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

[Hussar]

I have to admit that this thread has become somewhat eye opening for me. As I mentioned, in my last session I used one of these Deathlock Masterminds in the encounter. Now, a bit of background - the party has entered the Shadowfell to follow a quest for one of the PC's and have come to the attention of Vecna (I won't bore you with the details) who is very interested in capturing said PC. So, since the Deathlock got away, I figured I'd use him to taunt/talk to/expository infodump on the party during their next long rest.

I wanted to have some way for the baddy to communicate with the party without actually being right there and getting pretty much instantly killed. So, the first thing I did was look at the stat block. It's a caster, after all, so, does it have something like Message, or whatnot? Nope. Hrm, nothing in the statblock is going to help me. Darn, guess I'll have to change my plans.

But, wait. Isn't a lot easier to just not worry about the stat block? The Deathlock Mastermind animates some small animal, sends it into the party and talks through it. Poof, problem solved. How does he do it? No idea. Don't know, and, really, really don't care. Why should I rewrite my adventure just so some stat block isn't changed?

It's funny though. In the past, I absolutely would have done that. The game says that the monster can't do X, so, it can't do X. Now? Yeah, rulings over rules baby. Full DM power ahead. I don't have to restrict myself to the stat block. Poof, instant change, and my fun idea is full steam ahead.

To me, THAT'S the liberating point about truncated stat blocks. Making that absolutely clear to DM's that the stat block is just meant for combat. All the other stuff? That's what those paragraphs of information written in nice descriptive text is for.

I agree with the point made way, way back that the 2e monster write ups were fantastic. Very evocative. Lots of information. But the stat blocks? Hell, the 2e stat blocks didn't even tell me what the stats of the monster were. Nothing in the game had a Dex score unless it was a PC. And that didn't ever seem to matter too much. So, again, if the baseline is a combat of 3-5 rounds, why does a monster stat block (not the monster itself, that's a different story, but, just the stat block) need more than 5 discrete actions?

 

[Minigiant]

The Champion is a 22HD humanoid NPC version of a fighter at CR 9
How many spell slots a ~20HD half caster have?

4/3/3/3/2

How the heck is an attack baaed "monster" with 2-3 attacks per turn gonna use half those slots and not be a pushover to a 7-10th level party?

They can't. Half casters aren't designed around their top half of their slots being their combat power. VGTM cut the blackguard's fewer slots and its offense was still terrible.

Which brings the question. Which is more important:
simulation of the game rules equally among NPCs
getting NPCs to function in their most common usage,
OR
matching the NPCs' actions across the pillars with the narrative of its fantasy?

 

[Vaalingrade]

That was due to DMs not understanding how to run a high level game. I ran many 3e campaigns to 15-21st or so level and I can tell you that adamantine doors were not everywhere. Almost nowhere in fact. That wasn't how to challenge a high level group.

It was what was in the DMG.

Like, we complain that no one reads the DMG, but then when they do what it tells them, we blame them for it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

How did it try to correct it?

Actively telling the DM to not use scaling DCs unless it mattered. People remember the table on page 42, but not the text.

 

[Hussar]

Let’s be honest here. How people understood 4e and what the game actually said were very far apart.

That was always 4e’s biggest isssue. Played great, read terrible.

 

[Maxperson]

It was what was in the DMG.

Like, we complain that no one reads the DMG, but then when they do what it tells them, we blame them for it.

Where? I just went through the 3.5 DMG and looked at every instance of the word adamantine and not one instance of it had anything to do with doors, so if the DMG is saying to use adamantine doors everywhere at high levels, it's not using the word adamantine to say it.

 

[Minigiant]

It was what was in the DMG.

Like, we complain that no one reads the DMG, but then when they do what it tells them, we blame them for it.

That was for combat encounter DCs. You had to stick with the chart in order to avoid abuse of improvisational attacks. Combat had it only mechanics of out of tier challenges (minions and solos).

For noncombat, the DM count choose any DC on the chart that matched the fiction.

Like @Hussar said. 4e played great but read terrible. If D&D streaming was big when 4e was the flagship, fans might have been instructed on it better and more energy could have been focused on the flaws not caused by miscommunication or misunderstandings.

5e is going and ent the opposite way. 5e doesn't tell you jack. So you don't really know the ins and outs of design without delving yourself. Therefore you never can understand exactly why something is changed with detial unless you delved yourself.

For example, asa heavy player and DM of rangers, I know more about the 5e ranger class's design than 90% of the D&D community who doesn't work for WOTC.. So when I watch ranger vidioes on YT and here all the confusion, I know the reason for said confusion becase I dug up the hidden info.

 

[Voadam]

Because if you are running a lot of out of combat stuff and playing with players who choose things based on what suits their character, you're pretty much leaving about 2/3rds of the D&D game out of your particular game, which is means for lots of combat stuff. At least, I think that's the way the argument goes.

And, it's not entirely off base either. D&D is a heavily combat focused game. It doesn't really have much support for the out of combat stuff, or, at least, it's fair to say it has a lot less support for the out of combat stuff, which means that if you're game is mostly out of combat stuff, then you're probably free-forming a lot of the time and barely referencing the game.

Which does rather lead to the conclusion that perhaps D&D isn't the best fit for this kind of play. To be fair, it doesn't actively resist it either though, so, if free-forming is what you like, then more power to you.

D&D has long accommodated a variety of styles for handling non-combat stuff from complete free-form, to those who want mechanics, and those who mostly skip noncombat stuff entirely to focus on combat.

5e explicitly gives DMs discretion to adjudicate noncombat stuff through pure adjudication or roleplay or to go with skill roll mechanics.

D&D usually does not have a ton of mechanics for out of combat stuff, like a full in-depth social combat system, but many editions have stuff to handle most everything with mechanics if you want and D&D games with mechanics for combat and free form noncombat stuff work very well as D&D games in my experience.

 

[Voadam]

To me, THAT'S the liberating point about truncated stat blocks. Making that absolutely clear to DM's that the stat block is just meant for combat.

I don't know that that is what they are doing here.

CR 26 Vecna has prestidigitation, mage hand, and 1 action scrying. The scrying is quick enough to be used in a combat, but I am not sure that is something that will ever be used in the middle of a combat.

These seem more like things for a wizard NPC to use in a noncombat encounter (the cantrips) to show he is a wizard with casual narrative magical effects, or to give him narrative excuses to know what the PCs are up to (the scrying).

The statblock is mostly combat oriented, but there are non-combat elements there as well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So your experience would not be representative of a mid to high level ranger using all their resources in one combat.

No one said anything about high level. The vast majority of NPCs with anything resembling a class, and the stat blocks that represent them, are low-mid level. If there were lots of high level NPCs running around the country the PCs would be out of a job!

Rangers only know a few spells and can only choose them when they level up. One would assume an NPC ranger has not spent their entire life preparing for a single fight, and therefore will have learned everyday useful spells like Speak with Animals and Pass Without Trace. Ambushing the party with +10 on Stealth checks is what I would expect of an NPC ranger.