Complete Disagreement With Mike on Monsters (see post #205)

[Pale]

Actually, it's not an assumption. One of the first points they hit at the seminar at GenCon was that monster stat blocks are a lot shorter/simpler.



I don't imagine they'll be too foreign. To quote Mike Mearls:



Note the part that I bolded. I expect that, while the designs will differ, there'll be enough common ground for someone familiar with the game system to tweak them one way or the other.

Thank you, o' Rodent of the Dark. That does put some of my fears to rest. But while the stat blocks have been confirmed to be shorter and simpler, from what I'm hearing the monster write-ups won't be. Orc racial abilities, I believe, have been mentioned. This leads me to believe that as monsters advance they will have access to stronger abilities. So, while what I have in front of me while I DM may be shorter and simpler to work with at the gaming table, does it necessarily follow that the MM entry will be as well?

 

[Mouseferatu]

So, while what I have in front of me while I DM may be shorter and simpler to work with at the gaming table, does it necessarily follow that the MM entry will be as well?

That's a good question, and I honestly don't know. I can see a few possibilities.

1) The write-up in the MM is more complex than any given usage of the monster. I see this possibility as very unlikely, given the emphasis on simplicity and ease of use.

2) Orcs and similar races will only include bare-bones racial options, and if you choose to advance them by class level, they'll be restricted to class-based options only. While this would give them a little less flexibility than PC races, it wouldn't cost them anything in the way of overall power (assuming class and race abilities are balanced.) Then, in later books, if the designers chose to expand on orcs as a PC race, they could include higher level racial abilities.

Option two seems most likely to me, but of course it's also possible they're going with something I haven't remotely thought of.

 

[JustinA]

Simply put, the current skill system isn't friendly for DMs. At first, it seems like all the DM has to do is follow the formula, but that formula is highly inaccurate. Not only doesn't it not factor in things like synergy bonuses and circumstance bonuses but it also ignores how the skill system works. For many skills, you just need a certain value to hit a DC so you don't even want the skill maxed out.

I understand your point regarding synergy bonuses. And I would, in fact, get rid of those. Or, at least, I would get rid of them as hard-coded bonuses where skill Y always gives a bonus to skill X.

But I'm not following the rest of your claim:

1. Circumstance bonuses are applied to specific tasks and on the fly. They have nothing to do with building a stat block.

2. Of course the simpler method is going to give you less control and give you less optimized results. The point is that you don't always need that optimization, and the system can be designed so that you can ignore it when you don't need it. But saying that "if I want optimized results it will take me more time than non-optimized results, so let's get rid of the ability to optimize so that I'm not tempted to spend my time on it" doesn't make any sense to me.

But, of course, I've never understood the "I don't like having more options" school of design and gameplay.

It is true that there are some skills whose usefulness dead-ends while other skills usefulness remains open-ended. This is, IMO, a design flaw in the dead-end skills. But it's a separate problem that needs to be fixed.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Nebulous]

Thank you, o' Rodent of the Dark. That does put some of my fears to rest. But while the stat blocks have been confirmed to be shorter and simpler, from what I'm hearing the monster write-ups won't be. Orc racial abilities, I believe, have been mentioned. This leads me to believe that as monsters advance they will have access to stronger abilities. So, while what I have in front of me while I DM may be shorter and simpler to work with at the gaming table, does it necessarily follow that the MM entry will be as well?

Here's what i think will happen, and i'm taking the idea from MM 4 and 5. There, they introduced advanced levels of monsters that we were already familiar with, hobgoblins and illithids and ogres, etc. Some people felt shafted that we were getting write-ups for monsters that we already owned, and could add class levels to ourselves.

Perhaps the 4e MM will take this a step further by breaking down the different "ranks" of the same creature, in 3 stages, and layering on (or even replacing entirely) its special abilities at each stage. This would be very similar to adding on levels, only there wouldn't be the mechanics the PC's use, it would be the mechanics they establish in the MM. The end result would be cleaner with enemies for multiple combat levels without the DM having to modify too much. Of course, a DM will always start modifying anyway, DM's like to do that.

 

[Spatula]

How much will this hamstring DMs, though? Sorry guys, I still love Player and Monster stats being the same... one system to rule them all. The old ways are what produced such things as "The Ogre Mage" (yes, I know that was also in 3.5, but more out of tradition than anything else, I think). Am I going to have to have a seperate "monster" if I want "Fighter Kobolds", "Stealthy Kobolds" and "Magic Casting Kobolds"? Meh, just let me add character classes to them.

Agreed. Monsters following the same rules as PCs means that it's as easy to modify monsters as it is to modify PCs, while being able to roughly gauge how your modifications affect the monster's power level. The anything-goes of earlier systems wasn't a good thing IMO. The 3E format wasn't too much information, as most of it could be safely ignored unless the situation called for it.

Not to mention that giving monsters PC stats makes it much easier to adjucate how they are affected by numerous spells or magic items.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I understand your point regarding synergy bonuses. And I would, in fact, get rid of those. Or, at least, I would get rid of them as hard-coded bonuses where skill Y always gives a bonus to skill X.

But I'm not following the rest of your claim:

1. Circumstance bonuses are applied to specific tasks and on the fly. They have nothing to do with building a stat block.

2. Of course the simpler method is going to give you less control and give you less optimized results. The point is that you don't always need that optimization, and the system can be designed so that you can ignore it when you don't need it. But saying that "if I want optimized results it will take me more time than non-optimized results, so let's get rid of the ability to optimize so that I'm not tempted to spend my time on it" doesn't make any sense to me.

But, of course, I've never understood the "I don't like having more options" school of design and gameplay.

It is true that there are some skills whose usefulness dead-ends while other skills usefulness remains open-ended. This is, IMO, a design flaw in the dead-end skills. But it's a separate problem that needs to be fixed.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

Is it really optimizing? It might be from a purely number crunching point of view, but what does this optimization really mean in game? Outside of the encounters with the NPC, most things are entirely up to the DM and the adventure plot. I doubt that there are any adventures whose outcome or direction are based on the "off-screen" roll of a NPC (which was only decided one way because of the extra 5 skill points). During the encounter, only very few skills are ever needed, you don't take 10 or 20 on these skills, and roll so seldom that most of the outcome is based on the general competency (not precise skill modifier) and the die result. So in essence, the optimization was for little effect.

If there are options, they should be meaningful. A +2 bonus to a specific skill is not meaningful. The decision whether my NPC is at all good at a skill, or if he can power attack, cast a specific spell, that's what is meaningful. It affects his personality, if affects his role in the adventure, it affects its abilities in combat.

It might be a bit different for a PC. Mostly because a PC actually uses a skill fairly often, has a lot of chance to take 10 or 20, and there are no "Off-Screen" rolls for a PC. A PC is always on screen. He might actually care about all the bonuses he can get, because he will have a considerable effect on the character performance.
But on the other hand, does he really need to? If the system does give him only, say 4 general competence levels* for a skill (based on his level), is that so bad? Sure, it might take out the fun of the optimizing (provided that it's easy to advance these 4 "general competence levels"), but would gameplay be hurt by it? Note also that this means that while the character has only "4" options for a individual skill, this also means he doesn't have to spend more than 4 of his total option points (measured in # of feat, skill ranks, class or race options) "spendable" for this specific skill. He can spend the rest to get other options. Which reduces the risk of a character being only good at one thing and in the cases where this one thing isn't applicable, he will be less enjoyable to play.

*)

Spoiler

In the Starwars Saga edition, there are basically 4 options to select from: Untrained, Trained, Skill Focus and Trained, Reroll Ability with skill.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Agreed. Monsters following the same rules as PCs means that it's as easy to modify monsters as it is to modify PCs, while being able to roughly gauge how your modifications affect the monster's power level. The anything-goes of earlier systems wasn't a good thing IMO. It wasn't too much information, as most of it could be safely ignored if you didn't need to know it.

Not to mention that giving monsters PC stats makes it much easier to adjucate how they are affected by numerous spells or magic items.

I would say this:

It is not important that monsters follow exact the same rules as the PCs. But the way to create them must be common among all monsters so that you can determine their power level.
The end result must be "compatible" to the PC statistics, at least in all effects that determine the monsters options in combat and how it is affected by PCs.


In software terms, the class Monster and the class Player Character must adhere to a common interface. How you implement the interface or construct a instance of the implementing class doesn't matter.
The interface most likely consists of the following properties:
Attacks (including #Attacks, Attack Bonus, Spells), Hit Points, Saves/Defenses (AC, DR, Energy Resistance, Spell Resistance or whatever will exist in D&D 4), Ability Scores, and probably something like "Challenge Level"
Maybe they also share an abstract base class that provides a few base "methods":
Resolve Attack, Resolve Damage, Resolve Saving Throw. But the "Constructor" would be unique for the two classes.

 

[JustinA]

Is it really optimizing? It might be from a purely number crunching point of view, but what does this optimization really mean in game? Outside of the encounters with the NPC, most things are entirely up to the DM and the adventure plot. I doubt that there are any adventures whose outcome or direction are based on the "off-screen" roll of a NPC (which was only decided one way because of the extra 5 skill points). During the encounter, only very few skills are ever needed, you don't take 10 or 20 on these skills, and roll so seldom that most of the outcome is based on the general competency (not precise skill modifier) and the die result. So in essence, the optimization was for little effect.

In general, I agree. Which is why I generally don't bother optimizing my NPCs' skill choices or fret at the prospect that I've "wasted" an NPC's skill points in some way. It's just not a good use of my time and it doesn't really contribute anything to the quality of the game.

(But, just for the sake of devil's advocacy, I will note that I just got done running an adventure where an off-screen skill check was a key point in how the adventure played out: The NPC discovered that the PCs were asking questions about X. If he hadn't discovered that, things would have gone very differently. And I do routinely run adventures where NPCs do plenty of on-screen skill checks. Even moreso if were to include allies, minions, cohorts, and the like in the NPC count.)

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Richards]

Yeah. Books like MMIV, which give people like John Cooper an ideal place to slam Wizards for not getting the stat-blocks right.

Cheers!

Reading through this thread, and some of MerricB's comments on the first two pages in particular, I got a strange image in my head. You know that Far Side cartoon with the two guards standing on top of the Great Wall of China? One of them says "There! That ought to keep that dog out of here!" I'm imagining a big "4E" superimposed on the wall, and the quote changing to "There! That ought to keep that Cooper guy out of our stats!"

In any case, it does sound like the mechanics on stat design are not going to be as transparent as they are in 3E/3.5, so "gearheads" like Mr. Cooper (I think that's the term, and it's not meant disparagingly) are going to have a harder time checking up on stat block accuracy.

Johnathan

 

[RigaMortus2]

[Generalization] Most people can't even play a human [/Generalization]

Ahhhh, what? Were you just being sarcastic, or have you found this statement to be true in your experience? Can you give an example of what you mean by this? I don't understand your statement unless it was meant as sarcasm.