The incredible shrinking stat block!

[OnlineDM]

I love "initiative ties go to the PC". That's a simple, elegant idea that makes a ton of sense to me.

And while it probably doesn't matter all that much, using Reflex for untrained Acrobatics or Fortitude for untrained Athletics is imperfect since Reflex can come from Intelligence rather than Dexterity and Fortitude can come from Constitution rather than Strength. It doesn't necessarily matter (maybe a good Con should be helpful in breaking free of a grab), but it's another level of rule change.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION]
Yep, it's quick and dirty. And leads to goofy situations where you have a mage with ninja balance and stealth. Still, with untrained skills this is rarely the kind of stuff the players will notice.

Here's my first stab at the redesign I was mentioning. It's the kobold minion very heavily edited.

Got rid of the fiddly "+2 defense against traps". If the DM is playing kobolds smart they're not falling into their own traps, and as always the DM's best friend applies.

As an aside, this is MM1 monster math, so obviously it's a bit outdated. My intention here is solely to illustrate redesign of the stat block. Though, I'll admit to taking liberties with the rules for the sake of DM-friendliness. Why? Because we should love our DMs.

 

[Klaus]

[MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION]
Yep, it's quick and dirty. And leads to goofy situations where you have a mage with ninja balance and stealth. Still, with untrained skills this is rarely the kind of stuff the players will notice.

Here's my first stab at the redesign I was mentioning. It's the kobold minion very heavily edited.

Got rid of the fiddly "+2 defense against traps". If the DM is playing kobolds smart they're not falling into their own traps, and as always the DM's best friend applies.

As an aside, this is MM1 monster math, so obviously it's a bit outdated. My intention here is solely to illustrate redesign of the stat block. Though, I'll admit to taking liberties with the rules for the sake of DM-friendliness. Why? Because we should love our DMs.

I think you're going in the right direction. I don't like the placement of the skills, though. Sure, the kobold minion only has two, but there are creatures that have five or six trained skills, and the placement should be consistent.

Also, type and subtype have to be in there, these are important mechanics.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Yeah, you need the type, subtype, and keywords. I also think you need the stats. I for one frequently use ability checks (they are, after all, needed for untrained skills). Not having the stats makes that difficult. I think you need to try a much more complicated monster to see how useful this stat block will be.

 

[Quickleaf]

I also think you need the stats. I for one frequently use ability checks (they are, after all, needed for untrained skills). Not having the stats makes that difficult.

You know, the other problem I just realized looking at the roper stat block is that using monster defenses for skills doesn't work once you're in the paragon tier because the defenses get higher than what an untrained skill would be.

I'll think on it some more. Don't want to include them cause they're such a space sink, but I see your point.

I think you need to try a much more complicated monster to see how useful this stat block will be.

How's this? To be fair, I made its double attack its basic attack, which is a power upgrade and not RAW, but hey it's cooler that way anyhow. Oh, and the star is an action point.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wonder if the problem is less stat blocks and more expectations. If you go back to AD&D modules standard monsters that appeared in the MM/FF/MM2 (in 1e) didn't get ANY stats, just their hit points, and MAYBE hit dice/ac/#AT/dmg in some modules. It was simply assumed you would look them up if you needed more information. If a monster was new or maybe if it appeared in a more obscure publication then the full MM style stat block showed up in an appendix at the end of the module. Even in cases where a monster was a minor variation of an existing monster often the difference would just be noted without a whole statblock.

Obviously AD&D monsters COULD be pretty simple and for a 1e orc you hardly needed more than a couple of numbers to run it in 99% of all cases, but really for most standard/minion 4e monsters it is often a pretty similar situation.

Normally if I write up an adventure I will attach copies of the stat blocks to it for use at the table, but nowadays without hit points varying you can pretty much just write up a room as "3 orc warriors" (for the monster part anyway). Maybe crunched up stat blocks are handy, but I'm undecided. Obviously smaller is better if it doesn't require any sacrifice, but otherwise it is hard to say.

Anyway, it is an interesting experiment and I encourage you to continue playing with it. I do like the concept of using icons and little boxes to organize things. I think that picks each thing out better. I'd actually just get rid of labels like "HP" at this point and just put the number inside the shield. Likewise with F/R/W I would just use the single letter abbreviations or even just have 3 boxes with a number in each and some styling to indicate it is defenses, we can remember the order they come in.

As for stats, you COULD do the same thing, just have 6 boxes, maybe with a little letter in the corner for each stat's name to make it a bit easier to read, takes up one line, conveys a lot of less vital but often useful info.

 

[OnlineDM]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]: I think it's a good innovation that whenever a monster is listed in an adventure, the stat block is given. It's certainly still possible to just give the name of a monster in an adventure and, if you want to be extra helpful, a citation (such as "Monster Vault, page 54"). But having the stat block right there means the DM can run the adventure as-is, without needing to refer to any books. That's a good thing, even though it takes up space - and I guess that space is what Quickleaf is trying to address here.

 

[Quickleaf]

Anyway, it is an interesting experiment and I encourage you to continue playing with it. I do like the concept of using icons and little boxes to organize things. I think that picks each thing out better. I'd actually just get rid of labels like "HP" at this point and just put the number inside the shield. Likewise with F/R/W I would just use the single letter abbreviations or even just have 3 boxes with a number in each and some styling to indicate it is defenses, we can remember the order they come in.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of semiology, and the further we get away from "tax form" characters and monsters the better. I remember what a hit those D&D Game Day character sheets were.

I would like to find a way to express defenses and such with just icons but I it needs to be super clear.

And I agree it's a trade-off: details & convenience at the cost of precious text space. It should be up to each DM or adventure writer to decide what's best for their particular situation. Overall I'm pretty happy with what I whittled the roper down to - halved it's space.

I guess that's my rough target: statblocks that take up half the space they do now.

 

[wlmartin]

Stat blocks take up a lot of space. As I was looking over some of the Dungeon adventures put out recently I thought about ways to shrink the stat block into something more manageable.

I decided to tackle two examples: a kobold minion & an elite roper.

BD&D had these really short one or two-line entries for guards and such, the equivalent of minions. Boring as heck, but you could fit a ton of them in. I wanted something in between those extremes. Maybe I could have gone further, but as you can see, I shrunk the stat block in half.

The roper was much more difficult, and I'm still not satisfied with "tentacle grab". Part of the idea was to include more information (succinctly) next to the name of the power/ability itself. Judge for yourself whether I succeeded at anything here.

I'm also working on a radical redesign of the stat block, and I'll post that next.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I like the detailed stat blocks.
Sure they are a pain to print out sometimes and don't fit well if Copy+Pasted from the Monster Builder but if the alternative is trying to read their powers from an excel spreadsheet with no flavor, I choose stat blocks each time.

I do like the idea but am extremely resistant to it because it makes monsters a little less flavoursome.. it is the same thing I feel when i dont get to see an art picture of the monster in the MM... I have no idea (if i havent dealt with that mon before) what it looks like and if it fits the concept of my adventure... shrinking down the stat blocks and removing the cool flavor hurts my head.

I do think that they could aid in helping people that want this shrinkage by providing a snippet type stat block that takes up no room but I wouldnt want them to publish it in replacement of

 

[Recidivism]

While statblocks can probably be compressed a fair bit, I like that everything is laid out in nice bite-sized chunks. Although it might seem trivial to unpack that a power entry could be used for both melee and ranged attacks, many monsters will have different attack and damage values for both, so the space saving is small and you have to remember that this particular power entry for this particular monster might be useable in more than one way.

Honestly I wish statblocks contained more information. Specifically, relevant flavor information on how to describe monsters to players. Oftentimes that's easily discernable when you're looking at an entry in Monster Manual, however it's not so easily discernable at the table if all you've got is a printout and a name.

I remember running an Encounters game and the players were pitted against (IIRC) Fell Taints. I had no clue how to describe a "Fell Taint" to the players, had never seen it in any of the Monster Manual books, and the Encounters format rarely provides descriptive text of what the players are facing off against. I would gladly sacrifice space used for the ability scores and miscellaneous skills to get a brief description.