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Why A GM Can Never Have Too Many Bestiaries
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7691599" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>That's entirely a matter of atmospherics. When players/PCs encounter a monster, the players/PCs don't necessarily know what they are facing. A skilled DM doesn't introduce a monster by saying, "You see a ghost (as described on page ## of the MM)" or "You see a bodak." The DM introduces the monster by describing it. How you describe and the circumstances of the encounter determine the player/PCs emotional response. Even a goblin can be scary, disturbing, horrific, or threatening if you play it right. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, meeting a new undead, how do players know what they are meeting? Is it a manifested malevolent ghost, a spectre, a wraith, a bodak, or something else? There are so many different sorts of undead with so many similarities that its almost impossible for someone to tell what something is until it manifests some more unique power. And in meeting a ghost in particular, there is just know way of knowing what you are facing. Not only do ghosts retain powers that they had in life, so that the ghost of a beserker and the ghost of an ice sorceress are going to be very different things, but the ghost template itself provides for an enormous amount of very easy customization by mixing and matching its malevolent powers. </p><p></p><p>In the case of a ghost in the Bodak role, giving the ghost 'corrupting gaze', 'horrific appearance', and 'draining touch' gives a monster that kills in the same sort of manner a Bodak does but with a couple of notable improvements from a mechanical perspective. First, the majority of the monsters threat doesn't come from its gaze attack, but rather the threat level of the monster can be tuned to the level of the party so that its not a cake walk just because you can resist the gaze attack. And secondly, the main attacks aren't an all or nothing affair, but rather following the D&D paradigm they do progressive attrition of party resources. They are still frightening or debilitating but what they are that the death gaze isn't is interactive. Those powers create interplay, so that the players feel like they are engaging with the situation. By contrast, the death gaze is all or nothing. Either it is threatening, in which case players die to sheer bad luck, or else the party is prepared for the death gaze in which case the monster and its remaining abilities are likely to make this a cake walk encounter.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, first, there is nothing about that situation that you can't do with a ghost. A ghost with 'corrupting gaze' is plenty capable of blasting out of existence innocents in a predatory fashion. But unlike the situation with the Bodak, it's not an all or nothing affair. PC's can witness NPCs being threatened while still having time to respond to the problem. Some NPCs may well die before anything can be done, but other NPCs will remain in perpetual jeopardy unless rescued. This makes for a better encounter. And likewise, the PCs themselves will remain in more perpetual jeapary compared to the situation with the Bodak, as easy solutions like Death Ward won't be available to render the encounter trivial.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>But ghosts can have hypnotic death-dealing gaze. And it is a trivial matter to customize the ghost - literally a matter of seconds - to make it have a unique flavor. For example, in my current campaign, one of the PCs - in an effort to flush out or kill an enemy - burned down his house. Instead of killing the villain though, they burned alive a servant girl that lived in the house. That character now haunts the party as a vengeful ghost, and the ghost has a power inspired by the 'corrupting gaze' entry - 'burning gaze'. Instead of doing 2d10 damage + 1d4 charisma damage, her gaze does 3d10 fire damage + 1d4 charisma damage. She burns alive whomever she looks at. </p><p></p><p>This character started as 'scary bodak', but thanks to the fact that the party contains a (now powerful) shaman, the ghost has been transformed into a somewhat 'tame' weapon. But, as a weapon, she's proven decidedly double-edged, as she is something of a weapon of mass destruction. When unleashed, she tends to blast and disrupt allies as much as enemies, panicking mounts and henchmen, shaking the will of even stalwart party members, and burning everything around her. She's also used in this manner undeniably evil, both because the party has basically enslaved her, and she's a freaky scary necromantic weapon that tends to burn the innocent along with the guilty. </p><p></p><p>Again, there is nothing that a Bodak inspires that I can't get from the ghost template, and there are lots of things from the ghost template I can't get from the Bodak. And while the flavor of the Bodak isn't bad, and I'd be ok with 'corrupted abysmal ghosts' (or zombies, which are more what Bodaks are) as a concept, the implementation of 'save or die' on a monster that is otherwise not very threatening at all is wholly uninteresting and unproductive IMO.</p><p></p><p>To that end, I'd be more interested in a book that was 200 unique ghosts and which had a 'random ghost generator' on a CD in the back of it, than 200 chupacabras someone randomed up. For one thing, I suspect that a random chupacabra generator would on average do as good of job creating monsters as most Bestiary authors I've read. </p><p></p><p>Or I might be interested in 'Stat blocks (both full and condensed) for 300 unique hordlings; we did the math so you didn't have to'. Things like that would again be more interesting to me than most Bestiaries out there. Or, take a look at my <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?380192-Playing-like-Celebrim-Dryad-Flavor-Text-and-Unique-Mechanics" target="_blank">Dryad</a> write up. A product that was equivalent to '100 unique dryads' based on that write up, would be more useful to me than 90% of the Bestiaries that have been created for 3.5. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, with something like an adherer it's not at all obvious how to make them interesting. Coming up with something that gives an adherer some level of mythic resonance and narrative power is not easy. I applaud anyone that does even a half-way good job of it. I'm still not convinced I'd ever use them, but at least with something like the Pathfinder Bestiary backstory I can see why someone would use them without completely reflavoring them ('tar golem', 'tar devil'?).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Your lucky to have the time and life stability to play that often. But I don't think that ideas for monsters would ever be a limiting factor in my ability to create game content. For me, the hard part of DMing is always a good story conception. If a murder mystery, then its constructing the crime in such a way that it leaves sufficient clues to figure out who-done-it without easily dead ending in an unsolvable crime, but not so many that figuring that out is trivial. In any story, it's figuring out the hook that gets PC's involved and which compels players to pursue the hook because they want to, and not merely because the DM dangled a hook. If a campaign, then its having a story with a philosophical arc to it and drama, and hopefully twists along the way. </p><p></p><p>Monsters, magic items, and traps are to me dime a dozen. I could spam out unique magic items pretty much forever. Monster variants are harder only because they need some sort of stat block, and that means a lot of interacting math. </p><p></p><p>If I could point to a single big reason that I end up not needing a Bestiary though, is that the one thing I value in a Bestiary - flip to a stat block and use it as is - is denied to me by my own unique rules. Every monster before I can use it as is, requires conversion in order to be 'perfect'. So, I can still use a PRD or SRD monster in a pinch, but it's not how I would have designed the monster if I was doing it myself based on my rules and what I've learned makes for a good monster. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They don't sound very different to me. One is made of ether; the other is made of astral. But they are both basically hungry ghosts, with the caveat that you can't turn the astral one because 'not undead'. Mechanically they have a lot in common, particularly in earlier editions before 2e formalized the idea of a more customizable ghost (already frequently used by Hickman in his designs) and that really caught on in 3e with the template concept. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I've already conceded that. What I don't concede is that the existing bestiaries fulfill most peoples needs - both the ones they know about and the ones they don't yet understand - for monsters particularly well. </p><p></p><p>A valuable bestiary which is worth buying would do all of the following well:</p><p></p><p>a) Clearly define who needs the bestiary and why they need it.</p><p>b) Clearly and correctly identify not only the challenge that a monster represents ('CR') but correctly design monsters of an intended CR to work within the frame work of abilities that a party is likely to have when encountering it.</p><p>c) Have each monster have a clear tactical shtick which is interesting and interactive and which is both conducive to fun combat and at least slightly different from other monsters (especially existing monsters) in the same CR range.</p><p>d) Create monsters with a clear ecological niche that lets them integrate into the overall world in some interesting way preferably without destroying the average D&D worlds integrity. That is to say, the existence of the monster shouldn't require retconning your cosmology. </p><p>e) Have monsters that are built not just from random animal parts, but from tangible and common human fears or which draw from folk lore in interesting ways. Ideally, these monsters ought to often be more than mere combat encounters, but have a folk lore to them. Monsters that straddle ally/enemy lines or which have reason to see you as something other than food at least some of the time are particularly interesting and compelling. The good monsters, even if made up whole cloth, feel in some way familiar, as if they'd always been lurking at the edge of your subconscious. I'd note that HP Lovecraft is particularly good at this, and while his monsters might not have the right feel for every sword and sorcery campaign out there, they are built from his own fears - and often common or universal human fears - the way a good monster ought to be. By contrast, a lot of attempts to make horror bestiaries fail this test, creating monsters that feel more campy and just weird than things that have always been lurking in your nightmares.</p><p>f) Detail things about the monster which DMs frequently have to rule on, but which most books neglect.</p><p></p><p>A good example of a Bestiary I think does everything really well is Beta Bunny's 'Bestairy: Predators'.</p><p></p><p>a) Who needs this?: Anyone that uses animals in their campaign and wants greater detail, breadth and granularity than the MM gives them. If that's not you, you can skip the product, but that's a fairly broad audience because most campaigns assume the existence of real world animals.</p><p>b) What's the challenge?: In most cases low, but real. Realistic animals make good opponents for low level campaigns, but quickly run out of steam against high level parties with reality bending powers.</p><p>c) Tactical schtick?: Check. Real world animals have all sorts of different modes of behavior. The author goes out of his way to enhance those different behaviors to make them effective and dangerous.</p><p>d) Clear ecological niche?: Check. Indeed, the most obvious and realistic niche's imaginable. Throw templates like elemental, fiendish, celestial, umbral, spirit or skeletal on an animal and you immediately have a monster that works as a concept and which you can place in most dungeons as well without hazard to believability. </p><p>e) Clear mythological niche: Check. Animals are hugely important to human mythology, and all players are going to have existing mythic relationships to dogs, bears, snakes, cats, rats, sharks and so forth. And many players will have fears or phobias of these creatures, so you can build even terror around them. Doubling or tripling the HD for a 'dire' monster is a bit more work, and runs into problems of consistent challenge since most animals have problems contending with ranged attacks, flight, etc. but it still can get you mid-level brutes. A valid complaint against the Beta Bunny work is that all the stat blocks are on the realistic side. I wouldn't mind seeing after the cryptid section, a section with true fantasy stats adapting the 'dire' concept to the innovations in the book.</p><p>f) Details common issues that most books neglect?: Check. Issues like, "Can I eat it?", and "What's the body worth?" that invariably come up are dealt with in detail. </p><p></p><p>Now obviously, a Bestiary that is just about animals isn't for everyone. But, if it is for you, there isn't a wasted page in the document. And you can clearly explain to someone in the intended audience why they need the document. If you wanted to sell me on 'Why you need this book', you'd go somewhere like that.</p><p></p><p>Monster books I use a lot are Monster Manual I and Tome of Horrors, and to be sure even those contain a decent amount of badly designed monsters. But there are whole 3.X bestiaries where I'd never use a page of them, and which fail on every level for me. I don't want to use it because the monster is uninteresting, and often is a minor variation on an existing monster (hippo headed humanoid, turtle humanoid, baboon headed humanoid, etc.) with a generic stat block. I wouldn't enjoy using it because the monster isn't fun in play because it doesn't do anything that is unique either in terms of powers or synergies or niches. The CR's or the monsters are all over the place and high CR monsters are often created with Achilles heels that make them hard to employ against experienced parties (lack of actions, lack of resistances, lack of ability to deal with ranged attacks, over reliance on a single smashing attack that tends to result in non-interactive glass cannons, etc.). The monsters mostly fit neatly in the chupacabra category, right down to being chimerical combinations of real animals. The monsters lack mythic resonance and don't play on any strong fears or draw from a folk lore tradition, and often as not if they do have some sort of folk lore are so grounded in the specifics of a particular campaign that they aren't very useful outside of it (a ghostly gunslinger has lots of mythic resonance, but has no use in a campaign world where guns aren't part of its myth). And the details you'd want are either missing, or lavish in some areas while wholly neglectful of others, increasing the cost of the book while decreasing its overall utility (5 pages per monster entry is acceptable, if and only if every single monster is made of design gold and begs to be repeatedly used).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7691599, member: 4937"] That's entirely a matter of atmospherics. When players/PCs encounter a monster, the players/PCs don't necessarily know what they are facing. A skilled DM doesn't introduce a monster by saying, "You see a ghost (as described on page ## of the MM)" or "You see a bodak." The DM introduces the monster by describing it. How you describe and the circumstances of the encounter determine the player/PCs emotional response. Even a goblin can be scary, disturbing, horrific, or threatening if you play it right. Again, meeting a new undead, how do players know what they are meeting? Is it a manifested malevolent ghost, a spectre, a wraith, a bodak, or something else? There are so many different sorts of undead with so many similarities that its almost impossible for someone to tell what something is until it manifests some more unique power. And in meeting a ghost in particular, there is just know way of knowing what you are facing. Not only do ghosts retain powers that they had in life, so that the ghost of a beserker and the ghost of an ice sorceress are going to be very different things, but the ghost template itself provides for an enormous amount of very easy customization by mixing and matching its malevolent powers. In the case of a ghost in the Bodak role, giving the ghost 'corrupting gaze', 'horrific appearance', and 'draining touch' gives a monster that kills in the same sort of manner a Bodak does but with a couple of notable improvements from a mechanical perspective. First, the majority of the monsters threat doesn't come from its gaze attack, but rather the threat level of the monster can be tuned to the level of the party so that its not a cake walk just because you can resist the gaze attack. And secondly, the main attacks aren't an all or nothing affair, but rather following the D&D paradigm they do progressive attrition of party resources. They are still frightening or debilitating but what they are that the death gaze isn't is interactive. Those powers create interplay, so that the players feel like they are engaging with the situation. By contrast, the death gaze is all or nothing. Either it is threatening, in which case players die to sheer bad luck, or else the party is prepared for the death gaze in which case the monster and its remaining abilities are likely to make this a cake walk encounter. Again, first, there is nothing about that situation that you can't do with a ghost. A ghost with 'corrupting gaze' is plenty capable of blasting out of existence innocents in a predatory fashion. But unlike the situation with the Bodak, it's not an all or nothing affair. PC's can witness NPCs being threatened while still having time to respond to the problem. Some NPCs may well die before anything can be done, but other NPCs will remain in perpetual jeopardy unless rescued. This makes for a better encounter. And likewise, the PCs themselves will remain in more perpetual jeapary compared to the situation with the Bodak, as easy solutions like Death Ward won't be available to render the encounter trivial. But ghosts can have hypnotic death-dealing gaze. And it is a trivial matter to customize the ghost - literally a matter of seconds - to make it have a unique flavor. For example, in my current campaign, one of the PCs - in an effort to flush out or kill an enemy - burned down his house. Instead of killing the villain though, they burned alive a servant girl that lived in the house. That character now haunts the party as a vengeful ghost, and the ghost has a power inspired by the 'corrupting gaze' entry - 'burning gaze'. Instead of doing 2d10 damage + 1d4 charisma damage, her gaze does 3d10 fire damage + 1d4 charisma damage. She burns alive whomever she looks at. This character started as 'scary bodak', but thanks to the fact that the party contains a (now powerful) shaman, the ghost has been transformed into a somewhat 'tame' weapon. But, as a weapon, she's proven decidedly double-edged, as she is something of a weapon of mass destruction. When unleashed, she tends to blast and disrupt allies as much as enemies, panicking mounts and henchmen, shaking the will of even stalwart party members, and burning everything around her. She's also used in this manner undeniably evil, both because the party has basically enslaved her, and she's a freaky scary necromantic weapon that tends to burn the innocent along with the guilty. Again, there is nothing that a Bodak inspires that I can't get from the ghost template, and there are lots of things from the ghost template I can't get from the Bodak. And while the flavor of the Bodak isn't bad, and I'd be ok with 'corrupted abysmal ghosts' (or zombies, which are more what Bodaks are) as a concept, the implementation of 'save or die' on a monster that is otherwise not very threatening at all is wholly uninteresting and unproductive IMO. To that end, I'd be more interested in a book that was 200 unique ghosts and which had a 'random ghost generator' on a CD in the back of it, than 200 chupacabras someone randomed up. For one thing, I suspect that a random chupacabra generator would on average do as good of job creating monsters as most Bestiary authors I've read. Or I might be interested in 'Stat blocks (both full and condensed) for 300 unique hordlings; we did the math so you didn't have to'. Things like that would again be more interesting to me than most Bestiaries out there. Or, take a look at my [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?380192-Playing-like-Celebrim-Dryad-Flavor-Text-and-Unique-Mechanics"]Dryad[/URL] write up. A product that was equivalent to '100 unique dryads' based on that write up, would be more useful to me than 90% of the Bestiaries that have been created for 3.5. Well, with something like an adherer it's not at all obvious how to make them interesting. Coming up with something that gives an adherer some level of mythic resonance and narrative power is not easy. I applaud anyone that does even a half-way good job of it. I'm still not convinced I'd ever use them, but at least with something like the Pathfinder Bestiary backstory I can see why someone would use them without completely reflavoring them ('tar golem', 'tar devil'?). Your lucky to have the time and life stability to play that often. But I don't think that ideas for monsters would ever be a limiting factor in my ability to create game content. For me, the hard part of DMing is always a good story conception. If a murder mystery, then its constructing the crime in such a way that it leaves sufficient clues to figure out who-done-it without easily dead ending in an unsolvable crime, but not so many that figuring that out is trivial. In any story, it's figuring out the hook that gets PC's involved and which compels players to pursue the hook because they want to, and not merely because the DM dangled a hook. If a campaign, then its having a story with a philosophical arc to it and drama, and hopefully twists along the way. Monsters, magic items, and traps are to me dime a dozen. I could spam out unique magic items pretty much forever. Monster variants are harder only because they need some sort of stat block, and that means a lot of interacting math. If I could point to a single big reason that I end up not needing a Bestiary though, is that the one thing I value in a Bestiary - flip to a stat block and use it as is - is denied to me by my own unique rules. Every monster before I can use it as is, requires conversion in order to be 'perfect'. So, I can still use a PRD or SRD monster in a pinch, but it's not how I would have designed the monster if I was doing it myself based on my rules and what I've learned makes for a good monster. They don't sound very different to me. One is made of ether; the other is made of astral. But they are both basically hungry ghosts, with the caveat that you can't turn the astral one because 'not undead'. Mechanically they have a lot in common, particularly in earlier editions before 2e formalized the idea of a more customizable ghost (already frequently used by Hickman in his designs) and that really caught on in 3e with the template concept. I've already conceded that. What I don't concede is that the existing bestiaries fulfill most peoples needs - both the ones they know about and the ones they don't yet understand - for monsters particularly well. A valuable bestiary which is worth buying would do all of the following well: a) Clearly define who needs the bestiary and why they need it. b) Clearly and correctly identify not only the challenge that a monster represents ('CR') but correctly design monsters of an intended CR to work within the frame work of abilities that a party is likely to have when encountering it. c) Have each monster have a clear tactical shtick which is interesting and interactive and which is both conducive to fun combat and at least slightly different from other monsters (especially existing monsters) in the same CR range. d) Create monsters with a clear ecological niche that lets them integrate into the overall world in some interesting way preferably without destroying the average D&D worlds integrity. That is to say, the existence of the monster shouldn't require retconning your cosmology. e) Have monsters that are built not just from random animal parts, but from tangible and common human fears or which draw from folk lore in interesting ways. Ideally, these monsters ought to often be more than mere combat encounters, but have a folk lore to them. Monsters that straddle ally/enemy lines or which have reason to see you as something other than food at least some of the time are particularly interesting and compelling. The good monsters, even if made up whole cloth, feel in some way familiar, as if they'd always been lurking at the edge of your subconscious. I'd note that HP Lovecraft is particularly good at this, and while his monsters might not have the right feel for every sword and sorcery campaign out there, they are built from his own fears - and often common or universal human fears - the way a good monster ought to be. By contrast, a lot of attempts to make horror bestiaries fail this test, creating monsters that feel more campy and just weird than things that have always been lurking in your nightmares. f) Detail things about the monster which DMs frequently have to rule on, but which most books neglect. A good example of a Bestiary I think does everything really well is Beta Bunny's 'Bestairy: Predators'. a) Who needs this?: Anyone that uses animals in their campaign and wants greater detail, breadth and granularity than the MM gives them. If that's not you, you can skip the product, but that's a fairly broad audience because most campaigns assume the existence of real world animals. b) What's the challenge?: In most cases low, but real. Realistic animals make good opponents for low level campaigns, but quickly run out of steam against high level parties with reality bending powers. c) Tactical schtick?: Check. Real world animals have all sorts of different modes of behavior. The author goes out of his way to enhance those different behaviors to make them effective and dangerous. d) Clear ecological niche?: Check. Indeed, the most obvious and realistic niche's imaginable. Throw templates like elemental, fiendish, celestial, umbral, spirit or skeletal on an animal and you immediately have a monster that works as a concept and which you can place in most dungeons as well without hazard to believability. e) Clear mythological niche: Check. Animals are hugely important to human mythology, and all players are going to have existing mythic relationships to dogs, bears, snakes, cats, rats, sharks and so forth. And many players will have fears or phobias of these creatures, so you can build even terror around them. Doubling or tripling the HD for a 'dire' monster is a bit more work, and runs into problems of consistent challenge since most animals have problems contending with ranged attacks, flight, etc. but it still can get you mid-level brutes. A valid complaint against the Beta Bunny work is that all the stat blocks are on the realistic side. I wouldn't mind seeing after the cryptid section, a section with true fantasy stats adapting the 'dire' concept to the innovations in the book. f) Details common issues that most books neglect?: Check. Issues like, "Can I eat it?", and "What's the body worth?" that invariably come up are dealt with in detail. Now obviously, a Bestiary that is just about animals isn't for everyone. But, if it is for you, there isn't a wasted page in the document. And you can clearly explain to someone in the intended audience why they need the document. If you wanted to sell me on 'Why you need this book', you'd go somewhere like that. Monster books I use a lot are Monster Manual I and Tome of Horrors, and to be sure even those contain a decent amount of badly designed monsters. But there are whole 3.X bestiaries where I'd never use a page of them, and which fail on every level for me. I don't want to use it because the monster is uninteresting, and often is a minor variation on an existing monster (hippo headed humanoid, turtle humanoid, baboon headed humanoid, etc.) with a generic stat block. I wouldn't enjoy using it because the monster isn't fun in play because it doesn't do anything that is unique either in terms of powers or synergies or niches. The CR's or the monsters are all over the place and high CR monsters are often created with Achilles heels that make them hard to employ against experienced parties (lack of actions, lack of resistances, lack of ability to deal with ranged attacks, over reliance on a single smashing attack that tends to result in non-interactive glass cannons, etc.). The monsters mostly fit neatly in the chupacabra category, right down to being chimerical combinations of real animals. The monsters lack mythic resonance and don't play on any strong fears or draw from a folk lore tradition, and often as not if they do have some sort of folk lore are so grounded in the specifics of a particular campaign that they aren't very useful outside of it (a ghostly gunslinger has lots of mythic resonance, but has no use in a campaign world where guns aren't part of its myth). And the details you'd want are either missing, or lavish in some areas while wholly neglectful of others, increasing the cost of the book while decreasing its overall utility (5 pages per monster entry is acceptable, if and only if every single monster is made of design gold and begs to be repeatedly used). [/QUOTE]
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