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I thought I did a good job getting this across earlier, or maybe I just assumed people grasped it from the opening statements of the thread, but this is a RAW discussion. In the base ogre's statblock, there is nothing unique, be it resistances, abilities, or secondary effects. There are few, if...

There was no contradiction, as I've never argued that the ogre (or other generic monster) can't do such things, just that it's a massive waste of time and routinely subpar to going with the auto-attack option, which is the case here. You can fling cows all you want, but when you make that...

You showed nothing with your example. First off, you neglected to mention the additional foes in your “roll-playing” example, and then failed to show how the ogre was going to do anything different other than his basic attack in the second. I can dump tons of effort into making cool descriptions...

Sacrosanct you are technically correct (the best kind of correct) with your examples, but only because...guess what, the stat block supports those distinctions. Goblins are shifty and can use hit and run tactics because they get to use disengage/dodge as bonus actions, and bugbears are...

It more or less does…for players. For monsters they kneecapped the ability to do stuff like that on the fly, and anything even remotely resembling a ‘taunt’ effect against players has almost always been rejected, doubly so for nonmagical ones. I suspect ‘fiddly’ and ‘inconsistent’ are...

Going to chop this just down to questions and subsequent answers for brevity. Good post though, certainly food for thought. Well, there are multiple ways of thinking of this. One is that given elves’ long lifespans and relative isolationist tendencies, they might have a very small relative...

The problem with this line of thinking is that not every DM wants to meticulously comb over every monster to create unique abilities, and also the difficulty of creating balanced options on the fly. Furthermore, monsters are explicitly discouraged from improvising with the rules as written, as I...

3 out of 5 rating for D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual Pros: - Overall great art design. There are a few stinkers to be found here and there, but on the whole I found the artwork to be very evocative and inspiring. - Good print quality. I've had no issue with smudging, tearing, or other damage...

Well, yeah, many people have. It's been an oft discussed topic here over the years, with most people coming down somewhere between wanting more of 4e's relatively complex offerings and others prioritizing speed of play with these 'simple' foes and relying on improv. for anything else. Kind of...

Well first of all, is said paladin sentient? Like is there any vestige of his prior personality, or is just his material form? Assuming that we're going with the latter, there are a couple ways you could go with it. First is that the demon itself could possess the body. You could turn this...

Hm. Hope none of my regular players read this, since it hasn't been revealed yet. Mithril in my setting isn't mined, and in fact isn't found naturally in the earth at all. When a particularly powerful elf dies, his bones slowly transform into the substance after its death. This material is...

Yes and no. The 4e design did lead to some intellectual pigeon-holing, that point I certainly cede. As for 5e though, there aren't a lot of options for most creatures to draw inspiration from, nor can I remember off the top of my head if there's a chart in the DMG for damage progress with CR for...

Roseweave Glad to see you're open about your hypocrisy, at least. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." The "bullies" being harassed are often innocent of any of their supposed crimes (such as the latest controversy around tweets remembering Carrie Fisher), and even if they were...

I'd agree that this was likely their desired intent, it just comes off to me personally as sort of a cop out. It also results in a lot of monsters having strangely identical teleport distances and the like, to say nothing with having to constantly look up spells/buy spell cards. Furthermore, the...

Jester David Most of your points I more or less agree with (and yes, I own the excellent tome of beasts), much as I acknowledge the spellcasting prevalence as a nod to earlier editions. Don't get too caught up in the humanoid thing, they're by far the best candidate for scaling templates as it...

Inversely, you don't want the capstone fight to be a series of repeating auto-attacks, either. The thing is that it's always less work to dumb something down than it is to increase its difficulty/options. Even in 4th edition if you wanted the most basic use of a monster you could just have it...

No, there isn’t a problem because class identity being tied to skills hasn’t been a thing for two editions now, and likely never will be again. The classes that do differentiate themselves on the basis of skills tend to do so with things like expertise, which is niche protection enough. Gaming...

Ranger: echoing the sentiment that we'll probably see a return of the Horizon Walker at some point. Same for the urban ranger, although that one is predictable enough to maybe no make the cut. Rogue: I likewise think we'll be seeing a 1/3 divine caster rogue, but I also wouldn't be surprised...

In the other thread speculating on this week's offering, I asked for a hell-knight/blackguard revamp, and got two instead! Christmas IS real! More seriously I like the general gist of both of these options, though I would agree that things like smite should probably be more thematically in-line...

I completely agree, but especially because of the schism created by 4th edition, this is never going to change. Aside from 4th, D&D has always had cripplingly few options for non-casters, with almost everything the character in question can do stemming from the basic class features (like early...