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

[pukunui]

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?

I suspect it’s more the latter because Crawford has been in charge of game mechanics for the entirety of 5e’s lifespan.

He experimented with writing stat blocks the way I like but unfortunately for me decided to move on to what we have now.

I would love to sit down with him and really pick his brains to understand why he has chosen to do things the way he has. He’s always been rather opaque about his methods – to the point that some of his rulings based on rules he wrote are just bizarre!

One thing I miss from the 3.5e days was how the designers would include little “behind the curtain” sidebars to explain their design methodology a little.

It would be nice if the WotC design team would be more open and transparent about their work. But I suppose they don’t because of social media trolls or something.

 

[Ondath]

I showed this stat block to my game group, and one of my players made a very pertinent point: This is optimised for D&D Beyond and Project Sigil. Sure, having an awkward sentence where the word Spellcasting is repeated three times without mentioning what the die roll for Healing Word is very, very weird on paper. But in the app, those will be hover-over text. The DM hovers over Spellcasting and sees the narrow, machinistic definition of what Spellcasting means. They hover over the Healing Word and automatically see that it heals 2d4+3, because the system automatically inputs the Empyrean's Wisdom modifier into the whole thing, and it probably even rolls the spell for them (and marks off the daily use) if they click on it.

So I don't think it's necessarily a problem about employee churn or the designers not knowing better. They were given different priorities (writing all the rules in a way that will be outputted cleanly to apps) than making a legible book. Which I think is a horrible, horrible idea for a hobby that is primarily about pen & paper, but I can see why they did it.

And luckily, Level Up A5E actually follows a near-perfect system for statting our spellcasting monsters, so I know what I'll be sticking to.

 

[Reynard]

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?

It literally takes the same exact number of lines of text to write Fireball: Save Dex 16, 8d6 fire, range 150 ft, area 20' radius,

Are the feats actions or reactions? If yes, then yes. If not, they should be built into the statblock.

I don't understand why folks want to praise WotC for making the GM's life harder.

 

[TwoSix]

Which I think is a horrible, horrible idea for a hobby that is primarily about pen & paper, but I can see why they did it.

To be fair, while that's still generally true of the TTRPG hobby as a whole, it seems to be becoming less true for D&D.

 

[mamba]

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

the latter, and given how many words they waste on telling me where to look instead of giving me what I am looking for in less space, chances are they could fit the relevant info in with hardly any increase in page count while considerably improving the stat block

 

[Joshua Randall]

Is this because of employee churn,

Probably yes.

the newer folk not having the experience of the folk that were there when it was solved, so it happens again?

Probably yes.

Or is this just the result of unfortunate experimentation?

Possibly yes with a side helping of "we must not do anything that 4e did well because we hate 4e".

 

[mamba]

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

so everyone has to do that because WotC created unusable stat blocks, great

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

self contained is self contained, so include the relevant info

 

[mamba]

This is optimised for D&D Beyond and Project Sigil.

no, it just is slightly less inconvenient there, having it all spelled out would still be better

 

[Ondath]

no, it just is slightly less inconvenient there, having it all spelled out would still be better

I agree that it's still not the best design for an app (after all, you could just have the healing dice roll etc. queried immediately to the stat block page instead of having awkward hover-over text), but I can at least understand why they chose this frankly useless and counter-intuitive design for paper. It sorta makes sense for an app environment. It's still not the best, but at least the design intent becomes clear.

And to be clear, that design intent lessens my interest in the 2024 version even more.

 

[pukunui]

Probably yes.

Probably yes.

Probably not. As I pointed out above, we’ve had the same guy in charge of game mechanics for the entirety of the game’s lifespan. While individual writers have come and gone, all content will have been vetted and approved by Crawford.

Possibly yes with a side helping of "we must not do anything that 4e did well because we hate 4e".

I think it’s more the opposite. It’s clear Crawford at least likes 4e, but WotC wanted to bring the 4e haters back to D&D, so with the 2014 rules, he had to disguise all the 4e mechanics he was bringing forward.

Since the game exploded in popularity and there has been a huge influx of new players, Crawford can now openly refer back to 4e without fear of inciting another edition war.