D&D 5E Changes to D&D's Spellcasting Monsters: Streamlining Your Way To Bliss

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks about the way they are changing spellcasting monsters in D&D.

• Making the game more fun, easier to learn, shorting "the pathway to getting to your bliss".
• Making monsters easier to run.
• "Rumors of the death of spellcasting [in monsters] are not true". Innate spellcasting has been streamlined with spellcasting into a single trait.
• Spellcasting options are consolidated whenever possible.
• Removing options that a DM is unlikely ever to use.
• In some cases, new magical abilities in the monster statblock which exist alongside a list of spells they can cast.
• For example, the mind flayer's mind blast is not a spell, and other abilities are magical but not spells and aren't as easy to interact with with things like counterspell.
• Things which make archmages say "How is this functioning, and why can't I stop it?"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

'Streamlining'

You mean breaking every prior ability which relied on NPC's using spells?

DM - "The enemy wizard casts 'Ball of Fire"

Player - "Ok as Ancients Paladin my aura gives resistance to damage from spells"

DM - "It's not a spell, it's just just an ability identical in every way to a spell. Guess you die"

That needs to be adressed.
It is a bit unlucky that they changed magic resistance to only work against spells at the same time they changed the spellcasting.

 

[HammerMan]

None of that stuff would have survived an edition change. Its the same at the tail end of all of them.

too bad. having "wizard' be an overall term for 4 or 5 classes would work better. give them some overlap but mostly split the spells. no one gets to choose Counterspell or Fireball, because the nobody gets both.

 

[carmachu]

In principle I'm all for 4e style monsterblocks. But since I use Beyond and AboveVTT spell slots is no bother to use, and my players enjoy the odd lifesaving counterspell at heroic moments. So I will not buy the book and will keep using classic 5e style blocks, at least until anniversary cores/5.5.

As to streamlining, I wish WotC don't just simplify/dumb down stat blocks for 5.5. Go full 4e style and give monsters new and interesting abilities, to get away from bag of hp syndrome.

From memory of old, 4e had a problem where fights were grinds because monsters were a bag of hitpoints.

 

[Jer]

'Streamlining'

You mean breaking every prior ability which relied on NPC's using spells?

DM - "The enemy wizard casts 'Ball of Fire"

Player - "Ok as Ancients Paladin my aura gives resistance to damage from spells"

DM - "It's not a spell, it's just just an ability identical in every way to a spell. Guess you die"

5e is starting to feel like an incoherent mess, where old stuff isn't meshing with the new stuff very well at all.

Take a look at the new stat blocks for Orcus or the Drow Matron that were floating around. They still have spells. And even where the spell has been moved into the attack block and given a different name, it's still a spell. Orcus no longer "casts chill touch as a 17th level caster" instead Orcus now has a "Necrotic Bolt" Ranged Spell attack that has a +15 to hit and does 5d8+7 necrotic damage. Still a spell - it's still even mechanically a chill touch spell - except now it's called out in the stat block that he has it and that he's expected to use it and it's not hidden in there as a cantrip that you might ignore because you might be thinking "why the heck would Orcus be casting chill touch - that's a cantrip?"

Here's a tweet where the two versions get compared - you can see the side by side of the stat blocks for yourself:


From everything we've seen the only places where they're taking spells away and making them magical non-spell attacks are on monsters where it fits the theme of the monster. Like the Mind Flayer (which also suggests that a) they're still thinking of bringing in psionics, and b) they're not thinking of psionics as spells).

(Another good bit that they did there is add the Necrotic bolt to Orcus's Multiattack and upped the number of attacks he gets to make from 2 to three. So where before he could make 2 Wand of Orcus attacks now he can make 3 attacks mixing in his Wand attack, his necrotic bolt, and his Tail attack. It ups his power level, which demon lords can always use IMO, but also indicates how he's supposed to be used.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

There seems to be 55 different people who all need their monster statblocks to tell them 55 different things so that they do not have to spend any time looking up 55 other rules in 55 other books, while at the same time apparently unwilling to adjust said statblocks themselves so that they can have the 55 different abilities they think these creatures should have on the off-chance they aren't used in a one-and-done fight.

What amuses me is that those 55 people posting still seemingly surprised that WotC hasn't been able to cater the rules to their 55 individual needs. I mean how long has this game and all its variants been in existence? 55 years? Has there EVER been a version of the game that did live up to everything those 55 people needed with no additional work on their part, so they could just sit down at a table, open up a book with absolutely no prep and then run the game exactly how they wanted the game to go with no annoyances and nothing needing to be changed?

And if so... why aren't they just still playing that game rather than continually being concerned with what new stuff WotC was releasing since ipso facto it wouldn't be what they knew they needed?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

From memory of old, 4e had a problem where fights were grinds because monsters were a bag of hitpoints.

Actually that is not universally true.
They had fantastic abilities and were actually well balanced. There also were minions that could easily be taken down with one solid hit.

The problem was a little bit more nuanced:

- Soldier type monsters were quite hard to hit and had solid hp. If you missed with your encounter abilities, a lot of damage potential was wasted. That was corrected later (in essentials). Also essentials had martials with 5e divine smite type abilities. Also more things later.

- solo used to have 5 times hp instead of 4 times. That was corrected later (in essentials)

- the way minions, normal and elite type monsters worked was problematic. They were distinct monsters instead of using a formula like : if you are 8 levels above, change damage and hp to minion type but increase to hit and AC accordingly. Reverse for elite (not corrected).

And last but the most problematic aspect:
- monsters scaled quadratic, which means that if you used higher level opponents, not only did HP increase, but also AC, which resulted in very frustrating encounters, because my first two bullet points were even more problematic.

However:

• essentials also had humans that could add +3 to any one check per encounter turning acrucial failure into a hit.
• they also added specialized weapon expertise feats which in my opinion was also stealth errata, so your general to hit was slightly improved.

So in the end, the felt bag of hp problem was mostly eliminated, as long as you sticked to opponents very close to your level. But many people left before the corrections took place.

 

[Jer]

From memory of old, 4e had a problem where fights were grinds because monsters were a bag of hitpoints.

4e had this problem because whoever was in charge of the first Monster Manual screwed up the math. Fights were a slog because they gave monsters too many hit points and didn't have them doing nearly enough damage when they hit. That led to fights where the outcome was inevitable and obvious but it would take 8 rounds to play out instead of 3 because of the bag of hit points problem.

Adjusting the HP of the monsters down and the damage they dealt up got rid of that problem and made the fights fast and furious and generally over in 3-5 rounds in my experience (barring a setpiece fight with a BBEG of course). They eventually figured this out long after the rest of the internet did - sometime around MM3 or so I think - but by that point 4e's reputation for having sloggy combats was set into stone.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Snip...
And if so... why aren't they just still playing that game rather than continually being concerned with what new stuff WotC was releasing since ipso facto it wouldn't be what they knew they needed?

I was sooo annoyed, that rakshasas were innate spellcasters and could not pick different spells, so that they can learn nystul's magic aura so they can appear as celestial when the paladin used detect evil and good.

So I added 3 levels of wizard. Done.

You are totally right. It is so easy as a DM to just treat those abilities as spells or just add real PC class levels if they wish. Those options are in the DMG forever.
The unmodified game however should make it easy for beginners to learn and DM. As another poster said: they are willing to play but not to DM anymore. Without DMs, the game will not find new players.

 

[HammerMan]

From memory of old, 4e had a problem where fights were grinds because monsters were a bag of hitpoints.

yeah 4e was far from perfect. and fighte last twice to three times too long is the biggest.

 

[Remathilis]

Take a look at the new stat blocks for Orcus or the Drow Matron that were floating around. They still have spells. And even where the spell has been moved into the attack block and given a different name, it's still a spell. Orcus no longer "casts chill touch as a 17th level caster" instead Orcus now has a "Necrotic Bolt" Ranged Spell attack that has a +15 to hit and does 5d8+7 necrotic damage. Still a spell - it's still even mechanically a chill touch spell - except now it's called out in the stat block that he has it and that he's expected to use it and it's not hidden in there as a cantrip that you might ignore because you might be thinking "why the heck would Orcus be casting chill touch - that's a cantrip?"

So let me point out the major difference between Chill Touch and Necrotic bolt: the former had two riders on it: you can't heal for 1 round after getting hit with chill touch if you're living and you have disadvantage to hit the caster if your undead. Necrotic bolt has neither of these factors, and while the undead one isn't likely to come up, the healing one is huge as it can lockout a character from big healing effects (or more if he uses his legendaries) making a healer have to carefully use thier spells. Second, if you have a spell or ability that protects you from "spells" (such as spell resistance) it is useless against necrotic bolt. So effectively, they took away the PCs chance of resisting it at the cost of it no longer being an inconvenience when it hits the PC beyond damage.

This is what "dumbing down" looks like; remove all the interplay and strategy from fighting a CR 23 boss monster so that it's easier to read the stat block.

Now, WotC COULD have changed it to:

Necrotic Bolt. Ranged Spell Attack. Orcus casts chill touch (+15 to hit, range 120 ft. One target Hit: 29 (5d8 + 7 damage, target cannot regain HP for 1 round).

It captures the feel of the old ability with the convenience of the new.

And to be fair, Orcus isn't even my worry here: he's a monster using an innate magical attack that could be anything the DM wants. I am concerned when a necromancer npc who is supposed to be a "wizard" has Necrotic Bolt in his stat block instead of chill touch, because then we set the precedent that cantrips are "PC magic" and NPCs get different versions that don't abide by the same laws of magic.