D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Creepy and Crawly—Simultaneously!

[Orius]

But, again, why? Why do you need 4 separate stat blocks for a horse? It's not like horses are really all that different from each other. One or two stat blocks pretty much covers everything you're honestly going to need in a horse in D&D. Once you have stats for a giant wasp, why do we need Giant Wasp +3 HP for a giant hornet? Which is effectively the only difference between the two.

I'm all for having the text for the monsters contain variations. But the mechanics? Why bother? It's needlessly padding the book. One stat block for, say, Horse, and maybe a couple of sentences on "To vary your horse, drop or raise it's strength by up to 4 points, and consider adding a HD or two for particularly big horses." There done.

Exactly. We don't need tons of space for stuff like normal animals and scaled up versions of them. They dont have many unusual abilties, and what abilties they have are seldom magical or supernatural. Lengthy desriptions of real-world animals aren't all that necessary either, since something like Wikipedia more than adequately gets the job done. There's only so many monsters tha can be published in one volume, and it's better to save the space for the interesting and iconic stuff.

 

[steeldragons]

There is a lot of mention about what warrants a stat block and what doesn't...

How about we come to some kind of consensus what a "stat block" entails. All of this "saving of space" or "padding the book" really doesn't mean anything if we're all talking about/envisioning a different amount of info/layout/space. Is there some reason you couldn't have 4 stat blocks under the Horse or Cat or "Winged Stinging Insect"? If the only differences are "+3 HP" or "+10' movement" but everything else is the same then that gets detailed in the description? Does it take up "no more"-to-"significantly less" room than you would by giving each critter its own entry...not it's own stat block...its own entry? Or does it take up more/less to list separate stat blocks within a single entry?

So...What is a stat block? What does it include? How much room does it take? Are they horizontally or vertically oriented? Is there some reason they can't be listed next to each other for similar types of creatures: i.e. Cats, Horses, Winged Stinging Insects, or with separate stat blocks for each creature under a "Horse section", "Cat section", etc... like has traditionally been done for the large scale categories of Dragons, Giants, etc...? That would still, to my mind's eye, be a good amount less room than a "Lion" under "L", "Destrier" under "D", with Panther and Pony under "P".

I'm still of the mind that the differences of such creatures as Dragons, Demons, Giants, Genies, etc. are too significant and do require a separate stat block and descriptive entry for each type...within their respective "sections", of course. It's not just a size/damage thing. Their lairs are different. Their breath weapons, their magical abilities/affinities (if any), societal interactions, alignments, etc. etc. They are definitely different enough that I shouldn't see "Dragon: XYZ +1HD per age, +10 HP damage with breath for each size category, +50' movement for each size category while flying" with little bits of fluff saying differences between "White, Black, Bronze..."

But my point is...before arguing yay-individual/nay-group [or vice versa] any further, what is a "stat block"?

 

[Hussar]

Depends on the edition SteelD. A stat block in 3e is about a 1/2 column or so. So, 4 stat blocks are going to take about half the page. 4e had somewhat shorter stat blocks, but, still taking up a fair bit of landscape on the page.

I agree that we need more than 1 stat block for dragons. Sure. But, do we really need 144? 12 dragons in 3e, each with 12 stat blocks? The dragon section in the 3e MM takes up 15 PAGES for 12 creatures. In an edition where you typically get 2-4 different monsters per page, that's a heck of a lot of real estate for a bunch of information that isn't really all that different.

There has to be a happy medium here.

 

[Nymrohd]

Depends on the edition SteelD. A stat block in 3e is about a 1/2 column or so. So, 4 stat blocks are going to take about half the page. 4e had somewhat shorter stat blocks, but, still taking up a fair bit of landscape on the page.

I agree that we need more than 1 stat block for dragons. Sure. But, do we really need 144? 12 dragons in 3e, each with 12 stat blocks? The dragon section in the 3e MM takes up 15 PAGES for 12 creatures. In an edition where you typically get 2-4 different monsters per page, that's a heck of a lot of real estate for a bunch of information that isn't really all that different.

There has to be a happy medium here.

Heck the problem isn't the 15 pages. It's the fact that more than half of them are just rules and in 3.0 there is not a single stat block, just rules for making it. If you wanted any dragon you had to spend a good amount of time building it.

 

[Klaus]

Heck the problem isn't the 15 pages. It's the fact that more than half of them are just rules and in 3.0 there is not a single stat block, just rules for making it. If you wanted any dragon you had to spend a good amount of time building it.

To the point where about half of the 3e Draconomicon was nothing but stat blocks for 144 diferent dragons.

 

[Nymrohd]

To the point where about half of the 3e Draconomicon was nothing but stat blocks for 144 diferent dragons.

There is an easy solution ofc, but it is not for everyone. WotC can decide to use Web Enhancements to give you stats for all ages and dragons and just have samples in the MM.

 

[Hussar]

And, really, putting it behind the paywall isn't terrible. Insisting you get paid for your work isn't a horrible thing to do IMO.

 

[Sunseeker]

If it is a bug, there should be a swarm of it. Bees, wasps, spiders, scorpions, maggots, all of them should be swarmable in the right location.

I like having two varities of scorpion though, I think that's enough, one big one and one swarm.

And I like the idea of a "swarm mage", perhaps as some kind of druid or necromancer capable of turning themselves into a swarm of specific creatures.

 

[Nymrohd]

If it is a bug, there should be a swarm of it. Bees, wasps, spiders, scorpions, maggots, all of them should be swarmable in the right location.

I like having two varities of scorpion though, I think that's enough, one big one and one swarm.

And I like the idea of a "swarm mage", perhaps as some kind of druid or necromancer capable of turning themselves into a swarm of specific creatures.

Well just modifying the worm that walks concept into a ritual that can result in any kind of vermin swarm monster wouldn't be that much of a stretch.

 

[JamesonCourage]

And, really, putting it behind the paywall isn't terrible. Insisting you get paid for your work isn't a horrible thing to do IMO.

Well, buying the book is paying for it. Anything behind the paywall will work for a lot of people, but likely won't work for many more (like me). Putting something iconic like dragons behind the paywall would be a terrible decision, in my opinion (as I think it'd needlessly piss off a lot of people), but maybe not too bad for a lot less iconic creatures. As always, play what you like