An Open Letter: 'Missing the Mark: Mike Mearls’s ‘Revised’ Ogre Mage'

[Gold Roger]

However, leave my phantom fungus alone! It was the only CR 2 monster that I ever saw that almost caused the deaths of an entire 4th level group by itself, and taught a group of players, singlehandedly, to value the "see invisibility" spell. The first time I brought out 3.0 Darkmantles, it did the same thing with them and Daylight spells. I have to go with the "flavor is subjective" crowd, because half of the new monsters Rounser mentioned I've kinda liked.

QFT. A flavor is subjective. Some people obviously hate destrachans, delvers and co. But I'm a big destrachan fan and think that the delver has some great potential purely because of its flavor (never even looked at the stats to be honest).

And the argument that unloved flavor can always be changed is quite valid as well. Otherwise I'd never use incarnum.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

See kids... even a normally "cool cat" like Demogorgon looses his head(s) every once n'awhile.

Well, maybe when a Paladin cuts them loose. Personally, I wouldn't let my heads loose -- too easy to lose track of them that way...

 

[Pants]

The explanation on Wizard's web site didn't mention a typo by Monte - it made it sound like it was a "style" decision.

Well considering that Monte said that he accidentally wrote 'hyena' instead of mandrill...

WotC art to classic art is like comparing sugary cereal to food.

Riiiight.
Yeah, get your point across by bashing other art styles, very classy there chief.

QFT. A flavor is subjective. Some people obviously hate destrachans, delvers and co. But I'm a big destrachan fan and think that the delver has some great potential purely because of its flavor (never even looked at the stats to be honest).

QFT.

Hell, some people like the flumph, for whatever reason.

 

[Hairy Minotaur]

If you (or anyone reading this) is going to be at GenCon, there will be a seminar on Saturday about the monster makeover series. I lucked out and was able to get an event set up at the last minute. It's a two hour talk that will go over the creatures the series has covered, what people liked and dislike, and (if I have time) a live, audience participation re-design of an iconic D&D critter.

Here's the date and time:

Date and Time: Saturday 8/12 at 5pm
Location: Hyatt, Salon A.

Mike do you know that the GenCon write-up fro this event says you will be doing a makeover on the Beholder? Which I hope you get to do, I think getting to do one from start to finish would be my personal deal maker for this event.

 

[gizmo33]

Riiiight.
Yeah, get your point across by bashing other art styles, very classy there chief.

Is there such a style as "WotC art" ? Or is it just an example of a style - and perhaps not all pieces are good examples of that style. I didn't think I was bashing a style.

Chief.

Is it still the 70s?

 

[Garnfellow]

Strange that fans throughout X editions noticed this "bad design" so rarely. Would you please point us to any substantial Dragon Magazine debate (in the Forum or even the letters section) about how the ogre mage is "badly designed"? Come to think about it, the same would be pretty nice for rust monsters also...

These sorts of criticisms were plenty common back in the day, but Dragon would have been the last place you would go to find documentation of this. Not sure if the editors rarely published these sorts of D&D-griping letters (as opposed to Dragon-griping letters), or if the critics just didn't write to Dragon, or what. But there was certainly a vocal group criticizing D&D's treatment of monsters . . . for both mechanics and flavor. I remember the first time I read through some non-TSR publications, and it really opened my eyes. Not that I agreed with all of the criticism -- monsters were my favorite part of the game! -- but I remember being surprised that there were so many folks discontented with D&D. I never got that sense reading Dragon magazine every month.

But you would need to check out the APAs and magazines affiliated with other games to get a sense of the depth and breadth of the criticism. I can't think specifically of a letter picking on the ogre mage, but there is an essay in a Chivalry and Sorcerery supplement (I think the first Companion book) that really takes D&D to task for its monster design.

 

[mearls]

Mike do you know that the GenCon write-up fro this event says you will be doing a makeover on the Beholder? Which I hope you get to do, I think getting to do one from start to finish would be my personal deal maker for this event.

Yup, that's on the agenda. It's going to be fun. The way I see it, either 1 or 2 people will show up and we'll have a cool conversation, maybe over a beer at the Ram, or we'll have a room of 20 or 30 people doing a mass exercise in group game design.

Either way, it's going to be a blast.

 

[Hussar]

I agree with you to a certain point. I think it's important for monsters to follow the mechanics rules during actual gameplay. Creating a creature that introduces a unique mechanic or that creates an exception to a well-established rule (eg, if you created a mult-armed creature with suckers on its arms that used its own grapple mechanic) is a bad idea all around.

But saying that your mutli-armed creature with suckers on its arms gets a +4 bonus to grapple checks shouldn't need any additional justification other than 'it has suckers on its arms'.

99% of the DMs aren't going to be running fights and have a critter memorized; they are going to have the MM open to that page, or a stat-block sketched out, or whatever. So long as once its in play the monster follows the rules, how it got there or what it can do shouldn't matter. And if a designer strays far from the base type, or wonders whether or not something might be overpowered, that's what playtesting is for. D&D is so far from a science that you shouldn't be trusting formulas for all this anyway.

As you say, there's a world of difference between breaking rules and slapping a +4 racial bonus to an attack.

I misread what SJMiller said, so my criticism is unfounded.

But, I do think that there is a very good point made by Ridley'sCohort. With the monster makeover, you could go either way - either a proper CR 8 or a lower CR version. Neither version is better or worse, just different. Since there is a hole in the monster manual for a mastermind type critter at CR 5, while there are more than a few CR 8 masterminds, I can see why lowering the CR is perhaps a better way to go for the game.

As far as public debate over monster design, gimme a break. There was almost no debate in Dragon or anywhere outside of fanzines with a readership of a few thousand about monster mechanics or design. Can you imagine TSR actually doing what Mearls has done? Allowed public debate over its design choices? Come on. Given EGG's editorials in early Dragon, I'm very skeptical that the public would even remotely be consulted when it comes to something like this.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

As far as public debate over monster design, gimme a break. There was almost no debate in Dragon or anywhere outside of fanzines with a readership of a few thousand about monster mechanics or design. Can you imagine TSR actually doing what Mearls has done? Allowed public debate over its design choices? Come on. Given EGG's editorials in early Dragon, I'm very skeptical that the public would even remotely be consulted when it comes to something like this.

Different world then than now. There's even a world of difference from when 3.0 was first announced in terms of how easy it was for players to communicate with each other, and for designers and publishers and consumers to interact.

These kinds of discussions certainly went on in a similar form though smaller scale, though. We had discussions on dial-up BBSs and Compuserve and what have you.

 

[Hussar]

Even the discussions on a smaller scale were most likely never done in the presence of designers of D&D though. Sure, sitting around the FLGS and jawing about the game happened all the time. But, this sort of large scale examination never did. It couldn't.

Melan's point was that no one was complaining about the creatures back in the day. This, IMO, is untrue. People were complaining, it's just that there was nowhere to make your voice heard, and no one listening even if you did.