Monsters with spell lists is not a good sign

[Dragonblade]

After the joy and ease of running 4e monsters, both me and my current Pathfinder DM both agree that monsters with spell lists is a potential deal breaker.

He hates that he can't run a PF game without d20pfsrd.com due to monster stat blocks with feats and spells that have to be looked up in another source. He is tired of having to do monster "homework" to run a monster.

I'm liking what I see on the player's side of the screen for the playtest, but monsters stat blocks that aren't entirely self-contained is one of the few potential deal breakers we have with D&DN.

Having spell blocks that bury important info in the description just compounds the issue.

 

[NewJeffCT]

that doesn't sound good - I agree.

(I keep getting hung up trying to download the files)

 

[Dragonblade]

If its somewhat limited it might be tolerable. In PF its bad, because there are so many monsters with spell like abilities that work like spells, monsters with feats, and special qualities and all this stuff you have to look up, that its just a nightmare for DM prep. We have burned through 3 PF DMs in the past year because of this.

If they limit spell lists to only monsters that actually cast spells as a PC would, meaning they are actually wizards, not simply monsters with innate magic AND those monsters are not common AND spell descriptions are cleaned up so that range, duration, damage, etc. isn't buried in text then it might be ok.

But I'f I'm regularly looking up multiple feats and spells to run a monster, then that is a big problem.

 

[Kinak]

As a Pathfinder GM, I heartily concur that spells in stat blocks are a pain. But I think overall, they're on the right track with the monsters.

In a perfect world, I'd actually want most enemies to be OD&D simple. Some "elites" with a special power or two (like the chieftains in the playtest) would be great. Then "bosses" with crazy abilities that effect the battlefield (like the high priest's special).

So, really, they're very close. If they nudged everything's complexity down one ability (and collapsed spell casting into an ability), I would be one seriously happy camper.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[underfoot007ct]

that doesn't sound good - I agree.

(I keep getting hung up trying to download the files)

I am so with you guys on this.

 

[Kzach]

Monster design, as has been stated, is so far away from being finished that to tear into it doesn't make much sense. If the question comes up on one of the surveys for this playtest, just make sure to answer, "Spell lists suxxor!"

 

[Storminator]

There are few things that would make me dismiss Next out of hand. This is probably one of them. My last 3.5 session had a Vrock, and if you put all the spells, the summons, and the spells the summons can use together, it was 10 pages.

PS

 

[vagabundo]

Add me to the list. Could be a deal breaker for me too.

On second look I like the monster format sans the stat blocks. I assume that they didn't use any formatting on he stats because it is the play test and, as someone mentioned,monsters are far from being done.

Spell lists just slow down prep or play too much. I'm not willing to go back to long rep times. We'll just have to see how it turns out.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I imagine the spellcasting NPCs are only there because they were there in the original Keep on the Borderlands. It's a very faithful conversion.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah add me as someone who wants to see:

All monster abilities in one place.

Monsters that don't have to use the same rules as PCs.