Am I the only one who doesn't like the arbitrary "boss monster" tag?

[Ahnehnois]

There is going to be, and I would argue there has to be, a baseline mode of play. A foundation, if you will, upon which the modularity we are expecting in Next to rest. In this quote and a couple others you seem to be advocating for things that are certain to be in the baseline to be inherently optional. I would guess that it is as likely for XP for defeating monsters to be optional as making an attack roll determine if you hit to be optional. I.e. you can play that way, but it is on you to do the work to change your game.

XP has always been something that a lot of people ignored and that the rest of people tend to modify substantially (check the various ENW polls on the subject). XP is hardly a core D&D mechanic, nor is it a particularly successful or important one. Attack rolls are foundational to D&D's approach and are not really an appropriate comparison.

If they really assume that the average D&D group will use one XP system, the one in the book, they're in for a world of trouble.

So by dismissing a very valid question about the effect on xp rewards for tougher monsters cause you don't care is tangential, at best, to the thread topic.

You did see the detailed response I wrote after that, right?

In an unrelated aside, if your only experience with D&D encompasses versions released by WoTC then you are going to continue to go astray with a large portion of the ENWorld community when you make assertions of "historically" that were only true for 3.x.

I do have some experience with 2e; I just don't own any of the books. That being said, my perspective is my perspective. I don't know or care what D&D was before I was born (1985), and I'm pretty clear about that. You could say that perspective is limiting because I don't understand all of D&D's history, but it also brings something that ENW doesn't have a lot of: a younger voice. The average age on these boards is significantly older than me.

Many D&D players do not have experience with pre-WotC D&D. Virtually any new players recruited now don't have such experience. Conversely, almost all D&D players, new and old, have significant experience with 3.X in some sense, either as D&D or as PF, even if they went back to old school or now play 4e or a non-D&D rpg. It makes a lot of sense to use that as a point of reference.

Commonly, edition warriors have tried to posit 4e as the game for the 'cool kids', one that somehow attracts the youth that this hobby desperately needs. They have likewise tried to paint players of 3.5, PF, or various pre-WotC systems as old, cantankerous, inflexible, and unreasonable. They dismiss any number of mechanical issues on that basis, apparently believing that anything new is good, and anything older than 4e is obsolete. They're wrong, and they're killing the hobby. Thus, I feel it rather important to articulate the views of someone who is not old enough to remember old school D&D, let alone be nostalgic for it, who used to call the local WotC store the day the new splatbook arrived and liked the company and the brand, but nonetheless doesn't like WotC's recent creative and business decisions, not because they're new, not because I have some bias against them, but because they suck. I want 5e to be good. Not new, not old, good.

Like anyone, my opinion reflects only my experiences and perspective, but I try to say things that need to be said.

 

[Gryph]

XP has always been something that a lot of people ignored and that the rest of people tend to modify substantially (check the various ENW polls on the subject). XP is hardly a core D&D mechanic, nor is it a particularly successful or important one. Attack rolls are foundational to D&D's approach and are not really an appropriate comparison.

If they really assume that the average D&D group will use one XP system, the one in the book, they're in for a world of trouble.

You did see the detailed response I wrote after that, right?

I do have some experience with 2e; I just don't own any of the books. That being said, my perspective is my perspective. I don't know or care what D&D was before I was born (1985), and I'm pretty clear about that. You could say that perspective is limiting because I don't understand all of D&D's history, but it also brings something that ENW doesn't have a lot of: a younger voice. The average age on these boards is significantly older than me.

Many D&D players do not have experience with pre-WotC D&D. Virtually any new players recruited now don't have such experience. Conversely, almost all D&D players, new and old, have significant experience with 3.X in some sense, either as D&D or as PF, even if they went back to old school or now play 4e or a non-D&D rpg. It makes a lot of sense to use that as a point of reference.

Commonly, edition warriors have tried to posit 4e as the game for the 'cool kids', one that somehow attracts the youth that this hobby desperately needs. They have likewise tried to paint players of 3.5, PF, or various pre-WotC systems as old, cantankerous, inflexible, and unreasonable. They dismiss any number of mechanical issues on that basis, apparently believing that anything new is good, and anything older than 4e is obsolete. They're wrong, and they're killing the hobby. Thus, I feel it rather important to articulate the views of someone who is not old enough to remember old school D&D, let alone be nostalgic for it, who used to call the local WotC store the day the new splatbook arrived and liked the company and the brand, but nonetheless doesn't like WotC's recent creative and business decisions, not because they're new, not because I have some bias against them, but because they suck. I want 5e to be good. Not new, not old, good.

Like anyone, my opinion reflects only my experiences and perspective, but I try to say things that need to be said.

I think you over estimate the amount of the total player base ignores XP if you think it is a lot. But, like your estimate, that is also just an opinion, so no available facts, etc. So that aside, xp is certainly a core mechanic. Baked in at every turn and expected to be used. You can handwave it away and use dm fiat to level characters but that puts you outside the mechanics.

I admit to being one of the older players on the board, started playing D&D in grade school in 1976. I now play mostly 4e with two of my sons and some friends so beside myself our group ranges in age from 12 to 32 with two under 20, two in their 20s and two in their early 30s. We have played 3 versions of D&D in this group (1e, 3.5e and 4) as well as trying some other games and we keep coming back to 4e. Not because any of us think its perfect.

I have no issues with you advocating for what you think will make D&D Next a better game than any of its predecessors. I will do the same. What I did take issue with are those places where you seem to be trying to take D&D to some system it is not and has never been. I would also ask that you stop using "historically" when you mean "in 3.x". I am grognard enough to find that grating for pronouncements that were not true from 1974-1999. Your memory not extending that far is no excuse for sloppy phrasing. Get off my lawn

I do believe that 4e had the fracturing effect it did largely because it asked the player base to strongly re-examine what it meant to be D&D and a lot of the players didn't like that approach and didn't like the result. I think the designers of Next will be compounding that error if the essentially do the same thing again.

When it is done, I think a player of any previous edition needs to be able to look at the rules and see a lot of their favorite version and some cool new things or the designers will have failed.

It may turn out to be too high a bar, but not trying that hurdle would appear to me as admitting defeat.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I want every creature to have it's normal everyday statblock along with it's history, culture, and any other relevant information.

Then I want to be able to make that creature into what ever I want just by adding a class, background, feat etc...

I don't want a certain creature to be built and presented in the MM as just a "boss" creature.

 

[slobster]

They dismiss any number of mechanical issues on that basis, apparently believing that anything new is good, and anything older than 4e is obsolete. They're wrong, and they're killing the hobby. Thus, I feel it rather important to articulate the views of someone who is not old enough to remember old school D&D, let alone be nostalgic for it, who used to call the local WotC store the day the new splatbook arrived and liked the company and the brand, but nonetheless doesn't like WotC's recent creative and business decisions, not because they're new, not because I have some bias against them, but because they suck. I want 5e to be good. Not new, not old, good.

Like anyone, my opinion reflects only my experiences and perspective, but I try to say things that need to be said.

I'm just a little younger than you, and have a similar history with D&D. I did start with AD&D, but by the time I really got into it 3E was just coming out. It definitely forms the baseline of what I consider the D&D experience.

I like 4th, but I do think that 3.x did some things better. Everything that 4th did is not, in fact, superior to 3.x by the sole virtue of being new.

The converse is also true. Not everything in 3.x is better by virtue of being classic.

Giving monsters levels is already an abstraction, but one that is necessary for good gameplay. A monster with vastly mismatched offensive and defensive capabilities is going to be an uneven challenge and difficult for the GM to run. Thus I suffer the level system for monsters to continue, even though realistically speaking I could see a monster with massive AC but crappy attacks as being a possibility. Instead all monsters have a level, which largely determines the range of their attack bonuses, hp, defenses, damage abilities, and so on.

With that abstraction granted, I don't see a further abstraction in the form of elite/solo tags as being a problem. They serve a definite purpose, as I and others have pointed out. They give the GM guidance that is helpful to produce the game she wants to run. They grant capabilities not already served by the level system. They are no more decoupled from the fiction of the game universe than arbitrarily assigning levels to monsters already is.

If you don't want solos anywhere near your game, don't use them. But this is an instance where including rules for them is a large value for me and people like me. It's work that I couldn't necessarily do myself, involving the mathematics of the system which I don't have access to or the ability to playtest out my own version of. On the other hand, for people like you, it's trivially easy to ignore.

It seems to make sense to include it.

 

[D'karr]

On the other hand, for people like you, it's trivially easy to ignore.

It seems to make sense to include it.

Can't XP, but yep. Exactly!

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think you over estimate the amount of the total player base ignores XP if you think it is a lot. But, like your estimate, that is also just an opinion, so no available facts, etc.

Well, I have some. No one knows for sure (insert generic caveat about unscientific-ness), but I feel comfortable saying XP is only used as wriitten by a minority of people. Certainly a minority of people on these boards. And close to half simply ignore it.

So that aside, xp is certainly a core mechanic. Baked in at every turn and expected to be used. You can handwave it away and use dm fiat to level characters but that puts you outside the mechanics.

I suppose you could look at it that way, but by that logic everyone who goes outside the ability score generation systems in the DMG is off the book, as is anyone who goes outside the wealth by level guidelines. Pretty much everybody is "outside the mechanics" in this way of thinking. That's kind of how rpg mechanics work.

What I did take issue with are those places where you seem to be trying to take D&D to some system it is not and has never been.

No more than anyone on these boards, I think.

I do want a game that is better than anything we've seen (and therefore one that it has never been).

I would also ask that you stop using "historically" when you mean "in 3.x". I am grognard enough to find that grating for pronouncements that were not true from 1974-1999. Your memory not extending that far is no excuse for sloppy phrasing. Get off my lawn

It's actually a rather 4e-centric phrasing (especially given that the 3.X system is the market standard right now, albeit not necessarily with D&D on the cover). One could argue that anything other than what WotC is supporting right now is "historical" (and that anything pre-WotC is a subset of extremely historical D&D: "archaic", "heritage"?). That being said, you're right that it isn't a clear term and is not a good way of phrasing things. Point taken.

I do believe that 4e had the fracturing effect it did largely because it asked the player base to strongly re-examine what it meant to be D&D and a lot of the players didn't like that approach and didn't like the result. I think the designers of Next will be compounding that error if the essentially do the same thing again.

I suspect every edition change involved that kind of reexamination. 4e's issues are bigger than that.

When it is done, I think a player of any previous edition needs to be able to look at the rules and see a lot of their favorite version and some cool new things or the designers will have failed.

I'll agree on that.

 

[GreyICE]

Ahnehnois, what this threat is lacking is some solid examples that would make your viewpoint make sense to the rest of us.

Can you build an encounter to show us how it would work? I've got a wizard who is making a deal with a demon. The party hasn't managed to interrupt his ritual in time, so they're arriving just in time to see him complete his nefarious task and become the vessel of a demon within this mortal plane.

How would your system work in making this an interesting and compelling experience for the players?

 

[Ahnehnois]

The converse is also true.

Not everything in 3.x is better by virtue of being classic.

Certainly not.

I dislike many things about 3e, including some about its monster design. A lot of late 3.5 monsters seemed to be designed around a standard encounter rather than for a world, and it showed in the quality of the monster manuals. Despite there being five of them, MM3 is actually the best (after the core MM of course). Coversely, the beloved and presumably profitable monster series (Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, etc.) espouse the philosophy of monster design I'm advocating.

I also dislike how sharply the math scales in 3e, and any number of other things.

Giving monsters levels is already an abstraction, but one that is necessary for good gameplay.

It's not necessary, but it's D&D's chosen conceit. Moving on.

With that abstraction granted, I don't see a further abstraction in the form of elite/solo tags as being a problem.
...
On the other hand, for people like you, it's trivially easy to ignore.

Like I said, if someone writes a bit of text on an ogre mage saying "this creature would be a good fight and the end of a quest" or saying that a lich "is typically a major villain to build a campaign around" that's good fluff.

The problem is not the tag itself, it's the underlying monster design. If my monster is designed specifically to be a boss/minion/etc., if "bosses" get one hp/attack/damage/etc. value and standard monsters get different stats, that's not easily ignored.

In other words, this:

I don't want a certain creature to be built and presented in the MM as just a "boss" creature.

 

[slobster]

It's not necessary, but it's D&D's chosen conceit. Moving on.

Good riposte, that.

Like I said, if someone writes a bit of text on an ogre mage saying "this creature would be a good fight and the end of a quest" or saying that a lich "is typically a major villain to build a campaign around" that's good fluff.

The problem is not the tag itself, it's the underlying monster design. If my monster is designed specifically to be a boss/minion/etc., if "bosses" get one hp/attack/damage/etc. value and standard monsters get different stats, that's not easily ignored.

I still don't see how this is any different from choosing a level and than allowing that to determine hp/attack/damage/etc., but I think you and I understand each other pretty well at this point. We just disagree. Nothing wrong with that, though of course I hope that they end up agreeing more with me that they do with you.

I hope that some entries in the MM are explicitly offered as "boss monsters" (I prefer the term solo because it sidesteps the confusion around the multiple meanings of the word boss), both for direct use in the game and as inspiration for your own solo encounter set pieces.

 

[underfoot007ct]

The level system should handle badass monsters.

The solution is not to have solo boss fights to begin with. It's a bad trope drawn primarily from bad sources (comic books, videogames, cartoons/anime).

Are Dragons not a solo/boss fight? In any edition?
Never have I DM'd, when I said you see a Dragon, did anyone say "how many dragons?". Smaug the dragon is a boss fight, iconic & true. Have you removed ALL the Dragons from you game? Then remove Dragon & any other boss fighters, done. Easy Pease, simple.

This is NOT a solution nor a bad trope, nor fiddly nor wonky, it is remove something YOU dislike, and not for any good reason, except maybe you dislike cartoons, video games, etc.