D&D 5E Should Explicit Monster Roles Return?

[LordEntrails]

Nah, being a DM is being a game designer. You design an encounter or a map or an NPC? That's game design. The stuff you buy, the books, they're not the game, they're the game engine. Just like video game designers use the Unreal Engine for exemple, we are designers using the D&D 5e engine.

Someone else (or you) said this earlier and I disagree. Many of us, maybe most of us here at ENWorld are DMs and game designers. But I think that most DMs are not game designers, nor should they be expected to be.

why no?

I think I meant the negative there. Looks like I forgot the "not".

And that's bad because..?

Because then you limit the versatility of the middle of the group DMs. Those that want to be creative, but don't feel comfortable deviating from RAW.

In terms of this issue, I see three general categories of DMS. A) Those who only run things RAW / use prepared adventures. B) Those who create their own adventures, but will only use RAW (so if a monster has a role listed, they will only use them in that role) and C) those (you and I included I think) who will twist and adjust and change anything to suit our desires.

It's this B group that are in danger of being stifled by assigning roles. Now I admit that when someone starts out DMing in group B these assigned roles would be beneficial, but they will never progress to group C if stat blocks include "roles". But as I have said twice now; IMO there are better ways to accomplish the stated goal of making encounter design and running easier for DMs that do not have the downsides of using Role labels on stat blocks.

 

[jmartkdr2]

What's a monster without a role gonna look like?

Just gonna pick this out: one that works in a way that isn't really easy to capture with a single word. Like a lich could be a lot of things, so it'd be easier to actually spend some page addressing spell selection and different ways a lich might deal with being attacked.

If something gets a one-word role, that should be a quick way to broadly describe how it fights. "A basic goblin is a skirmisher" gives you a broad overview of the sorts of actions a goblin might take (ie run away after attacking and try to hide/find cover)

 

[Vaalingrade]

What's a monster without a role gonna look like?

3x demons that look like, are described like, and have a tactics section that describe them ad beefy bruisers who run in and hit hard, but also have a dozen spells that have nothing to do with running in and hitting hard and also summon a handful of demons that will be useless to them on a percentage chance.

Or the dragons, which are giant combat multi-foe beatsticks, but the imperious red ones are also clerics for some godawful reason. Not even like clerics of Tiamat with a special dragon domain. Just 'cleric'.

Basically a chaotic statblock with an idea of a direction, but a lot of cruft to make it less useful.

 

[Undrave]

I voted no because I'd prefer templates. Take an orc start block and it runs fine as is. At the brute template and it can soak damage, artillery template and its throwing axes at the PC's, etc.

Basically, I like a baseline creature that can then be altered.

Sounds like a lot of extra work... but it's not like we can't have both.

I voted yes, but with a caveat: as long as the roles are merely suggestions, not mandatory.

What do you mean 'not mandatory'? How could they be mandatory? You can do what you want with the monsters.

I prefer the way monster roles were handled in the 3.5e book Dungeonscape- there are roles, and there are monsters, and the same monster might fill multiple roles. There's no reason a lich can't be a striker, a lurker, or a controller, depending on its spell selection, for example.

Augh... spellcaster monsters...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Not with any rules associated to it.

I would not be opposed to have descriptors to how they are expectrd to be used.

 

[Undrave]

I saw 4e's monster roles as a good, if flawed, shorthand. If some version of roles makes a comeback, I'd like to see the box opened up a little bit to account for exceptional/unusual monsters.

Fair enough.

What is a Unicorn? Oh, it's a skirmisher! Because...uh...it blips around like a blink dog! What happened in 4e was they changed the unicorn's teleportation ability from something more narrative/short-term/long-distance (e.g. "Holding the unicorn's mane, you see the trees swirl and suddenly you're standing in the center of the old elvish ruins") to something more akin to misty step (i.e. combat-focused). And do we really care how to describe a unicorn's combat role? Or are we more likely to be using the unicorn in a social scene? Maybe it's role should be "quest-giver/quest-object" instead?

I don't see why a creature who can teleport long range wouldn't be able to misty step around. I would, however, detail the out of combat actions more in the text.

Ok, so every entry in a MM is a Monster (but...*). BBEGS are presented in adventures.

But what about the grey area? A troll champion, or a bugbear chieftain? At low levels those could well be the near unique BBEG yet at higher levels they are certainly no more than monsters. Or something like a specter, what role would they have? I've used them as re-occurring challenges and I've used them as simple tomb guardians.

I'm still thinking that labels have more negatives than they do advantages. Simplifying the game to make things easier is... a trap. It works well early on in a gaming career and even later on when DMs don't want complexity, but risks limiting the game later on. I know, I know, if you don't like a rule you can just ignore it. But a lot of people, a huge number of them, have trouble doing that.

Again, I think there are better ways to accomplish this goal (making it easier for DMs to understand to pick and run a monster in combat) than a single label. Multiple tags or even 1-3 sentences similar to The Monster Know...

Eh I don't mean that there's a strict line between 'monsters' and 'npc', it's really more in how you use them. A monster can become an NPC if you add more thought to him, and an NPC can be demoted to monsters if the PC just ignore your guidance. If I start fiddling with a specific guy's stat block or give him an accent or a personality quirk he becomes a NPC, but until then he's just a monster with a stock stat block that I don't bother touching unless I need custom monsters. You don't name monsters but you name NPCs.

 

[Undrave]

Not with any rules associated to it.

I would not be opposed to have descriptors to how they are expectrd to be used.

That's how they worked in 4e!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That's how they worked in 4e!

No. That is not how they worked in 4e.
In 4e soldiers initially had +2 AC over artillery monsters (nerfed in essentials). Brutes had more hp but less AC and more damage.

It did not matter what equipment they had. Stats were by role.

 

[Undrave]

Someone else (or you) said this earlier and I disagree. Many of us, maybe most of us here at ENWorld are DMs and game designers. But I think that most DMs are not game designers, nor should they be expected to be.

Eh, I think the act of DM is itself game design, even if you don't realize, but I guess it's philosophical at this point.

In terms of this issue, I see three general categories of DMS. A) Those who only run things RAW / use prepared adventures. B) Those who create their own adventures, but will only use RAW (so if a monster has a role listed, they will only use them in that role) and C) those (you and I included I think) who will twist and adjust and change anything to suit our desires.

Yeah that's usually why you give multiple option per monster to cover multiple roles that still feel like that specific monster, that match it's style in its own unique way. The Orc Archer shouldn't be just the sames stat as the Orc Ravager with his weapon switched, that's just boring. They should have unique special abilities while still having those unique traits Orcs usually have. The goal is actually to help B make entertaining encounters on their own by giving them a variety of tools they can mix and match.

Maybe you would prefer if we limited that to humanoid monsters?

Just gonna pick this out: one that works in a way that isn't really easy to capture with a single word. Like a lich could be a lot of things, so it'd be easier to actually spend some page addressing spell selection and different ways a lich might deal with being attacked.

I can see why that would be interesting. I'd personally use this opportunity to pre-build a couple different liches, and then maybe a Lich template so you can turn any other monster into one so you can use the base role.

If something gets a one-word role, that should be a quick way to broadly describe how it fights. "A basic goblin is a skirmisher" gives you a broad overview of the sorts of actions a goblin might take (ie run away after attacking and try to hide/find cover)

That's... that's what we want???? and then you give that goblin a special ability to facilitate that sort of actions.

 

[Undrave]

No. That is not how they worked in 4e.
In 4e soldiers initially had +2 AC over artillery monsters (nerfed in essentials). Brutes had more hp but less AC and more damage.

It did not matter what equipment they had. Stats were by role.

Yeah, and? That's just having synergistic stats. it's not like 5e gives you details on what the monsters AC or HP means, they just do it.