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

[I'm A Banana]

My own belief is that a Beholder doesn't really need to launch off 10 beams at once. Maybe more than one per turn, but things like a Quicken Eye Beam feat, or using some of the weak eye beams as free actions, may work much better than having to roll 10 seperate touch attacks in a round, anyway.

 

[pemerton]

A Beholder pretty much needs eye rays, but firing off 10 a round? Even 3? Does it really need that?

And if it does get that, if it really does need all those actions, is it really strange to think of a PC who can do more than one thing at a time like that?

<segue to second post on this topic>

My own belief is that a Beholder doesn't really need to launch off 10 beams at once. Maybe more than one per turn, but things like a Quicken Eye Beam feat, or using some of the weak eye beams as free actions, may work much better than having to roll 10 seperate touch attacks in a round, anyway.

Judging from what Mearls said about the Beholder in his monster makeover column, and also drawing inferences from the Dragon combat example posted in the recent Design and Development column, the logic of a Beholder will be that it is the functional equivalent, in combat, of 5 more typical monsters/NPCs. This requires that the Beholder have many actions, and certainly more than a PC can have.

To allow a PC to be the functional equivalent of 5 characters would defeat the purpose of the mooted monster design principles, because then a Beholder or Dragon, to fill the same niche, would have to be the function equivalent of 5 x 5 = 25 characters - and so on up if PCs are again allowed to scale up equivalently.

An LA/ECL-style "solution", of treating a PC who is the functional equivalent of 5 5th level characters as a 10th level PC is probably not very satisfactory, for two reasons:

*Such a PC will hog time at the table;

*Such a PC, despite the time-hogging, will probably be reasonably ineffective because of the comparative weakness of each of its actions.​

This is just one example to show that monsters can vary in parameters (in this case, the number of typical characters to which they are functionally equivalent) which should not be allowed to vary for PCs, if the desired style of game play is to be preserved.

It may be, of course, that one doesn't care for that style of play, in which case one will not care for (at least this aspect of) 4e.

 

[pemerton]

if a creature who was once a monster becomes an ally and suddenly changes stats, that kicks my realism in the groin and takes it's wallet. If I want to play a drow, I want to play a drow, not some sort of pseudo-drow who almost looks kind of like the other drow in the world if you squint.

There are two cases here.

If a Mind Flayer or Drow encountered in the field becomes an ally and joins the party, then its numbers will not change - they are already known. But there will be no quick-and-easy way of assigning a PC level to that ally.

If a player wants to build a PC Mind Flayer or Drow from the get-go, then there is no guarantee that such a character will be able to built, using the level/skill/feat/talent-tree rules, in such a way as to deliver something numerically equivalent to a Mind Flayer or Drow that one might meet in the field.

Does this mean we are having to squint at pseudo-Drow? I don't think so, because (as I understand the direction that 4e is taking) there is no correct answer to the question "What are the true numbers for a Mind Flayer, or a Drow?" The numbers, for monsters/NPCs, will vary depending on the role and challenge that the GM wants the creature to pose. So your PC Drow/Mind Flayer, with its own PC-build derived numbers, is just as much a genuine creature as any of those that one would encounter in the field.

This approach to monster stats is clearly a departure from previous editions of D&D. It makes it less like Runequest (to pick an example), and other systems where the build rules are meant to reflect an in-game process of character development, and more like Tunnels and Trolls or The Dying Earth (to pick another couple of examples), where monster stats are assigned for purely metagame purposes, and the in-game reality is then read back off those stats.

I can tell how well a centaur can tie ropes right now in 3e, and, for some crazy reason, I don't really think the designers really took that into account when assigning the creature CR. The reason? Becaues it doesn't really affect the CHALLENGE of the creature. It's breadth without deapth -- gives it more stuff to do without making it really any more potent in the combat.

It's worth noting that 4e will expand the challenge concept to cover challenges other than combat ones, and in such a challenge (eg a survival or trap challenge) the Rope Use skill of a Centaur would be relevant to its CR. But that's really a tangential point.

Use Rope is kind of an absurd example, and I'm fairly confident we won't even SEE Use Rope in the next edition, but think of the Survival skill. Most of the time, it doesn't matter how a monster gets food, but if the PC's are lost in the forest and befriend an alien creature, it can be useful to know if said creature can feed themselves as well as the PC's.

<snip>

"attributing such a bonus" = "Make Stuff Up." Make Stuff Up sucks. There's no solid reason, as far as I can see, why I should have to do that

I must confess I don't see the issue. At the moment, if the hungry PCs are wandering lost through a forest, you as a GM have to determine:

*Do they meet anyone?

*If so, is it a centaur?

*If so, is it a centaur Barbarian, Druid or Ranger who might be able to help them survive?​

In 4e you have to answer the same questions. So there is no more or less making up of stuff. If you don't want to decide, and instead prefer to use random tables that reflect the in-game likelihood of encountering creatures, including centaur Rangers of a given skill level, you will be able to use the same tables in 4e.

But if I can't take a centaur and not only say how well it peppers PC's with arrows, but also how well it will serve as a tutor for the party's Barbarian, then the 4e team, for all it's efforts, is not designing the monster for it's use. They're designing it for combat and combat alone -- a shallow design goal that does not speak to how monsters are truly used in at least MY campaign.

In 3e you can only tell how good a tutor the Centaur will be once you have decided what HD the Centaur has (and therefore what extra skill points and feats it may have acquired through advancement), what class levels it has (and therefore what extra skill points, feats and class abilities it may have acquired) and what magic items it has. The GM has to make those decisions, and together they determine the outcome to the question posed.

In 4e the GM will have to make a different set of decisions: What numerical bonuses do I want this creature to have? Once those bonuses are assigned, the question of tutoring utility will be answered. If you don't want to choose, use the same random determination process you are using at present.

I don't see any difference in outcome here between 3e and 4e, nor in the requirement for decisions to be made. Only the process is different - in 3e the one set of decisions (HD, class levels, etc) determines all the numbers by way of a single build process, whereas in 4e there is no comparable "build process" - there's just the assignment of numbers - but there are multiple decisions: is this an "archer" Centaur, a "survival" Centaur, a "brute" Centaur, or is it two or three of these?

I don't like just deciding how something is. I like arriving at my conclusions through a logical process of extrapolation (some of that is my improv-heavy DM style speaking, where logic leaps along a path, rather than springing fully formed to my mind unbidden).

Sure. But what precludes you extrapolating the Survival skill of a Centaur from your knowledge of Centaurs in your gameworld? Or your knowledge of this particular Centaur.

the centaur can be easily designed to fill the role of "brute" or "archer" in combat, as well as the role of "protector of untouched wilderness" in the world, and the role of "potential ally for the party druid" for the PC's (for instance).

<snip>

Centaurs are more than just antagonists. They're spirits of hedonism. They're horrible underworld terrors. They're evocative of a Mediterranean atmosphere, and conjure images of Hercules and Poseidon. They're creatures of the sea, they're trainers of heroes. They're sylvan defenders of the forest. They're monstrous savage brutes from distant lands.

And that's just the standard roles that they *should* be designed to fill.

Some of those roles are "functional", in terms of the sort of game mechanical sub-system they relate to: "brute" and "archer" are both combat roles, for example, while "wilderness protector" suggests a role in either survival or social challenges, and "potential ally" and "trainer of heroies" both suggest a social challenge role.

Others of those roles are broadly "flavour" roles which can overlap with any given functional role: "spirit of hedonism", "underworld terror", "monstrous brute from a distant land", etc.

There's no reason to suppose that the game won't support centaurs filling all those various functional roles, and nor to suppose that it will preclude you from using one or more of the flavour roles.

 

[Mokona]

[In D&D] 4e there is no comparable "build process" - there's just the assignment of numbers - but there are multiple decisions: is this an "archer" Centaur, a "survival" Centaur, a "brute" Centaur, or is it two or three of these?

As I read your comment you seem to imply a random (or arbitrary) assignment of numbers for monsters. I want to clarify that I don't think we know that yet. It seems possible to me that standard monsters, which fill one role at a time, will be semi-template. Perhaps we have a Stat Block for three different generic brutes (Strong, Fast, and Tough) at each Challenge Level. The "monster" choice would only provide minor changes to the generic Stat Block plus weapons and special abilities. In this world only monsters that are a party unto themselves (Dragons, Beholders, &c) would not use the role/template build model.

Mokona's lessons for the 4th edition of the core Monster Manual:

1. I don't want to wait years for Savage Species or the complete guidebook to humanoids before I can play a character version of a monster. At least not for monsters I already own.

2. Let's face it...some of the Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 monsters with a level adjustment weren't actually playable as characters. The cost of playing that monster made it impossible to be an effective member of a party (unless the entire party was similarly penalized) as that creature. This led to numerous solutions such as buyoff, monster classes, &c.

3. If it has at least two hands with opposable thumbs, a speed of 4+ squares, intellect, free will/choice, and its size is Large or smaller - then the majority of players will consider it a possible character. This includes angels, demons, half-breeds, ogres, kobolds, and mind flayers.

4. If it's the size of a house, a chaos beast, five-characters-in-one, or something equally silly then most players will agree that it needs a major overhaul before it can be their character.

5. Some abilities are great on one side of the table (under the Dungeon Master's control and used in service of the story) but terrible when used at will by players. The Wish spell-like ability of the Solar Angel falls in this group.

6. Have your cake and eat it too. Wizards of the Coast R&D should require all monster submissions that meat certain physical descriptions to include a player character sidebar. The design guidelines should be flexible enough to allow great monsters but also generate a separate player version as well. Currently LA creatures already get a second stat block for the PC adjustments so this isn't new.

7. All humanoids and near-humanoids (i.e. mind flayers) should have a 1 Hit Die playable version so they can be advanced using class levels just like an Elf, Dwarf, or Human.

8. It should be possible to get the super powers of your monster race by an appropriate level where it's balanced but not necessarily at first level.

9. It would be really cool for a monster that fits neatly in to a party role (striker, defender, leader, &c) to get it's own 1-30 level class specific to the creature. These could be rare but I so love the Elf and Dwarf class from the old box set. The playable version of the monster should still be able to be a wizard or fighter in case the player wants it as a character to fill a different party role.

10. Why ten? Because the 10 best ideas sounds better than a Top 9.

So if Wizards of the Coast gives us stripped down monsters with independently designed character versions we can all stop fighting. Besides, this stretches out the content for the monster books by increasing the page count for each creautre so we can be at MM V in five years.

 

[pemerton]

you seem to imply a random (or arbitrary) assignment of numbers for monsters.

Not arbitrary or random. Determined by the GM so that the monster can play the encounter role (brute, archer, trap, social etc) that the GM wants it to play, at the level of challenge that the GM wants to set.

It seems possible to me that standard monsters, which fill one role at a time, will be semi-template. Perhaps we have a Stat Block for three different generic brutes (Strong, Fast, and Tough) at each Challenge Level. The "monster" choice would only provide minor changes to the generic Stat Block plus weapons and special abilities.

This sounds highly plausible to me. The GM wants a centaur brute of challenge level 5: look at the basic Brute5 stat block, apply the centaur mods and off we go!

Can the centaur also teach the barbarian Survival skill? At this point the GM needs to decide whether or not the centaur has Survival, and if so at what level. How is this decided? The GM makes it up. Or the GM rolls on a random table (this is basically how 1st ed handles these questions about encounters). Or the GM requires the barbarian's player to spend a Fate Point. Or whatever. My only point is that the answer to this question will not be dictated by any method of building centaur stats. A creature's stats will be assigned at the metagame level to fill the in-game need; there will not be generic stats for a centaur from which one can work out, using in-game logic, whether or not it fills this in-game need.

It should be possible to get the super powers of your monster race by an appropriate level where it's balanced but not necessarily at first level.

For the reasons I gave I don't think this will work. If one of the monster's super powers is to be the functional equivalent of multiple ordinary characters, then that power is simply not a viable one to be possess by a PC (who is, by definition, a single ordinary character).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Judging from what Mearls said about the Beholder in his monster makeover column, and also drawing inferences from the Dragon combat example posted in the recent Design and Development column, the logic of a Beholder will be that it is the functional equivalent, in combat, of 5 more typical monsters/NPCs. This requires that the Beholder have many actions, and certainly more than a PC can have.

To allow a PC to be the functional equivalent of 5 characters would defeat the purpose of the mooted monster design principles,

That's exactly why this wouldn't work in 3e, but 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.

This is just one example to show that monsters can vary in parameters (in this case, the number of typical characters to which they are functionally equivalent) which should not be allowed to vary for PCs, if the desired style of game play is to be preserved.

It may be, of course, that one doesn't care for that style of play, in which case one will not care for (at least this aspect of) 4e.

There's no reason for a Beholder to be as powerful as 5 other PC's in the new edition, so your reason falls flat: if the beholder is designed to be one monster among 4 in an encounter, it can be designed to be one monster among 4 in a PC party of the same level.

If a Mind Flayer or Drow encountered in the field becomes an ally and joins the party, then its numbers will not change - they are already known. But there will be no quick-and-easy way of assigning a PC level to that ally.

If a player wants to build a PC Mind Flayer or Drow from the get-go, then there is no guarantee that such a character will be able to built, using the level/skill/feat/talent-tree rules, in such a way as to deliver something numerically equivalent to a Mind Flayer or Drow that one might meet in the field.

That's a problem, because it shouldn't be hard to do. The designers have an opportunity to address that concern NOW that they won't have again until 5e.

Does this mean we are having to squint at pseudo-Drow? I don't think so, because (as I understand the direction that 4e is taking) there is no correct answer to the question "What are the true numbers for a Mind Flayer, or a Drow?" The numbers, for monsters/NPCs, will vary depending on the role and challenge that the GM wants the creature to pose. So your PC Drow/Mind Flayer, with its own PC-build derived numbers, is just as much a genuine creature as any of those that one would encounter in the field.

If the drow fighter in the party and the drow fighter the party is facing have dissimilar and incompatible abilities, my realism is curb-stomped. If the abilities are similar and compatible, there should be no reason the PC can't get it if the NPC can.

At the moment, if the hungry PCs are wandering lost through a forest, you as a GM have to determine:

*Do they meet anyone?

*If so, is it a centaur?

*If so, is it a centaur Barbarian, Druid or Ranger who might be able to help them survive?

In 4e you have to answer the same questions. So there is no more or less making up of stuff. If you don't want to decide, and instead prefer to use random tables that reflect the in-game likelihood of encountering creatures, including centaur Rangers of a given skill level, you will be able to use the same tables in 4e.

In 3e, the answers to those questions are a few die rolls away: do they meet anyone? Roll encounter chance. Is it a centaur? Roll on the encounter table. Is it exceptional? Not if I don't already have the stats. Can it help them survive? It has a Wisdom bonus, and it has listed skills, let's roll a check for it.

I don't really have to make anything up at the table there (unless you count adding class levels to the centaur, which, again, I wouldn't do unless I had set it up beforehand). I just have to let my brain leap from logical point to logical point and let random tables fill in the gaps.

In 4e, if I have to arbitrarily decide how well a given centaur can find edible food for the party, I will pretty much scrap the monster manual as "not designed for my uses."

In 3e you can only tell how good a tutor the Centaur will be once you have decided what HD the Centaur has (and therefore what extra skill points and feats it may have acquired through advancement), what class levels it has (and therefore what extra skill points, feats and class abilities it may have acquired) and what magic items it has. The GM has to make those decisions, and together they determine the outcome to the question posed.

There's a centaur in the MM, y'know. And treasure generation methods to find out what kind of stuff it might have. All the descisions there are already made, a few die rolls away at most, and unless I do some extra work for a specific purpose, there's nothing left for me to invent about it's stats. Which is perfect, because then I can concentrate on running the encounter and not pondering the mysteries of centaur skill points.

In 4e the GM will have to make a different set of decisions: What numerical bonuses do I want this creature to have? Once those bonuses are assigned, the question of tutoring utility will be answered. If you don't want to choose, use the same random determination process you are using at present.

So what am I paying these guys for, if not stats? Fluff? Artwork? Why should I have to decide what bonuses the creature has when, presumably, the purpose of the MM is to have that work already done for me?

And my method of "random determination" isn't at all. I look at the stat block, and I say "Well, looks like the typical centaur isn't that good a teacher. Maybe Chiron is an Expert with some ranks in Profession (Teacher). Looks like I may have to do a little pre-prep for this game." Or I say "Well, they're pretty wise, so maybe they can give the PC's some aid."

I have a starting point and I divert from it for variety. If 4e doesn't give me a starting point, 4e's monster design sucks for my purposes.

Sure. But what precludes you extrapolating the Survival skill of a Centaur from your knowledge of Centaurs in your gameworld? Or your knowledge of this particular Centaur.

Again, I'm an improv-heavy DM. I don't spend much, if any time pondering the mysteries of centaur survival outside of the times it comes up at the table, and when it comes up at the table, I want to have an answer RIGHT THERE, so the game can keep plugging along. That particular Centaur may not have appeared before I randomly rolled him on an encounter table, or before I had a character in a nearby town mention him (which I didn't anticipate doing) or before the party druid, just five minutes ago, mentioned how he would like to train under a truly wild creature, or before I chose some arbitrary creature of the appropriate CR...in fact, Centaurs may not have existed in the world at all before the party encounters them.

So my knowledge of centaurs in the world, and of that particular centaur, may not be any deeper than the PC's knowledge at the moment, and may, in fact, be more shallow. I like DMing that way -- it keeps me on my toes and keeps nearly all of my work directly useful. But in order to DM that way, I need a very solid baseline that I can pull from, to keep things fair and to ensure verisimilitude. I need monsters that are more than just XP gristle. I need monsters that are part and parcel of the world I throw them into, down to whatever probably-irrelevant detail that I need to render them complete.

Some of those roles are "functional", in terms of the sort of game mechanical sub-system they relate to: "brute" and "archer" are both combat roles, for example, while "wilderness protector" suggests a role in either survival or social challenges, and "potential ally" and "trainer of heroies" both suggest a social challenge role.

Others of those roles are broadly "flavour" roles which can overlap with any given functional role: "spirit of hedonism", "underworld terror", "monstrous brute from a distant land", etc.

There's no reason to suppose that the game won't support centaurs filling all those various functional roles, and nor to suppose that it will preclude you from using one or more of the flavour roles.

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.

If things are excepted because they're "not relevant," and if monsters are designed solely for combat, without considering their game-world and player-character usefulness, there's no reason to believe that Wizards really wants me to play 4e, because they're not going to be designing for what I need at a game table.

 

[Mouseferatu]

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.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

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.

 

[Jhaelen]

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.

Ahh, I beg to differ.
There's lots of reasons why a beholder should be the equivalent of 5 PCs. There are creatures who are solitary by nature.

To give a more obvious example: The Tarrasque is rarely encountered in groups.
A slightly less obvious example that's already 'official': An ancient red dragon.

Personally, I like the concept of tough, BBEG-type monsters to get more actions than pcs or social monsters.
Other games have been doing that for ages; take Horrors (cmp. Lovecraftian Mythos creatures) in the Earthdawn system:

They get a number of spellcasting actions and a number of attack actions to make sure they're able to compete with a group of 6-8 pcs (the default party size in Earthdawn). They also get 'Karma Dice' to boost any of their rolls.

 

[Mokona]

If one of the monster's super powers is to be the functional equivalent of multiple ordinary characters, then that power is simply not a viable one to be possess by a PC (who is, by definition, a single ordinary character).

See Mokona's Rule #4 - "If it's the size of a house, a chaos beast, five-characters-in-one, or something equally silly then most players will agree that it needs a major overhaul before it can be their character." This means I agree that some capstone monsters like dragons should be treated differently.

My Summary:

Faction A - "There can be only One [system]!"

The system lacks verisimilitude if all creatures aren't built as characters; it doesn't matter if they're player characters, monster characters, or non-player characters. Irrelevant abilities provide inspiration for Dungeon Masters and quirks for otherwise pin cushion creatures.​

Faction B - "K.I.S.S. 4 M.E. (Keep It Simple, Silly, for Monsters Especially)"

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.​

Faction C - "You can please everyone, some of the time"

Both factions A and B can have their way if only Wizards of the Coast will require most monsters to have two stats. One Combat Block of encounter rules and another character build system sidebar. This is more work for R&D but we’re paying them for their efforts, aren’t we!​