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

[AllisterH]

Using the MM1, these are some monsters are ones I think inappropriate for PCs of any level. I'm with JustinA in that many monster abilities are "ok" at a certain level of power but there ARE creatures that we would lose if they HAD to be balanced on the assumption that they would be appropriate for PCs.

Aboleth - The trasnformation power, the enslave power and the psionics/spell like abilities at will are the major concerns.
Barghest - The Feed ability. No way, no how is that appropriate for a PC
Chaos Beast - Sure, it has a save on its corporal instability power but given that as a PC you'll be using it all the time, this is a way too strong ability.
Choker - No extra partial actions for PCs without the use of spells is appropriate.

 

[Klaus]

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.

Well, in CoC every Investigator is a Commoner 1, and the lowliest creature is CR 20...

I am actually eager to see how the monster and PC "build process" differ between them, Mike. Sorry I missed GenCon this year, it was sure fun talking to you last year!

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

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.

To say that D&D is closer to Lovecraftian horror than it is to four-color supers runs completely counter to my experience of the game in novels, in electronic games, in artwork, and in actual play.

Is this not the game often described (often, inappropriately, derided) as 'fantasy supers' because of the mythic-level powers the PCs wield?

A 20th level barbarian or fighter in 3e is, to an ordinary person, nearly as alien and inhuman in his POWER as Cthulhu, and moreso than most non-'divine' Mythos creatures. At the very least he is closer to Superman than he is to Batman. The 20th level character's mindset may be more comprehensible (or is that just a conceit we tell ourselves to be able to play him?), but his power is such that, if there weren't explicitly called-out gods with another 40 hit dice and salient divine abilities to smack him down, he could easily be considered a god by humans. He is capable of annihilating a moderately-sized army of human or goblin or orc warriors without even bothering with tactics, just by wading into their midst and reaping them by the THOUSANDS. If he uses his typical array of tactical movement options (i.e. magic items), he can probably kill an entire country by sheer martial might and battle experience.

Now consider that the 20th level barbarian or fighter is a PIKER (and much closer to human) compared to a 20th level wizard. A 20th level wizard can literally BEND REALITY TO HIS WILL. It costs some of his life energy to do it in the most potent and flexible manner possible (XP cost for wish), but he can do it, and he can do it multiple times per day. He can stop time. He can move between two points instantaneously. He can control another person's mind and force her to do something completely anathema to the core of her being, or he can invade that mind in dreams or even in the waking world, twisting, changing or even protecting its contents. He can fly (trivially) and rain fire upon the earth and wipe out an army with a word. He can assume any form he wants (and again, he can do it several times daily). He can duplicate his body and transcend death itself. He can walk a million worlds in the flesh or in spirit, perceive entities utterly alien to human comprehension - AND KILL THEM AND TAKE THEIR STUFF. He can CREATE WORLDS.

A 20th level wizard in 3e is more powerful than Superman (albeit probably not Silver Age Superman); there is nothing Cthulhu can do that a 20th level wizard can't, and there are things a 20th level wizard can do that have never been described as within Cthulhu's power. The Great Old One is older and eviler and a whole lot stronger when he manifests physically, but his powers have apparent limits that a 20th level wizard's don't. The wizard is Nyarlathotep for a few minutes a day, GREATER than Cthulhu - he just runs out of that unbelievable power quickly if he doesn't conserve it.

Somehow, the thought of one of these transcendent beings, superheroes in all but name, at the very least equivalent to Solars in Exalted, being advanced from a corporeal creature with as odd a form as a mind flayer doesn't seem all that strange to me; 20th level PCs transcend mind flayerdom almost as much as they do humanity.

 

[Remathilis]

Here is a simple example of why LA doesn't work.

Lets say I made a monster known as a Fairy Charmer. Deconstructed, these are its racial stats.

+2 Cha, -2 Wis
Medium Sized
Fey Type
30 ft move
Low Light Vision
Immune to Sleep Effects
+2 Listen, Search, Spot
Charm Person at Will.
FC: Bard.

What LA should it be? 0? (Can't, better than an elf). LA +1? (Can't, better than a Feytouched). LA +2?

Is Charm Person as will really worth the same as two wizard levels? Or two bard levels? Or two Fighter levels? It doesn't seem so, but the minute you freely use Charm Person on the town guard to get out of legal trouble, the bartender to get free drinks, the merchant to lower the price on his wares, the cleric to heal your friend for free, the orc guards to let you into the wizard's keep, the princess you want to sleep with, etc it shows itself as a huge problem.

Beyond a scant handful of humanoid races, EVERY MONSTER IS A POTENTIAL PROBLEM. Minotaur's have size/reach. Ogre's have huge strength and NA. Trolls regenerate. Harpies beguile. Medusa's have an instant-kill at will. Vampire's are immune to most normal forms of PC death. The List goes on. The only option to make them potentially playable is to a.) Remove/limit their natural powers b.) create some LA like Mechanic to make them playable at a certain point, but not useless when they get there, or c.) use a PC version to limit their distrupting powers while keeping the flavor of the monster and allowing them to develop in PC classes.

I'm betting on the last option, since it gives me what I want (I'm a minotaur) without tying me to a large XP kill in LA (or worse, racial HD) and allows my DM to keep some of his sanity.

 

[Mouseferatu]

To say that D&D is closer to Lovecraftian horror than it is to four-color supers runs completely counter to my experience of the game in novels, in electronic games, in artwork, and in actual play.

Is this not the game often described (often, inappropriately, derided) as 'fantasy supers' because of the mythic-level powers the PCs wield?

If you're describing high-level play, perhaps. But I'd argue that low-level play is not even remotely "supers," and even mid-level play doesn't qualify. It may border on mythic, but it's not until high levels that you truly reach the "superheroes in armor" category.

Thing is... If I want a superhero game, I'll play one. There's plenty of good ones out there.

As the designers have discussed, the "sweet spot" of the game, on a mechanical level--and, I think, tough I don't claim to have proof, on a conceptual level for a majority of D&Ders--is between 4 or 5 and 13 or 14.

That's before you get into the "superheroes in armor" category.

As has been said before, no game can be all things to all people. While you can play D&D as high or low magic, as grim-n-gritty or mythic, as Call of Cthulhu or Justice League, the game cannot be optimal for all of those. It has to choose a baseline.

I don't want my baseline to be supers. I don't want my baseline assuming an end result that can't any longer be called human. I don't want my baseline to assume that monsters--alien horrors, demons from hell, ancient dragons--aren't something to be viewed with awe and fear. And if that's what it takes to make the weird monsters appropriate as PCs out of the box, then I'd just as soon they not be.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

If you're describing high-level play, perhaps. But I'd argue that low-level play is not even remotely "supers," and even mid-level play doesn't qualify. It may border on mythic, but it's not until high levels that you truly reach the "superheroes in armor" category.

Thing is... If I want a superhero game, I'll play one. There's plenty of good ones out there.

Low-level play doesn't really resemble Call of Cthulhu, either, though, and mid-level play doesn't at all. D&D as it stands - and this is largely true of past editions, as well: BECMI even ends with 'Immortal' as the default assumption of where characters will end up, as power players on the godly level - never resembles Call of Cthulhu and does eventually resemble Champions. Mike said the inverse, which, as I said, runs completely contrary to my experience.

As the designers have discussed, the "sweet spot" of the game, on a mechanical level--and, I think, tough I don't claim to have proof, on a conceptual level for a majority of D&Ders--is between 4 or 5 and 13 or 14.

That's before you get into the "superheroes in armor" category.

Agreed, and I do prefer the game at these levels as well - D&D has not traditionally been a very GOOD supers system.

But a 14th level D&D character could handle any non-'divine' Mythos creature in combat, slay a shoggoth or hack a hunting horror. It might not be easy and it wouldn't be safe, but he would be able to pull it off. Even a 6th level D&D character is at the very least at the upper limits of human potential, able to take on weird and powerful monsters from fey to aberrations to even less-powerful dragons and demons. WITHIN the sweet spot, D&D PCs exceed human limits and go toe to toe with things that Call of Cthulhu PCs would be mooked by in seconds.

As has been said before, no game can be all things to all people. While you can play D&D as high or low magic, as grim-n-gritty or mythic, as Call of Cthulhu or Justice League, the game cannot be optimal for all of those. It has to choose a baseline.

I don't want my baseline to be supers. I don't want my baseline assuming an end result that can't any longer be called human. I don't want my baseline to assume that monsters--alien horrors, demons from hell, ancient dragons--aren't something to be viewed with awe and fear. And if that's what it takes to make the weird monsters appropriate as PCs out of the box, then I'd just as soon they not be.

So be it.

Obviously 4e will cater to your wishes in this regard, and that makes it completely unusable out of the box for MY wishes.

Which, ironically, have NOTHING to do with playing at the supers level. Neither of my preferences - JRPG and Sword and Sorcery - actually require the kind of really esoteric stuff we're talking about. They do, however, require something other than the baseline Tolkienisms, and this will not initially be available in full form.

Here is a simple example of why LA doesn't work.

We differ.

Lets say I made a monster known as a Fairy Charmer. Deconstructed, these are its racial stats.

+2 Cha, -2 Wis
Medium Sized
Fey Type
30 ft move
Low Light Vision
Immune to Sleep Effects
+2 Listen, Search, Spot
Charm Person at Will.
FC: Bard.

What LA should it be? 0? (Can't, better than an elf). LA +1? (Can't, better than a Feytouched). LA +2?

LA +1 or LA +0. Better than an elf, but elves are too weak anyway. It's not better than a dwarf.

Is Charm Person as will really worth the same as two wizard levels? Or two bard levels? Or two Fighter levels? It doesn't seem so, but the minute you freely use Charm Person on the town guard to get out of legal trouble, the bartender to get free drinks, the merchant to lower the price on his wares, the cleric to heal your friend for free, the orc guards to let you into the wizard's keep, the princess you want to sleep with, etc it shows itself as a huge problem.

It does? It shows itself as a useful ability - but a "huge problem?" I can count on zero hands the number of times I've seen PCs use charm person more than a couple of times per day. Most situations where it's useful, it's incredibly dangerous - because if you get caught, there's a very good chance you'll be imprisoned for it. You can charm your way out of the trouble you got yourself into, but then you'll be in WORSE trouble if you fail. You may well have a short trip to the gallows.

That's for, say, magicking a merchant or a cleric (especially good luck on the latter; plenty of LN and CN clerics will make their Will saves, fake that they didn't, and cast a cause rather than cure wounds spell. Using it to sleep with a princess? Bam - you're dead, right there, if you don't get away with it, for using magic on a member of the royal family and almost certainly causing a diplomatic nightmare in the process.

Anyway, Diplomancer (a character with a high Diplomacy skill) can do any of this in 3e more reliably (and eventually, more potently) than your theoretical fey creature. A sorcerer with charm person can effectively do it most of the time as he gets to higher levels, and can often pull it off even at 1st or 2nd level if he picks his targets carefully - certainly he can do the cleric or the merchant or the bartender or even the princess just as easily; any one of those takes all of one spell, and a sorcerer has at least four.

Finally, aside from the 'money as balancing factor' problem with the merchant and cleric examples, what's wrong with any of the situations you described cropping up in game? Free drinks? Yee gods, so WHAT?! Seducing a princess or bribing/charming a guard is risky business, but it's rather in-character for adventurers, so why not? Charming an orc guard? What, are we only supposed to kill him and take his stuff, and any other mundane or magical solution is 'problematic?'

Frankly, I see no reason charm person wouldn't BE an at-will, or at least per-encounter, spell in 4e. It's a relatively minor effect with potentially severe drawbacks.

Beyond a scant handful of humanoid races, EVERY MONSTER IS A POTENTIAL PROBLEM. Minotaur's have size/reach. Ogre's have huge strength and NA. Trolls regenerate. Harpies beguile. Medusa's have an instant-kill at will. Vampire's are immune to most normal forms of PC death. The List goes on. The only option to make them potentially playable is to a.) Remove/limit their natural powers b.) create some LA like Mechanic to make them playable at a certain point, but not useless when they get there, or c.) use a PC version to limit their distrupting powers while keeping the flavor of the monster and allowing them to develop in PC classes.

Or use racial hit dice to balance their abilities. Everything you're describing (size/reach, strength and NA, regeneration, beguilement, save or die, immunities to various forms of death) is available to PCs. None of it is game breaking as a magic item or a spell or a class feature, but Principle forfend it be a racial ability? The problem here is the tendency to treat race as a tiny package of abilities that modify the character in small ways and class as the be-all and end-all of what he can do. And again, none of your objections address the fact that ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE COMPLETELY POSSIBLE IN OTHER GAMES.

I'm betting on the last option, since it gives me what I want (I'm a minotaur) without tying me to a large XP kill in LA (or worse, racial HD) and allows my DM to keep some of his sanity.

Racial hit dice are "worse" because the LA system was a kludge imposed after the fact. They don't have to be.

I can't speak to your DM's sanity. I know MY sanity as a DM will be ill-served by, if I switch to 4e as a matter of course, having to write houserule documents as long as the ones I had for 2e before I abandoned that system.

Obviously, if this is the case, I will NOT switch to 4e. I'll study what is no doubt a brilliant bit of game design (as radically as I disagree with Mike Mearls' apparent vision of what D&D is and/or should be, I consider him the best Tactics/RPG designer and developer working today and know he and the WotC team will execute their design goals extremely well), perhaps play it if others run it, and try to sell material that expands the game back to where it was before what will be for me and the people I play with a crippling, game-killing contraction.

And, I become increasingly convinced, I'll GM a Star Wars Saga Edition-derived fantasy rulesset that can use the incredible wealth of material produced for 3e without being shackled to the clunky, overcomplicated system and its blessed bovines.

 

[bowbe]

If you listen to the latest podcast, actually, it's clear that Wizards of the Coast didn't really have "monster design guidelines" until David Noonan and the others worked them up while designing Monster Manual V.

Yeah, they had rules about monster types and what kind of BAB and save progression, skill points, and Hit Dice size they got based on that, but those rules themselves weren't based on the goal of producing an appropriate challenge at each CR - you made a monster and gauged its CR after it was built in an entirely different system.

I don't effin believe a word of that. It sounds good to bash a current system when your trying to sell $120 bucks worth of core rulebooks in a new system to a taciturn and jaded community of gamers.

Saying that they had no such rules is quite insulting to the likes of Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, and Jeff Grubb who no doubt indeed had a system. I would say most of the system mistakes that were exposed post core 3.0 were found in the many subsequent monster books. I.E. III, IV, Fiend Folio and so on, and long after the editing had gone to pot. (No Offense on the editing, I've had some gone to pot editing on plenty of my works)

I've been told that the imfamous "Writers Bible" has pretty exacting rules on how to make monsters for 3.5, though have not seen it myself.

Case

 

[bowbe]

On another note. I read that article Wyatt released with the "look into monster design".

More than a few things stood out that I find distasteful.

For a supposedly easy and streamlined system there are too freaking many actions (as noted on the part of monsters).

Immediate Actions, Free Actions, and Standard Actions are retained. Thus the dragon in the description takes an immediate action (evidently they get one per combat), a free action (aka supernatural/magical type effect), and multiple attacks per round. Thats a whole lot o' actions for 1 monster when the PCs allegedly get... 1 action.

I don't doubt when it comes out in the wash the PCs end up getting a score of free/standard/movement/and immediate actions. A far cry from the 1 attack combat that was touted at Gen Con. Definitely something that fits into the 'streamlined cinematic sequence" that they are going on about. I'm fine with that but don't sell me balogna masquerading as filet mignon.

Evidently (from continuing the read of the Wyatt article) characters still deal a wopping 250 points of damage on a non critical single attack. I quote "He charges the dragon and manages to land a solid blow, dropping the dragon down below half its hit points."

It later mentions that the dragon is "Now under 500 hp."

250 hp damage in a "solid blow" would certainly make combat quicker I guess. *chuckle* Maybe I would be happier with all the lingo and starry eyed joy of this new system if the designers would shave some of the zeros off of HP and damage. Perhaps its somantics but do bigger numbers really make a game better? I guess im still old enough that triple digit damage seems pretty cheesie unless your sufficiently high level. Triple digits beyone 100 sound Ultra cheesie.

Case

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

By lvl 5, wizards have Gaeous Form. By lvl 7, they have Dim Door. Both can be put into wands. Eventually you get Ethereal travel. ALL of it is Core. It isn't precisely the same as insubstantiality, but it is close enough. I've *done* the walk through the dungeon ethereally. I've done the "wind walk through the dungeon fast". I've done the "massive scrying fest+teleport to bypass dungeon elements". I've done the "disintegrate the wall to bypass dungeon elements". And Passwall. Thoqqua summoning. *Massive* soften earth and stone/stoneshape/rock to mud usage. Earth elemental summoning for recon.

The Out of Combat uses of insubstantiality can be mimiced (with adequate cash expenditure) by a lvl 7 party. The in combat uses of insubstantiality, aren't overpowered as you know: you are talking about sending such creatures against a very low level party (just beware the need for magic weapons).

It's possible to put that kind of thing in a wand, but not one that would be affordable by players until decently high level. Plus, it isn't INFINITE. And most players I know prefer permanent magic items over charged ones so they won't buy one give the choice. Even then, all the problem spells are above 4th level, the max level for wands.

Everytime we've had a wand that could do something cool like that, we only used it when ABSOLUTELY necessary. If we had an inkling there was another way, we wouldn't want to use charges. Plus its a balancing act, if they spend money on a wand they aren't spending it on a belt of giant strength +4.

Give them infinite ability to do it for free on the other hand, and it's over powered.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

On another note. I read that article Wyatt released with the "look into monster design".

More than a few things stood out that I find distasteful.

For a supposedly easy and streamlined system there are too freaking many actions (as noted on the part of monsters).

Evidently (from continuing the read of the Wyatt article) characters still deal a wopping 250 points of damage on a non critical single attack. I quote "He charges the dragon and manages to land a solid blow, dropping the dragon down below half its hit points."

It later mentions that the dragon is "Now under 500 hp."

250 hp damage in a "solid blow" would certainly make combat quicker I guess. *chuckle* Maybe I would be happier with all the lingo and starry eyed joy of this new system if the designers would shave some of the zeros off of HP and damage. Perhaps its somantics but do bigger numbers really make a game better? I guess im still old enough that triple digit damage seems pretty cheesie unless your sufficiently high level. Triple digits beyone 100 sound Ultra cheesie.

Case

You'll need to read around. That article NEVER says the fighter did 250 damage in one blow. It said that the fighter hit and that now the dragon was below half (500 hit points). This is th 4th or 5th round of the combat over which the party did most of the 500 damage it had already taken. This is confirmed by one of the devs in a couple of message boards where he pointed out that if the fighter did 500 points of damage in one hit he'd be beaten by the development team and kicked out of the game.

As for actions a round. No one has yet said how many actions players get. Just that in the Saga edition of Star Wars that you only get one attack per round.

However, the new design philosophy is that a party of adventurers always faces about 5 creatures at once, rarely if ever should it be just one creature. So, a dragon gets around 5 attacks per round to make up for the fact that it's designed as a solo encounter. The devs have already said that a dragon is one of the most complex monsters in the game.