D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Voadam]

4e stat blocks were meant to incline towards this (eg I remember reading a designer discussion of the Mind Flayer stat block along these lines).

My memory is that 4e monsters were fairly straightforward to run if you were running one or two types at a time. They have a couple options that are easy to see where they fit in tactically and are generally not overwhelming to run at the table but have decent options that make sense for the monster. When you get to running five different types in an encounter, and they have stuff like marking to track it can get to be like mid-high level 3e where you can lose track of parts of the statblock in a fight.

I remember reading they were intentionally conscious of trying to make them easy for a DM to run at the table, with intentionality on graphic design to support this with everything on one page, most mechanics spelled out on the stat block, and designing the number of features and options with useability in mind.

I know that when I had my young son play monsters as PCs for one shots the strategies with the options were intuitive enough for him to really enjoy the experience.

 

[Ondath]

4e stat blocks were meant to incline towards this (eg I remember reading a designer discussion of the Mind Flayer stat block along these lines).

At least the 4E stat blocks I saw still seemingly listed all possible actions. But granted, since the monsters were designed in a much more gamist manner, the number of actions was limited to a reasonable number so you could grok the monster's tactics much more easily than, say, the 5E lich. A5E also has a tactics section for each of its monsters that led me to this "algorithmic" thinking, actually. But I also want to maintain the simulationist elements of "here is everything the monster can do in the story's fiction, separate from the in-the-moment combat options", and I want the tactics to be more spelled out.

I'll probably end up doing it for myself, but you really need an entire book's worth of stat blocks with clearly-explained tactics for this approach to be any useful.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I really miss 4e monster statblocks. I'd like 5e monsters more if they were just formatted in the 4e style, even with no other changes. (Though I'd also like it if more of them had a simple unique recharge ability and less of them had a large spell list).

I always like monsters that are "toward the middle" in complexity. More than a bag of HP that does some damage; less than a massive list of situational abilities.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This prompted me to revisit some of my old posts refuting the claim that the 4e MM is distinctly lacking in "lore". Here are some:




EDIT: Sticking in a few more comparisons:

This whole, "4e lacks lore/color" thing is both old as the hills and full of nonsense. I once actually went through the 3 core 4e books, and the 3 core 5e books and COUNTED the amount of words of color/background/description. Just elements that are 'rules free' and convey things like setting, lore, etc. 4e actually WINS by a small %. I don't think its enough one way or the other to declare that either edition is specifically much heavier in this area than the other, but 4e is NOT deficient in this area. I don't recall the numbers, they're probably buried in some thread here from the mid 2010's but there it is.

Now, if you compare ONLY the MM1 of each game, you find that the 4e one concentrates a lot more of its material in the stat block, and does, for most monsters, add less unstructured verbiage, but the 4e stat blocks convey a LOT more information, and a lot more KEY information regarding the nature of monsters than the 5e ones do. Also 4e has a table of lore and sample encounters, which 5e lacks. Overall 4e's MM is more spare, but its other books are, contrariwise, considerably richer, so it kind of comes out in the wash.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I really miss 4e monster statblocks. I'd like 5e monsters more if they were just formatted in the 4e style, even with no other changes. (Though I'd also like it if more of them had a simple unique recharge ability and less of them had a large spell list).

I always like monsters that are "toward the middle" in complexity. More than a bag of HP that does some damage; less than a massive list of situational abilities.

I really disliked 4e's style, including the monster's statblocks. Way too clinical and cold-seeming. Extraordinarily gamist to my mind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This whole, "4e lacks lore/color" thing is both old as the hills and full of nonsense. I once actually went through the 3 core 4e books, and the 3 core 5e books and COUNTED the amount of words of color/background/description. Just elements that are 'rules free' and convey things like setting, lore, etc. 4e actually WINS by a small %. I don't think its enough one way or the other to declare that either edition is specifically much heavier in this area than the other, but 4e is NOT deficient in this area. I don't recall the numbers, they're probably buried in some thread here from the mid 2010's but there it is.

Now, if you compare ONLY the MM1 of each game, you find that the 4e one concentrates a lot more of its material in the stat block, and does, for most monsters, add less unstructured verbiage, but the 4e stat blocks convey a LOT more information, and a lot more KEY information regarding the nature of monsters than the 5e ones do. Also 4e has a table of lore and sample encounters, which 5e lacks. Overall 4e's MM is more spare, but its other books are, contrariwise, considerably richer, so it kind of comes out in the wash.

5e lore isn't great either, either in quality or quantity. In fact, if I was forced to choose between 4e's fairly original lore and 5e's watered down and frustratingly simplified version of TSR's much better work, I'd pick 4e.

 

[overgeeked]

I really disliked 4e's style, including the monster's statblocks. Way too clinical and cold-seeming. Extraordinarily gamist to my mind.

Well, to be fair, D&D is a game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

5e lore isn't great either, either in quality or quantity. In fact, if I was forced to choose between 4e's fairly original lore and 5e's watered down and frustratingly simplified version of TSR's much better work, I'd pick 4e.

TSR did sometimes go kinda lore crazy. Its cool, though it isn't always helpful in play.

 

[pemerton]

I really disliked 4e's style, including the monster's statblocks. Way too clinical and cold-seeming. Extraordinarily gamist to my mind.

This is something I reflected on around a decade ago:

I've always been in a minority in arguing that the MM has about the right amount of lore to make monsters significant story elements (with hydras, what I remember without going back to the book is that they come from the primordial Bryakhus (sp?)). I acknowledge that there are mechanical weaknesses in many of the MM monsters (and I always update to MM3 damage, and am careful with solos and elites) but its still one of my favourite ever monster books (up there with Rolemaster Creature and Treasures) for it mix of lore, myth and mechanics that deliver what is promised.

Anyway, I think that you're right about the "bedtime story" thing. If you look at how I resequenced the hook horror information, I made it flow better as a narrative, rather than the discrete bundles of factoids found in the entry itself.

This doesn't bother me, because I don't read the books as "stories". I read them to give me ideas for how to use monsters in my game. But I know the "story" approach is very popular (and not just in MMs - I get the impression it's a big part of the appeal of Paizo's adventure and campaign material). I see this as part of the overall 4e vibe of being upfront about being a game. I find it hard to put my finger on the exact point, because the 1st ed DMG is hugely popular and yet is also upfront about the game being a game. But somehow the way 4e did it seemed to be really unpopular.

I don't find the "rules should follow story" mantra very useful. Mechanics, in my view, should evoke story. If a situation is meant to be scary to the players, or tense, the mechanics should help induce that experience. For me, this is the significance of 4e's tactical mechanics - the players have to think hard, and the game can spend a long time in a difficult and complex situation where the outcome remains in doubt. In my RPGing experience, that's not a bad way to try to evoke an appropriate emotional response in half-a-dozen people sitting around someone's kitchen table.

the 4e MM was a revelation - in play, but also in pre-reading, because of the play that it promised.

I do read 4e monster books as bedtime reading, but not because they're stories - but because of the play implicit in them.

<snip>

An appreciation for the stat blocks is certainly a key part of reading the 4e MM. They're not an appendix to the monster descriptions - they express the monsters as game elements.

for me, the fact that the kobold description says "Natural humanoid" and gives a reasonable INT stat and doesn't have the undead subtype, and then lists a range of different kobolds filling obviously different cultural roles, already does the job of telling me that they're not automata.

Or look at a different monster, the Deathlock Wight. The fact that it has a power called Horrific Visage, that has the [fear] descriptor, attacks Will and causes psychic damage and a push on a hit already tells me that this thing can suddenly reveal it's true, rotting-corpse visage and this will make its foes flee in fear (that clearly being what the push represents here - and the power is a close blast, meaning that it has a "facing" aspect just as one would expect in this sort of case).

That's part of why I found the 4e MM so inspiring. More than any other monster book I've read or used, the mechanics are incredibly tightly integrated into the presentation and exposition of the creatures.

For those who don't think of the game in such mechanically-informed terms - as in, "How will this play at the table, given the action resolution rules" - I can see that they would find the Wight entry much more sparse than I do.

I also think this ties back to the "bedtime story" thing. Whatever I'm getting out of the book when I read those statblock, it's not like reading a story. It's much more like imagining and preparing a game. For me, the MM is a reference work - but like a good reference work, a useful and inspiring one!

 

[pemerton]

TSR did sometimes go kinda lore crazy. Its cool, though it isn't always helpful in play.

As per my post not far upthread, I stand by my view that the assertion that the AD&D 2nd ed Monstrous Vault had more lore than the 4e Monster Manual is not borne out by a creature-to-creature comparison. (At least the ones I've done.)

Except for demographics.