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

[Hussar]

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.

Honestly, I think that was largely the problem. This is why you see all the criticisms of "it's not natural" when monsters start becoming more transparent. The problem is, monster design has NEVER been based on any sort of naturalism. But, that was obfuscated by pretending that it was for many, many years.

Then 4e came along, ripped off all the stuff covering the fact that the only reason that Monster X did Y damage was because the game needed a monster to fill that specific niche, and people absolutely lost their poop.

Then 5e rolled in, threw a lampshade over everything again and pretended that the reason an Ogre is bigger than an orc but smaller than a Troll is because of some sort of in-world reason and has nothing to do with needing an opponent for 3rd level PC's.

It will be very interesting to see how well WotC can slowly pull back the curtains and allow some transparency while still pretending that math doesn't exist.

 

[Yaarel]

4e has precedents. Sometimes, the answer to a 5e problem is already in 4e.

I like 5e, and like 5e 2024 even better. One of the 4e-isms I am most glad to see in 2024 is the Bloodied condition.

Bloodied is so important because it connects mechanics with narratives. It relies on working definitions of hit points since AD&D 1e. It solves the debate between "plot points" and "meat points".

Before becoming Bloodied, it is virtually all nonphysical hit points. But Bloodied is the moment when fatigue and sloppiness starts to become evident, and attacks are starting to land. It is still superficial damage. The proverbial sword thru the heart can only happen at when Dying at 0 hit points. But bloodied is physical damage. It is bloody. There will be cuts, scrapes, bruises. The Bloodied character will require actual bandages, possibly treatments to avoid infection, and it will take days, maybe even a couple of weeks, to heal fully, regardless of hit points. That lingering blackeye can remain narratively amusing for sessions after it happened.

I love how the Bloodied mechanic helps mechanics and narrative cohere.

 

[Pedantic]

Honestly, I think that was largely the problem. This is why you see all the criticisms of "it's not natural" when monsters start becoming more transparent. The problem is, monster design has NEVER been based on any sort of naturalism. But, that was obfuscated by pretending that it was for many, many years.

Oh, that's also not the case. 3.x was all about derived monster stats from fixed type norms; you were absolutely supposed to add 3 Fighter levels to that orc, pick an appropriate set of feats and have a skirmishing archer. The criticism was not that the PC/NPC transparency or "naturalistic" derivation of stats didn't work, it's that it was time consuming and the CR system that was supposed to allow you to easily evaluate the results wasn't very accurate or useful.

The 4eism that 5e accept as a design principle, all the way back in 2014 was that NPCs do not need to confirm to the system norms of PCs, and do not need to function as full agents in the way PCs do outside of their brief stage time. Indeed, bounded accuracy is partially reliant on them not doing so, as combat pacing is largely a function of HP instead of AC.

That's not true in any absolute sense, it's simply a design choice. There's no particular reason (aside from perhaps that it makes the design task significantly harder), that it needs to be done that way. You could create monsters/NPCs that scale and progress in ways that are transparent to PCs, and might well want to do so, if your particular goal is to assuage that concern around "naturalism." 4e explicitly rejected that as a design goal, and 5e implicitly carried that forward.

Really, the issue is that minimalism was an initial 2014 design goal, and now it's significantly lower priority, so better monster designs are possible.

 

[zakael19]

4e's monster abilities are way more "naturalistic" then pretty much everything else I've seen in a D&D-like product because they're looking at what a fantastical creature would do and giving them stuff to do based on that which evokes their fantasy; or action that evoke the narrative role that the elite battlefield commander/tribal shaman worshipper of X god/etc etc should have.

Plus you can just like, look at the name tag on most of the monster moves and instantly know how to describe it. I'm glad to see actions like that showing up in the 2024 MM, makes the GM's life way easier when running monsters and narrating how things go.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, that's also not the case. 3.x was all about derived monster stats from fixed type norms; you were absolutely supposed to add 3 Fighter levels to that orc, pick an appropriate set of feats and have a skirmishing archer. The criticism was not that the PC/NPC transparency or "naturalistic" derivation of stats didn't work, it's that it was time consuming and the CR system that was supposed to allow you to easily evaluate the results wasn't very accurate or useful.

Well, yes, 3e was definitely the outlier here. But, I'd also point out that adding classes only really applied to humanoids. Yes, you could add classes to monsters, but, it generally wasn't the way you advanced a monster. Monsters had their own rules for advancement. Granted, yup, it was incredibly tedious and time consuming. And, again, it was largely all about trying to pretend that the rules were reflecting some sort of in game realism - a really old Rust Monster added HD and potentially got bigger. Although, again, it didn't actually have to be old. It could easily be that the DM just wanted a bigger rust monster.

And all the advancement was in service to the level system. You made a bigger monster, not because monsters "naturally" got bigger but because you wanted to use that monster, but the party was too high level to make the combat interesting.

 

[Hussar]

4e's monster abilities are way more "naturalistic" then pretty much everything else I've seen in a D&D-like product because they're looking at what a fantastical creature would do and giving them stuff to do based on that which evokes their fantasy; or action that evoke the narrative role that the elite battlefield commander/tribal shaman worshipper of X god/etc etc should have.

Plus you can just like, look at the name tag on most of the monster moves and instantly know how to describe it. I'm glad to see actions like that showing up in the 2024 MM, makes the GM's life way easier when running monsters and narrating how things go.

Again, not really. The reason that Monster X was level Y is because you needed something to fight at that level. It had zero to do with any sort of "naturalism". Monster design has always been 100% gamism, but, for most of D&D's history, they've tried to bury the lede under this veneer of simulationism.

 

[zakael19]

Again, not really. The reason that Monster X was level Y is because you needed something to fight at that level. It had zero to do with any sort of "naturalism". Monster design has always been 100% gamism, but, for most of D&D's history, they've tried to bury the lede under this veneer of simulationism.

I did air quote naturalistic because Im not really sure what that means apart from like "expresses teh fantasy of that creature as has been established in the D&D mythos or popular culture; or the appropriate theme for a being of the role being filled."

 

[pawsplay]

I've never understood that argument. It was around during the 4e edition-wars, and I see that it is alive today.

I still don't get it.

The 2014 stat-blocks are a bunch of words and numbers that supposedly represent a creature. The 2024 ones are also a bunch of words and numbers that represent a creature.

What's the difference?
How does that difference make one a "creature" and the other a "collection of abilities"?

It's the process of reification. That is, treating some representation of a thing as the thing itself. A simple stat block simply describes the creature in its basic terms and gives it measurements. But once you start assigning special moves, it becomes increasingly less a creature you are describing, and more a mechanism. It's not necessarily a negative process. RPGs are fundamentally about the reification of narrative elements with a focus on gaming. However, there is a continuum. If you aren't sure what I mean about reification, think about things like "game physics" where a hundred NPC peasants can pass an object down a 500 ft. line in one round.

There is definitely a point where I start disliking formal behavior and its limitations more than I'm liking the sparks that fly from unexpected and varying powers. I once watched this video about how 5e could improve dragons, and, ta-da!, all the presented ideas were adapted from 4e. But you know what? I didn't like it. There is this idea that gets floated around that 4e was really unappreciated for how it handled monsters and monster roles and actions. But I didn't like it then, and I don't miss it now. To me, the "index card monster" is just about the pinnacle of D&d design, when it can be achieved. I don't like minions in a D&D context, I don't think red dragons need more fire-based powers, and I think granting extra actions to "boss" monsters can be useful but threatens the suspension of disbelief.

Weapon mastery is a very 4e-like extension to the combat environment, and I don't like that, either.

 

[pawsplay]

Well, yes, 3e was definitely the outlier here. But, I'd also point out that adding classes only really applied to humanoids. Yes, you could add classes to monsters, but, it generally wasn't the way you advanced a monster. Monsters had their own rules for advancement. Granted, yup, it was incredibly tedious and time consuming. And, again, it was largely all about trying to pretend that the rules were reflecting some sort of in game realism - a really old Rust Monster added HD and potentially got bigger. Although, again, it didn't actually have to be old. It could easily be that the DM just wanted a bigger rust monster.

And all the advancement was in service to the level system. You made a bigger monster, not because monsters "naturally" got bigger but because you wanted to use that monster, but the party was too high level to make the combat interesting.

3.5 definitely advanced that aesthetic, but it wasn't even true in 3.5, not entirely. Monster types are not classes, for instance, and don't grant per level abilities for advancing. But that was definitely not true in 3.0. Most monsters had an entirely different method for generating skill ranks, and monsters in general got fewer feats.

5e simply took a unifying approach to monster design that, if anything, most closely followed AD&D 2e. It took some bits and bobs from 4e, and yes, some stuff from 3e. To me, adding lots of powers and unusual actions is a tangent, an little preoccupation of 3.5 and 4e that was much less prominent in AD&D or 3.0 or classic D&D.

 

[NotAYakk]

I've never understood that argument. It was around during the 4e edition-wars, and I see that it is alive today.

I still don't get it.

The 2014 stat-blocks are a bunch of words and numbers that supposedly represent a creature. The 2024 ones are also a bunch of words and numbers that represent a creature.

What's the difference?
How does that difference make one a "creature" and the other a "collection of abilities"?

In traditional D&D, Humanoid monsters started out with a base set of stats. Then you'd tack on PC class levels (!) to make them more powerful.

This inherently made the Humanoid monster's upgrade feel like it was part of the world - it was casting spells that the PCs cast and recognize, it was doing moves that PCs did (or could do), etc. A goblin rogue backstabbed like a PC did, a goblin fighter got extra attacks like a PC fighters.

Now, a problem develops in that the "ideal" PC is full of bells and whistles for a single human being to spend time tweaking. The player also tweaks the PC between fights and sessions, and PCs last for a long time. Monsters, on the other hand, are "ideally" often run by the half dozen or more by a DM, and rarely survive an encounter.

This means that the detail level of a PC should be higher, to keep the player entertained, while the detail level of a foe of a PC should be lower.

This became exceedingly clear in 3e, especially with spellcasting foes. Building a single spellcasting foe could take hours or days of a DM's time, and running them was also complex.

In 4e, they reacted to this. The monsters where built as an emulation layer; the idea is that you build what the player experiences and you leave the other details up to the DM. This means your monster abilities and PC abilities no longer pull from similar pools, and indeed could use utterly different mechancis!

If you do this well, there is no way to tell this is happening; but it is very easy to "mess up" and make the lack of detail in the emulation leak through. When this happens, the monster can feel "gamey" instead of like a creature in a fantasy world.

Some of the early attempts to bring this over to 5e had the same problem. They had spellcasting creatures who had this "arcane blast" ability that didn't match any ability a PC had. It was a generic combination of a cantrip and a low level spell, with the idea that by the time you fought a mid-level spellcasting foe, them spamming 1st or 2nd level spells every turn in combat is reasonable. The damage type was "DM just pick".

Everything you need, as a DM, to emulate a necromatic acolyte or a druid or a fire mage. Just pick an appropriate damage type and tier of foe! Then maybe tack on some extra abilities.

But "arcane blast" wasn't marked as a spell, so counterspell didn't work on it, in at least some cases. Oops! A leak in the abstraction. And DMs wheren't told "make it a necrotic blast, consistently, for cultists, and rename if needed", so would talk about this strange cantrip that sort of kicked ass that PCs couldn't duplicate.

The emulation leaked.

More than that, the monsters wheren't well designed. Lighting is supposed to do more than just damage - for it to feel like lightning damage, it should shock, stun, penetrate metal armor, etc. Fire damage should set things on fire; cold should slow people down. Poison damage should risk being poisoned, necrotic damage should sap your will to live, acid damage should corrode over time, etc etc.

You can bring all this back to the generic "CR 4 spellcaster", but the laziness of "do we haaaavvee tooooo?" kicks in. And you get sub-par cardboard cutout spellcasting monsters who don't feel grounded that cast Arcane Blast with acid damage that is mechanically identical to the cold damage you got last fight.

Being forced to actually pick PC spells (and abilities) means that the work put into making PC spells "feel like that damage type" gets delivered into your monsters (that is, when PCs spells are well written). Being forced to us PC classes for abilities similarly makes their combat abilities feel coherent.

You can see what happens when 5e does a good job of this. Look at the 2014 Guard, Veteran and Champion monsters; these are great emulations of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 fighter-types PCs. When you fight them, you feel like you are fighting somethign of similar competence; maybe they lack some training, or have some subclass you don't have, but they don't feel utterly alien.

When the 4e style shines it creates great emulations that are fun to play against and with the DM. They don't have gaps that make the emulation show through on the PC side, and give good advice for customization to the DM.

I want there to be 3 or 4 common kinds of goblins, like this:

Goblin Stinkers - low end, not very competent, melee grunts.
Goblin Sneaks - archers, sneaky, etc. Rogue inspired.
Goblin Beast Riders - ride wolves and dire rats, cavalry. Ranger inspired.

no heavy infantry, because goblins.

Then some leader types:

Goblin Shaman - Druid/Cleric inspired spellcaster
Goblin Alchemist - Artificer/Sorcerer inspired spellcaster
Goblin Chief - Tough, Sneak/Beast Rider combo.