D&D 5E Changes to D&D's Spellcasting Monsters: Streamlining Your Way To Bliss

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks about the way they are changing spellcasting monsters in D&D.

• Making the game more fun, easier to learn, shorting "the pathway to getting to your bliss".
• Making monsters easier to run.
• "Rumors of the death of spellcasting [in monsters] are not true". Innate spellcasting has been streamlined with spellcasting into a single trait.
• Spellcasting options are consolidated whenever possible.
• Removing options that a DM is unlikely ever to use.
• In some cases, new magical abilities in the monster statblock which exist alongside a list of spells they can cast.
• For example, the mind flayer's mind blast is not a spell, and other abilities are magical but not spells and aren't as easy to interact with with things like counterspell.
• Things which make archmages say "How is this functioning, and why can't I stop it?"

 

[Vaalingrade]

The designers aren’t designing encounters. They’re designing enemies to use in encounters of your own design.

Let me rephrase: Is part of the monster's purpose to drop a cloud of fog. Will fog cloud contribute to encounters built with this monster or is it just there because having a lot of choices of good for a player character and a bloated waste for a monster and the monster is being forced to be a player character for reasons.

 

[Vaalingrade]

the end of 3.5 had beguiler, warmage, true necromancer, duskblade, and others... 4e trided to split swordmage/warlock/wizard/bard but I think they could have done a bit better... then 5e went back to "General class"

I will never forgive 4e for keeping the wizard.

 

[Weiley31]

Is part of the monster's purpose to drop a cloud of fog.

Sometimes, ya just gotta Fart when the urge happens.

Unless your my one friend's dog: then you replace Fog Cloud with Cloudkill.

 

[Nefermandias]

This is a philosophical disagreement that always comes up in these conversations and isn't really reconcilable, between the viewpoint that the monster manual's job is to describe a game piece in a combat encounter vs. a simulated entity in an imaginary world.

If you are really worried with simulation, you are better off crafting your own stat blocks though. You can give your NPCs how many spellcaster class levels you want and whatever spell list you want.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My one other comment on this whole thing, is that the bit about "the pathway to getting to your bliss" strikes me as really bizarre, and really more off-putting than any of the concrete changes. D&D is not a spa treatment.

It’s pretty normal for JC. He often encourages players and especially DMs to “follow their bliss”.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Let me rephrase: Is part of the monster's purpose to drop a cloud of fog. Will fog cloud contribute to encounters built with this monster or is it just there because having a lot of choices of good for a player character and a bloated waste for a monster and the monster is being forced to be a player character for reasons.

Nah. Perfect efficiency is one of those things that sounds good only on paper.

D&D is better off staying a bit messy, asymmetrical, and weird.

If it feels right to have fog cloud on the statblock, include it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

the end of 3.5 had beguiler, warmage, true necromancer, duskblade, and others... 4e trided to split swordmage/warlock/wizard/bard but I think they could have done a bit better... then 5e went back to "General class"

If only 3.5 had kept the PHB in mind when making new stuff, and not made horrendously unbalanced classes to the point where even rather casual players were experiencing problems, I’d have loved the 3.5 approach to classes.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nah. Perfect efficiency is one of those things that sounds good only on paper.

D&D is better off staying a bit messy, asymmetrical, and weird.

If it feels right to have fog cloud on the statblock, include it.

Then write it out and don't waste my time digging through the PH.

Just begging for some competent design over here.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Then write it out and don't waste my time digging through the PH.

Just begging for some competent design over here.

If you think the 5e designers are incompetent, go design your own game.

Not to your preference is not the same as incompetent.

 

[Espadadelaaurora]

I know that it's for easy of play, but spells are IMHO one of the funniest part of the game. I'll miss them in monster stats. Hope this is just an option that don't rule out spells in stats blocks.