D&D 4E I love 5E, but lately I miss 4E's monsters

[doctorhook]

I love 5E, but lately I find myself missing some aspects of 4E's monster design. I find this particularly true when I'm looking at 5E's dragons; we've gone back to the days when the main difference between a Red and a Blue is the type of breath weapon they use. OTOH, in 4E (especially later on) each type of dragon had different abilities suited to entirely different types of tactics; Reds were tough front-line fighters, while Blues were like highly-mobile artillery.

(Full disclosure: I've considered simply running 4E again, and I'm not interested. The player-side mechanics just don't scratch the same itch that 5E's do, and ever-inflating-math got old fast. I don't want to go all the way back to 2010; I just miss the monster designs.)

Does anybody else ever feel like 5E slid "backwards" into boring, homogeneous monster design? Aside from converting everything myself, does anyone have suggestions about "4E-ifying" 5E's monsters?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Have you watched Matt Colville's YouTube episode about using 4E monsters in 5E? While he doesn't make specific statblocks or anything, he does talk about the process of doing what you want, and what works and what you can expect if you try it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoELQ7px9ws

 

[iserith]

I love 5E, but lately I find myself missing some aspects of 4E's monster design. I find this particularly true when I'm looking at 5E's dragons; we've gone back to the days when the main difference between a Red and a Blue is the type of breath weapon they use. OTOH, in 4E (especially later on) each type of dragon had different abilities suited to entirely different types of tactics; Reds were tough front-line fighters, while Blues were like highly-mobile artillery.

(Full disclosure: I've considered simply running 4E again, and I'm not interested. The player-side mechanics just don't scratch the same itch that 5E's do, and ever-inflating-math got old fast. I don't want to go all the way back to 2010; I just miss the monster designs.)

Does anybody else ever feel like 5E slid "backwards" into boring, homogeneous monster design? Aside from converting everything myself, does anyone have suggestions about "4E-ifying" 5E's monsters?

As I mention in another thread on monster design, an engaging encounter is more than just the monster in it. It's objectives and environment, too, both of which play into the complexity and difficulty. Lair Actions and Legendary Actions on some creatures also play into this and I think that if you really want to add some additional tricks to a monster's repertoire, you could do well by starting by giving Lair/Legendary Actions to more monsters. But again, don't forget objectives and environment, too!

As an aside, I run both editions. In my view, each game brings its own play experience to the table so I try not to mix the two.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I love 5E, but lately I find myself missing some aspects of 4E's monster design. I find this particularly true when I'm looking at 5E's dragons; we've gone back to the days when the main difference between a Red and a Blue is the type of breath weapon they use. OTOH, in 4E (especially later on) each type of dragon had different abilities suited to entirely different types of tactics; Reds were tough front-line fighters, while Blues were like highly-mobile artillery.

Not to pick on you directly, but I've seen this comparison a lot (4e dragons and 5e dragons), and it throws me off.

In 4e, the only difference between abilities between, say, an ancient blue and ancient green is:

Blue: Thunderclap, lightning burst
Green: Luring Glare, Mind Poison

So that's 2 things each has no other dragon does

In 5e, each dragon has three unique things to it's species. Granted, that's lair actions, but most dragons who are worth their salt would be fighting in their lairs whenever possible. They didn't get to be ancient by being dumb. And of course, I'm only talking about mechanical things, dragon types have different personalities, so I would run them completely different depending on what that dragon typically acts like.

But to answer the overall point, the DMs Guild is full of stuff that addresses this, like Monstrous Leaders, where you add feats, traits, and abilities to monster stat blocks.

 

[Blue]

Try 13th Age. It's a d20 OGL that is very close to 5e in philosophy and streamline-ness (look, I made up a word) by lead designers from 4e and 3ed. While neither 5e nor 13th Age have the heavy focus on tactical positioning that 4e had, 13th Age does a lot with a little towards making the monsters flavorful and different.

Here's an SRD if you want to look at some from the core book:
http://www.13thagesrd.com/monsters/

Core book is good, however the 13th Age Bestiary is what really blew me away in terms of monsters.

 

[machineelf]

To each their own, but no. I like 5e monsters better. You have to keep in mind 4e was operating on a tank, dps, healer, controller model. They were trying to take world of Warcraft and put it into a table top rpg.

It lost the true D&D feel for me. Was it fun to play as a tactical grid-based combat game. Sure, sometimes. But for me it lost the organic, versimilitude that makes a D&D game immersive.

5e monsters still have a lot of interesting features. I will take lair actions plus legendary actions plus their unique traits over the tank/healer/dps grid-based gimmickry any day.

If you want the ancient red Dragon to do more than just breathe fire, how about you let it beat its wings to make wind to knock characters down prone just before it bites and claws them, or scorches them? What If you let it cause firery hot magma burst up from under their feet, or let hot poisonous gases form around them to debilitate them? Or earth tremors to throw them off their feet?

Those would be cool features to add right? Wait, the 5e ancient red Dragon already can do all of that.

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

 

[Bacon Bits]

I'm also generally happier with 5e monsters. Or, at least, 5e combat.

Mainly because I had one too many combats in 4e where there were multiple monsters that all had auras plus abilities that refreshed plus PCs with stealth plus everyone with teleport plus PCs with push/slide/other at-will rider + absurd feat combo. And there was so much dice rolling and everything had so many hit points. Combat felt like 50% bookkeeping, 40% dice rolling, 10% meaningful action. With 5e, it's more like 20% bookkeeping, 30% dice rolling, 50% meaningful action.

If I still want to do things like that again, I can pretty easily include spellcasters in the opponents, but I don't have to do that anymore.

 

[Gradine]

I prefer 5e's combat, sure. But i definitely prefer 4e's monster design. Partly for the complexity (having stat blocks for five different types of level-appropriate goblins makes for some very interesting encounter design philosophies) but mostly, if I'm being honest, for their simplicity. My eyes roll out of my head every time I see an enemy stat block that contains the feature Spellcasting. Who has time for that? If I'm designing a spell-casting enemy and I assign them more than three-four spells (or really any kind of out-of-combat utility magic) it is because they are a major villain and I need to know what they're capable of in reaction to the PC's. But her dime-a-dozen necromancer goons? A cold-based cantrip, and two-three recharge-based higher level spells (a debuff, raising some skeletons, maybe a area attack) are all they really need.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I admit, some monsters could have got some few more iconic abilities. I am howrver glad that not every monster needs a special ability to do nice things. Grab, push, help, positioning is really all you need for interesting combats.
I am also glad I don't have to look up every variant of doing a fire blast. Now I just have to remember a few spells. If I could wish something, that would be a list with abbreviated spell descriptions. School, Save, Concentration Ritual, damage type. All in one line to have a quick reference at the table.

 

[Krachek]

Basic legal tricks for monsters


Dodge
Dash
Disengage
Grab
Hide
Move-Shoot-Move


Dirty tricks. once per fights or more. May change the CR is use too often.

Parry +3 AC
Action surge
Reckless attack
Recharge an ability
Attack that push, pull, make prone. DC adjusted with CR.
Extra damage if attack with advantage
A D20 reroll
First attack rolled with Advantage