D&D (2024) 2025's Ancient Green Dragon Stat Block From The New Monster Manual

The new ancient green dragon from the 2025 Monster Manual was previewed at Gen Con.

​

 

[Shardstone]

D&D 5E - Fixing Challenge Rating first post here, which he calls fixing cr

 

[dave2008]

D&D 5E - Fixing Challenge Rating first post here, which he calls fixing cr

Yep, like I thought, he is talking about encounter/combat building, not calculating CR. The first sentence of the 2nd paragraph says:

"5e drafts heavily off of 3e's core mechanics, so it made sense to recruit its encounter building tool."

I think we all agree 5e encounter building is some degree of whack (except for a very narrow band of play groups) and needs to be revised substantially. How CR is used is part of the necessary revision.

However, the CR calculating tools have always been fairly good and fairly consistent if used properly.

 

[TheDungeonMathster]

Getting back to the new stat block convo: I have converted a handful of creatures to the new 2024 stat block and ran them today. Here are my thoughts:

1. It will take a bit to get used to the ability score block. Having all the modifiers in a group visually makes it difficult to quickly find the value you're looking for. I am certain a bit of this is not being used to the new style.
2. I modified the new block to have all defense information right below the abilities because this is where your eyes goes to make saves. This structure was incredibly helpful in reminding me of save-related features (like legendary resistances and damage resistances).
3. The more terse action descriptions are nice (despite this specific creature being more robust).
4. Legendary Actions: So... here's where I think the new stat block designed slowed things down. Again, this was for a creature that I created for my game (see below). Since the legendary actions are not extra reactions, annd because reactions have triggers, I found myself having to continually reread reactions to see if I could use a given reaction based on a trigger.

If they keep this structure for legendary actions (which is not in doubt), then I think it might be better to group them by trigger type and reduce the number of reaction options.

For reference, the creature I am specifically referencing is the one below.

 

[TheDungeonMathster]

Maybe (other than intelligently reducing the number of reaction options) a design like this? It's still a bit cluttered, but I can at least find things faster.