D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.

[Cyrinishad]

"Grimtooth's Book of Set-piece Battles"?

An excellent read for academically oriented Orcs:

 

[Sunseeker]

3rd edition gave each monster an absurd level of little used abilities.

That is not what I am asking for, and what I consider to be a reasonable expectation.

However, statting up Juiblex, say, as a melee heavy hitter that can be completely neutralized by the repelling blast ability of warlocks is a HUGE failing in my book.

You simply don't design CR 15 and CR 25 creatures the way you can get away with designing CR 5 creatures.

There's this whole layer of... sophistication... that's by and large missing complete from this edition's high-level monsters. Like as if the MM was rushed. Or they put an intern on the job.

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So please don't try to frame this as something completely ordinary. And please don't paint our criticism as something unreasonable.

Yes, I'm calling you out on doing precisely this, hawkeyefan. You start out by being completely reasonable, but then you start dropping one uncalled for slight after the other.

I'm not looking for a "formula for almost everything". I don't "need WotC to hold my hand".

Using such language is only meant to denigrate the validity of our complaints.

The system hasn't "provided the tools needed" when it is precisely the opposite. The problem is definitely not solved just because you made it work once, in your home game.

A designer of high-level monsters must provide a way to counter trivial tactics, or the CR should be dropped to make it clear this is just a beefier upgraded low-level monster, with none of the tricks a true high-level monster needs to have to challenge a high-level group.

What the MM has done, is to drop the ball on high-level play.

Nothing more, nothing less. You will see it too, eventually, hawkeyefan.

For a change I actually agree with Zapp.

There's something missing from high-level monsters. Their power is frankly too low and the simply isn't any "flair" to monsters. I don't think I've used a high-level monster more than once, since I was completely disappointed with the results.

I miss 4E's "solos" and even more so, "Solo elites". After about 15th level, I just can't challenge my party without either A: squads of solars or B: custom monsters. Now I like custom monsters, but it's a lot of work. I'm cool with buying 3rd party resources, but I'm more concerned there's an inherent flaw in the monster design so even if something looks cool, I'll still get unspectacular results.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, because Repelling Blast's 20ft (maximum) push has no way of being negated *coughmovement*

If you move 20 ft you indeed "negate" the repelling blast.

But I know you are just being faceitious since this isn't about "negating" the push.

This is about kiting tactic - repelling blast effectively reduces the monster's movement (towards you) by 20 ft, which makes it trivial to keep your distance.

The end result is a monster that you easily kill without it ever being able to make a single melee attack.

Any high-level monster (and a demon lord is high level) absolutely must have ways to deliver its melee attacks, or it needs ranged attacks or spells.

This is simply fact.

You denying this and squirming as hard as you can to not to have to admit the MM is lacking in this regard is a sad sight.

 

[CapnZapp]

Look at Storm Kings Thunder, the added attacks for the Giants in there are standard stuff that every DM should use and make the Giants much more effective. Those extra giant attacks should have been in a UA article or Dragon magazine article.

Or, here's a novel thought, how about in the Monster Manual?

 

[CapnZapp]

One of my favorite tropes is the Big Bad Evil Guy who is so big and bad that he Cherry Taps the PCs out of boredom, basically. Strahd in Curse of Strahd can function this way at low levels, but 5E out of the box doesn't have any truly epic individuals. I think it's easy enough to add them (e.g. just slap some sorcerer levels on any dragon chassis and you're basically done) but from a design and story perspective it's extremely strange that 5E is designed to feature weak adversaries instead of strong ones.

And yes, you can create contrived scenarios like Flamestrike's "suddenly a Balor appears in your midst" that give weak adversaries temporary tactical advantages to make them scarier, but that's the wrong kind of fear for my taste. That is temporary, short-term adrenaline rush and a long-term fear that "the DM might arbitrarily kill us for no reason"; it's not a long-term fear that adds to the campaign the way "last time we crossed Darth Vader he killed Han and crippled Luke!" does. In a roleplaying game I want the latter.

5E does have the saving grace that it is designed to scale with quantity, so even if you never change any monster stats you can still scare players with organizations instead of monsters. An individual beholder isn't scary, but maybe a ship full of dozens of them is. An individual Chasme isn't scary to an 11th-level party, but eight of them kind of are. A Tarrasque... well, there's a whole planet full of them (Falx).

Yep.

Which brings us back to the Marilith.

If you throw a dozen Marilith at a party they will have their hands full, regardless of level.

But that's not the complaint.

The complaint is "how does a SINGLE marilith live up to the grand description" and the sad answer is her stat block sadly does not even come close.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think you mean 40ft maximum.

Of course he should.

Even a fairly new player should see that a Warlock can easily keep a melee bruiser from ever closing in on her. For CR 5 creatures this is fine. For CR 15 creatures it is weak, naive design.

For CR 20+ epic threats, however, it is extremely unsatisfying.

 

[CapnZapp]

CapnZapp, the part of your post that I quoted speaks to part of what I was driving at in my previous post. I think the mechanics of the 5e system hold up very well to high-level game play.

The way concentration and attunement (etc) keeps player power (somewhat) in control is great, yes. It's easily the best iteration of the game yet.

 

[CapnZapp]

For a change I actually agree with Zapp.

There's something missing from high-level monsters. Their power is frankly too low and the simply isn't any "flair" to monsters. I don't think I've used a high-level monster more than once, since I was completely disappointed with the results.

I miss 4E's "solos" and even more so, "Solo elites". After about 15th level, I just can't challenge my party without either A: squads of solars or B: custom monsters. Now I like custom monsters, but it's a lot of work. I'm cool with buying 3rd party resources, but I'm more concerned there's an inherent flaw in the monster design so even if something looks cool, I'll still get unspectacular results.

Exactly.

I could have Jeremy Crawford in my home and fix every monster stat block weakness on the fly...

... but I would much rather wind back the clock and have him actually to that work once for us all, by actually including that "flair" in the Monster Manual.

 

[Yunru]

If you move 20 ft you indeed "negate" the repelling blast.

But I know you are just being faceitious since this isn't about "negating" the push.

This is about kiting tactic - repelling blast effectively reduces the monster's movement (towards you) by 20 ft, which makes it trivial to keep your distance.

The end result is a monster that you easily kill without it ever being able to make a single melee attack.

Any high-level monster (and a demon lord is high level) absolutely must have ways to deliver its melee attacks, or it needs ranged attacks or spells.

This is simply fact.

You denying this and squirming as hard as you can to not to have to admit the MM is lacking in this regard is a sad sight.

Oh look at mister offensive over here. No, I am not "squirming as hard as I can", because I actually remember monsters have more actions than those listed in their stat block and would have it dash.

 

[dco]

Of course he should.

Even a fairly new player should see that a Warlock can easily keep a melee bruiser from ever closing in on her. For CR 5 creatures this is fine. For CR 15 creatures it is weak, naive design.

For CR 20+ epic threats, however, it is extremely unsatisfying.

It is bad design, in this case the problem is more related to the power and the attack & movement rules.
But the 5 edition monster manual is far worse than the past editions, not only the high level creatures, the NPC section is horrible, etc.