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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8273092" data-attributes="member: 87792">Bwuh? In my copy of Monster Vault there are seven different types of orc. There weren't "just orcs", there were entire communities and social structures of them. In 5e <a href="https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Orc#content" target="_blank">your basic orc</a> has 15hp and is far more than a match for commoners. Meanwhile your basic orc in 4e isn't the level 3 "Battletested Orc" - it's a level 4 minion "Orc Savage". Meanwhile the very first orc presented in the Monster Manual 1 is the level 4 minion "orc drudge". And there was explicitly presented for PCs to laugh at the level 9 minion "orc warrior"A level 4 minion is low level in 4e. If you personally houseruled that there was no such thing as a low level orc in 4e then that's fine - and it's an interesting piece of worldbuilding by you. But it's not particularly relevant as a critique of 4e that you houseruled basic monsters in the monster manual out of existence. Here 5e is an outlier. An AD&D human had a THAC0 of 20 to a hill giant's AC of 3; 17 to hit. A 3.5 Human guard was rolling probably at +1 to hit against a hill giant's AC of 20; 19 to hit. A 4e human Town Guard has +8 to hit vs a hill giant's AC of 25; 17 to hit. The reason the chance to hit is so low in all editions other than fifth is because the crossbow bolts are effectively bee stings and the giant doesn't care.Meanwhile in 5e the Hill Giant is AC 13 with 105 hit points. A human guard with a light crossbow is at +3 to hit doing an average of 5.5 damage per hit. It's going to take a mere 40 crossbow bolts to bring the giant down. Easy for a mere ten guardsmen. The giant has to care if two crossbow bolts take an average of over 10% of his hit points.As for the idea of the 5e giant firing from the relative safety of the hill, the hill giant loses that one hard unless it's completely out of line of sight. It's +8 to hit firing a single rock/round, and guards are listed as AC 16 (chain) in 5e. And light crossbows outrange it. That giant is unlikely to be back unless it's with an entire army of giants because it knows that the guardsmen have its number; no PCs needed thanks to the magic of bounded accuracy.Meanwhile if I actually wanted to run the type of encounter you suggest probably the best way to do it would be in 4e - when instead of speccing the giant as a level 13 ordinary brute you'd make a custom adventure treating it as a level 4 or so brute solo That's because, thanks to the magic of bounded accuracy, the giant isn't really a threat to an even vaguely prepared village unless it uses guerrilla tactics. Is that what you want?If game mechanics telling you what to feel means you cannot experience your character's emotional state you should prefer Monsterhearts to D&D.Does D&D have mechanics that tell you what your emotional state is? Sure. Loads of them. Charmed and Frightened both come to mind a standard 5e conditions. Both tell you not only your emotional state but how to react. A frightened character "can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear". The four standard reactions to fear are known as the "4 Fs" - Fight, Flight, Faun, and mate. You can neither fight, faun, nor mate when you can't approach someone. D&D 5e not only tells you what your emotional state is but how you react in that state.Does Monsterhearts? The Darkest Self sometimes does. Sometimes your character is irrational - but you picked what yours would be when you picked your skin. "You're turning into your wolfman form and pissed off" is a whole lot less controlling than 5e's Frightened condition especially because you personally chose to play a werewolf. The rest of it just says "You must react. You choose how and here are the normal reactions." Vastly better than 5e's Frightened condition.</blockquote>

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