D&D 5E New Spellcasting Blocks for Monsters --- Why?!

[Micah Sweet]

We just got an A5E version of The Archlich (no copyrights were harmed in the making of this stat block), and once again I can't help but express my pleasure at their design.

The spells are easy to read, but the spell slot system is preserved and actually serves a game purpose (Touch of Death gets more powerful depending on the spell slots you expend while doing it). There's even a special trait that says that the Archlich can cast any Wizard spell as a ritual, which gives a DM so many opportunities!

I just don't understand how the Vecna block can come anywhere close to this in terms of interesting uses as well as ease of use.

This is what I'm talking about! I especially love the design notes included, where they actually tell you what their intentions are. WotC could (but won't) learn a lot from Level Up's design. Too bad they're going the opposite direction.

 

[Parmandur]

Where was this said?

Mearls Happy Fun Hour numerous times when discussing Class design and balancing Spells and powrrs Crawford has casually dropped this here and there as well.

Mearls went into probably too much detail on this point, but in actual playtesting they have consistently found thst 3 Round combats are an outlier, and anything longer is a massive outlier. The consistency of this in play is what made them realize that the math for a Spell with lingering damage effects (say, Flaming Sphere) matched with CR calculations, which underlays the Tasha's Summoning Spells and pet adjustments for Beastmaster and new Pet Subclasses.

Which incidentally means they expect an Adventure Day to be 12-24 Rounds of combat, or 72-144 seconds of violent action per Long Rest, but.spread throughout the day.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's three pages long. And that's only if you use half-inch margins. Without that, it's pushing four full pages, and they didn't even include all of the spell descriptions (nothing below 4th level is described, so if you need to look up how expeditious retreat or animate dead work, you're on your own.) Oh, and that's completely leaving out anything that isn't explicitly the statblock. The opening paragraphs of fluff text and the "Combat" section add almost another full page of text.

It absolutely contains some clever stuff, including that "any wizard spell as a ritual" (though that might run into issues with spells that don't really make sense as rituals, e.g. instant spells.) But good Lord, this is unwieldy as hell and would absolutely require page-flipping if you were trying to use it from a book, just to look at all its actions.

None of that is a problem for me.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't believe there are enough people who have difficulty tracking or remembering 5 spells all useable once per day, but who easily track or remember 5 abilities all useable once per day to warrant catering to the latter.

I don't think it's impossible at all, but given that even Vecna is only going to be in the scene for a couple of Rounds, providing a streamlined gameplan for the DM seems a good service.

 

[Maxperson]

Mearls Happy Fun Hour numerous times when discussing Class design and balancing Spells and powrrs Crawford has casually dropped this here and there as well.

Mearls went into probably too much detail on this point, but in actual playtesting they have consistently found thst 3 Round combats are an outlier, and anything longer is a massive outlier. The consistency of this in play is what made them realize that the math for a Spell with lingering damage effects (say, Flaming Sphere) matched with CR calculations, which underlays the Tasha's Summoning Spells and pet adjustments for Beastmaster and new Pet Subclasses.

Which incidentally means they expect an Adventure Day to be 12-24 Rounds of combat, or 72-144 seconds of violent action per Long Rest, but.spread throughout the day.

Huh! Then when I was calculating combats at 4 rounds to show how trivial stat bonuses are, they are even more trivial than that! Thanks!

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think it's impossible at all, but given that even Vecna is only going to be in the scene for a couple of Rounds, providing a streamlined gameplan for the DM seems a good service.

I think Vecna could be and should be more than a 2 round combat. If the encounter is only going to be 2 rounds, then there should be significant out of combat interaction. Reducing him to a 2 round combat sort of trivializes him.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It just seems like a bad example when most of the people pleased about the changes 5e's designers are making, are specifically pleased because these new changes increase brevity and effective communication of critical components. By comparison, your example is almost profligate with its text, intentionally over-sharing information. "Look at how beautiful this thing is that not only doesn't do any of the things you guys like, but in fact goes in exactly the opposite direction, whole hog, full steam ahead!"

Level Up's design here is pretty much exactly what I want, and I can't thank them enough for creating it just as WotC falls off a cliff as far as my gaming desires are concerned.

 

[dave2008]

Who has difficulty writing down or remembering a few spells? A combat is about 4 rounds. It's also just as hard to remember or write that a creature has cast a fireball spell as it is to remember that it used the fireblast ability. The excess spells don't need to be remembered or tracked, so that's not a point of difficulty at all.

Wow, doubling down, that is an approach. I generally like your contributions to this forum Max, I guess I just expect more from you. I'm not here to be you parent, I will move on.

 

[dave2008]

Level Up's design here is pretty much exactly what I want, and I can't thank them enough for creating it just as WotC falls off a cliff as far as my gaming desires are concerned.

I like it from a design / world building perspective, buy I totally understand how it is not very helpful (when you get to something as big as the Archlich) to run in a game for some people.

 

[Parmandur]

Got it. Making it easier on an extreme minority of people who can't understand the difference between an ability and a spell, but irritating a much larger majority is how you maximize the number of players playing the game.

You have access to some demographic numbers there? WotC does,but I'm not aware of any.