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A few of those cats could definitely kill a commoner. ;) I think when your template starts producing the monster's Sensory info in multiple places/lines, it probably needs to be streamlined. You're butting up against a variation of the "Angelic Weapons" issue. Rather than just changing the...

You put together a really tight stat block. It’s tricky when presenting spellcasters in the conversation about “condensing” stat blocks because the go-see-X-Page-for-spell-description offloads TONS of space. For me, it gets back to the why I’m condensing stats - to make it easier to run at the...

Since the monster changes we saw about a year ago, I've noticed that Legendary Reactions (i.e. 3 reactions per round) pose a specific additional vulnerability to monsters more so than Legendary Actions. Monsters with Legendary Actions are especially susceptible to being being Incapacitated –...

I really wish a D&D designer would read your post. You're exceptionally clear. I feel like there's an effect – I don't have a name for it yet – that occurs when their rules design team has a deadline and are fixated on a specific issue. Common sense / big picture seems to get lost for these...

Really nice article, Michael!

Thank you for generously sharing some of your team's work as CC resources, Mike! :) I've been following the TotV/Black Flag monster design, and I see some nice innovations alongside carrying traditional design choices over from 5e that lead to stat block bloat. I thought I'd take a backstab at...

That's a college try for sure! Two things are working against the annotated short-form of this monster. First, I think A5E in particular - where that stat block comes from - has a more complex design (compared to 2014 5e) that makes shrinking stat blocks more difficult. Ambusher, Ruthless, and...

It has always irked me that there's no magic-using class that's designed to be low complexity in D&D. At least in the groups I've run for, there was pretty much always a desire (and a need) for that.

Ah it's a Lonely Mountain without the Mountain Dwarves...

Nice! Putting it into practice! 🤓 I just started trying to integrate working iteratively between a bigger detailed writeup and an annotated writeup of the same monster – noticing where things in my long-form version just don't translate to the annotated version, and seeing how I can make it...

Yeah, shorthand is... well you can go crazy with that, and it's very personal. Your single-line is pretty minimal but I like that! I've been playing around with a short/in-line text format for my own projects that looks like this (in current draft form)... still a bit heavy, though I...

@DinoInDisguise Interestingly, the Ancient Green Dragon (2024/25) has DEX save proficiency +8, and it's Initiative happens to be +8. I do understand the counterarguments from @Charlaquin and @Steampunkette in that having just one number is zooming out on the lens, so there's less tight...