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Do the Monster Building Guidelines Work?
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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9155472" data-attributes="member: 20323"><p>Hey Dave! My experience running a ton of homebrewed monsters is that the 5e D&D monster creation guidelines give a decent starting point.</p><p></p><p>There are two <strong><em>huge</em></strong> caveats, though - disclaimers that really ought to be stated in the books rather than a GM having to discover these things "on the job."</p><p></p><p><em>I'm going to use some architectural design lingo, since I'm studying to enter the same field as you, and maybe it will help communicate better.</em></p><p></p><p>First.</p><p></p><p>The guidelines will work decently enough...as long as you're designing / playing within tolerances. What does that mean? The 2014 DMG tables are not like structural load design tables which are meant to work in the vast majority of conditions. Instead, they are a designer's hand-written notes they use as a rule-of-thumb for design that doesn't stretch too far from baseline assumptions.</p><p></p><p>What does that mean <em>exactly</em>? So long as you're designing a monster whose offensive CR and defensive CR aren't radically far apart (leaving all conversations of "CR is flawed" aside), and it doesn't have a <em>ton</em> of features or any <em>unusual</em> features, you should be OK.</p><p></p><p>I'll give examples:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster relies on inflicting a debilitating condition like Stunned or Incapacitated or Petrified, you're moving into more art than engineering, and you need to spend some extra time with your maths and imagining of the monster-in-play. For ex, you'll likely need to know the average damage/PC/level to determine the foregone damage and add that to the monster's effective HP.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster relies on charming PCs, similar situation.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster circumvents HP as its main threat, you're again in the realm of art and the 2014 DMG isn't going to help you.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster relies on ambush tactics such as False Appearance, you need the human GM to make a judgment call on how to assess that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster has lots of features that don't seems to have an impact in isolation (i.e. low delta), you need a human GM to do a form of "clash detection" and to keep track of compounding impacts / multiplier effect on aspects of the monster's maths.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the monster is a certain type (undead, in particular) that is readily thwarted by a common character-ability, that needs to be accounted for by a human GM in a way that the monster/adventure design guidelines don't account for.</li> </ul><p>Second.</p><p></p><p>My hot take is that, if we zoom out our lens to not just look within the 5e ecosystem, but at the bigger RPG-o-sphere and what a GM more broadly wants from monster building guidelines... I think <strong>inspiration </strong>is the operative word. We don't get too excited by building a goblin-by-another-name that has different numbers, different weapons, and swaps Nimble Escape for a different feature or two. Lots of monsters are pretty much that - minor shifts. Excitement for monster design, at least for me, lies in the <strong>uniqueness</strong> of the monster and what it does different from all other monsters.</p><p></p><p>I believe the intensification of monster stat blocks across late 3e, 4e, and 5e actually works against this objective of <strong>inspiration </strong>& <strong>uniqueness</strong>. We're trying to capture lightning in a rather clinical formulaic stat block that is one-size-fits-all, when the coolest part of the monster may not conform to that at all (or may not be <em>best served</em> by that). Back in AD&D, yeah there was the stat block for numbers, but the interesting stuff was all in text below – it was a pain to reference in play, but it allowed for a lot more diversity.</p><p></p><p>So to get to your question "Do the monster building guidelines work?" From a basic mechanical framework, yeah, they work ok enough. But equally important (or, I would say, more important) is do they work to inspire the GM's own creations? For me, they really fail at inspiring – and this is where I love looking at other monster books outside of modern D&D.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 9155472, member: 20323"] Hey Dave! My experience running a ton of homebrewed monsters is that the 5e D&D monster creation guidelines give a decent starting point. There are two [B][I]huge[/I][/B] caveats, though - disclaimers that really ought to be stated in the books rather than a GM having to discover these things "on the job." [I]I'm going to use some architectural design lingo, since I'm studying to enter the same field as you, and maybe it will help communicate better.[/I] First. The guidelines will work decently enough...as long as you're designing / playing within tolerances. What does that mean? The 2014 DMG tables are not like structural load design tables which are meant to work in the vast majority of conditions. Instead, they are a designer's hand-written notes they use as a rule-of-thumb for design that doesn't stretch too far from baseline assumptions. What does that mean [I]exactly[/I]? So long as you're designing a monster whose offensive CR and defensive CR aren't radically far apart (leaving all conversations of "CR is flawed" aside), and it doesn't have a [I]ton[/I] of features or any [I]unusual[/I] features, you should be OK. I'll give examples: [LIST] [*]If the monster relies on inflicting a debilitating condition like Stunned or Incapacitated or Petrified, you're moving into more art than engineering, and you need to spend some extra time with your maths and imagining of the monster-in-play. For ex, you'll likely need to know the average damage/PC/level to determine the foregone damage and add that to the monster's effective HP. [*]If the monster relies on charming PCs, similar situation. [*]If the monster circumvents HP as its main threat, you're again in the realm of art and the 2014 DMG isn't going to help you. [*]If the monster relies on ambush tactics such as False Appearance, you need the human GM to make a judgment call on how to assess that. [*]If the monster has lots of features that don't seems to have an impact in isolation (i.e. low delta), you need a human GM to do a form of "clash detection" and to keep track of compounding impacts / multiplier effect on aspects of the monster's maths. [*]If the monster is a certain type (undead, in particular) that is readily thwarted by a common character-ability, that needs to be accounted for by a human GM in a way that the monster/adventure design guidelines don't account for. [/LIST] Second. My hot take is that, if we zoom out our lens to not just look within the 5e ecosystem, but at the bigger RPG-o-sphere and what a GM more broadly wants from monster building guidelines... I think [B]inspiration [/B]is the operative word. We don't get too excited by building a goblin-by-another-name that has different numbers, different weapons, and swaps Nimble Escape for a different feature or two. Lots of monsters are pretty much that - minor shifts. Excitement for monster design, at least for me, lies in the [B]uniqueness[/B] of the monster and what it does different from all other monsters. I believe the intensification of monster stat blocks across late 3e, 4e, and 5e actually works against this objective of [B]inspiration [/B]& [B]uniqueness[/B]. We're trying to capture lightning in a rather clinical formulaic stat block that is one-size-fits-all, when the coolest part of the monster may not conform to that at all (or may not be [I]best served[/I] by that). Back in AD&D, yeah there was the stat block for numbers, but the interesting stuff was all in text below – it was a pain to reference in play, but it allowed for a lot more diversity. So to get to your question "Do the monster building guidelines work?" From a basic mechanical framework, yeah, they work ok enough. But equally important (or, I would say, more important) is do they work to inspire the GM's own creations? For me, they really fail at inspiring – and this is where I love looking at other monster books outside of modern D&D. [/QUOTE]
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