a Drow NPC party, or just being able to use Drow at roughly all levels up to 20) would be possible.

There aren't that many iconic humanoid monsters that need this treatment: drow, orcs, hobgoblins, tiefling, duergar... maybe goblins, kobolds and a couple more, but hardly more than a dozen. I don't think this is an issue of space, and if it is then just do it for the top 4-5.

Rhenny · Oct 7, 2012

Li Shenron said:
You're never going to need to do that, if the MM contains sample characters. They don't need to be many, and they don't need to be for all humanoid creatures. For example, a sample 5th-level Drow warrior and a sample 7th-level Drow priestess, and you already have what you want: two versions of ready-playable Drow "monsters" (if it were for me, I'd also add a 6th-level Drow Wizard in between).

But with the monster entry in the MM also containing a description of the Drow race (and BTW, races ARE templates!), all the applications I described previously (using Drow as PC, creating a Drow NPC party, or just being able to use Drow at roughly all levels up to 20) would be possible.

There aren't that many iconic humanoid monsters that need this treatment: drow, orcs, hobgoblins, tiefling, duergar... maybe goblins, kobolds and a couple more, but hardly more than a dozen. I don't think this is an issue of space, and if it is then just do it for the top 4-5.

They can also provide simple templates for when we want to use them, and quite honestly, the more comfortable we get with the challenge levels (at this point it is too difficult to tell since monsters seem weak and xp values are all over the place), the easier it will be for us to just change some monsters to make them more unique, or to do across the board changes to alter the "lethal dial."

For example, in Blingdenstone House Center, I'm giving Pharran (the drow wight) 52 hp, the energy drain ability from the first playtest package, and the ability to raise dead once per encounter (the skeletons will come back to life at 1/2 their normal hit points). In addition, I added two Ogre Skeletons with 20 HP each and a club attack that does 1d10+4. Across the board, I give monsters +2 to hit. At this point, I'm hoping that the encounter becomes a challenge for 4 level 3 PCs.

Gorgoroth · Oct 7, 2012

GameDoc said:
Say your first adventure as 1st level characters is clearing out a gang of human bandits from the forest, trying to remove a curse inflicted on the local magistrate by an eleven witch whose minions are adventures charmed by her magic, or the like. Now pepper in monsters sparingly. The bandit captain has a pet owlbear that you have to deal with as he tries to flee. The witch summons a lesser demon when you finally infiltrate her lair. Or maybe no monsters at all until 2nd level.

Arnold voice : That's fantastic.

Reminds me of a principle in piano playing, where when you approach a crescendo you lower your volume on purpose to accentuate the change in levels, for an even greater dynamics. So, the literary / D&D equivalent would be to start off more mundane and then throw in--BAM--some filthy creature that just rips stuff apart. You don't have your big bad ghost or alien visible full-frame every frame from the start of the movie, so to speak. You catch glimpses, you notice its presence indirectly, furtively.

Pedestrian use of monsters -- do not want.

/note : that's not just a question of DM style, but overall tone that's set in the PHB, and also related to the expectation of PCs owning christmass trees of magic items. no no no. I like being in the shadow of the colossus, but if you are the scurrying rats trying to get away from the terrasque, it should be hidden by the fact that YOU are the hunted, you must be cowering in the corners, feeling its T-Rex stomps approaching from the distance. This is what I want. Not everyone having bloodclaw bastard swords from level 3 onward, or wands of CLW or mithril bps. Gotta find it, or make it. Or go out to seek it.

Agree with the premise of the OP : Monsters should be mystical and memorable! perhaps rarity is not the only mechanism to implement that, but it should be one of them

Stormonu · Oct 8, 2012

slobo777 said:
Following the DM Guidelines section on encounter building - including how to build "easy", "average" and "tough" encounters, for a party of 5 PCs:
1st level: 3 Ogres would be a "tough" encounter, and PCs should be able to handle just a couple of those per day.

3rd level: 3 Ogres would be an "average" encounter, and PCs might face four such encounters in a typical day.

5th level: 3 Ogres would be an "easy" encounter, and PCs might face six to eight such encounters per day.

7th level: 12 Ogres would be an "easy" encounter.

9th level: 16 Ogres would be an "easy" encounter.

Hmmm... I'd prefer it was:

1st Level: 1 ogre is a "tough" encounter

3rd Level: 1 ogre is a "average" encounter, 2 ogres are a "tough" encounter

5th Level: 1 ogre is a "easy" encounter, 2 ogres an "average" encounter, 3 ogres is a "challenging" encounter, 4 ogres are a "tough" encounter

7th Level: 2 ogres is an "easy" encounter, 4 ogres are an "average" encounter, 6 ogres are a "tough" encounter

9th Level: 4 ogres are an "easy" encounter, 8 ogres are an "average" encounter and 12 ogres are a "tough" encounter

Or something like that.

slobo777 · Oct 8, 2012

Stormonu said:
Hmmm... I'd prefer it was:

1st Level: 1 ogre is a "tough" encounter

3rd Level: 1 ogre is a "average" encounter, 2 ogres are a "tough" encounter

5th Level: 1 ogre is a "easy" encounter, 2 ogres an "average" encounter, 3 ogres is a "challenging" encounter, 4 ogres are a "tough" encounter

7th Level: 2 ogres is an "easy" encounter, 4 ogres are an "average" encounter, 6 ogres are a "tough" encounter

9th Level: 4 ogres are an "easy" encounter, 8 ogres are an "average" encounter and 12 ogres are a "tough" encounter

Or something like that.

These are self-consistent enough. You could probably take the current ogre stats, increase hit points, perhaps give it a little damage resist, give it some kind of sweep- or multi- attack that targetted more than one PC at a time, and get pretty close to what you want within the current PC/monster balance.

I'm expecting (well, hoping) hit points and damage numbers to move again in next playtest though, so might be worth seeing where the ogre is pitched in following playtests.

Edit: I tested a few changes to the ogre, and I think the following pitches it about right, given the current PC/monster balance:

1) Increase Ogre hit points to 48, AC to 16 and club attack bonus to +6 (I also increased Armour Piercing to 6, although I think the impact of this is tiny with a +6 to hit)

2) Allow a multi-attack action with two targets with the club

3) Add damage resistance 6 (I tried a few other values, but I like 6 because it is exactly 2 times monster level)

This upgraded ogre is roughly as dangerous as three regular ogres, but without simply making it a bigger bag of hitpoints. I ran a few variants versus the dwarf fighters, and the above values to hit very rough equivalence in results - I don't see much point at this stage in aiming for exact equivalence, in any case adding features like damage resist changes what the best PC tactics would be - adding the damage resistance makes Deadly Strike a more optimal tactic than Parry/Protect.