MightyZehir
Explorer
As more information on monsters is revealed, different opinions arise. Some people think the monsters are boring because they lack a wide range of tactical options. For example, without lairs, the only difference between dragons is their breath damage type.
Personally, I don't mind the simplicity but I can see why some people would think that way. So I would like to share some of my thoughts on this matter.
While monsters have similar attacks and abilities, they don't have to play the same. It all depends on how you design and run the encounter.
A black dragon may be an ambusher that attacks from dark swamp and drags characters to the bottom of the pool to drown.
You don't need special rules to do that. It just moves out of water, uses multiattack(replace one attack with grapple), then move back down into the water with the character. If you feel like it, you could even rule that it can grapple the target when the dragon hits with its attacks.
There are so many things you could do, nothings stop the dragon from grabbing characters and throwing them around like rag dolls. It could also summon reptiles to fight for him, just throw in a couple of poisonous snake swarms and add their xp to the encounter. Easy.
Use the environment, the lair action is great, but why stop there, acid breath could bring down trees on characters, create aicd pools and difficult terrains.
DMs shouldn't just focus on how the characters and monsters interact with each other, think about how their actions can impact the surroundings. It creates more interesting and dynamic encounters.
Personally, I don't mind the simplicity but I can see why some people would think that way. So I would like to share some of my thoughts on this matter.
While monsters have similar attacks and abilities, they don't have to play the same. It all depends on how you design and run the encounter.
A black dragon may be an ambusher that attacks from dark swamp and drags characters to the bottom of the pool to drown.
You don't need special rules to do that. It just moves out of water, uses multiattack(replace one attack with grapple), then move back down into the water with the character. If you feel like it, you could even rule that it can grapple the target when the dragon hits with its attacks.
There are so many things you could do, nothings stop the dragon from grabbing characters and throwing them around like rag dolls. It could also summon reptiles to fight for him, just throw in a couple of poisonous snake swarms and add their xp to the encounter. Easy.
Use the environment, the lair action is great, but why stop there, acid breath could bring down trees on characters, create aicd pools and difficult terrains.
DMs shouldn't just focus on how the characters and monsters interact with each other, think about how their actions can impact the surroundings. It creates more interesting and dynamic encounters.
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. If anything 5e seems to be a throwback to 2e monsterous compendium style, with a decent amount of background info and fluff to help the DM be creative in world / encounter building. There's never been much to differentiate kobolds from goblins (mechanically) but prior editions had no problem providing descriptive fluff to allow DMs to portray them differently and create memorable encounters.
