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

[pemerton]

Somewhere along the line, this conversation changed from "should PCs and monsters use the same build system" to arguing whether monsters even have a build system.

I'm not saying that there won't be a build system. I'm predicting that it won't be the same as the PC build system.

The PC build system works by starting with the base of a race and class, then adding levels. At each stage this adds skills, feats, class abilities and race abilities.

As I understand it, the monster build system will work differently. A GM works out what role they want the monster to play, at what challenge level, and then (as a result of those two choices) reads the monsters stats off (whether from a table, or a formula, or a list of examples I don't know - the designers' comments suggest, however, a combination of examples and general tables).

If it doesn't tell me their Diplomacy bonus, it doesn't support me using it as a social challenge. If it doesn't tell me their Survival bonus, it doesn't support me using it as an ally to the PC's. If it's combat abilities would be unbalancing in the hands of a player, it doesn't support me using it as a consistent party member. If it doesn't give me a solid, stable baseline, it doesn't support me departing from that.

Have you seen the Dying Earth rules? Creatures in that game don't have fixed stats. A number of key creature stats are defined as N*X, where N is a constant and X is the average of the PCs' bonuses in a particular skill. The idea of this mechanic is that, whatever the skill level of a particular party of PCs, a given monster will always be sneaky, or a physical challenge or whatever. This is a different approach to monsters from traditional D&D, but it is neither arbitrary nor handwaving. It just supports a different approach to play.

My impression is that 4e is also intended at supporting a different approach to play. As I read it, there may be a centaur statted out as a brute, or an archer, in the MM, but this is just an example. It is not a generic centaur. Thus, from the fact that this centaur brute is statted out with no Diplomacy or Survival bonus it does not follow that it does not have one, or that other centaurs typically do not. The point would be that, if you want to use the centaur for one of those other roles (social, or survival, challenges) you look at a different part of the rules - the social challenge builder, for example - to work out what it's stats are, based on the level of challenge you want it to pose.

This is not handwaving in place of building. The rules tell you what numbers a given monster has if it is to play a given role at a given level of challenge.

But it is a change from typical D&D, because it does away with the notion of a "generic centaur" (just as one of the designers gave the example that there is no "generic orc", and the players won't know what an orc can do till they encounter it and see what role it is playing). It puts the onus on the GM to choose what sorts of challenges, at what level, to pose to the players. Just as, at the moment, you must choose whether or not to advance a monster or give it class levels.

You have said that you don't use non-MM creatures if you haven't prepped them. The equivalent in 4e might be saying that all MM-statted brutes default to 1st level social challenges unless you've prepared something else in advance. Or maybe the DMG will give guidance on other ways to handle a change of role, if the players decide to talk to the centaurs rather than fight them.

If, instead of the approach I am describing, you want monster-build rules that (in effect) model in-game environmental processes, so that they deliver a "generic centaur" which is the typical gameworld representative of that species, I don't think that 4e will deliver that. (Except, perhaps, for those animals or beasts which are only capably of filling one role - but even then one of the designers was talking about having a bear fill different roles by statting it up in a different way.)

 

[pemerton]

it's shortsighted. There's no reason a Beholder HAS to be as powerful as 5 other monsters. The new encounter design is 4 monsters/4 PC's. The Beholder can be as powerful as ONE PC, and not loose one bit of it's beholder-osity.

The whole point of a Beholder, in 4e (I'm inferring here from Mearls' column, and the Dragon example) is to be the functional equivalent of 5 PCs. Not just in terms of its power (eg damage delivered per round) but in terms of its actions per round.

This is not shortsighted design. It is deliberate design - it means that a fight with a Beholder will play out in a fashion quite differently to a fight with an NPC wizard, because the NPC wizard will have (approximately) one action per round, while the Beholder will have many. The single Beholder is therfore a satisfying battle for the whole party.

It would, of course, be possible to design monsters in such a way that none were able to play this sort of role. In that case, all satisfying fights would require the use of multiple monsters - multiple Beholders, multiple Dragons, etc.

There are therefore two design alternatives: make all monsters equivalent to a single character and rule out satisfying one-on-many fights; or make some monsters equivalent in power and actions to multiple characters, and rule out PC versions of those monsters. I don't see what is wrong with going the second way.

 

[pemerton]

My Summary: <snip summary of 3 Factions>

There is a 4th Faction, namely, me.

I don't think verisimilitude is under threat, because monsters and PCs will have stat blocks that look more-or-less the same: abilities, skill bonuses, save values, feats, attack bonuses, damage output, special ability descriptions. That is, verisimilitude is preserved by build output, not build process.

But I don't think that monsters have to be built in the same way as PCs. This is not, for me, an issue of simplicity (though that's good too). It's a recognition, as Mearls put it, that monsters are a different game element from PCs. They are challenges. The rules should therefore support the building of challenges.

The current monster rules build monsters like PCs, and then leave the GM to guess what sort of challenge the monster is. The 4e rules, as I understand them, will tell a GM what numbers to assign to a given monster so that it constitutes a challenge of the desired role and level.

The upshot of the new build process is that GMs should find it easier to build satisfying challenges. Another upshot is that there will be no simple way of determining what level of PC a monster is equivalent to (because the answer cannot be read off the build process like it currently is). To me, the price seems worth paying (especially because, at the moment, the reading of PC-level-equivalence is pretty rough-and-readay anyway).

 

[Mokona]

There is a 4th Faction, namely, me.

Nope, look again. There is no difference between the opinions you express and Faction B. You just take issue with my nickname for that group.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Righty-oh. And this means we're back to my point of why the monster build system and the PC build system have to be fundamentally incompatible, including the point about Beholders probably not needing 10 eye rays at once to be beholder-y.

It's because the most "fun" encounter is one where the enemy is relatively equal to the party in terms of its to hit and damage for its abilities but one that survives longer than one of the PCs would if it were being attacked by 5 monsters at once.

Also, it's more "interesting" if a monster has more interesting things to do than just attack once per round. Most combats only last 3 or 4 rounds, so the encounter has to have a variety of interesting things happen during that time. With 5 enemies, you will have a number of things happen each round. With one creature, you only get one thing happening each round. But it doesn't make sense to throw 5 beholders at a party just to fix that.

Unfortunately, there currently isn't a way to create a creature like this in 3.5e. If a creature has enough hit points to create a longer, more epic feel to the battle, its attacks are likely going to hit near 100% of the time and it will have way more feats than the party, way more skill points and will have way too high DCs for its special abilities.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Somewhere along the line, this conversation changed from "should PCs and monsters use the same build system" to arguing whether monsters even have a build system.

For the record, the designers have already said that yes, there's a system to building critters--it's not just handwaved--and yes, they're going to have things like skills.

Just in case that fact's been lost.

The blogcast seems to be slightly against you with more handwaving and advancement as an 'art' and not a science.

 

[pemerton]

There is no difference between the opinions you express and Faction B. You just take issue with my nickname for that group.

D&D 3rd edition has proven that the game bogs down when all monster situations must abide by character generation rules. We need the flexibility to use monsters on the fly and have some strategy (e.g. combat roles) amongst the bad guys in combat. In some extreme examples the needs of the monster encounter just break the player character system.

My explanation and defence of the mooted 4e monster generation rules really has nothing to do with simplicity, bogging down or doing things on the fly.

It is to do with making the mechanical generation of monsters fit their metagame purpose. This could be achieved - and it therefore be the case that the monster generation rules cannot be used to build PCs - even if the monster generation rules weren't especially simple.

 

[Kraydak]

My explanation and defence of the mooted 4e monster generation rules really has nothing to do with simplicity, bogging down or doing things on the fly.

It is to do with making the mechanical generation of monsters fit their metagame purpose. This could be achieved - and it therefore be the case that the monster generation rules cannot be used to build PCs - even if the monster generation rules weren't especially simple.

Overly focusing monster generation on metagame purposes breaks down when, as happens *extremely* often, monsters get used for other purposes. Enhanced diplomacy rules or a well placed charm spell can take nigh any creature and put it in a position where you need to know what skills it has, how it interacts with equipement or buff spells and everything else that you decided to ignore because it was *only* a combat brute that would live for 5 rounds, max. Only a very, very limited subset of monsters (oozes?) will never be forced to interact with the PC rule set. Certainly anything even vaguely humanoid will.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Overly focusing monster generation on metagame purposes breaks down when, as happens *extremely* often, monsters get used for other purposes. Enhanced diplomacy rules or a well placed charm spell can take nigh any creature and put it in a position where you need to know what skills it has, how it interacts with equipement or buff spells and everything else that you decided to ignore because it was *only* a combat brute that would live for 5 rounds, max. Only a very, very limited subset of monsters (oozes?) will never be forced to interact with the PC rule set. Certainly anything even vaguely humanoid will.

Extremely often? I don't know about that. I played in weekly campaign for almost every week since about 1993(2 weekly campaigns for a number of those years), and I've been a Triad member for Living Greyhawk for 2 years and played in LG for 6 years. I can fairly certainly say that the number of times that I've need to know those things has been maybe...2 or 3 times. We did all play monsters during one campaign, but the only reason we did so is because Savage Species came out and we wanted to try it out.

Besides, none of that really matters, they've said that creatures have ALL of that information.

The difference between player characters and monsters(from everything I've read) is that a player race will say:
+2 strength, -2 con. At 5th level they get Super Luck, and 10th level they can choose to be able to jump really high or turn into a frog.

monsters will say:
Goblin Clubfighter
Level 10 Monster
xp: 570
Str 26, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 15, Wis 12
Attacks: +14 (Club) 1d6+8
HP: 258
Saves: 20 Ref, 15 Fort, 17 Will
Skills: +14 Diplomacy, +12 Tumble, +3 Craft, +10 Concentration
Special Abilities:
Hit Hard With Club (Ex): Once per combat, he can spend a swift action to do an extra 2d6 damage with his club.
Low Light Vision (Ex)

Does that mean that Goblins have +15 strength? Nope, just that this one has that strength. Does that mean that all goblins can Hit Hard With Club? Nope, this one can though. You can run this monster through virtually any situation you want. Although, you can't figure out HOW it got 258 hitpoints or how it got +14 to hit. It just does, since it is a level 10 monster designed to be a brute, and it needs about +14 to hit so that it can hit level 10 PCs on average 60% of the time. It has 258 hit points so that it can survive about 5 rounds of attacks since the average striker at 10th level does 50 damage.

Does it compare directly to the players? Nope. It likely has WAY more hit points and some of its abiltiies will be extremely powerful for a 10th level character. Nor does it give you enough information to make a character out of the monster, but you still have all the same stats as a character.

 

[ptolemy18]

The reason monsters as players don't work as smooth as it should not isn't in the details of the monster races, it's in the fact that ECL/Level Adjustment is just broken.

Coming late to this thread, I just want to say I agree with Joe G. Kushner.

Actually, when I first heard of monsters-with-ability-scores in the proposed 3rd edition back in 2000, I was like, "That's crazy talk!" But after nearly eight years of playing and DMing D&D3e (my DM got pre-release rules from a friend at WotC), I think the way it currently works is awesome. If you don't want to take a lot of time designing a monster, it's easy to just take an existing monster and rename it and change its appearance and give it fire breath or whatever; but if you want to really tweak a creature and craft it into something new, the existing rules are great.

And plus, as a longtime player of simulation-focused RPGs (not so much GURPs, but lots of Call of Cthulhu), the game just makes more sense when monsters and PCs are made with the same basic toolkit and have meaningfully comparable statistics and skills.