The Bane of the 3ed DM: Monster Advancement, Class Levels, and Prep Time

[GlassJaw]

I'll preface this post by mentioning that it's somewhat tied to the Trailblazer Monster Design Discussion, which can be found here in the Bad Axe Games Hosted Forum. However, I wanted to take an informal "poll" here first to get a feel for how 3ed DM's address monster customization, whether it's advancing Hit Dice, increasing Size, or adding class levels.

I'll present three scenarios. Assume you are prepping for sessions that would involve these creatures or encounters.

How would you go about preparing the stats you would need?
What format would you use for the actual game session?
How much prep time would you estimate you would need to stat each encounter or creature?

Scenario 1: You are DM'ing for a party of 10th-level PCs. They have been hired to infiltrate an ancient dwarven stronghold to recover an artifact. Unbeknownst to them, it has recently been over-taken by a band of ill-tempered derro who are also looking for the artifact.

The leader of the derro is a 13th-level wizard-necromancer. Exploring the stronghold with him is his inner circle of twenty or so 8-12th level henchmen of various classes - warriors, rogues, and casters (of all types).

Scenario 2: The PCs have been tracking the operations of a band of assassins led by a particularly cunning wererat bugbear. He is a level Ftr 2/Rog 5 that fights with 2 kukris.

Scenario 3: Your demon-hunting, planar-hopping campaign is coming to a close. The final battle will be a solo battle against the Demon Queen, a 24-HD Huge Marilith. Since it is a solo boss fight, you want to give the marilith an AOE tail sweep attack that can knock down opponents.

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Other questions:

What is your general feeling on monster and NPC customization in the 3ed system?

Do you tend to use creatures "out of the book" or do you customize?

What short cuts do you use that makes your preparation easier and faster?

What other types of preparation do you absolutely dread when getting ready for a session?

Thanks!

 

[ExploderWizard]

Another poster ( I think it was Irdaranger) had a wonderful solution to the prep time issue in another thread a while back.

Pretty much it amounted to running the monsters like Basic D&D critters and give them whatever you felt was appropriate. This was the players have all the options and toys of a 3E like system while the DM doesn't have to spend hours prepping the nuts and bolts stuff.

I thought that it was a wonderful solution.

 

[Mark Chance]

How would you go about preparing the stats you would need?
What format would you use for the actual game session?
How much prep time would you estimate you would need to stat each encounter or creature?

Scenario 1: You are DM'ing for a party of 10th-level PCs. They have been hired to infiltrate an ancient dwarven stronghold to recover an artifact. Unbeknownst to them, it has recently been over-taken by a band of ill-tempered derro who are also looking for the artifact.

The leader of the derro is a 13th-level wizard-necromancer. Exploring the stronghold with him is his inner circle of twenty or so 8-12th level henchmen of various classes - warriors, rogues, and casters (of all types).

Scenario 2: The PCs have been tracking the operations of a band of assassins led by a particularly cunning wererat bugbear. He is a level Ftr 2/Rog 5 that fights with 2 kukris.

Scenario 3: Your demon-hunting, planar-hopping campaign is coming to a close. The final battle will be a solo battle against the Demon Queen, a 24-HD Huge Marilith. Since it is a solo boss fight, you want to give the marilith an AOE tail sweep attack that can knock down opponents.

I regularly use the NPC tables in the DMG for run-of-the-mill NPCs. I'll prep a short list of important equipment. Leaders get a more thorough treatment. So, in Scenario 1, I'd probably only do full stats for the leader, using a one-page stat block. The rest would be numbers plugged into a table with some notes. I could stat the leader in about thirty minutes. The rest would take about the same amount of time.

For Scenario 2, times would be shorter as a Ftr 2/Rog 5 doesn't require a spell list, which is the main slowdown for higher-level caster types. I'd start with the bugbear statblock and apply the template and classes one at a time.

With Scenario 3, I'd cut-and-paste the basic marilith stat block, apply any size changes first, and then add the HD advancement. All told, I could have that done with a half hour as well. The tail attack would be a trip attempt in a 90-degree arc affecting everyone within reach.

Other questions:

What is your general feeling on monster and NPC customization in the 3ed system?

Do you tend to use creatures "out of the book" or do you customize?

What short cuts do you use that makes your preparation easier and faster?

What other types of preparation do you absolutely dread when getting ready for a session?

My general feeling on monster/NPC customization is that it isn't as cumbersome as many make it out to be. Most often, I use creatures out of the book, usually quite literally. I'll have the book open as a reference and track hit points, et cetera, on a notepad. To make prep easier and faster, I use a cut-and-pasteable SRD and stat block templates in an RTF document using WordPad or OpenOffice. I find these the easiest programs for quick edits.

My biggest obstacle with sessions is the maps for the locations and remembering to buy beer.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Scenario 1: ...The leader of the derro is a 13th-level wizard-necromancer. Exploring the stronghold with him is his inner circle of twenty or so 8-12th level henchmen of various classes - warriors, rogues, and casters (of all types).

After wondering what I did to hate myself, I'd start by scavenging every adventure I had the time to skim through for appropriate NPC stats. Then I'd remember those funny tables in the DMG, copy entries with additions for Derro and modifications to spell lists appropriate to concept.
For formatting, I'd use something like the attached.
Excluding panic time, I'd figure a 35 minutes-per-critter average prep time. That mostly is for the casters and selecting spell lists, and then writing everything into a usable format.

Scenario 2: The PCs have been tracking the operations of a band of assassins led by a particularly cunning wererat bugbear. He is a level Ftr 2/Rog 5 that fights with 2 kukris.

This guy I might take a little time to custom build. Two kukris tells me that I need the TWF tree and a few knife fighting feats. To really mess with my players, I might build him using the Razor Fiend feats from Iron Heroes. When all is done, probably 1 to 2 hours of work for a guy that will see about 45 minutes of game play.
The band, I'd probably spend about 15 minutes on, mostly writing down a bunch of level 3 rogues.

Scenario 3: Your demon-hunting, planar-hopping campaign is coming to a close. The final battle will be a solo battle against the Demon Queen, a 24-HD Huge Marilith. Since it is a solo boss fight, you want to give the marilith an AOE tail sweep attack that can knock down opponents.

... Just do it. I've long since come to the conclusion that special abilities are something you just assign if it fits the NPC.
I've tried it with PCs but it really depends upon the maturity of your players as to how well it works out.

What is your general feeling on monster and NPC customization in the 3ed system?

Too constrained and too fiddly. I have to follow rules extremely-similar to player characters, which leads to really odd situations

Do you tend to use creatures "out of the book" or do you customize?

One book or another. If it's not out of a monster manual or setting book then I'm likely to be lifting it out of some adventure module I've got lying around.

What short cuts do you use that makes your preparation easier and faster?

See previous.

What other types of preparation do you absolutely dread when getting ready for a session?

Spell selection and use.
I'm one of those guys who falls asleep when he tries to read spell lists and spell entries. Which means I don't know the system very well, as a player or a DM. So I don't use them well, largely out of ignorance, which causes me to like it even less.

 

[Bullgrit]

I never found this whole thing problematic. But then, first off, I guess I never really had the urge to make extremely complicated monsters. And second off, I realized that the Players will never, ever actually know the monsters stats on the page. If you are off by a few points or feats, no one will know, so it won't matter.

A wererat bugbear? OK, just add this to his personality: he thinks shifting into a rat form is demeaning (even half-rat), so he will never do it. Bam! Now you only deal with one form.

Advancing a monster's hit dice, OK, just don't worry about picking out all the new feats and skills. Just bump up the standard skills by the increase in hit dice.

I've run dragons without all their skills and feats picked out. I've run 15+ hit die dragons with only 1-3 feats picked out, and only 3-4 skills with max ranks. In the 10+ rounds of combat the PCs had with the dragon, no one knew the dragon was missing anything.

I've made demon soldiers (based on these minis) by taking the stock bugbear then adding fire and acid resistances, and a flying speed.

I made some ash-asps by taking the stock giant snake and saying they turned to ash at death. These snakes spontaneously formed from piles of ash in the dungeon. The Players thought these new snakes were very cool, never knowing they were nothing more, mechanically, than a normal animal snake.

As for leveled PC classes, there are samples already in the DMG, yes? For the spellcasters, just pick out their top/most useful/most likely to be used spells. If a caster has 20 spells available, he's still probably only going to cast less than 10 in a normal battle.

Getting the exact game mechanics proper and perfect for new or advanced monsters is only really needed for publication.

Pretty much it amounted to running the monsters like Basic D&D critters and give them whatever you felt was appropriate.

Yep. This, too.

Believe it or not, I've run powerful dragons and wizards from just the major notes written on 3"x5" note cards.

Bullgrit

 

[coyote6]

A wererat bugbear? OK, just add this to his personality: he thinks shifting into a rat form is demeaning (even half-rat), so he will never do it. Bam! Now you only deal with one form.

This sounds like sidestepping the challenge -- you end up with a guy indistinguishable from a non-wererat bugbear with a couple of extra HD and the ability to talk to rats. What's the point of using a wererat that doesn't do wererat things (i.e., turn into a rat) or have wererat powers (DR X/silver)?

The rest, I mostly agree on. Though I usually found myself statting up at least the big-bads completely, out of a combination of OCD-leaning and urge to power game and make the bad guys as tough as possible. If they're going to die in an hour, at least let 'em go down in a blaze of glory, dangit.

 

[kinem]

Using one of the automatic NPC generators is an essential 3.5 ed DM tool. The NPC will need some editing and retooling, but at least it handles the basics for you. e.g.

D&D 3.5 « Dingles Games

 

[Shazman]

If I've got plenty of free time, I'll stat out the enemies completely. (Not the individual derro henchmen. I'd just make a fighter, a rogue, and a sorcerer, and say there are x amount of each). It was actually part of the fun of DMing 3.5 for me. I ususally do equipment and sometimes skills a bit fast and loose, but the rest is by the book. If I don't have plenty of time, I'd make them as bare bones as possible, or look for stats for something close in an old issue of Dungeon or Pathfinder APs.

 

[the Jester]

Even you 24-HD marilith is nothing compared to serious epic monster creation... going by the book (which I almost always did with monsters) you could spend hours on a high-level adversary for the pcs.

I often spent more time prepping bad guys than running them. That's one of the things that eventually turned me away from 3e. Nowadays I'd be much more arbitrary and would bring 4e monster generation conceits to my 3e stuff, but I would feel like I was sort of cheating- which, I recognize, is ridiculous, but still.

High-level monster creation was a tremendous amount of work, which was a lot of fun. The sad thing was watching them die before they even had a chance to act.

 

[Psion]

Not apropos to the scenario of the OP, but AFAIAK, the bane on the 3e DM was power creep in the late 3e era and the attitude that magic items were to be treated as part of the "character build".