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

Statblocks, but not the same narrative creature. That's explicitly a 4e thing (a feature if i remember the ad copy correctly).

A magic school dropout, a lone necromancer, and a warlord's henchmage all could use the same statblock in 5e and fight exactly the same.
But you meet them at different levels.

In 4e you use different statblocks for the different levels you meet them at.

That was the point of bounded accuracy. So that you use the same statblock at more levels.
 

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I don't like using the same enemies over and over again. It's boring.

I also think it is useful to have a bunch of maneuvers and special abilities on hand to give to otherwise generic monsters/NPCs to spice things up. If each of the 5 hobgoblins had a different "move" the fight would be much cooler.
The real strength of 4e for DMs for sure. I recommend Nord Games 5e books for undead and humanoid variants for sure.
 

It breaks my own personal sense of verisimilitude to have the PCs cower before an oger, say, only to wallop 4 at a time some weeks later on the in game calendar.
Strangely, I feel the opposite here - it shows how far the characters have come that the monstrous creatures they fled from at level 1 are now no match for them at level 10. The verisimilitude comes from the fact that their increased prowess is reflected by the world itself.
 
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The thing is that would still be too much like a fighter.
Any ranger plays very much like a fighter. Wearing lighter armour (usually) and popping off hunter's mark is the only practical way a ranger and a fighter differ in combat. Most of a Ranger's special stuff is out of combat and is therefore beyond the scope of the stat block. The albino dwarf spirit warrior is, no doubt, an ace tracker who knows the jungle like the back of their hand. But that is established narratively, not mechanically. And one could argue that using poisoned weapons better fulfils the narrative role of a ranger archetype than the hunter's mark spell.

As for the archer, team them up with a pet and you have a Beastmaster. Put them in an army and you have a soldier. You establish their identity through their narrative role, not the mechanics, which the players shouldn't see anyway.

Now, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the rest of the world should follow the same mechanics as the PCs, but I'm also aware of the big problem: a player only controls a single character who's abilities they know well. They can handle complex mechanics for that one character. But the DM has to control a bunch of mobs, whose abilities they might only have had time to glance at. Complexity needs to be avoided in favour of practicality.

Now in my game, all mechanics stay "behind the curtain". The players can only see how their own character works and nothing else. So they have no way of telling what mechanics are being used, they only see the effects.
 


Strangely, I feel the opposite here - it shows how far the characters have come that the monstrous creatures they fled from at level 1 are now no match for them at level 10. The verisimilitude comes from the fact that their increased prowess is reflected by the world itself.
About a week and a half later if the PCs are in a dungeon crawl adventure. It breaks my brain.
 


About a week and a half later if the PCs are in a dungeon crawl adventure. It breaks my brain.
Then don't have them level that fast.

If you don't want the characters to become more powerful super rapidly (and I agree with you on that) then pace things so that this doesn't happen. What I find nonsensical to have them mechanically level but pretend that narratively they didn't become more powerful, and then match this by levelling the world around them. Seems utterly pointless. Why have bigger numbers that represent nothing?
 


Any ranger plays very much like a fighter. Wearing lighter armour (usually) and popping off hunter's mark is the only practical way a ranger and a fighter differ in combat. Most of a Ranger's special stuff is out of combat and is therefore beyond the scope of the stat block. The albino dwarf spirit warrior is, no doubt, an ace tracker who knows the jungle like the back of their hand. But that is established narratively, not mechanically. And one could argue that using poisoned weapons better fulfils the narrative role of a ranger archetype than the hunter's mark spell.

As for the archer, team them up with a pet and you have a Beastmaster. Put them in an army and you have a soldier. You establish their identity through their narrative role, not the mechanics, which the players shouldn't see anyway.

Now, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the rest of the world should follow the same mechanics as the PCs, but I'm also aware of the big problem: a player only controls a single character who's abilities they know well. They can handle complex mechanics for that one character. But the DM has to control a bunch of mobs, whose abilities they might only have had time to glance at. Complexity needs to be avoided in favour of practicality.

Now in my game, all mechanics stay "behind the curtain". The players can only see how their own character works and nothing else. So they have no way of telling what mechanics are being used, they only see the effects.

I'm not saying an NPC ranger should have the same mechanics as a PC ranger.

I'm saying that rangers haven't fought like fighters since 2nd edition. Rangers have been doing arrow bursts, fire arrows, sword flurries, and entangling strikes for 3 editions now. Rangers on nova mode use magic style weapon attacks like ensnaring strike, hail of thorns, and lighting arrow.

Adding 1d10 to attack and damage rolls is a fighter thing. A ranger enemy would be shooting 1/day entanglement, burst, and lightning arrows.

Now I wouldn't be arguing for having a ranger NPC to have spells either. Running a warrior with weapon magic spells would be a pain to run for a DM. Instead I would prefer just a skilled warrior with a few special attacks.
 

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