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

[Klaus]

Quote by Mouseferatu about beholders, which I forgot to actually quote.

Say it's a CR 20. Make it a 20th-level Aberration. Give it 20 HD. And then you'll say "it has too many hp!". Lower the Con, until the hp adjust.

Of course, this would be such an enormous adjustment to the system that the entire MM (and specially the monster types) would need to be rewritten. It certainly can't work with how the types are done now.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Say it's a CR 20. Make it a 20th-level Aberration. Give it 20 HD. And then you'll say "it has too many hp!". Lower the Con, until the hp adjust.

I'm still not convinced. Even a 20th-level PC can't fire off 10 different offensive spells in a single round. (Or even three, if you only want to count a singe "arc" of fire.) Without being completely reconceptualized, beholders simply can't have the same CR and HD.

Of course, this would be such an enormous adjustment to the system that the entire MM (and specially the monster types) would need to be rewritten. It certainly can't work with how the types are done now.

That much, certainly, is true. It goes back to the discussion of whether it's worth redesigning the whole system from literally square one.

 

[Jared Rascher]

I'm actually kind of hopeful in this new paradigm, with a few reservations. My hopes are (and I think the dragon example actually does show things moving in the right direction) that monsters will have time to do something that feels right for the monster while not doing something that isn't really dangerous for the PCs.

Case in point, from my own campaigns. When demons show up, especially reasonably powerful ones, I want there to be a feeling of unholy and chaotic power along with the physical threat they possess. I had my PCs run into hezrous a few times, and this is what I discovered.

1. If the PCs are too far below the hezrou, and it uses something like blasphemy, you've more or less doomed them. So if you have a non-standard size party, you can't "play up" and let them have an encounter with these guys because 8 or 4 characters at a level that is too low doesn't matter, they will just wipe them out, no fun being had by anyone.

2. If the PCs are high enough level that powers like blasphemy isn't a big deal, then suddenly it becomes more of an automatic assumption that the hezrou should slam the casters as fast as he can, or maybe summon help, rather than use any of his "chaos and evil" feeling powers.

If the hezrou is just pounding the PCs, and maybe teleporting away, he doesn't feel all that demonic, just like a mobile basher. He might as well be an ogre with a helm of teleportation for as much as he feels like a demon.

So now, looking at the dragon encounter, and applying some of the "generic" priciples of that fight to redesigning the hezrou, lets say that the PCs close on this guy to attack him. Instead of having a list of powers and having to chose between them or bashing the PCs, it works like this.

The hezrou throws its head back and speaks some words of Dark Speech as a swift action, then charges the cleric and pummels him. The dark speech weakens and damages the party, and then they close on him and tear into him with their weapons.

The hezrou can use his Dark Speech ability again two more times per encounter, but since he's been swarmed, he uses his Abyssal Burst ability, which he can only once per encounter as a standard action, to blow everyone away from him 10 feet.

Next round, the hezrou charges the cleric again, while uttering Dark Speech, and the figher manages to close on him with a charge as well, and the wizard blasts him with a force spell. He takes serious damage, and now that he is down to 50% of his hit points, his free action teleport triggers and he moves safely away.

The next round, the hezrou uses another once per encounter ability to drain hit points from the PCs to heal itself, and charges back into battle. This time the PCs manage to get him down to 25% of his hit points, and his ability to summon a creature automatically triggers, summoning a minor demon (that's mainly there to slow down the PCs and divide their attention).

The point being it feels more "demonic" being able to throw fewer abilities that are either swift actions or automatically triggered actions. No worrying about using tactics that might be suboptimal just to make it feel more "demonic" rather than just a tank with a lot of unused options.

On the other hand, I do like the idea that some creatures had the ability to do certain things. I don't care if a dragon doesn't have 20 levels of spellcasting like they do now, but I do hope that there is some way for a powerful dragon to at least use high level spells, if they want too. I don't care if they only have one or two spells that they can use in the encounter as long as they retain the ability to use powerful magic as an option. That having been said, I know having 20 levels (or even 10) of spells makes a dragon have so many options, many of which are useless to them, that they are a nightmare to figure out how to make feel "draconic."

As I said, I hope there is enough "grandfathering" to keep spellcasting monsters having some kind of spellcasting options to them, even if the options for them in a given combat are much more limited (but limited to the higher end of what they used to be able to do, and thus limited to the more useful side of things).

 

[pawsplay]

I'm still not convinced. Even a 20th-level PC can't fire off 10 different offensive spells in a single round.

Rogues can't make multiple attacks (3e)
Wizards can't cast more than one spell in a round (3e)
Spellcasters can't blast all day (Warlock)
Rogues can't sneak attack undead (Skullclan Hunter)
Constructs can't be PCs (Warforged)
PCs can't be permanently invisible (pixie)

Can't, can't, can't. You know what? If you accounted for it, I think you could build a PC that fired off ten offensive spells in a single round. Just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't be.

If you had to design a game where the base classes are fighter, rogue, cleric, and beholder, you would find a way.

 

[pawsplay]

A good example is the ability to move through walls at will. You can design a perfectly fine creature with 6 hit points who moves through walls at will and throw them up against a 1st or 2nd level party.

I disagree. You could have them fight a 1st or 2nd level party. But a low level party can't stand guard against such foes, can't capture them, can't question them, can't find them if they escape, etc. The argument would be roughly the same as saying a level 10 wizard is a CR 5 threat because he has BAB +5, fights with a dagger, has half the hit points of a fighter, etc.

Something that walks through walls is a challenge. Shadows have always been a problematic monster, because they show up right before magic weapons become commonly available... so it's magic missile, or TPK. And have you ever used shadows strategically? I've sent a gang of four shadows up against a 6th level party and nearly took out the wizard, using very simple tactics. Why? No ghost touch weapons, one wizard with magic missile, etc. Although the shadows weren't formidable in terms of hit points or damage, they could simply outmaneuver the PCs in numerous ways. A few levels later, the party encountered a half dozen shadows led by a greater shadow and annihlated them in two rounds.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Shadows have always been a problematic monster

So what level would a Shadow PC be? A monster that is incorporeal, does Str damage with a touch attack, and has only 19 hp? How do you balance something like that?

 

[JustinA]

A breath weapon.

Why?

Because if your PC is a type of creature that *has* a breath weapon how the bleeeep did it become a PC and what was your DM smoking at the time s/he allowed it?

Council of Wyrms for the win.

And I guess I don't see why you would ban a cone-effect just because it originates from the mouth. What's so inherently unbalanced about a cone-effect that you could never countenance one being used by your players?

Flying at will, teleportation at will, summoning at will, spontaneous resurrection, splitting yourself into identical copies, magic immunity.

So you don't allow a cloak of the bat in your campaign?

And so forth.

In the absence of any meaningful explanation of why you feel these abilities should never be duplicated by any spell, magic item, class, or race it's difficult to actually have a discussion on it.

The notion that "PCs can do anything a demon or fey can do" is absolutely anathema to the mood and feel of both heroic fantasy and grittier, sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Whether it's Lord of the Rings, Record of the Lodoss Wars, Conan, Elric, Final Fantasy, or the myths of Perseus and Odysseus, the villains and monsters all have strange, frightening, and/or potent abilities that the heroes do not and cannot have.

I think it's more useful to say, "...[they] have strange, frightening and/or potent abilites that the heroes do not and cannot have AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT."

But saying that, because Conan couldn't cast a magical spell, Gandalf shouldn't be allowed to do it doesn't make any sense to me.

I have a fairly open-ended taste when it comes to RPGs. My reasoning is simple: It's always easier for me to say "no" and ban something which is inappropriate for a particular campaign or game world than it is for me to rewrite the entire rule system to allow for something that the designers thought should be inappropriate for ALL campaigns.

For example, my current campaign world severely curtails teleport. This has little to do with game balance, and a lot to do with the fact that my players wanted a campaign that "felt like Lord of the Rings". Well, you can't have LOTR if you can just teleport to Mount Doom, so for that first campaign curtailed teleport.

But it would be foolish for me to say, "Gandalf was never able to teleport, so it shouldn't be in the rules."

This doesn't mean that every ability is appropriate for every level, campaign, character, world, or whatever. But I've played campaigns in which the PCs literally became gods. So, for me, it's rarely a question of, "Is ability X appropriate?" It's a question of, 'WHEN is ability X appropriate?"

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[mearls]

I wonder if those who feel that monsters =! PCs would ever play a game where that's just inherently true like Hero, BESM, Mutants & Masterminds, GURPS, etc... and if their stance is just, "For D&D...".

This is actually something we talked about at the office on Friday. In some games, it makes tons of sense for monsters/opponents to use the same exact rules as PCs.

In Mutants & Masterminds or Champions, the only difference between a hero and a villain is that the villain is a bad guy. Otherwise, both sides can have super speed, shapeshifting, mind control, or whatever. Consistency makes sense.

In D&D, the two sides aren't equivalent. Monsters are supposed to be scary, weird, and unknown. It's more like Call of Cthulhu than Champions, and I doubt anyone would claim that CoC monsters should be built in the exact same way as characters.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I think the big problem isn't that "PCs shouldn't be able to do X" as much as "Ability X is so powerful that PCs shouldn't have it until X level, but at X level this race will suck."

Take illithids. At will Mind Blast is incredibly powerful. But, they're fairly weak otherwise. At the level when an at will Mind Blast will be balanced, their defenses are too weak. If you make them lower level, then their ability is too powerful.

Level Adjustment just isn't the answer. It's always been a kludge that works sometimes. The general recommendation is, after all, always keep your LA about 1/3 to 1/2 your ECL. That makes a lot of monsters as PCs unplayable in the current system.

 

[JustinA]

You know, for a long time--a couple of years, in fact--I've been trying, on and off, to figure out a system that did just that. I even began writing it up at one point.

The problem is, it doesn't work.

Agreed. What you can do, however, is get to a system where a HD is a HD is a HD.

Step 1: No matter where a HD comes from, it should be accompanied by a set of balanced abilities. Thus, a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 wizard. And both of those are equivalent to a plain vanilla 1 HD animal or 1 HD aberration or 1 HD ooze.

Step 2: However, for flexible creature design, you need to be able to give monster's abilities which would not be balanced if they belonged to a PC with the same number of HD. One easy way to balance this is to use the wealth-by-level guidelines: Assign a value to the creature's extra abilities, and apply that as a modifier to the party's total wealth (since those abilities are resources, just like magic items are resources).

Let's use the beholder as an example. How can you possibly make it equivalent to a character of a level equal to its HD or CR? In 3.5, a beholder is CR 13. Its huge array of offensive abilities makes it far more dangerous than any 13th-level character. Heck, it's possibly more dangerous than a single 20th-level character. But if we call it a CR 20 creature, it doesn't have nearly enough HP or HD. But if we raise the HP or HD, it becomes even more dangerous...

For example, let's pretend that the 3.5 beholder's 11 aberration HD actually equated to 11 levels in a PC class. (They don't, but I want to simplify the example.) The beholder's "extra abilities" are the antimagic cone, the ability to fly, and the eyestalks.

You can go through and price every one of these abilities very precisely using the existing magic item creation rules and get a total "wealth value" for the beholder's abilities.

Why is this useful? Because it eliminates the concept of ECL/LA. A HD is a HD is a HD, and any unusual or powerful abilities a creature are factored into the party's resources just like any other resource.

This doesn't mean that you've gotten to a point where you can play a creature just because their HD is equal to the party's current level. You'll never get to that point (as you rightly point out). The wealth value of their abilities will frequently outstrip an equivalent PC's resources.

But it does mean you've dropped a layer of complexity from the system. And you've also gotten away from the wonkinees where a creature's LA/ECL makes them over-powered in the short-term and then ridiculously underpowered forever after.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net