D&D General 2024 Monster Creation

[Sword of Spirit]

Regarding resistances and immunities, remember it only comes into affect when there are 3 or more:

"Giving a monster resistances and immunities to three or more damage types (especially bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage) is like giving it extra hit points."

and only if your group doesn't have countermeasures:

" If a monster has resistance or immunity to several damage types—especially bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons—and not all the characters in the party possess the means to counteract that resistance or immunity, you need to take these defenses into account when comparing your monster’s hit points to its expected challenge rating"

So they should only be applied when they are relevant to your group.

Yes, some feel off with nimble escape being the big one. I also wonder if having 5-6 saves is really worth +4 to AC, but that seems more accurate than nimble escape. Most of the rest of the modifiers are too small for me to really worry about if they are slightly off. I do wonder sometimes, but have not done any type of analysis to see if their values are justified.

Got it. I was thinking about B,P,S, but I had forgotten about the customizing to your party. I probably forgot it since I never do that (not at all how I run game). It would be useful for me if they had more objective rules for that, but I might end up needing to finish my replacements for that one.

 

[mamba]

That's the situation that happened

The bad table was removed from the menu.

No replacement was added.

and that is why this situation is an utter failure

Increased page count.
Increased cost.
Increased complaining.

yeah, getting no complaints has certainly worked great here

As to increased page count and cost, I’d much rather have monster creation than bastions, so use that space… it’s not like people will not complain about bastions either

What is saving them right now is the expectation / hope that they will be in the MM. If that turns out to be false I expect a lot more complaining about the removal than they ever got about the inclusion

Removing something mediocre makes the situation worse, replacing it with a better version improves it, that should be really easy to understand

 

[Blue]

Welp, guess it’s official then. I really am sticking with 5e 2014.

The monster creation and combat encounter balance sections of the 2024 DMG were the only parts of the new book that I was interested in.

Do you know what new sections are in the book? Or are you assuming that because they are new you cannot be interested in them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's the situation that happened

The bad table was removed from the menu.

No replacement was added.



Again

Increased page count.
Increased cost.
Increased complaining.

Sometimes I wonder if D&D fans realize how much the D&D community complains about stuff.

Make the increased page count worth it to me, and I will pay more for it.

 

[Quickleaf]

Got the new DMG today and I looked at the Making a Creature section.

Let's just say that if the rules for monster creation aren't in the MM instead of this extremely deficient garbage, I am probably giving up on the 2024 rule set. I haven't been real happy about the direction of the game in this revision, but this? Had this section of the DMG been called Reflavoring a Creature, hey, okay, it would be a decent section. But "Making a Creature" it is absolutely NOT.

If anyone sees any designer comments indicating that there is going to be a robust system for actually making a creature in the Monster Manual, please post here to assuage my disappointment.

If not, this is simply awful.

I'm just going off the free rules on creating a creature, which is pretty anemic, but I'm noticing – leaving aside the missing maths chart (I assume that'll be somewhere in one of the 3 books) – it's also not representative of the designers' own process of monster creation.

We have a point of reference that should be represented here in the DMG, based on the last 10 years of experience. A youtuber named the_twig made a surprisingly good video on this topic: Is This How Monsters Are Designed In D&D 5E?

Jeremy Crawford once said (~6 years ago on DM's Deep Dive #18, clip at 3:45 in the video above) that when evaluating a monster's CR they would take the "harder to define" powers and translate them to the lowest level spell of a similar effect, and then translate that to a list of "representative damage spells by level" (e.g. at 2nd level his marker for a paralyzation/turn-denial power was Scorching Ray). IOW they translated everything that was "harder to define" into "virtual damage." That seems like a weird approach to me, but that's from the horse's mouth. This sort of explanation/chart would take very little space, belongs in this Creature Creation section, and is missing.

 

[the Jester]

So they've been doing it wrong in your opinion for the last 50 years?

The monster creation rules have only ever been in the Monster Manual in 3.5. In every other edition with monster creation guidance and a system more robust than "just write down whatever"- which is to say, everything after 2e- it has been in the DMG.

 

[the Jester]

The Monster by CR chart creates boring blob monsters that the community constantly complained about.

The chart was only one part of a far more robust process that can put out very interesting and cool monsters.

Just reading the numbers off the chart was a bad approach, but is sufficiently accurate to allow off-the-cuff improvisation in the moment when the DM throws out an impromptu encounter with creatures not fully ready for play.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I guess I should be ready to cut and paste my post concerning how much internet ink was meaninglessly spilled concerning Custom Backgrounds not being in the PHB, just edited for monster creation instead, for when the MM comes out.

 

[Minigiant]

Removing something mediocre makes the situation worse, replacing it with a better version improves it, that should be really easy to understand

You aren't getting a better version for the same money.

Business 101.

 

[the Jester]

That being said, are there any of the monster features you have felt aren't very accurate?

I have less of an issue with some features being maybe slightly over or undervalued and more of an issue with a lack of guidance concerning things like paralysis, petrification, and other effects that essentially bypass hit points. Include those, and I think the 2014 monster creation guidelines work pretty well.

Regarding Nimble Escape (for example), I believe that the rules are designed to assume the monster is played optimally and gets the most out of its features. This is obviously not always true; but the rules rate a monster at its best, when it can be.