dave2008
Legend
I will post some lower CR monsters this weekend.
D&D 5E 5e Hardcore: Monster Manual
I will post some lower CR monsters this weekend.
dave2008
Legend
I haven't considered multiple effects, I will have to think about it. Since the movement is based on duration I would probably just extend multiple instances into the next round. So two conditions = loss of bonus action in next two turns.
Yes, I don't think paragon and mythic are needed at this point. but I might add them back. Mythic was 2x Paragon, which should be generally about 4x standard. There could be a mistake in my spreadsheet though.
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dave2008
Legend
That's basically what I am trying to do with this thread. The "elites" have 50% more HP and do 50% more damage and I always try to add few interesting abilities.
Now some of the lower CR monsters will just have interesting abilities added.
P.S. I do plan on revising the epic updates in the 2nd drafts.
Warmaster Horus
Explorer
As someone who made a ton of custom monsters in 3/3.5e to present challenges to my every burgeoning players, I see no problem whatsoever with making some ubermonsters to rock the multiverse with. I do think you can play vanilla 5e in a way that challenges players of all stripes versus, but I don't see a problem at all with creating tougher foes.
kbrakke
First Post
Doing that still doesn't prevent parties that strategize well from killing monsters in the MM with less resource loss than expected. If your goal is to challenge players making new and interesting monsters is a solid way to do it over removing fun toys they can use.
Also as a DM I have never been sad if my players did a lot of damage, my goal isn't to make unkillable monsters. My goal is to make some number of encounters with story significance feel dangerous to the players. Nerfing their abilities will just make them feel like they are less heroic. Making cool monsters with new abilities will make them feel more heroic. Given the choice between running cool monsters and making the players feel like heroes for overcoming it, or taking away fun abilities or items I have given them, I will choose the former every time.
In regards to the thread I have some aberrations that I can contribute after some more playtest. I have to review the guidelines. So far medium sized groups of them have given my 27th level players some trouble, so I think they can be adapted for non-epic play.
Tony Vargas
Legend
No? Because it was available in 3.x, and there may be 5e fans who miss it.
I probably am, it's something I do casually, because I did run AD&D that way for so long, and 5e has such a similar feel that it puts me in that grove naturally enough.
But one that'd have to give up a lot of foundational 5e-isms. Modularity, for instance. You swap in some modules, you may change the challenge represented by encounters substantially, the MM can't adjust to match that, you have to. The 5e approach to class designs means that party composition will swing the party's capabilities quite a bit, too. Players' system mastery, obviously, changes the challenges they can handle very significantly (not as much as 3.x, but still nothing you should ignore). Encounter/day pacing (plenty's been said on that). We could probably go on.
5e /does/ have BA, which is one small but significant area of fairly tight math, but it's prettymuch alone in a sea of design decisions that make challenge something you have to customize, not count on. Which is not exactly bad for, nor unreasonable to expect for an Empowered DM. It's not like it requires actual game design work or anything - encounter design is part of the DMs normal function.
In the technical sense, sure. In the sense of listening to your players complain, maybe not. ;P
dave2008
Legend
This is for people who don't want to use the nerf bat.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
It's easier to create a tough monster than it is to deduce and nerf every possible good build down to the exact same level, because you're dealing with a single point instead of an entire constraint optimization space.
Scaling that up to multiple tough monsters is likewise straightforward: you just do the same thing more than once.
I'm not a huge fan of stat inflation so I don't know that I will use any of the monsters as Dave has presented them--I tend to favor keeping the MM stats largely the same and just adding more tactical and strategic abilities like Teleport Without Error for fiends, which leave bounded accuracy intact.
I also have some misgiving about the name of this project ("AD&D") because it's misleading--I opened this thread expecting to see either old-school monsters or else monsters inspired by old-school, with non-combat-related considerations like habitat, ecology, and social structure playing a greater role.
But it's definitely an interesting thread, and when I do see a genuinely-anemic monsters like the Balor for which I do want to inflate the stats, it is useful to have a writeup that I didn't create myself. Thanks, Dave.
I would argue that damage and HP can affect BA, just not as directly and obviously as attack/defense. My argument for this is long, so bear with me (if you care.)
In general, damage does not actually keep up with HP. I think this is intentional.
The basic way people see HP is: At low levels, you are a squishy nobody who can be killed by an unlucky axe swing from an orc. At high levels, you have the grit/luck/toughness/etc. to withstand that...orcs are nothing! You're a superhero. And now you don't fight orcs, you fight Dragons (or, perhaps, Infernal Orcs of the Adamantine Fist, though that's not my preference). And, people presume, Dragons can now kill you with an unlucky breath weapon or chomp or whatever.
Because, I think due to the last 2 D&D editions and a healthy dose of video game advancement design, people assume the game is supposed to fundamentally play the same at all levels. At high level you have Bigger Numbers and more widgets and doodads, but it's all the same thing really.
But I think this is a faulty assumption for 5e. If you look at the MM, damage really doesn't keep up with HP. As soon as PCs get a few levels under their belt, they become fundamentally more resilient, even against high level threats... if those threats are individual, anyway. This is part of why you can see players shredding high CR monsters, e.g. a party of 11s defeating an ancient dragon or a Pit Fiend or whatever.
And this is why multiple low CR threats are often much worse. A CR 10 monster does not deal 10 times the damage a CR 1 monster deals, most of the time. So ten CR1 monsters will actually rip a party apart faster in many cases. CR 1 is high enough for a decent HP pool, one large enough that even high level PCs will not typically be able to kill in one hit unless they are dropping resources on the hit. Because, as I keep saying, damage and HP don't scale equally.
So... given that he can't just one-shot them, for a high CR monster to be a true threat to high level PCs, it has to be clever and use battlefield control, attack denial, hit-and-run, and things like that.
That's all just... facts about the game, basically. The assumptions that, to some extent, I think you don't like and want to change with this project. You want powerful "solo" monsters that hit so hard they can level a PC in a blow or too, and can take a pounding of nova powers and keep trucking. I get it. But...
The reason I say that this is a Bounded Accuracy issue is... the same way that a pack of low CR monsters can actually still threaten higher level PCs when handled carefully, so too can a party of low level characters threaten a high CR monster when handled carefully. If the party is the one using maximal battlefield control, denial, hit and run, etc. they can potentially punch high above their weight class.
And I think that is actually the most fun and exciting thing that ever happens in any D&D combat, ever, throughout every edition of the game. That's the stuff legendary table stories are made of. The time the level 7 party stopped a Pit Fiend. The time the level 3 half-orc took a fire breath and kept standing (thanks [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION]).
What you guys seem to want is a way to have those fights, but have them bound within the "proper" CRs. So you have an epic fight with a Balor when you are the appropriate level 16 or so, just a few levels shy of the CR so it still feels kinda like you're in over your heads. This is the "solo" monster mindset, basically.
But monsters feel like "solos" when they're tough enough to nearly drop you in a hit, and sustain several hits from your whole party. To get that, you need a monster of higher CR than the party... and as the party level increases, you actually need the CR disparity to be bigger and bigger. So a CR 3 Veteran can achieve this for a party of level 1 characters, but a single CR 7 Illithid isn't going to scare a party of 5th level PCs the same way. Well, maybe a bad example, because brain extraction, but he'd have to be fairly lucky to pull it off. Certainly a CR 19 Balor is not scary in this way to a party of level 17s.
To do it, you'd need to dramatically buff high level monsters. Or, what you should really do: recognize that as the party gets higher level, challenging "solos" will become harder to find, so make more of them. A solo for a level 15 party isn't a CR 19 monster. It's a CR 25 monster. By 15th level, if the party wants to be challenged and killed by a solo monster, they need to be going after demon princes and stuff like that. Level 20 isn't really the gateway to "Epic play" like in 3e and 4e. It's the end.
The party that wants a more grounded, less epic game, can do one of two things: accept that high level PCs need multiple threats, or accept that they don't want to play at high level.
Your goal is basically to buff monsters so that you can always have that "solo a couple CRs above the party" feel. Since damage and HP don't scale in a way that allows this, you have to supercharge damage and HP. But when you supercharge monster HP and especially damage, you can create a "Level X Need Not Apply" barrier the same way monsters with AC 47 did in 3rd and 4th edition. So now we're back to no ability to punch super high above your weight class, regardless of tactics.
As a DM who favors open worlds without sculpted encounter zones and scaling CR story quests, a lack of "Level X Need Not Apply" signs is especially important to me. I get that my style isn't for everyone, and more tightly scripted games that employ Level Appropriate Encounters could find this useful. But that's what I meant when I said I felt the design was a betrayal of the spirit of Bounded Accuracy.
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