D&D (2024) Its till just me or is the 2024 MM heavily infused by more 4e influences?

[Jacob Lewis]

Oh. It was the hill giant. Sorry.

On a side note: when I browsed through the book I noticed 2 things:

1. Monster (graphic) design overall was very cool. I liked the look of the book.

2. Dragon (graphic) design is terrible. They all look alike. Just the colour is different. Only the white dragon is a bkt more brutish.
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At least we can see where improvements were made later by the time Essentials rolled out.

 

[AlViking]

I didn’t say it was universally loved. Indeed, I said the opposite.

We had issues with some of the general design approach as well. Things like minions seemed really cool at first but just seemed odd at higher levels. Could have just been expectations of course and it just didn't hit the sweet spot but they were in part caused by issues with overall game philosophy. I don't really care much about 4e any more, that ship sailed and we bid it a fond adieu and moved on just stating that better is always going to be relative and based on experience.

 

[Hussar]

The hill giant thing really highlights the issue with 4e. People looked at things like the hill giant and declared that this is the way 4e is.

Everyone seems to forget that 4e, probably more than any other edition, evolved the most over its very short lifespan.

So people, like me, who got into 4e a year or more after release had a very different experience with the game. Particularly because of the online tools which made those changes instantly available to everyone.

But, in any case, one would hope that we can actually discuss specific changes without having to worry about 4e cooties anymore.

Well one would hope.

 

[grimmgoose]

That's great if true (I haven't seen too much of the MM 2024 press, yet).

4E monster design, for me, is leagues better than 5E's. (though to be fair, it's gotten better over the past few years)

I used to waste time at work designing monsters back in the 4E days. With 5E, monster design might be my least favorite part of session prep.

They are bringing minions back at least in some form.

is this true? My google-fu isn't giving me any details. Fingers are crossed that is true.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The hill giant thing really highlights the issue with 4e. People looked at things like the hill giant and declared that this is the way 4e is.

Agreed.
The inital 3 books were full of sloppy errors that were clearly time restraints. Grammar errors. Obviously wrong numbers even XX references....

Everyone seems to forget that 4e, probably more than any other edition, evolved the most over its very short lifespan.

I am not sure everyone forgot.
Half the people on the internet ignored essentials because it was not to their liking. But it started with MM3 where the monster mechanical design was getting cool.

So people, like me, who got into 4e a year or more after release had a very different experience with the game. Particularly because of the online tools which made those changes instantly available to everyone.

I did not buy the initial printed PHB... because I really waited for the errated version... which never came. Based our games on online sources (D&D insider) and later essential books. I think I got the inital DMG...

But, in any case, one would hope that we can actually discuss specific changes without having to worry about 4e cooties anymore.

What is a cootie? Ah. Found it.

Well one would hope.

Yes. Was still worth mentioning that the some problems of 4e was due to not having enough time to playtest and proofread. And the murder suicide of course.

I am still a bit saddened that 4e had those initial problems. And I wish essential had came first. It would have gotten way less pushback because it felt a lot more like older editions.

But that ship has sailed.

Lets hope 5.25 MM evolves monster design as much as monster vault did.

 

[zakael19]

Threats to the Nentir Vale is probably the single best "wow I can grab these monster factions and run an entire freaking section of a campaign off this" supplement WOTC has ever done. Incredible lore (that mimic tower!) linked into the Points of Light world, but evocative enough that you can file off the numbers and reuse the entire faction anywhere; great mechanics to build interesting fights; and of course 4e's tight math meaning you can quickly scale things up and down to fill out encounters with specific roles or threats you want to bring in to fit the narrative or moment.

Now that enough new players are here that they don't have to worry about a bunch of grumpy grognards tossing the table and affecting sales dramatically & teh digital tools actually exist to make complex things easy to automate (and of course 1st party ones coming), you can see WOTC bringing back a lot of the 4e concepts for this iteration.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I hope they make the Hill Giant a bit more interesting. All previous ones were pretty much slightly stronger Ogres. (Minus the version 1 4e which looked super wimpy for its level) maybe they will put some of the Storm Kings Thunder optional traits onto the giants by default. The Hill Gisnts gained a belly drop from that.

 

[Pedantic]

If you don't set PC/NPC design transparency as a design goal from the outset, then 4e's choices are sort of an inevitable outcome, assuming you do the design work well and don't intentionally shoot for minimalism.

Monsters exist to show off a few abilities, you want a variety of different roles/encounter functions to make fights dynamic, and you want a variety of monsters within an archetype/species to let you do themed encounters. The result is a bunch of different orc statblocks for different kinds of orcs, and design generally references a "role" or combat archetype system to get your starting math.

Personally, I think PC/NPC transparency is an obvious good and should be a design constraint, but as that's clearly never been a 5e norm then all improvements to 5e monster design will make it look a little more like 4e. It's not so much taking ideas from 4e, as doing a better job running with a 4e idea 5e had already brought on board.

 

[SteveC]

This is about the first time I've read something about 5.5E that actually excites me. Having monsters who can do more interesting things and aren't just bags of hit points ... that's a very good sign. Many moons ago, when I ran Curse of Strahd, I had to find a custom stat block for all of the important bad guys because the original ones were so boring and underpowered. Since then, I've played in a couple of low-level campaigns and one higher, and I've been underwhelmed by the opposition. I think books like Flee Mortals show that you can do interesting things with 5E monsters, but that book is influenced by, you guessed it, 4E. From both the perspective of a player and a DM, more interesting monsters make the game more exciting. It will be interesting to see what this ends up being in practice.

 

[Yaarel]

4e math is awesome.

4e math made math precise, so it became possible to actually critique math. There was examples where a 4e creature or level does better to recalibrate its math.

But overall, 4e math is superior to the math of any edition before, and even superior to 2014 at times.

We will soon see what the math of 2024 monster look like.

In any case, 4e math works well.