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

[Reynard]

Yep. Too much and the RP side geta smothered.
Not enough and the game becomes boring and people stop playing it. There is a fine balance to reach.

I don't think they are that closely linked.

 

[Helldritch]

I don't think they are that closely linked.

Have you ever played Role Master. Each weapons, skills and spells have their tables. Each have a critical table from A to E and fumble tables A to E... that is a lot, and I mean a lot. Arms law, Claw law (because a tiger's bite and claws will not do the same crits as a lion's) Spell law and so on. Searching for the right one in the right book can be... cumbersome? And while the DM is looking for that table, players are drinking beers and soon forget they are playing and end up drunk and... 'nough of my personal experience as a player in RM....

 

[Reynard]

Have you ever played Role Master. Each weapons, skills and spells have their tables. Each have a critical table from A to E and fumble tables A to E... that is a lot, and I mean a lot. Arms law, Claw law (because a tiger's bite and claws will not do the same crits as a lion's) Spell law and so on. Searching for the right one in the right book can be... cumbersome? And while the DM is looking for that table, players are drinking beers and soon forget they are playing and end up drunk and... 'nough of my personal experience as a player in RM....

I'm not sure the interrupted roleplaying in that scenario is the fault of the system...

 

[Hussar]

We're making Advanced 5E. It's OK if that's not what you personally want or need, but I'm not sure why the dripping sarcasm or badwrongfun overtones are necessary. Plenty of people love our books, but they don't have to be for everyone.

Sorry, the sarcasm was misplaced. I think it's absolutely fantastic the work that you guys are doing. I honestly do, even if it isn't really for me. That's fantastic.

But, I'm being told that what you are doing should be the ONLY way of doing it. That not doing it the way you are doing it is dumbing down the game and pandering to the lowest common denominator. That's where the sarcasm and badwrongfun overtones are coming from. I mean, why are you taking this up with me, while ignoring the dozens of pages of people claiming that anyone who disagrees is either incompetent or too stupid to use a more complicated stat block.

 

[Hussar]

So, if I follow your logic I can make this assumption.

Whenever I play a six string guitar, it sounds like someone is slitting the throat of a poor cat. By your analogy because I can't play six string guitars, people should stop making six string guitars because poor Helldritch can't play one.

This is what we call in French:" leveling to the bottom." It is too hard? Remove the top difficulty and make it the new standard for everyone. The problem there is with this mentality is that you will never truly improve your play. There were way easier solutions and I even shared some and got flamed for daring offering a solution or simply saying that WotC were wrong in their approach.

But, you freely admit that you are not capable of playing a six string guitar. With some practice and training, however, you could and could do it accurately and without making mistakes every time you pick it up.

That being the key difference here. It's not that people who have never picked up the game before can't use these stat blocks accurately. It's that people with YEARS of experience, still can't use them without making mistakes.

@Morrus, I believe this is exactly what I was pointing to?

 

[Helldritch]

I'm not sure the interrupted roleplaying in that scenario is the fault of the system...

If it had happen once or twice yep. If it had been with only one Referee, yep. But it was constant until a crazy guy I knew put all the major tables in Excel format... it was fun for a while but even then, flipping and consulting one table after the other simply felt... well tedious.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But, you freely admit that you are not capable of playing a six string guitar. With some practice and training, however, you could and could do it accurately and without making mistakes every time you pick it up.

That being the key difference here. It's not that people who have never picked up the game before can't use these stat blocks accurately. It's that people with YEARS of experience, still can't use them without making mistakes.

@Morrus, I believe this is exactly what I was pointing to?

There are always going to be folks that just aren't going to be great at certain things. No matter what they do. Despite years of trying, I've never been able to be even half way decent at any first person shooter. That doesn't mean we should stop making them.

There's also no problem with liking a more simplified system, even though I personally do not. But you can't expect people to advocate for a point of view they don't agree with.

 

[Helldritch]

But, you freely admit that you are not capable of playing a six string guitar. With some practice and training, however, you could and could do it accurately and without making mistakes every time you pick it up.

That being the key difference here. It's not that people who have never picked up the game before can't use these stat blocks accurately. It's that people with YEARS of experience, still can't use them without making mistakes.

@Morrus, I believe this is exactly what I was pointing to?

Not really, we offered ways to make the old stat blocks more readable and usable but I got hosed for that. It is not because something is a bit harder to do that it is bad. There are ways to ease the learning and usage of the starting stat blocks but it seems that no one that got problems with them wants to hear about the possible solutions.

If I were gating the game as you claimed, I would not offer solutions. I would simply do as some did to me. Though luck Helldritch. You lost we won. But this is not what I have done. And yet, I got hosed as a gatekeeper for offering solutions.

I also regret that the DMG insists so much on world building and not on how to run encounters. It maybe why the spell slot system for high level NPC is seen as tedious. But is it tedious because most DMs play in the low/mid level and lack experience to run high level? Or is it because it is truly hard to understand and track? To the latter I offered solutions. Check them.

Note that in no way have I said that the new stst block were bad. I said that the change in current edition was not what we had asked during original play test nor what we had at launch. My grippe from the beginning has been that this is a major change in the edition. Instead of changing it, they could simply have put a how to run monsters in a DMG2 and it would have been fine. They did more than one DMG in 3ed and in 4ed and both were useful.

In fact, would this change had been introduced in a 5.5ed (50th anniversary) I would have welcomed it. Not necessarily liked it, but I would have seen it as an evolution of the current edition. Now, it is as if my MMs (note the plural here) are just waiting to be replace by the next MM5.1. And that is what is truly bugging me.

 

[Helldritch]

Also, these stat blocks looks a lot like the old 4ed ones. And there were complains that these stats blocks were to hard to track at high levels!

The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that it is not the spell slot that is the problem, but the lack of experience at high level play. We did not hear any complaints for the spell slot of low to mid level casters
Did we?

 

[DragonBelow]

These statblocks are well organized, it spells out what Vecna can do by type of action, and there some choices but there is nothing like a meteor swarm, dissintegrate, or horrid wilting? That is a bit disappointing. He has a lot mobility on the mat and a great ability to do damage every round. To me what's missing from the statistics, is possibility of being a threat to an entire kingdom, not "just" to the king. More importantly though, how are the decades/centuries/millennia of magic studies reflected in his statblock? I don't see that.