WotC Considering NPC Stat Format Change

jedijon · Mar 9, 2019

Tables were made for gaming (on).

Jester David · Mar 9, 2019

guachi said:
I almost always DM my 5e games. Having sat in on a few 5e games DMed by others I've found that if the DM hasn't taken the time to extract the monster stats then combat grinds to a halt as the DM has to look up stats. It's even worse if the combat has more than one type of monster or the creature is described in the adventure itself. Now the DM can't have both the encounter page and creature stat page easily accessible.

It's awful. The game stops. A good adventure design would never handicap the DM like this. With the adventures I run, which are all converted 1e or B/X adventures, I make a spreadsheet with each creatures stats reduced to 3 or 4 lines in one column.

I almost never have to open up another book to look up stats. I consider doing so a failure. If an adventure forces me to have to turn to some other page to routinely run encounters it is a bad adventure.

I tend to regularly have the Monster Manual open as I run, and things wok well enough. But I also tend to bookmark or sticky tab the monsters I need for a session ahead of time. Having a second book open (or two or three plus my iPad) works fairly swiftly.

Really, DMs will be fastest using the method they're familiar with. The DM who hasn't had time to extract the monster statblocks won't be any faster if you hand them a spreadsheet.

Having adventures include the stats on the page where they're being used didn't work out well in the past. It kills the page-count and leads to redundancy, if the same monster appears more than once.

Jester David · Mar 9, 2019

Mortellan said:
TL;DR I'm guessing the vast majority on this forum are opposed to this new look format.

Yeah, but we're also a small, opinionated, and generally grognard heavy community. The vast majority of us can hate something and it could still be popular with most D&Ders.
That's why WotC does surveys and playtests.

Leatherhead · Mar 9, 2019

Controversial Opinion: 4e had the best monster stat blocks.

I'm not a fan of unnecessary prose, it makes it harder for someone to parse out what is an important mechanic. This format also seems to have variable syntax, which is a huge problem in regards to ease of use.

guachi · Mar 9, 2019

Jester David said:
Really, DMs will be fastest using the method they're familiar with. The DM who hasn't had time to extract the monster statblocks won't be any faster if you hand them a spreadsheet.

Having adventures include the stats on the page where they're being used didn't work out well in the past. It kills the page-count and leads to redundancy, if the same monster appears more than once.

"Kills the page count"

This is a load of bollocks.

I have my conversion for Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh up on my screen.

The module is 32 pages plus cover maps. If I only include the monster blocks of the conversion the entirety of the stats is a little over a page. Every creature is included, even if it's redundant. It also includes the publication and page number the creature came from (which would be nice in actual adventures), the CR and XP, plus its equipment and treasure.

That's about 3% of the module.

That's far less than the amount of likely useless art in any adventure. (Saltmarsh actually has useful art as the Holloway drawings show exactly what the encounter location has in it. You could photocopy the drawings and hand it to the players. Also, the drawings don't, individually, take up that much space)

Jester David · Mar 9, 2019

guachi said:
"Kills the page count"

This is a load of bollocks.

I have my conversion for Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh up on my screen.

The module is 32 pages plus cover maps. If I only include the monster blocks of the conversion the entirety of the stats is a little over a page. Every creature is included, even if it's redundant. It also includes the publication and page number the creature came from (which would be nice in actual adventures), the CR and XP, plus its equipment and treasure.

That's about 3% of the module.

That's far less than the amount of likely useless art in any adventure. (Saltmarsh actually has useful art as the Holloway drawings show exactly what the encounter location has in it. You could photocopy the drawings and hand it to the players. Also, the drawings don't, individually, take up that much space)

It was minor in 1e, but if doing it now it wouldn't. Because statblocks are larger. (And they don't use the stupid partial statblocks that don't give you all the information needed to run the monster without consulting the Monster Manual.)
We're not really talking about what they did 40 years ago. Because it's not 40 years ago and this is a 5e forum.

Even then, an update of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is a very, very poor example. Because, it's not a combat heavy dungeon crawl. Looking through my copy of the module, it has a poisonous snake, a large spider, giant centipedes, stirges, skeletons, and a mage. It only needs six or seven statblocks in total, and a couple of those are short.
Yeah, that is pretty tiny. And likely only takes 2-1/2 pages. (Which is actually like 7% of the book.)

BUT you can't just add pages. To add those pages of statblocks you'd need to take away 2-1/2 pages of text.
Which 2-1/2 of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh are you getting rid of?

That's also a pretty non-standard amount of combat. The U series probably isn't "the bar". But the second one, Danger at Dunwater (chosen because it's in the some folder) has over twice as many monsters. And even having several of the variant lizard folk be, well, variants, it's still probably 3 to 3-1/2 pages. A good 10% of the module. And this is still a combat light module.

AtomicPope · Mar 9, 2019

Pencil and paper game designers need to stick to the strengths of the format otherwise they'll just ruin it.

Strengths of PnP:
* Narrative Time
* Narrative Distance
* Imagination
* Immersion

Weaknesses of PnP:
* Complex Math
* Distraction
* Overchoice
* Misunderstanding

The new format is definitely adding Distraction, and probably Misunderstanding. From my experience as a DM and player, combat in 4e took a long time due to overchoice. When we limited each turn to 30 seconds (1 min for the DM) the combats were fast and dynamic. The problem is there were too many precise movements, which is better handled by video games, rather than narrative movement. Every complexity slows the player down, and then slows the game down. I've watched innumerate players suffer under Mathfinder, but excel under NWoD. Simple stat blocks is lessens misunderstandings. More importantly, those stat blocks speed up the game by letting the DM focus on what PnP does best: telling the story.

MerricB · Mar 9, 2019

My experiences with trying to condense the 5E stats into an inline format have been horrible. It works for a small subset of monsters - the ones that have common abilities that can be remembered, such as pack tactics - and then falls apart quickly thereafter. AD&D could do it due to so many monsters being vanilla and no ability scores, and even then you'd need a Monster Manual whenever something complicated popped up, like a beholder. However, 5E's monsters have a large amount of required information to run them, so much so that you lose huge amounts of readability when using them in an inline format. 5E wants the full statblock treatment.

This, of course, causes problems when the full stats of monsters are included on the encounter's page. There is no doubt it makes it easier to run such encounters at the table, and it works very well for complicated set-piece encounters. Unfortunately, the trade-off is in the flow of the adventure. The extreme example is the 4E adventures printed in the "delve" format, as well as late 3.5e adventures such as "Return to the Ruins of Undermountain". It's great for combat, but less great for non-combat details. It's very easy for story beats to be lost, and it also has the drawback of assuming every encounter is a combat. That's not great.

Also, it kills the page count. (This is not short descriptions of the monsters, this is their stat-block material; typically 1/4 of a page or more for each monster).

As to a more expansive way of writing character descriptions as suggested by Chris Perkins? I don't like the example he gave that much, but it's not so bad when there's only one NPC in an encounter. Once you have several together, I think it doesn't work that well.

Cheers!

NaturalZero · Mar 10, 2019

guachi said:
I almost never have to open up another book to look up stats. I consider doing so a failure. If an adventure forces me to have to turn to some other page to routinely run encounters it is a bad adventure.

I really like the core 5e system. I like the streamlined math. One place where they absolutely dropped the ball and kicked it down the

ing street was when they went away from the 4e monster statblock that included everything you needed to run the monster. They went back and gave monsters spell lists, with rules on multiple pages... in an entirely different book! It was one of the reasons i hated running high level caster monsters in 3.5 and always truncated or altered the mechanics to be more forward.

Leatherhead said:
Controversial Opinion: 4e had the best monster stat blocks.

Yes, yes, yes. I like running 5e as a system, but the more i do, the more i notice how many evolutionary enhancements that 4e proposed that worked better but got chucked out the window. I'd like a concise 4e statblock, with flowery 5e prose and world-building flavor.

Henry · Mar 10, 2019

Jester David said:
It was minor in 1e, but if doing it now it wouldn't. Because statblocks are larger. (And they don't use the stupid partial statblocks that don't give you all the information needed to run the monster without consulting the Monster Manual.)
We're not really talking about what they did 40 years ago. Because it's not 40 years ago and this is a 5e forum.

Even then, an update of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is a very, very poor example. Because, it's not a combat heavy dungeon crawl. Looking through my copy of the module, it has a poisonous snake, a large spider, giant centipedes, stirges, skeletons, and a mage. It only needs six or seven statblocks in total, and a couple of those are short.
Yeah, that is pretty tiny. And likely only takes 2-1/2 pages. (Which is actually like 7% of the book.)

BUT you can't just add pages. To add those pages of statblocks you'd need to take away 2-1/2 pages of text.
Which 2-1/2 of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh are you getting rid of?

That's also a pretty non-standard amount of combat. The U series probably isn't "the bar". But the second one, Danger at Dunwater (chosen because it's in the some folder) has over twice as many monsters. And even having several of the variant lizard folk be, well, variants, it's still probably 3 to 3-1/2 pages. A good 10% of the module. And this is still a combat light module.

[MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] DID say, “his conversion”, not his 1e prep notes. If it is a 5e conversion, i’d Be interested in seeing one of his more complex liner notes for monsters (in a spoiler block if anyone is concerned with spoilers).