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

[FitzTheRuke]

Isn't that another way of describing of how Flurry of Blows looks to an observer?

Yes exactly. That's my point. They do have those things. You have the freedom to describe anything you like that you'd agree falls under "unarmed strike". Now the same is true for dragons, who use "rend" as a catch-all for physically mauling their opponent. It allows for more story-telling, not less.

 

[Pedantic]

I assume by “PC/NPC design transparency” you mean PCs and NPCs function in the same way mechanically? In that case, I would argue that it was kind of a design constraint in early 5e. Like, not quite because they weren’t totally consistent about it. But they seemed committed to keeping NPC designs close enough to transparent with PC designs that you could pretend they were transparent if you wanted them to be. It was kind of part of 5e’s “compromise edition” design. Make everything look close enough to something that could have fit into the reader’s favorite edition, regardless of what that may have been (maybe excluding the various versions of original/basic).

I'd argue that's more of an aesthetic constraint than a design one. 3.x's was a game with, effectively, 12(ish, humanoids worked differently) monster classes and lots of power offloaded into species, plus sideways progression either via templates or traditional classes. The design constraint was really that you had to assemble things out of the LEGO blocks the game was made up of.

I would argue that "Rend" works better for simulation purposes than "claw-claw-bite" does, as now* we can describe the dragon using more of their bodies than just those two when stuck in melee. Stomps. Tails. Wings. Claws. Bites. Headbashing (heck, a bunch have horns and yet, they've never that I've seen ever had a mechanical way of using them!).

This is especially true if the basic damage types (bashing/piercing/slashing) don't have a significant impact and/or aren't attached to specific natural weapons. If you're not going to make a bite function differently than a claw attack, you might as well just say rend and free up the descriptive space.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Yes exactly. That's my point. They do have those things. You have the freedom to describe anything you like that you'd agree falls under "unarmed strike". Now the same is true for dragons, who use "rend" as a catch-all for physically mauling their opponent. It allows for more story-telling, not less.

You can extend this, given you presume asymmetric design, and just lump attacks without special rules into a "generic attack" that is "melee or ranged" and get a similar result. We see this with Arcane burst. If you prioritize balance, damage is coming from CR and not the weapon anyways. And this changes nothing besides length of the statblock because the DM can describe these attacks as anything they want.

I wonder what number of DMs limit combat options to the flavor provided in the statblock. It says Mace so it has to be a mace, as an example. And if that number is high, I wonder if the flavor is actually harmful. This is actually made worse in 2025 by the "loot" section where they reinforce this rigidity.

I find the whole treating flavor as rules thing here as kind of odd.

 

[mamba]

I would argue that "Rend" works better for simulation purposes than "claw-claw-bite" does, as now* we can describe the dragon using more of their bodies than just those two when stuck in melee. Stomps. Tails. Wings. Claws. Bites. Headbashing

I'd say it might work better narratively, but for simulation feels like a stretch. So you are telling me a dragon headbutting you, clawing you, biting you, slapping you with a wing, knocking you with their elbow, hitting you with their tail, goring you with a horn, that all of that has the exact same result?

It allows for more story-telling, not less.

seems to agree with my take that it helps narratively

 

[Tonguez]

I'd say it might work better narratively, but for simulation feels like a stretch. So you are telling me a dragon headbutting you, clawing you, biting you, slapping you with a wing, knocking you with their elbow, hitting you with their tail, goring you with a horn, that all of that has the exact same result?

Yes - a dragon hitting you with a relentless attack is going to leave you as a shredded bloody pulp regardless of what body part it chooses to use

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can extend this, given you presume asymmetric design, and just lump attacks without special rules into a "generic attack" that is "melee or ranged" and get a similar result. We see this with Arcane burst. If you prioritize balance, damage is coming from CR and not the weapon anyways. And this changes nothing besides length of the statblock because the DM can describe these attacks as anything they want.

I wonder what number of DMs limit combat options to the flavor provided in the statblock. It says Mace so it has to be a mace, as an example. And if that number is high, I wonder if the flavor is actually harmful. This is actually made worse in 2025 by the "loot" section where they reinforce this rigidity.

I find the whole treating flavor as rules thing here as kind of odd.

I think it's fine, so long as you make it clear you can replace things like specific weapons and spells with different specific weapons and spells.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd say it might work better narratively, but for simulation feels like a stretch. So you are telling me a dragon headbutting you, clawing you, biting you, slapping you with a wing, knocking you with their elbow, hitting you with their tail, goring you with a horn, that all of that has the exact same result?


seems to agree with my take that it helps narratively

I would also add that it makes the storytelling less meaningful in my view, since it has less connection to the specific actions (since the actions themselves are more generic).

 

[Charlaquin]

I'd say it might work better narratively, but for simulation feels like a stretch. So you are telling me a dragon headbutting you, clawing you, biting you, slapping you with a wing, knocking you with their elbow, hitting you with their tail, goring you with a horn, that all of that has the exact same result?

No more or less of a stretch than all of the ways you might use a sword to hurt someone having the exact same result.

 

[nevin]

Yes - a dragon hitting you with a relentless attack is going to leave you as a shredded bloody pulp regardless of what body part it chooses to use

com'on a dragon hitting you once solidly is going to break many bones, cause internal bleeding and all but gaurantee your death in minutes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No more or less of a stretch than all of the ways you might use a sword to hurt someone having the exact same result.

Lots of different ways one can attack with a sword. Many are modeled mechanically in many RPGs, including 5.5.