D&D 5E Bigby's Hand & Drow Mages - understanding changes brought in with 5e

[martynq]

I'm quite familiar with 1e/2e/3e/v3.5, but wandered away when 4e came along. Consequently, I'm late to the party with 5e and am now trying to get my head around what has changed. It seems that people like 5e lots - I can see that it looks slightly more rules-light than 3e, but has some aspects of earlier editions' general structures.

Some of the design choices look unexpected to me. I wondered if anybody could enlighten me as to why certain things were done, as my Google skills have not managed to find an explanation. I've got two specific questions to start:

1. Why were the many Bigby's Hand spells from earlier editions combined into a single spell in 5e?

2. Why does a Drow Mage (Monster Manual 5e) get d8 hit dice? It seems strange to someone more familiar with 3e that NPCs get to play with different rules to PCs, so I would have expected a drow mage to use the same hit dice as a wizard (or whatever class it was supposed to be).

Apologies in advance for my ignorance... I look forward to being enlightened by those more informed than me.

 

[prabe]

1. Because spellcasters get fewer spell slots and fewer prepared, by something like a lot, IIRC. Also, streamlining things was something of a design priority. Might be more the second than the first. See also: Enhance Ability.

2. Because size-Medium NPCs/monsters get d8s for hit dice. NPCs aren't symmetric to PCs the way they specifically were in 3.x. You can build an NPC as a PC with levels, but the CR ends up working out differently (if that matters).

 

[dregntael]

1. 5e tries to simplify and consolidate many elements of previous editions, which is why you won't see many lesser/greater versions of the same spell like in 3.5. Likewise many similar spells have been combined into one. This makes things easier to remember and run at the table, at the cost of some loss of depth compared to previous versions.

2. Monsters (including humanoid adversaries) do not follow the same rules as PCs in 5e. Instead, they all follow the monster creation guidelines in the DMG. One of these guidelines is that all medium-sized creatures use a d8 for their hit dice, no matter the type of creature or the class that they are based on. The separation of the rules for PCs and monsters was introduced in 4e, and kept in modified form for 5e.

 

[dave2008]

1. Why were the many Bigby's Hand spells from earlier editions combined into a single spell in 5e?

Simplification is the general theme of 5e. Why have 5 spells that do basically the same thing when you you can have one that does them all (or similar). Is is evident in numerous spells.

2. Why does a Drow Mage (Monster Manual 5e) get d8 hit dice? It seems strange to someone more familiar with 3e that NPCs get to play with different rules to PCs, so I would have expected a drow mage to use the same hit dice as a wizard (or whatever class it was supposed to be).

5e monsters (including NPCs) generally follow the monster rules not PC rules (you can combine them if you want). Medium size monsters, which Drow are, use a d8 for Hit Dice. Large use d10, Huge use d12, & Gargantuan use d20.

This approach started in 4e which had very simplified rules for monsters compared to PCs. It is similar in 5e, but more complex than 4e.

 

[Oofta]

The others answered the specific questions, but I think you'll see a lot of other places where things have been simplified and streamlined. For example there's no longer multiple cure wounds spells, just one that you can cast at higher levels to get more healing.

The other big difference for me was how monsters are built because I tend to do a fair amount of customization and building my own. They are not built like PCs, although I do occasionally add PC levels to existing monsters. I'm more likely to follow the guidelines from the DMG and then add abilities from other monsters.

Whether all this streamlining and simplification is always a good thing or not is a matter of personal preference. My recommendation would be to not worry too much about the details, but just run the game as written for a bit while avoiding the temptation to "fix" it. I have a handful of really minor house rules but once I stuck with it for a while 5E became my favorite edition. It lends itself nicely to different styles of play without too much tweaking.

Good luck!

 

[Voadam]

5e does that for a lot of spells, there is cure wounds instead of the old cure light wounds, cure moderate wounds, cure serious wounds, etc. They also make a lot of spells have options for higher level slots instead of things going up by caster level. So magic missile gets another missile per slot instead of by every two caster levels.

This has a consequence of spells known staying relevant throughout the caster's career instead of for the specific levels chosen.

Monsters (including NPC monster entries) get HD type based on size, d8 for medium, bigger dies for bigger monsters and smaller dies for smaller monsters. This allows hp to be tied closer to target CR range than class and type did in 3e but still have some variation that makes some simulationist sense (partially tying hp to mass). The enemy wizard's hp from the 5e game design viewpoint is to gauge how long they last in combat, not to be comparable to the PC wizard's hp.