D&D General 2024 Monster Creation

[Paul Farquhar]

This is baffling to me in today's society and RPG environment. Is someone in upper management directing them not to share "trade secrets" for fear it will reduce their bottom line if fans know how to create content just like the official team, or what?

No, it’s because the fans would rip it to shreds.

People who actually have to ship product are far less rigorous than obsessive fans.

Keep it secret to maintain the mystique that they know what they are doing.

 

[Quickleaf]

Spells are a format. Once the high level features are well understood and comparable to other high level features − which is what spell lists inherently do − one can reformat the mechanics in a nonspell format.

I’ve seen two flaws with Hasbro’s approach:

First, “this is how the balance is done” has fundamental mismatches between reality and effect. If I say “ghoul’s parlayzation is worth scorching ray damage”, I’m completely neglecting the play impact (slowing combat, frustrated players) that paralyzing has vs the monster dealing more damage (speeding play, increased tension).

Second, this relates to a great systemic design issue - seen most clearly in monsters & spells - where I anecdotally see fun diminished. Counterspell, for instance, works great in a card game but can be kinda crappy in a RPG.

But maybe I’m too much of an outlier in this perspective.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I would like to have monster creation rules...that work just like the 4E monster creation ones (or the more recent MCDM take) with explicit roles to design around. 5E so far IMO has suffered too much from inconsistent monster design standards that make it so some monsters are just interchangeable bags of hit points and others have a suite of abilities that intuitively support a role in combat.

 

[Yaarel]

I’ve seen two flaws with Hasbro’s approach:

First, “this is how the balance is done” has fundamental mismatches between reality and effect. If I say “ghoul’s parlayzation is worth scorching ray damage”, I’m completely neglecting the play impact (slowing combat, frustrated players) that paralyzing has vs the monster dealing more damage (speeding play, increased tension).

Monitoring the spells, such as making sure "Hold Person" and "Scorching Ray" really are about equally desirable within the same slot, helps for assessing monster builds.

Second, this relates to a great systemic design issue - seen most clearly in monsters & spells - where I anecdotally see fun diminished. Counterspell, for instance, works great in a card game but can be kinda crappy in a RPG.

But maybe I’m too much of an outlier in this perspective.

I think all of these critiques are necessary, including is Counterspell "fun".

 

[Dalamar]

This question seems important, as rules that have been in the DMG every time in the past (when they appeared at all) now aren't. We don't know where and if they will appear, but they do, and the rules in question are of unquestionable value to a number of folks.

That is not a 100% correct. At least for 3.5e, the monster creation rules were in the Monster Manual, right after the rules for customizing monsters.

Edit: I see that was actually brought up already. Should've finished reading all the posts before replying.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes. It's part of a pattern I've noticed that I do not understand.

WotC has specific internal design principles that they use, and they almost never tell us what they are.

Some of these have been mentioned during the playtest. One of the early UAs told about "ribbons" in a sidebar, which was a revelation to many of us and now is just an understood thing in the fan base. Very occasionally a designer mentions some other similar principles. And sometimes those of us with lots of time for it can reverse engineer what appear to be (occasionally pretty precise) design principles.

But, in general, they don't tell us these things.

This is baffling to me in today's society and RPG environment. Is someone in upper management directing them not to share "trade secrets" for fear it will reduce their bottom line if fans know how to create content just like the official team, or what?

I mean, we have content from plenty of other places showing how you can do this in RPGs, and third-party creators providing alternates for official 5e D&D that work fine. But WotC can't just tell us what rules they are using for design so we can be better informed in our own work? This would literally make them more money, and most people here understand why so I'm not going to go into it. This is the 2020s, not the 1950s. It's ridiculous not to have more transparency here.

I think it's more than the info is too much.

That in order to properly explain all of the implied aspects you would have to explain a lot about the various information about DMing and then the process then all the math behind it and the entire information dump would be several pages that most people would not read and would take up space In otherwise very important book.

The people who would actually read all the information can already figure it out.

The people who "need" it won't read it.

The people who will read it don't "need" it and will know exactly how to criticize it.

It's no conspiracy. It's just word count and page count. A half dozen charts and tables minimum. A dozen if you do it right. And pages and pages of explanations.

Monster Design is more complex than Adventure Design. Way more than Campaign Design. And less cool. And more math.

 

[Quickleaf]

Monitoring the spells, such as making sure "Hold Person" and "Scorching Ray" really are about equally desirable within the same slot, helps for assessing monster builds.



I think all of these critiques are necessary, including is Counterspell "fun".

They don’t lay this out in any of their official monster guidelines, but I’ve noticed that if you’re following the defensive CR and offensive CR averaging calculation, that the higher CR the monster gets the more it is for those ratios to be equal or for the offensive CR to be higher. Monsters where the defensive CR is significantly higher, should be used very sparingly and for specific effect.

 

[dave2008]

That is not a 100% correct. At least for 3.5e, the monster creation rules were in the Monster Manual, right after the rules for customizing monsters.

Edit: I see that was actually brought up already. Should've finished reading all the posts before replying.

and 1e and 2e didn't even have monster creation rules!

 

[mamba]

When did that become a thing though. Neither 1e or 2e considered it a major aspect of DMing.

not sure whether they considered it one, to me it was one back then, just without official support

 

[Bitbrain]

Do you know what new sections are in the book?

Yes, I’ve seen a preview of the 2024 DMG’s table of contents. On this very website in fact.

I admit I’m curious about the bastion system, but not enough to justify buying the rest of the book alongside the bastion section. Either in hardcover or digitally.

Or are you assuming that because they are new you cannot be interested in them?

There are elements of the 2024 version of 5e which I like, and others which I do not. It’s just that those elements I dislike outnumber those I do.