D&D (2024) Wizards have a problem with Spellcasting stat blocks

[Horwath]

I thought they were going to move away from giving monsters spells and instead give them spell-like powers, guess not.

if you use only spells for everyone that you do not need to write (more or less) same thing multiple times.

I.E:
Action:

vampire uses Dominate person: at-will.

no need to write anything else, just look at PHB


or fire elemental:

Action:
scorching ray(3rd level): at-will
Fireball: 3/long rest


also, spell-like can be written like in 3E:
spellcasting, but without any spell components.

 

[mamba]

if you use only spells for everyone that you do not need to write (more or less) same thing multiple times.

yes, but everyone then has to look up that stuff instead of WotC adding it once. To me it is a step backwards from MotM, and I wished they had gone farther in MotM, it still referred to too many spells… ideally a stat block does not require me to look up anything, it is self contained

 

[TwoSix]

Thats not the full text for every spell. The spell text for guiding bolt ist not "4d6 radiant dmg + 1d6 radiant dmg per level above first, on hit next attack on target has advantage". Spell descriptions are much more verbose than that. So no, they were not saying that the monster manual should reprint the full text for every spell a monster can cast.

To be fair, it's probably worth asking why the full spell text has so many more words than that.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't agree. If the NPC is basically a PC not being played by a player, then they should conform to the same rules as the PCs. Let's say you're playing an evoker wizard, and your PC meets some classmates from the Evokers Academy. I would expect those NPC evoker wizards to work the same way as your PC. Sure, one or two of them might have learned something that your PC didn't learn, but they should still operate using the same underlying structure (leveled spells and spell slots).

There's a lot of worldbuilding assumptions there (that class is something that exists within the fiction, and that all PCs and NPCs follow those development tracks) that a lot of 5e games don't use.

 

[Reynard]

if you use only spells for everyone that you do not need to write (more or less) same thing multiple times.

I.E:
Action:

vampire uses Dominate person: at-will.

no need to write anything else, just look at PHB


or fire elemental:

Action:
scorching ray(3rd level): at-will
Fireball: 3/long rest


also, spell-like can be written like in 3E:
spellcasting, but without any spell components.

There is no reason not to include the relevant data in the actions list for any of these: attack bonus or save dc, range, damage, effect etc.

 

[Distracted DM]

They already solved it for 5e as well (see my post above) but then they went and messed it up again!

Is this because of employee churn, the newer folk not having the experience of the folk that were there when it was solved, so it happens again?
Or is this just the result of unfortunate experimentation?

 

[Distracted DM]

There is no reason not to include the relevant data in the actions list for any of these: attack bonus or save dc, range, damage, effect etc.

I'm sure someone somewhere can find a reason, even if it's not a good reason

 

[Horwath]

There is no reason not to include the relevant data in the actions list for any of these: attack bonus or save dc, range, damage, effect etc.

it is useful, but there is a trade off;

do you want more monsters per page, or more data that is already written in PHB to take up MM space?

 

[Reynard]

it is useful, but there is a trade off;

do you want more monsters per page, or more data that is already written in PHB to take up MM space?

I don't want more monsters. I want usable monsters. I DO NOT want to flip pages in the middle of a combat.

 

[Horwath]

I don't want more monsters. I want usable monsters. I DO NOT want to flip pages in the middle of a combat.

if it says:
Action:
Fireball; 1/Long rest

that is a usable monster, just in session preparation, write what fireball does.

if a monster has a Feat or two, should entire feats be reprinted for every monster that has them?