Monster Manuals: Things You Don't Kill

[Shemeska]

I'm perfectly fine with cutting down on the whole Monster-Manual-as-Discovery-Channel-Special excesses that characterized much of the 2e MMs...

I approach it from the opposite perspective - we need more flavor text (a heck of a lot more) in monster manuals. Current and future editions would be well served by looking back at the various 2e MMs. Rather than just being lists of monsters with stats to kill, they served as sources of inspiration that made me want to use those creatures.

Somewhere along the way since then, we've often and unfortunately favored the 'it has stats, kill it it, therefore it only needs stats and nothing else' approach, and skimped on flavor text and providing flavorful material to inspire people.

 

[Umbran]

There's also the fact that, despite what the GM might intend, players do... pretty much what they want, including fighting things that aren't there to be a major combat menace.

Not having stats means the game's purpose for them is predetermined, and the GM has an issue if the players step away from that purpose. Having stats means you can use the stats, or not, as you need.

 

[Reynard]

If you can't kill it, it's not D&D. Even the gods have stats. Odin has hit points, that means he can be killed.

I'd like to see concepts like love and death given stat blocks. That would be something, eh? To kill death.

No no no. It's "if it has stats, we can kill it" and that's a subtle but very important difference. Giving Odin hit points is indeed a "Kill Me" sign on a god, but not giving Shriekers hit points turns them from monster to environmental hazard (which, IMO, is a good thing; steel doesn't solve every problem).

 

[MrMyth]

It is interesting. The idea of singing mushrooms is fun and interesting. It also doesn't require stats. I'm all for removing such stat blocks from a Monster Manual - it isn't the place for them. The problem is that if you take those elements out of the MM, and don't put them somewhere else, they get lost entirely (and complaints that the game is all about combat thus inevitably float out of the woodwork.)

But what occurs to me is that I don't object to the concept of having these non-combat creatures somewhere - I object to having them statted out in a monster book. At least, if just presented as stats. I'd want them actually to have guidance on using them in a scene, maybe the basics of a skill challenge or some other form of interaction.

Really, what I'd want would be a Big Book of Encounters in which they could both stat monsters and present puzzles, social encounters, weird encounters, and other things a DM could use to populate a dungeon / road / setting / etc.

 

[Imaro]

FIrst, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree with KM's premise in this thread, and actually believe that only including "things to fight" can severly limit the type of encounters new DM's will be inspired to comeup with and run.

There's also the fact that, despite what the GM might intend, players do... pretty much what they want, including fighting things that aren't there to be a major combat menace.

Not having stats means the game's purpose for them is predetermined, and the GM has an issue if the players step away from that purpose. Having stats means you can use the stats, or not, as you need.

This is pure gold on why I don't subscribe to the whole "if it's not meant to be fought... it shouldn't be in a MM." philosophy. It pre-supposes what actions the PC's will take with what creatures, and as each campaign is individualized... how can that be determined by anyone but the players themselves. Personally, until 4e, I didn't consider unicorns something heroic PC's should fight... but hey different strokes for different folks.

As a DM my purpose is not to determine what will or will not be fought by the PC's, but instead to simply provide situations where they can react however they want... if that means fighting something that's not a threat more power to them... just like if that means negotiating with a "monster they are suppose to fight"... I'm not going to make them fight it.

 

[Scribble]

This is pure gold on why I don't subscribe to the whole "if it's not meant to be fought... it shouldn't be in a MM." philosophy. It pre-supposes what actions the PC's will take with what creatures, and as each campaign is individualized... how can that be determined by anyone but the players themselves. Personally, until 4e, I didn't consider unicorns something heroic PC's should fight... but hey different strokes for different folks.

As a DM my purpose is not to determine what will or will not be fought by the PC's, but instead to simply provide situations where they can react however they want... if that means fighting something that's not a threat more power to them... just like if that means negotiating with a "monster they are suppose to fight"... I'm not going to make them fight it.

I don't think it should be in the MM if it's "meant" to be fought, but if interaction with the PCs in combat would be meaningless then it shouldn't be in there.

If it can present a reasonable combat challenge to a PC at some point in the game then it should have combat stats. If not, it doesn't need them.

If for instance the thing has no hope of doing anything against the PCs, can be eliminated effectively by the PCs stepping on it or something... Then combat stats just get in the way, and confuse things.

Not having combat stats doesn't mean the PCs can't fight it... It just means they win, with pretty much 0 effective resistance.

That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a book of "encounters and challenges" that contained things like traps, terrain, diseases, poisons, skill challenges, and etc- ways of interacting with some stuff as a "challenge" that isn't combat all in one place.

Campestri are in the game already, but since they don't present any sort of real combat challenge they don't have (or need) combat stats, or a spot in the MM. Instead, they interact with PCs in another way, effectively as magic usable terrain, and the stats are supplied for that interaction.

Mosquitoes would be something I'd do in a similar fashion... There's no need for combat stats for a normal mosquito, but as a chance to catch Malaria?

 

[Umbran]

Not having combat stats doesn't mean the PCs can't fight it... It just means they win, with pretty much 0 effective resistance.

That may be true for the mushrooms. But what about the Giant Stone Face of Qualzidum (which I just made up)? The thing's living, but part of the side of a mountain, taller than the Tarrasque. It is immobile, so not "intended' as a combat encounter. But what happens when the party kobold gets fed up with the riddle game and takes a pickaxe to it?

"No stats" does not equate to "easy win".

 

[Scribble]

That may be true for the mushrooms. But what about the Giant Stone Face of Qualzidum (which I just made up)? The thing's living, but part of the side of a mountain, taller than the Tarrasque. It is immobile, so not "intended' as a combat encounter. But what happens when the party kobold gets fed up with the riddle game and takes a pickaxe to it?

"No stats" does not equate to "easy win".

Sorry- easy win was probably a bad choice of words...

I was intending to convey that combat stats would be meaningless on either side of the combat, so therefor they're unneeded.

The only stats I say are needed are those that would actually interact with the game rules in some way.


If one side or the other would amount to meaningless combat rolls, then there's no point of having the combat stats.

That doesn't preclude some other type of game related information being attached to this thing though.

 

[jefgorbach]

Because the book was originally "misnamed" and should have dubbed the "Suggested Encounter Catalog" or some such and tradition has held over the decades.

Rather than a shopping list of things awaiting to be slain, it includes many creatures routinely encountered outside of combat and knowing their stats and capabilities is just as important as their hp/xp values.

For example, knowing a mundane creature's stats and capabilities is valuable information to both the mage researching possible familiars as well as druids either seeking an animal companion, Wild Shape forms, as well as those making/encountering an Awakening version. The same goes for the infamous Flumph, your singing mushrooms, as well as the recently redefined "terrain hazards" such as Shriekers [which begs the question of what happens in 4e when the druid WildShapes into one?]

 

[pawsplay]

The A&D monster format, which would fit on a notecard, lent itself well to giving basic stats to everything.