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

[hong]

Monster Combat isn't 99% of my game, though. It's maybe 25-75% depending upon what the party's doing at the moment and where their focus lies. When I'm not hurling XP gristle at 'em, the monsters serve as background population, NPC's, advisers, party members, social rivals, contacts, trainers, etc.: basically as a role in the world and in the party. Designing them for combat is an important goal, probably even THE most important goal, but to make it basically the only goal is to totally miss the boat on the other reasons monsters exist.

So Make It Up. Think of it not as a problem, but an opportunity to get into some serious design hacking.

Designing monsters for only one purpose is narrow minded design. If Beholders only exist to challenge a party as a boss monster, the designers are artificially limiting what I should be able to do with a Beholder (which should include "playing one as a PC" IMO).

The designers are not limiting what you can do in the slightest. You can always Make It Up.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

So Make It Up. Think of it not as a problem, but an opportunity to get into some serious design hacking.

Wheee! I not only get to PAY MONEY for incomplete material, I also get to TAKE TIME AWAY FROM MAKING MORE so I can complete it? What next? Do I get to pay a subscription, not to have more content delivered, but to have it actually, physically removed from my books?

What is the point of buying the book (which, among other things, is claimed to SAVE time) if I end up having to do 'serious design hacking?' I don't have to do 'serious design hacking' to bring the awesome in existing, well-designed systems. I have to buy a book and use its rules to do what I want to do.

If I have to do that ON THE FLY, then it's even worse - now I'm wasting my player's time as well as my own. If we assume even an average hourly wage of $8, that means a single hour taken to do this during a session, or, heck, a campaign, would run us $72. We could collectively buy copies of Mutants and Masterminds and Spirit of the Century and have a pair of complete games for the money spent doing 'serious design hacking' for just an hour over the course of a campaign.

The designers are not limiting what you can do in the slightest. You can always Make It Up.

The designers are, however, claiming it as a time saving measure.

 

[hong]

What is the point of buying the book (which, among other things, is claimed to SAVE time) if I end up having to do 'serious design hacking?'

To play the game. As opposed to building worlds. If building worlds is in fact your primary goal in buying RPG books, then perhaps D&D 4E indeed is not for you, given its emphatic shift from HEROization to Iron Heroization.

I don't have to do 'serious design hacking' to bring the awesome in existing, well-designed systems. I have to buy a book and use its rules to do what I want to do.

I do (or did) serious design hacking all the time. Never again.

The designers are, however, claiming it as a time saving measure.

And as someone who habitually rolls his own monsters, it certainly is.

 

[pemerton]

Monsters still have all the stats they did before(they still have feats, saves, skills, etc).

They will have the sams sorts of stats, yes. But I'm not sure they will have complete or total stats in the way that PCs do.

The basic idea is that monsters will be designed for what, 99% of the time, they will be doing. The DM is supposed to make stuff up (with certain guidelines in mind) the other 1% of the time, instead of eating up prep time to account for it. If the DM cannot make stuff up 1% of the time, they should not be DMing.

That's not too far from what I've been saying. It suggests that in some cases the GM has to add to the stat block on the fly (eg by working it out as a social rather than a combat challenge).

DMs making stuff up can have problematic results, causes frequent inconsistent rulings, and, hugely important, eats into *game time*.

If the "making up" is deciding, on the spot, whether the orc in front of you is a skilled speaker or not, or whether his chain armour is +1 magic or +1 quality, then there is no danger of inconsistent rulings. Because these are not rulings, they are encounter design decisions.

More complete rules eats into prep time ONLY if DMs are designing their own monsters (in which case more complete rule designs have a distinct chance of saving time). MM monsters, being stated up by other people, cost a DM the same regardless of design principles

This claim has already been shown to be false - for example, using spell like abilities for monster abilities eats into playing time by necessitating cross-referencing.

Once you have decided to do a "full stat" monster design paradigm, tying it into the PC generation system costs little, and promises huge gains (monster PCs, long lived monster NPCs, templates/half breeds that work etc...).

This is obviously not true.

First, a monster can have full stats but still be generated in a very different manner from a PC, because its generation system is designed to serve a different metagame purpose (of generating a challenge, rather than a player vehicle).

Second, there would be obvious costs of going this way, such as ruling out Beholders and other creatures which will be the functional equivalent (in terms of useful actions available) to several ordinary characters.

Third, it's not obvious what the gains are. How is the game better off because multi-function monsters are excluded, and every opponent of the PCs is (in effect) a PC under the GM's control? There are other sorts of challenges which players cannot play in D&D - walls, for example, or poison needle traps, or the positive material plane, to name some environmental ones. Why is it important that every personal challenge (monster or NPC) be, in effect, a PC under the GM's control?

If Beholders only exist to challenge a party as a boss monster, the designers are artificially limiting what I should be able to do with a Beholder (which should include "playing one as a PC" IMO).

And, conversely, if Beholders were designed so as to be playable as PCs (and therefore to be limited to PC parameters of actions per round) than the designers would be (artificially? I'm not sure what that means here) limiting what I can do with that Beholder. In particular, they would be preventing me from using it as 4e will allow me to use it, namely, as the functional equivalent of ordinary characters.

The question is, which is the better set of limits? I think the designers are right to think building monsters to work well as monsters is a higher design priority than building monsters to work well as PCs.

If building worlds is in fact your primary goal in buying RPG books, then perhaps D&D 4E indeed is not for you, given its emphatic shift from HEROization to Iron Heroization.

Agreed.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Monster Combat isn't 99% of my game, though. It's maybe 25-75% depending upon what the party's doing at the moment and where their focus lies. When I'm not hurling XP gristle at 'em, the monsters serve as background population, NPC's, advisers, party members, social rivals, contacts, trainers, etc.: basically as a role in the world and in the party. Designing them for combat is an important goal, probably even THE most important goal, but to make it basically the only goal is to totally miss the boat on the other reasons monsters exist.



If that is true, I have to wonder why.

Or, perhaps more relevantly, why you just can't use a "higher level" beholder or throw a beholder at a lower level party to gain the BBEG challenge you seek. Or even have some sort of template or guidelines for when you want to use a monster (any monster) as a solitary boss.

Designing monsters for only one purpose is narrow minded design. If Beholders only exist to challenge a party as a boss monster, the designers are artificially limiting what I should be able to do with a Beholder (which should include "playing one as a PC" IMO).

I don't believe for a second that you need to sacrifice combat awesomeness in order to maintain PC or simple "world element" balance when you're starting from scratch like 4e is.

They are doing that in D&D 3.x, and it works sometimes, and sometimes not.
The Beholder is not by any means a playable creature. It's 10 eye rays will ramp up its Level Adjustment so high that you could as well say you can't play the creature. D&D 4 will explicitly tell you and not bother giving you guidelines to do it differently. If you want a beholder that serves as a minion, you either make up the statistics yourself or they are provided by the MM.

Ever looked at how many attacks a Dragon has per rounds, and at what attack bonuses they are? A Dragon _is_ the functional equivalent of 4-5 characters - at least if he gets a full round attack. If not, this might change (but he has area attacks and spells to make up for that). And that can be a problem, because it can turn into a glass jaw syndrom (it doesn't in the case of the dragon because dragons have little ways how you could exploit their "weaknesses" - high saves, great size, spell resistance, ability to fly)
It's also next to impossible to play a dragon, because HD and LA will jump its ECL into the high level to epic level region.

--
A lot of these problems can also be solved by assuming that there are some standard guidelines for monsters:
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster has a skill modifier equal to one half its level (plus its ability modifier)
- Unless noted otherwise, a monsters attack deals bludgeoning damage according to size seen on the following table. [...] A game master may decide that a specific creature might deal slashing or piercing damage instead. Apply the creatures strength modifier to the attack as with a one-handed weapon. Use this damage if no other natural weapon is provided and the monster is disarmed of its usual weapon.
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster attacks bonus is equal to its level + its relevant ability modifier. Use this modifier if the monster has been disarmed of a weapon or uses a weapon not listed in its description.
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster statistics do not include any magical item or spell based modifiers.
These are the most obvious ones, but others might add:
- Unless noted otherwise, a monsters armor class against touch attacks is reduced by 5 points, and a monsters armor class when flat-footed is also reduced by 5 points. These modifiers stack.

Using such guidelines, all interaction with the characters is easy to adjudicate. You don't have to write anything in the stat block.

 

[pemerton]

A lot of these problems can also be solved by assuming that there are some standard guidelines for monsters:

<snip example guidelines>

Using such guidelines, all interaction with the characters is easy to adjudicate. You don't have to write anything in the stat block.

I agree. This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I suggested the possibility of "default" settings when the Brute suddenly becomes a player in a social challenge.

 

[Kraydak]

They are doing that in D&D 3.x, and it works sometimes, and sometimes not.
The Beholder is not by any means a playable creature. It's 10 eye rays will ramp up its Level Adjustment so high that you could as well say you can't play the creature. D&D 4 will explicitly tell you and not bother giving you guidelines to do it differently. If you want a beholder that serves as a minion, you either make up the statistics yourself or they are provided by the MM.

The beholder is almost Ogre Magi kin. It has the defense of an 11 HD monsters (way lower than an 11th lvl PC's) but the offence of a 13-14th lvl wizard. This split is what causes the problems. Add several (6?) HD to a beholder and the LA starts to melt away (and the CR rises some, the offense/defense split evens out and the beholder becomes more fun as a monster).

A lot of these problems can also be solved by assuming that there are some standard guidelines for monsters:
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster has a skill modifier equal to one half its level (plus its ability modifier)
- Unless noted otherwise, a monsters attack deals bludgeoning damage according to size seen on the following table. [...] A game master may decide that a specific creature might deal slashing or piercing damage instead. Apply the creatures strength modifier to the attack as with a one-handed weapon. Use this damage if no other natural weapon is provided and the monster is disarmed of its usual weapon.
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster attacks bonus is equal to its level + its relevant ability modifier. Use this modifier if the monster has been disarmed of a weapon or uses a weapon not listed in its description.
- Unless noted otherwise, a monster statistics do not include any magical item or spell based modifiers.
These are the most obvious ones, but others might add:
- Unless noted otherwise, a monsters armor class against touch attacks is reduced by 5 points, and a monsters armor class when flat-footed is also reduced by 5 points. These modifiers stack.

Using such guidelines, all interaction with the characters is easy to adjudicate. You don't have to write anything in the stat block.

So tigers have Forgery 4 and barbaric 10 HD goblins have Craft: Calligraphy 5. All monsters have full BaB and are proficient with all weapons (including exotics). Iron golems have dex scores of 20 and naked goblins are wearing chain mail. Yup, you don't have to write things in a stat block if you are aiming for comedy or are removing interaction options.

Is the above fixable by adding stuff to a stat block? Of course, easily. Mind, if you add it, why not do it right in the first place?

Of course magic bonuses should be written up in the stat block. There are "brute" designs for whom magic bonuses are central though, so we will need an attack bonus breakdown in the stat block. And an armor bonus break down in the stat block, etc...

 

[D.Shaffer]

I suspect that much of the simplification of the stat line is a result of both the rules itself (See how skills are being handled now) with some compacting of common traits into a main list.

The big change is in how those stats are going to determined. They will not be decided using the same rules as PCs, but they are still being determined using consistant rules. So long as we have the formulas/tables/whatever for it, (And I have little reason to doubt they'll not include ithem), we know all the information needed for adjusting them and determining new values for different roles.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The beholder is almost Ogre Magi kin. It has the defense of an 11 HD monsters (way lower than an 11th lvl PC's) but the offence of a 13-14th lvl wizard. This split is what causes the problems. Add several (6?) HD to a beholder and the LA starts to melt away (and the CR rises some, the offense/defense split evens out and the beholder becomes more fun as a monster).

Yes, that's what they will probably do in D&D 4. BUT: Adding HD doesn't change the LA. Maybe changing it to Undead HD could, but a monster that shots up to 6+ magic rays with powerful spells and with a Antimagic Aura cannot have a low LA. It is so totally more powerful in the "spellcasting/ranged" combat department than any PC that you just can't do it.

So tigers have Forgery 4 and barbaric 10 HD goblins have Craft: Calligraphy 5.

Yes and no. Forgery cannot be used untrained, so it doesn't matter that they have a modifier in the skill. (And the modifier would be far lower, if animals keep their Intelligence of 1-2). To have a specific subset of a Craft skill, you must be trained in it, meaning that the Goblin just has Craft (Everything) +5, which they typically use to build crude traps or cave paintings of their heroic deeds in killing adventurers that try to mock their cave paintings or their inability to read and write (or just wanted to kill them and loot their stuff).

All monsters have full BaB and are proficient with all weapons (including exotics).

Oh, I might have been missing a paragraph for that case.
But I think, why bother: Yes, they are proficient with all weapons. Because how likely is it that they will end up with an exotic weapon if it is not already in their stat block? Oh, sure, maybe the PCs give them the stupid two-bladed sword nobody wanted to use then. Well, if you don't like your NPC using it, let him say he doesn't want it and they better give him his own weapon back!

Iron golems have dex scores of 20

Maybe. But all creature that are flat-footed take at least a -5 penalty to defense. (But actually, if that was not the mechanic, the value might still be written into the stat block, and wouldn't make it any worse, because you just add 2 words and 2 numbers to the AC line.)

and naked goblins are wearing chain mail.
[/QUTE]
No. This naked Super Goblin Brute does obviously have natural armor. (have you looked at the HD and attack bonus of that damn Goblin?) Didn't I write that in the guidelines above or did I just think about writing that down?

Yup, you don't have to write things in a stat block if you are aiming for comedy or are removing interaction options.

Is the above fixable by adding stuff to a stat block? Of course, easily. Mind, if you add it, why not do it right in the first place?

Or just have written down a few more complete "general guidelines" as the ones I have been "typing from my hip"?

Of course magic bonuses should be written up in the stat block. There are "brute" designs for whom magic bonuses are central though, so we will need an attack bonus breakdown in the stat block. And an armor bonus break down in the stat block, etc...

Brute designs requiring macic bonuses will not be common in D&D. In fact, for most D&D monsters, they aren't today. Giants rely on their extraordinary strength and HD to hit their enemies, not on magical mumbo-jumbo. The only exceptions that I clearly remember are some demons/devils and celestials. Oh, and the Unicorn.

It's a kind of "opt-in" policy - if it is important or different for the monster, it will be in there. But if it is not, it is not important.

 

[Kraydak]

I think some of our arguement is drifting out to sea due to a lack of a solid 4e preview anchor. Please allow me to try and state my full position.

The preview information suggests that (for brutes, maybe strikers, the suggestion that they tried to do the easy things, namely raw stats, before working out the hard things, namely cool abilities first is somewhat disheartening) they are putting in a set of look-up tables with the raw stats (and, potentially, special abilities). This has a few problems.

Firstly, if you want to allow for varied tactics (such as disarm, charm, dispell, calm emotions), you need to know the provenance of the stats (the bonus types). Of course, different monsters will have different bonus types. An animal will have raw, relatively untyped stats (a very few might get a morale bonus at low hp). Humanoids however, even restricting one to the brute role, will have many different types, in different amound based on concept. The barbaric humanoid should have different bonus types (and different stats) than a skilled civilized fighter who in turn should have different stats (and especially abilities) than an exotic weaponsmaster who in turn will have different bonus types than a mystical fey warrior. Because typed bonuses are less valuable (stacking difficulties, ability to target them directly), and some types carry penalties (heavy armor slows one down), the stat totals should not be the same.

This means that, instead of 1 look up table for brutes, you need several. Effectively, each brute subtype is becoming its own class. If you don't have seperate lookup tables, your goblin berserker plays the same as the skilled warrior, who plays the same as the fey knight (I consider this tradeoff to be far too expensive, and I fear it is the direction WotC is heading).

Now, if each brute subtype is effectively becoming its own class, why not MAKE IT A CLASS. In practice, using D20 modern terminology because I don't have SWSE, each *type* would become a Basic Class, with a talent tree for each Role+Style (brute being a role, skilled warrior in plate being a style). The Type classes would be perfect DI information (too long for the print MM). This would make things like monsters as PCs (duh) and half-breeding (half dragon template would become a varying number of Dragon Type HD, based on how draconic you want the result to be) easy. In fact, the whole abomination that is templates (which, like anything that involves a non-zero LA, works poorly) could be removed entirely. In terms of design difficulty, you replace reading off a line on a table with a BaB/Saves progressions and 1 talent tree taken in the obvious order (allow only one order for simplicity's sake). Somewhat more work? Maybe, albiet marginally. If you want something other than a *pure* brute though, it becomes less work.

All of this largely independant of stat block layout, where you have to balance simplicity of layout (difficulty in finding the information you want) with complexity of stats (having the information you need included in the stat block), although have a design procedure that produces all the information you'll want is needed. I certainly agree with people who say that special abilities should be written out in the stat block, but that has little bearing on the design procedure of the monster/ability.

(As a side note, HD does change LA. A 2nd lvl SLA on the 20HD monster will affect the LA not at all, while it will have a huge effect on the LA for a 1HD monster. This obviously causes problems if you level out of the range the LA was designed for. As the wotc optimization board long ago realized, most printed LAs are *way* out of whack. Going through the MM and changing HD until well balanced LAs became 0 would go a long way towards avoiding Ogre Magi.)