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

[dave2008]

I just took the Mouthless One's stat block (as linked above), pasted it into Word, and without deleting any content got it down to 1 highly legible page. I can even grow the font a couple of points and it only becomes a page and a half.

I can't find the link you mentioned, care to repost it?

 

[Parmandur]

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!

No problem! I mean, obviously folks are playing longer combats, and itnot like the world explodes. But WotC is extremely comfortbased on their data thst 2-3 leaning towards 2 is the norm to make their design using thst as a standard assumption.

Heck, at one point on the Happy Fun Hour Mearls answered a viewer question to do a dissection of the reception of 4E, and "we listened to people who like playing long abdinvolved combats, not most people playing D&D" was the gist of his answer.

 

[dave2008]

I appreciate that you feel that way, but I don't think your preferences are universal. Nor do I think it is necessarily a positive development to continuously reduce complexity for "ease of use." I think it continues the "MCUification" of the game. Granted, my preferences aren't any more "important" than yours, so the real trends will be driven by some combination of market research, fan feedback, and designer preference.

Well my preferences are in conflict actually. I like to design spellcasting monsters as spellcasters (like A5e does); however, I don't enjoy running them in the game. So I end up making / design custom monsters, and then running the ones from the MM!

And to clarify I never think my preferences are universal or even common. I've always been an odd-ball.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Design and worldbuilding is what I care about the most. I can get the rest to work for me on my own.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

Could be, sure. Should be, that's a more complicated question. Given that 2 Roune, 3 at the most, is a universal design assumption in 5E, though....this what it be.

 

[billd91]

I can't find the link you mentioned, care to repost it?

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.

There it is - and with the link back to the original post.

 

[Maxperson]

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

I doubt they have it, either. How many polls by WotC have asked if we have trouble telling the difference between a spell and an ability? None that I can remember. I guess I just have a higher opinion on the capabilities of the average player. I don't think the vast majority of players don't have an more trouble tracking spells than abilities.

WotC has said this change was to make it easier to play monsters in an optimal manner and hit at the CR they are supposed to hit at. Adding in more spells and issuing a statement at the beginning of the book accomplishes that.

 

[Stoutstien]

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.

Note. All of his videos and interviews on this topic are after 5e was out for quite a while. They weren't finding this out on play testing but actual table play. Hence the shift in design with action economy and features to permit the use in the first 1-2 rounds rather than multi rounds.
They also have been really stretching CR to the limit to try to make enjoyable NPCs that also only last that long. Hence the shift to more off turn options.

 

[dave2008]

Design and worldbuilding is what I care about the most. I can get the rest to work for me on my own.

I care about them separately. I like to design and world-build. Heck I have a thread on these forums with 200+ monsters that are more complex then WotC version and some have spellcasting exactly like you want.

However, I can't really use them in my game. I almost never use my own creations in my games because they are to complex. I like simple statblocks to run in game, and I can just improvise anything else I need. For some reason I can't do that as well when there is a big list of actions or abilities in the page.

 

[dave2008]

I don't think the vast majority of players don't have an more trouble tracking spells than abilities.

Why are you focused on this distinction? That is not how this conversation started.