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

[CapnZapp]

I'm not saying I'm displeased with how dragons ended up in 5e, because I think they're one of the better monsters

Exactly.

Bringing up Dragons is not a completely representative example, since much more care has been given to them than to many other critters.

 

[CapnZapp]

Like you say the blue was "highly mobile artillery," but it only moves 10 ft. faster than the red (and it had the exact same movement modes). You say the Red was a "tough front-line fighter" but +3 AC and +100 hp looks a lot more different on paper than it feels in play. If that seems like a significant difference to you, we have very different thresholds of "significant."

It's better if you guys move on from Dragons to examples that are more distinct and therefore better.

That said, -10 ft Speed, +3 AC and +100 hp is a huge difference that I would have thought was more than enough to justify a change from "artillery" to "bruiser" (given that no dragon will ever be simple, and all dragons will always be more versatile than regular bruisers or artillery). If that's not significant to you, I wonder what is significant to you...?

 

[CapnZapp]

I agree with the claim that monsters in 5e are a bit boring. But I dont think dragons are the best example, I think ogres, gnolls, orcs etc are where a feel like the bag of hit points claim has some merit. I do think that 5e overreacted to the idea that 4e fights take too long and made monsters (and some of the martial classes) too simple.

Yes.

On one level I can completely symphatize with their effort to keep things simple.

I just wish I didn't have to live with the consequences...

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yes.

On one level I can completely symphatize with their effort to keep things simple.

I just wish I didn't have to live with the consequences...

Great news! You don't. You can either modify 5e so it fits what you want, or you can keep playing the version you like best. It's a game. We choose what we play. There are no 'consequences' since no one is forcing you to do something you don't want to do.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I do think that 5e overreacted to the idea that 4e fights take too long and made monsters (and some of the martial classes) too simple.

Those aren't the only things that make 5e combats faster, BA and hps/damage were also tuned for fast combat, attacks hit more often and saves are failed more often, in general. There's also just fewer formal combat options across the board relative to something like 3e or 2e C&T. But mostly it's just that everyone dies faster, making combats shorter. Adding more combat options wouldn't really make combats a lot slower, but it might end up being pointless, if the more-complex creature dies before availing itself of those options.

On one level I can completely symphatize with their effort to keep things simple.
I just wish I didn't have to live with the consequences...

The intended consequence is you'll have to customize the game a bit to match your DMing style, campaign tone, and the preferences of the group you run for. And that's across the board, going for a lot more than just monsters.

Of course, it is generally harder to come up with functional new material from scratch than to cut material you don't want, but the game could have made the latter easier. For instance, if monster stats (some of 'em at least) had 'advanced' actions towards the end of the block that could be ignored when wanting to run it more simply, or utilized when it was more the star of the encounter.

Of course, the unintended (and undesired) consequence would be giving up on the game.

However, I do wonder that if you add extra attacks to monsters that you could unbalance the system.

Not worth worrying about, IMHO. Balance isn't that tight, so part of running 5e is being aware of how important relative balance is to you & your group, and keeping things in line dynamically, that's a continual effort, and adding complexity to your monsters shouldn't make it much harder. Part of being Empowered.

 

[76512390ag12]

Matt C's video is excellent advice. I also recommend 13th Age where these kinds of interesting easy and fun monster abilities are baked in. Due to bounding effect, one does need to be wary of 4e or 13th Age AC and bonus to hit, better to base them off a 5e creature.

But hey, I *play* 5e and 13th Age and *run* 13th Age..

Posted by C4-D4RS on the MetroLiberal HoloNet

 

[machineelf]

Does your character talk about saving throws? Their hit point total? Their feats? Their armor class? Their proficiency bonus? Spell levels? Challenge ratings? Experience points?

Don't those terms break immersion?

No. They don't for me. The nature of the game is that there must be some mechanics to it. We all accept that. It's a balance of mechanics and storytelling. But when the game becomes too much about the mechanics in ways that are at many times detached from the logic and reason for why and how those mechanics correspond to the natural order of the fantasy world the character is in, immersion becomes broken for me.

Feats are extra abilities your character learns as they become more skilled and a more powerful warrior or wizard or thief. Armor class represents the quality of armor you have and/or how fast you can move and react in a fight. Proficiency bonus again represents you becoming better at picking locks or sneaking around the more you practice and the greater an adventurer you become with experience. Spell levels represent your knowledge of the magical arts and how, through your studies, you have increased your control over the arcane weave.

See how those mechanics are tied to story-telling aspects? Some mechanics don't fit into story-telling aspects as well, for sure. But 4th edition has many more of those kinds of mechanics that are detached from immersive story-telling explanations, for me. Why can a fighter only do a brutal strike or a crushing foot attack once per day? Umm ... because it's a daily power, that's why, don't ask questions. At least in 5th the fighter can only do his second wind and action surge once per short rest because it takes a lot out of him to push himself to those levels. There, explanation given that fits into the storytelling nature and has a level of verisimilitude. And there are only a few of those kinds of things, you're not hit over the head with a hundred of them that are daily powers just because each class needs a certain number of daily powers for the sake of the mechanics.

Playing card powers; Having each class have as many "powers" as any other; everything being aligned tightly to a grid ... it all just became more of a board game feel than an immersive role-playing game.

Like, why in the world do "minions" with 1 hit-point exist? I know why the exist in terms of the game mechanics, but how does that fit into the world? Creatures that can do a good bit of damage, but are always on the verge of dying if you blow on them? It's such a game mechanic detached from the verisimilitude of the world the characters are living in; it's a prime example of what I'm talking about.

Now I like 4e for what it is, a well designed tactical grid-based board game. But it's not the immersive D&D experience I wanted. That's my opinion, and you very well may not agree with it, but I'm telling you why I think a lot of people like me abandoned 4th edition, WOTC knew it was in trouble, and why 5th edition has done so much better. Not trying to start an edition war, because like I said I thought 4th edition, for what it was, was really well designed. But the designers, in my opinion, lost track of how tying skills and abilities and magic to the story-telling aspect of the game creates the overall cohesive, immersive nature that role-players (and not roll-players) want.

In 5th edition, if feels like I am casting an arcane ritual using my spellbook. In 4th edition, it feels like I am playing a card on the table. Everything was too meta-game mechanics wise in 4th.

 

[Tony Vargas]

why in the world do "minions" with 1 hit-point exist? I know why the exist in terms of the game mechanics

Nod. The same reason BA or hps or what-have-you exist. To make the game work a bit better.

but how does that fit into the world? Creatures that can do a good bit of damage, but are always on the verge of dying if you blow on them? It's such a game mechanic detached from the verisimilitude of the world the characters are living in

Unless you're a dragon, blowing on someone will not kill them. A 1hp creature is perfectly valid, and 1 hp of damage does represent something lethal. Take a dagger for instance. Daggers do, if we want to cite realism, kill people very efficiently, even all but instantly. But they do 1d4 damage in D&D. If everyone in the world is like a PC with no less than 5 hps (1st level wizard w/ 8 con), the verisimilitude of the dagger as a deadly weapon would be a bust!

Minions were actually less fragile than low-hp creatures in 5e, because of Damage on a Successful Save. Light up a band of 11 hp orcs with a fireball and unless you roll stunningly low, even the quickest & luckiest of them are toast, 22 or more hps save for half is unavoidable death. A minion always stood a chance of surviving a fireball, even if it might be a 1:20 chance if he's dreadfully outclassed.

So, if you wanted to make some more-interesting monsters on the lower end of the CR scale, taking a page or two from the lowly minion might not be a bad thing. Some sort of resistance to DoaSS, for instance, like a Trait: on a successful save for 1/2 damage, the creature cannot take more than half it's total hps in damage from the spell.

Another trait of minions that 5e has already embraced, OTOH, was not rolling for damage.

 

[CapnZapp]

Great news! You don't. You can either modify 5e so it fits what you want, or you can keep playing the version you like best. It's a game. We choose what we play. There are no 'consequences' since no one is forcing you to do something you don't want to do.

You misunderstand. I talked about how I wanted the game to be in a certain way already straight out of the box, no modifications necessary.

There's nothing great about it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Couple things on this:

1) Brutes are always more potent when coupled with a Leader.

Sure. And 5e ogres are more potent when coupled with the 5e version of a leader. They're also plenty potent on their own.

But the more relevant thing is that points like this exhibit the fiddly bits pretty well. One of the things that really didn't mesh with my playstyle in 4e - on both sides of the table - was this focus on "build." If I have an encounter with ogres they won't be really significant unless I also pair them with Options B, X, and Q? That's too fiddly for me. The decision to fight some ogres should carry a lot of impact on its own without 3-4 higher-order decisions also influencing whether or not I really got the real effect of some ogres.

2) I'm wondering if your GM (or you) used updated math Brutes or MM3/MV Brutes (or the mid/later Dungeon ones). Speaking of Red Dragons? Low paragon tier multi-headed Red Dragon Calastryx (Brute)? A Wizard will have mid-60s HPs when Calastryx will be encountered;

a) Attacks on Init 30, 20, 10 (and 40 when Bloodied)
b) Does 28 damage with a Slide 3 rider (keeping you nice and close for furthing OMNOMNOMing...for sitting in her Breath Weapon conflagration rider = 10 fire damage/turn...better have a teleport or a Defender!).
c) Each of her 3 heads tracks Breath Weapon recharge and Rip and Tear usage on their own (so basically a possible 3-4 Breath Weapons or Multi-attacks on one combat turn...yikes).

That is a Brute. And that Wizard is lunch if things don't go right.

I DMed and played throughout 4e's lifespan, so I'm sure there was a mixed bag of MM3/MV critters as well as earlier critters. That +25% damage thing comes directly from the post-MM3 math.

If it takes a monster three separate steps to be a Brute, including 4-5 attacks, sliding, an ongoing effect, and tracking three different heads at once, it's making me think WAAAAAAAAAY too much about it. 5e ogres do it in one: dealing massive damage with a friggin' club. Everything else is unnecessary cruft. That's what I'd call effective, elegant design, a joy to use, across multiple levels and even at scale.

You actually picked the only dragon age that wasn't updated. Even if you would have picked a Young Dragon, things would have been different. Even still, while the non-updated Adults aren't remotely as nuanced/good as all the other dragons, they are still observably different from their kin in how each would manifest in play (which I thought was the premise?).

As I pointed out, I don't think the differences between the Adults in 4e are really all that MORE noticable than the distinction between Adults in 5e. The big thing a lot of players are still going to remember is: that one breathed lightning at us in a desert, that other one breathed fire at us in a volcano. They're about the same in terms of distinction from each other (ie: not very), 5e's just simpler about it.

Some pretty large pieces of the puzzle missing here.

a) The Opportunity Cost of subbing a 5e Dragon Multiattack for the Shove Action is way, way, way too steep. You better be ensured an auto-gib from fall death. First, you have to have a contest for it to work. Second, it is either 5 ft or prone, not both. Meanwhile, the 4e Blue Dragon is (i) doing a chunk of physical/lightning damage to you while (ii) automatically pushing you 3 squares and knocking you prone. Prone, which is a more punitive condition in 4e than it is in 5e.

That is a suite of melee riders built for a "mobile, sky-kiting, lightning/thunder hurler." Get out of melee and right back on the wing. And maybe drop someone off a cliff after you've NOMMED them.

The 5e dragon bites you, deals phyiscal/lightning damage to you, then trades one of its claws for a shove. The 4e dragon bites you and shoves you and knocks you down. This is the same thing in essence - the differences there are subtle and nuanced and so end up often being mostly irrelevant in practice IMXP. At least when compared to "that blue thing breathes lightning" and "that red thing breathes fire."

b) Yes, my guess is 5e's "Wing Attack" was pulled directly from the Blue Dragon "Wingclap." The thing is though that all dragon's generically have Wing Attack as a 2 LA costing ability that does the same thing regardless of dragon. The premise (I thought) was distinctive things across the dragons. The 4e Blue Dragon's Wingclap synergizes with its other unique abilities to create a distinct draconic experience (very distinct from the Red) at the table for both player and GM.

A big part of my point is that if you have to start talking about "synergies" you're starting to admit that the thing on its own isn't distinct. 5e dragons can be mobile when they need to be. I don't feel like it's a problem that this ability isn't reserved for certain flavors of dragon, and forbidden to other flavors, because one dragon doing that and one dragon not doing that isn't really that big of a difference in play IMXP.

You also have to consider everything in context (especially (a) and (b) above). 4e's melee is passively-persistently "sticky" with lots of participants having active abilities to punish or restrict movement (see the updated Red Dragon that you didn't use for your argument - 3 * mid/high DC Grapple + Interrupt on any movement within 4 squares and you get smashed and come right back next to "good ole red"). Everyone isn't just a Skirmisher by default. Having resources to escape the passive/active melee vortex is absolutely central to being a functional and effective Skirmisher or (in this case) ranged Artillery.

Yes, more "builds," higher requirements for system mastery, more "you're doing it wrong," etc. All for very little effect when the players mostly remember the lightning vs. the fire.

c) and d). C is what it is. Stunned until the end of your next turn nearly the entire time (5 % of the time saved ends instead...not too complicated). And D is what it is. Not just a "different breath weapon." Its another long range, deadly kiting tool. The difference between Range 20 and Close Blast 5 is gigantic (as you know).

Adult Blues with their BW recharged are choosing between a breath weapon that's "a lot of damage to a single target vs. AC" or an area attack that's significant damage to a cluster of targets vs. Reflex. The areas and targeting and damage values don't lead to a lot of distinction in practice IMXP. It might as well not be there.

The Lair Effects (which I touted all through the playtest as the best 5e tech along with the Background Traits and a few other things that didn't make the cut) and Regional Effects are what make the 5e dragon's distinctive. Their basic chassis is entirely nondescript (save for Burrow vs Climb...which, given the fleeting fury of 5e combat, may...or very well may not...be featured for a sparing moment on-screen).

They each need a personalized suite of synergizing Legendary Actions.

Nondescript is fine. Just having a different breath weapon shape/damage is a significant distinction when combined with their fiction elements. They don't need unique and particular powers that speak to specific combat roles to achieve distinction. They never really have needed that. The difference that everyone knows between red dragons and blue dragons is that one shoots fire and one shoots lightning, and adding to that is a lot of cruft for very little value.

Again, I'm cool with that being an opt-in element that 5e could certainly stand to add to its monsters. But I'm happy with 5e monsters as they are - straightforward - and if the option to make them more complex was available, I don't think I'd actually use that option much. It's not a thing I want or need from my monsters, so adding it to my games would be adding a lot of work for little reward. So I'm glad the base versions of these creatures aren't complex like that - I don't have to "build" my monster's identity out of 4-5 disparate parts assembled just so. I can just say "my blue dragon breathes lightning," and it's fine.