D&D 5E Surf's D&D 5e Monster Analysis

[Blackbrrd]

Mike Mearls has said, repeatedly, monsters, magic items, and encounter building stuff will be added to 5B when the PH(B) launches.

Thaumaturge.

Ahhh... The monsters! That's the meat that's missing for me to say how I think 5e is going to turn out. Trying to analyze the game with only one side of the equation is really hard.

I talked to a couple of my players, and they aren't that fond of what they have seen of 5e yet. I can actually understand it. One of them really hated starting campaigns at level 1 pre 4e. I am pretty sure we are going to start at level 2+ most of the time.

Personally, I am a bit sceptic, because I am quite sure they will have bungled the math on when you look at PC vs Monster. It might be totally unimportant due to bounded accuary and easily fixed with an adjustment to xp budgets and challenge rating.

The reason I am sceptial is that they haven't done a test with a large number of players like they did with the mechanics. Looking at the Hobgoblin and it's CR/xp showed to me that they were quite off. Will have to actually play test it to be sure though.

 

[surfarcher]

Just posted Part 2: Construction: Before Building

I should have been clearer. My original question (asked at one am my time) was about this bit from Surf's website:

So, my question to Surf is are you going to be posting analysis of Starter Set monsters before Wizard's adds monster to Basic?

I've already finished pulling Starter Set critters apart. I'm spending my time writing blog posts on it now.

Check out the greenline quote from Part 1...

2. Preparation. Once the first phase is completed I will prepare for the deeper analysis the Monster Manual release will trigger. This will mainly consist of analysis of PC data, similar to the Class Analysis I did for my D&D Next series. During this time new official D&D 5e monsters may also be released and, if appropriate, I will post updates for the Monster Construction phase. Basic D&D and the Player's Handbook will be the main sources of this work. New blog posts will be few and far between during this period.

So yes, I'll be updating as more comes out. But I'll also be preparing for the deep analysis the Monster Manual will afford... Because we won't ghet enough critters to do the job until then.

Because I'm really curious about what's deducible from the monsters in the Starter Set. I noticed some patterns in my curious look through the appendix, but I really want to see what someone who's better at this kind of analysis comes up with.

A lot is very, very obvious and consistent across all 27 samples. Plenty to put together a process-oriented build method. Which will do until I can figure out a result-oriented method.

Can you tell I'm excited?

I'm not sure you guys can tell how excited I am

I was afraid it looked like process built monsters as opposed to result oriented. Sigh.

I know :-( But the tiny sample size doesn't allow us to figure out a result-oriented build method yet :-( There's a big part of me that craves it. Even when I relax with a process-oriented build I want to lean on the result-oriented math. :-( Bring on the Monster Manual!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

FYI surfarcher, the address to your blog in your sig is wrong. The 'g' is missing in "blogspot".

 

[surfarcher]

Thanks for the heads up! I will fix that now. For some crazy reason Enworld doesn't let me put BBCode in my sig so my fat fingers mangled it :-(

 

[surfarcher]

Mmmm.... I've received some feedback on my blog posts on Reddit... Yeah I know what Reddit is like... remind me to tell you about it sometime.


They may have some kind of point tho, so I thought I might ask on these here forums...

Would folks rather see more frequent installments that are smaller?

Or longer, more detailed installments that cover more, but are further apart??

 

[Grazzt]

Mmmm.... I've received some feedback on my blog posts on Reddit... Yeah I know what Reddit is like... remind me to tell you about it sometime.


They may have some kind of point tho, so I thought I might ask on these here forums...

Would folks rather see more frequent installments that are smaller?

Or longer, more detailed installments that cover more, but are further apart??

Reddit's cool. (It's where I spend downtime sometimes when servers aren't blowing up at work.) Ya gotta have thick skin sometimes though, lest ya not survive.

And I vote more frequent as to your question(s)?

 

[surfarcher]

Reddit's cool. (It's where I spend downtime sometimes when servers aren't blowing up at work.) Ya gotta have thick skin sometimes though, lest ya not survive.

Oh don't get me wrong. I really enjoy Reddit.

But... You know what it can be like ;-) Hence taking it to forums for advice :-D

And I vote more frequent as to your question(s)?

Vote noted and thank you!

 

[the Jester]

And I vote more frequent as to your question(s)?

Me too!

 

[surfarcher]

Me too!

Noted!

A quick update...


I have completely stalled on the articles because I am breaking down CR. I had thought I could work around it but it's proving more foundational to monsters than anticipated... I figure I may as well bite the bullet now.



On the downside this means the next post will be delayed a couple of days more than planned.



On the upside we'll have something we can use for a result-oriented build far sooner than I expected!

 

[Theodric the Obscure]

I will be following your analysis with interest.