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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Thing I thought 4e did better: Monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6980324" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>5e is designed so monsters fit in a classical CR range other than a few niche cases, most creatures can be faced by PCs of a certain level in 1e or 3e can face that monster at that level in 5e. Which makes it easier to update classic adventures.</p><p>A monster's challenge wasn't inflated to fill level bands, and monsters weren't really designed to be certain CRs. The monsters were designed to replicate what the monster should look like and then a CR was assigned. It'd be weird if troglodytes - generally presented as roughly the same challenge as an orc - were suddenly three times as powerful as an ogre. Suddenly running the level 1-3 adventure <em>Against the Cult of the Reptile God</em> would be a series of TPKs</p><p></p><p></p><p>Meh.</p><p>The higher level variants tended to exist solely so you could use a monster a more level ranges. But that's irrelevant in 5e as you can just use the standard monster. A couple variants were cool, and had a unquiet story or were a fun twist on the original (I'm a fan of the beholder Eye of Flame and Eye of Frost variants) but often they were the same thing with higher numbers. </p><p></p><p>The humanoids got silly though. There were hundreds of variants of orcs at the end. Pretty much one for every level. </p><p>Plus, like 3e, the humanoid races can use NPC statblocks. So there can be higher CR variants. They're just not unique. An orc bandit isn't radically different from a bugbear bandit. And it's easy to just give a monster race PC class levels. (This is something I advocated for following 3e and expected in 4e: NPC statblocks and generic NPCs that can easily become monstrous humanoids of any CR.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>Monsters in 5e tend to do one cool thing. Which tends to be enough given the shorter rounds (sometimes just getting their one cool thing out is hard). The 3-4 cool things 4e monsters had all but required 3-4 rounds per monster to show off all their cool things. If they died prior, it was always a disappointment. </p><p>And in an average fight there might be three types of monster (assuming a couple doubles), each with 3.5 cool things, for 10-11 cool things to keep track of in each fight. There was so much stuff going on, it all just blurred together. As a player I couldn't keep track and never knew exactly what was going on (and was always much more interested in planning my next cool thing coming up), and as the DM I had enough to worry about with five monsters and managing the combat to really care about each monster's cool thing.</p><p></p><p>The 4e special snowflake powers could also be slow. They could require a lot of reading and explaining the details across the table. But unless they did a lot of damage, most of the time players wouldn't care. Unless the monster threatened the PC with immanent harm, there was no danger and thus no threat or interest.</p><p></p><p>Also, regimented game effects are a little less necessary in 5e. As the DM, I don't need a unique Bugbear Strangler to explicitly tell me it can garrote a character. It doesn't need a "Deadly Garrote" Melee Basic Attack. I just need to give it a choke cord and treat it like a grapple that also prevents the victim from breathing or speaking. And it's not a special unique attack trained in by one type of bugbear: in the right situation, any of them could pull out the ol' length of wire and give an unsuspecting victim a silent death.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 6980324, member: 37579"] 5e is designed so monsters fit in a classical CR range other than a few niche cases, most creatures can be faced by PCs of a certain level in 1e or 3e can face that monster at that level in 5e. Which makes it easier to update classic adventures. A monster's challenge wasn't inflated to fill level bands, and monsters weren't really designed to be certain CRs. The monsters were designed to replicate what the monster should look like and then a CR was assigned. It'd be weird if troglodytes - generally presented as roughly the same challenge as an orc - were suddenly three times as powerful as an ogre. Suddenly running the level 1-3 adventure [I]Against the Cult of the Reptile God[/I] would be a series of TPKs Meh. The higher level variants tended to exist solely so you could use a monster a more level ranges. But that's irrelevant in 5e as you can just use the standard monster. A couple variants were cool, and had a unquiet story or were a fun twist on the original (I'm a fan of the beholder Eye of Flame and Eye of Frost variants) but often they were the same thing with higher numbers. The humanoids got silly though. There were hundreds of variants of orcs at the end. Pretty much one for every level. Plus, like 3e, the humanoid races can use NPC statblocks. So there can be higher CR variants. They're just not unique. An orc bandit isn't radically different from a bugbear bandit. And it's easy to just give a monster race PC class levels. (This is something I advocated for following 3e and expected in 4e: NPC statblocks and generic NPCs that can easily become monstrous humanoids of any CR.) Monsters in 5e tend to do one cool thing. Which tends to be enough given the shorter rounds (sometimes just getting their one cool thing out is hard). The 3-4 cool things 4e monsters had all but required 3-4 rounds per monster to show off all their cool things. If they died prior, it was always a disappointment. And in an average fight there might be three types of monster (assuming a couple doubles), each with 3.5 cool things, for 10-11 cool things to keep track of in each fight. There was so much stuff going on, it all just blurred together. As a player I couldn't keep track and never knew exactly what was going on (and was always much more interested in planning my next cool thing coming up), and as the DM I had enough to worry about with five monsters and managing the combat to really care about each monster's cool thing. The 4e special snowflake powers could also be slow. They could require a lot of reading and explaining the details across the table. But unless they did a lot of damage, most of the time players wouldn't care. Unless the monster threatened the PC with immanent harm, there was no danger and thus no threat or interest. Also, regimented game effects are a little less necessary in 5e. As the DM, I don't need a unique Bugbear Strangler to explicitly tell me it can garrote a character. It doesn't need a "Deadly Garrote" Melee Basic Attack. I just need to give it a choke cord and treat it like a grapple that also prevents the victim from breathing or speaking. And it's not a special unique attack trained in by one type of bugbear: in the right situation, any of them could pull out the ol' length of wire and give an unsuspecting victim a silent death. [/QUOTE]
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