D&D 5E Changes to D&D's Spellcasting Monsters: Streamlining Your Way To Bliss

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks about the way they are changing spellcasting monsters in D&D.

• Making the game more fun, easier to learn, shorting "the pathway to getting to your bliss".
• Making monsters easier to run.
• "Rumors of the death of spellcasting [in monsters] are not true". Innate spellcasting has been streamlined with spellcasting into a single trait.
• Spellcasting options are consolidated whenever possible.
• Removing options that a DM is unlikely ever to use.
• In some cases, new magical abilities in the monster statblock which exist alongside a list of spells they can cast.
• For example, the mind flayer's mind blast is not a spell, and other abilities are magical but not spells and aren't as easy to interact with with things like counterspell.
• Things which make archmages say "How is this functioning, and why can't I stop it?"

 

[dalisprime]

The software part doesn't translate to physical books which continue to be in use. Until D&D moves to digital distribution only, there's no easy way of implementing what you mention while keeping the stat blocks clutter free.

 

[Zehnseiter]

From memory of old, 4e had a problem where fights were grinds because monsters were a bag of hitpoints.

Correct. But as others already have mentioned that is mostly a problem of the first 4E Monster Manual. They fixed the maths here quickly.
D&D has a habit of the first MM always being the weakest one mechanically as the designers still learn about and get comfortable with their own new system. Sadly the first MM always has the most well known and iconic monsters.

The 5E MM is not different in that regard. It has for example a large number of really boring sack-of-hitpoints monsters that you change out with your player not even noticing. Luckily monster books tend to improve a lot during the course of a edition.

What is rare is that the first MM monsters get revisited during a running edition.
In 4E this happend with the Monster Vault that came at the end of the edition and was the pinnacle of 4E monster design. Reading the first 4E MM next to the Monster Vault is a nice treat if you like mechanics. The dragons alone.....

Back to 5E. If they ever revisit the first MM for it we will see a lot of way better designed stats for them as long as the designer don't have too much of a turnover. It will be very difficult to reproduce the mechanical brilliance that the MV had as 5E just has other design priorities but its almost certain that we would see huge improvements.

 

[pauldanieljohnson]

I am concerned when a necromancer npc who is supposed to be a "wizard" has Necrotic Bolt in his stat block instead of chill touch, because then we set the precedent that cantrips are "PC magic" and NPCs get different versions that don't abide by the same laws of magic.

I guess it depends on who is insisting that this necromancer is "supposed" to be a wizard, and why they are insisting so. You can go all the way back to 2015 to see examples of NPCs "breaking" the rules that PCs live by.

Consider the Berserker from the Monster Manual. It has the Reckless Attack ability that lets it attack with advantage while also granting advantage to attacks made against it. Clearly, the Berserker is intended to be an NPC version of the Barbarian. But rather than lard the stat block with all the complexities of the Barbarian Rage ability such as forcing the DM to track a 1-minute timer, limited uses per day, and so forth, they just replace all that with a straight-forward ability the DM can use without any additional accounting.

I don't see that as dumbing anything down, it's just about leaving complexity where it belongs and removing it where it doesn't.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That needs to be adressed.
It is a bit unlucky that they changed magic resistance to only work against spells at the same time they changed the spellcasting.

I think it’s maybe intentional, but yeah I hope there is an official clarification that anything with a spell attack is a spell. I mean, I don’t need that clarification, but just so the forums and twitter don’t get annoying.

 

[Gadget]

It may be just me, but I can't help but think that this may be in part a reaction to the growing realization that they opened a Pandora's Box with Counterspell and the like. Jeremy's talk of some magic being less formulaic and "wiggly" is all well and good, but I can't help but think that things like a Sorcerer's magic sounds like it would fit in to that less formulaic and more "wiggly" slot as well.

That said, I don't really have a problem with the changes and streamlining, at least in theory.

 

[Remathilis]

I guess it depends on who is insisting that this necromancer is "supposed" to be a wizard, and why they are insisting so. You can go all the way back to 2015 to see examples of NPCs "breaking" the rules that PCs live by.

Consider the Berserker from the Monster Manual. It has the Reckless Attack ability that lets it attack with advantage while also granting advantage to attacks made against it. Clearly, the Berserker is intended to be an NPC version of the Barbarian. But rather than lard the stat block with all the complexities of the Barbarian Rage ability such as forcing the DM to track a 1-minute timer, limited uses per day, and so forth, they just replace all that with a straight-forward ability the DM can use without any additional accounting.

I don't see that as dumbing anything down, it's just about leaving complexity where it belongs and removing it where it doesn't.

WotC is: they are putting keywords "wizard" "bard" and "cleric" etc in the npc stat blocks. Eight of them are named after the wizard subclasses in the PHB.

The berserker in the MM does look like a barbarian stripped down, but beyond sharing a single class feature, the berserker isn't trying to say "I'm a barbarian class" either by keyword or explicit design. And some of the other NPCs get similar new class features (bards with taunt instead of inspiration because the latter isn't a flashy feature) but mostly, I could roughly gauge about what "level" most NPCs are supposed to represent based on caster level, sneak attack dice, class features, etc. It's not foolproof, but the NPCs that were supposed to be a "class" felt like a simple version of the class.

I can't tell you what level the new bard or warpriest are supposed to represent. If I need to level them higher or lower, I don't have an easy mechanic to adjust that. If they had some software that allowed for painless monster creation using the DMG guidelines, I might be more willing to create whole clothe NPCs. But most of them (DnDBeyond included) are just fancy text editors, not calculators, and it's not worth my time to create a whole new monster for one encounter.

I really wish they had found some way to keep NPCs looking, if not exactly acting, like the PCs. Their had to be some way to get the ease of giving spells stats in the Actions list while keeping some form of spell slots or caster level.

 

[pauldanieljohnson]

WotC is: they are putting keywords "wizard" "bard" and "cleric" etc in the npc stat blocks. Eight of them are named after the wizard subclasses in the PHB.

I agree. If you look at NPC "fighters", the MM does a great job of using different identifiers. You've got guards, gladiators, veterans, knights, and thugs, and they all act like fighters of various specialties and power levels, but they don't intrude on the space of an actual PC fighter. My heart dropped the first time I saw the druid stat block in the MM, because it flies in the face of that design philosophy and introduces an NPC that implies it uses the same rules as a PC class by virtue of using the same name. I really wish they'd made a firm mandate that monsters and NPCs avoid PC classes in their names.

Nonetheless, and correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere do the rules state that an NPC, irrespective of its name, is mandated to mimic a PC. That's an inference you're reading into things. It's not an unjustified inference, but here's the thing: The players don't get to see the stat blocks you're using. If your 10 hit die NPC wizard doesn't have exactly 5 cantrips the way a 10th level wizard does, they'll never know and it shouldn't break anything in the game. If you've found instances where this actually causes in-game problems, I'd be curious to hear what they are.

 

[Remathilis]

I agree. If you look at NPC "fighters", the MM does a great job of using different identifiers. You've got guards, gladiators, veterans, knights, and thugs, and they all act like fighters of various specialties and power levels, but they don't intrude on the space of an actual PC fighter. My heart dropped the first time I saw the druid stat block in the MM, because it flies in the face of that design philosophy and introduces an NPC that implies it uses the same rules as a PC class by virtue of using the same name. I really wish they'd made a firm mandate that monsters and NPCs avoid PC classes in their names.

That didn't bother me so much because while a guard, gladiator, or veteran might not have the features of a fighter (like second wind or action surge) they weren't exactly doing things that a fighter couldn't do narratively. It's not like they had a decapitation strike or something that was blatantly not a PC ability. And for the most part, characters that did mimic a PC class (like warpriest, champion, mage, assassin, bard, etc) either gave a few signature abilities that looked the PC abilities or something remarkably similar. The most egregious examples might have been something like the bard's taunt (which is an ability a bard PC cannot mimic) creating an ability NPC bards have that PC bards can't. But nearly everything else on the bard lined up, and I accepted taunt as replacement for bardic inspiration (which doesn't work well for an NPC) and an ability like cutting words.

It was nice though that if I needed an NPC with the abilities of a bard, I could use the bard NPC stat block as a starting point, add a few spell levels, up HD as needed, and recalc CR and I had a reasonable idea of what I was doing. Now that easy part is gone and replaced with "make it up yourself".

Nonetheless, and correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere do the rules state that an NPC, irrespective of its name, is mandated to mimic a PC. That's an inference you're reading into things. It's not an unjustified inference, but here's the thing: The players don't get to see the stat blocks you're using. If your 10 hit die NPC wizard doesn't have exactly 5 cantrips the way a 10th level wizard does, they'll never know and it shouldn't break anything in the game. If you've found instances where this actually causes in-game problems, I'd be curious to hear what they are.

As a DM, I used it to know what exactly an NPC was trying to represent. In Ravenloft, Firan Zal'Honan is an archmage. That means looking at his stat block I can tell he's supposed to be an 18th level wizard, just stripped down of fiddly things like Arcane Recovery that is useful to A PC but less so an NPC. In return, he gets a little more tankier (less glass canon like PC wizards are) and some spells are already factored into his stats (like stoneskin). He's simpler to run than a PC wizard, but still looks and feels like one.
By contrast, Candlekeep Mystery has a Master Sage, which has a few "spells" listed as attacks (fireball, shocking grasp, shield) and some in the spellcasting trait (usuable 1/day or 3/day each), but I can't tell at a glance what level of wizard he is supposed to be. They have up to 6th level spells, but due to the lack of slots they can cast more 6th level spells than a PC wizard could. I guess they kinda resemble an 11th level wizard as long as your not tracking spells used.
Worse yet, the Lorehold Professor of Order in Strixhaven is keyword tagged as a "Wizard" but doesn't even have abilities that resemble known spells; he have a weird "contact other planes 1/day" feature, a spectral scroll attack (which does 2d10 force damage and the prof can make two attacks/round with, making its closest spell cousin Eldritch Blast) They also gain a few cantrips and three PHB spells (2nd level, 1st level, and 5th! level) and another "this kinda resembles a spell" attack called weight of history. Its flavorful, it kinda resembles the MTG cards, but its utterly alien compared to the PC wizards this guy is supposed to be teaching magic to. I don't know why he gets the powers he does, or what logic is used to building him beyond "I think this guy should do this!" He doesn't resemble a PC wizard in the slightest, any more so than a mindflayer represents a "wizard".
From what I've seen of the leaks on MotM, it looks like the problem will only be exacerbated. I hope that NPC "caster" classes like abjurer or warlock of the X are built closer to the Candlekeep model (here are some known spells written up as NPC actions) and not like Strixhaven (here are some magical whatever abilities we invented and gave to this "wizard") but from what I've seen on the Bard and Warpriest, I fear the latter is probably more likely.

 

[Weiley31]

That's the fifty dollar question isn't it? It says it's a ranged spell attack, which might imply it's a spell. But it's distinct from his spellcasting action. So it might be a spell as far as magic resistance is concerned.
But as far as globe of invulnerability or counterspell? It lacks a level reference so if it's a spell it's one that's immune to the influence of any other spell that references levels.
Kind of begging for a clarification, if you ask me.

I would say for Counterspell in those situations, the DC is whatever the Spell Save DC, of the monster, and even if that seems, easier to beat, the Monster is still technically chewing threw your Spell Slots/Reactions and if it makes three attacks, then two of those are getting through if the dice rolls in the DM's favor.

That's how I would rule it as a DM anyway.

 

[Weiley31]

That's the fifty dollar question isn't it? It says it's a ranged spell attack, which might imply it's a spell. But it's distinct from his spellcasting action. So it might be a spell as far as magic resistance is concerned.

The book, regardless of what is said, specifically labels it as a spell so it would/should still be hampered by Magic Resistance. Unless Perkins/Crawford says "Golly lulz guyz: that would full under the (And other effects) portion of the old Magic Resistance. heh heh."

Which I'm still expecting to somehow pop up in a Sage Advice.