Demonomicon. Musings about abilities and skills.

[NexH]

I recently bought the Demonomicon supplement for 4E, and it has quickly become one of my favorites for both its mechanical implementations and its wealth of ideas and descriptions.

Now, I have noticed that some of the demon lords presented have notably impressive ability scores. For example: Kostchtchie boasts a tremendous 44 Strength, Zuggtmoy has an incredible 55 Constitution, and both Pazuzu and Phraxas have three ability scores over 39.
I like that these beings have very high stats: not only are they Solos, which should in my opinion tower over standard monsters of their level, they also are god-like unique beings (although Zuggtmoy's Constitution score is perhaps exceedingly high for a level 22).

On the other hand, it is a pity that most monsters are still assigned skill scores based only on their ability scores and a possible +5 trained bonus. Rather than higher ability scores, in many cases I would just prefer monsters with a more evocative variety of skill scores (for example, I would like Vecna to be clearly more knowledgeable than the party's wizard).


So I am wondering two things: are the high ability scores for Solos an anomaly from the Demonomicon? Is there a design reason for the lack of variety in monster's skill scores?

 

[Riastlin]

So I am wondering two things: are the high ability scores for Solos an anomaly from the Demonomicon? Is there a design reason for the lack of variety in monster's skill scores?

Not sure on the first question. I don't have the Demonomicon and haven't really looked at the ability scores of higher level monsters in the MMs.

As to your second question though, I imagine the answer is sheer simplicity. Makes it a lot quicker to design the monster that way and makes it easier for DMs to create their own monsters since they need not think about the skills.

That being said of course, the DM is always free to alter monsters as he or she sees fit, so there's nothing stopping you from upping Vecna's History or Arcana skills. You can also give items to your monsters to help boost their scores, etc. The real question though is, how will this help your game? How will Vecna's History modifier come into play? How will Orcus' Intimidate score affect it? In many cases, outside of stealth, acrobatics, and athletics, a monsters skills will likely have a minimal impact, if any, on the campaign. Though I could certain envision cool uses of skills for monsters on a campaign scale, just maybe not on an encounter level.

 

[Lancelot]

One comment on Zuggtmoy: I think her Constitution may be an intentional nod to her original 1e stats. She was a demon lord (lady) of only middling power - the fluff text for Demogorgon and Orcus clearly made them the "big boys" of the demon princes... and even Graz'zt quickly gained a reputation for being one of the major Abyssal shakers and movers.

Yet Zuggtmoy had more HP than any of them (222 HP). She had more HP, in fact, than nearly any other non-deity 1e entity (and more HP than most of the demigods and lesser gods, as well). More than Asmodeus, more than Demogorgon or Orcus, more than Tiamat and Bahamut, and vastly more than Lolth (three times over). So, a ridonkulously high Constitution score on a "low Epic" level demon lord is actually a pretty fair way to represent that.

 

[Jhaelen]

Is there a design reason for the lack of variety in monster's skill scores?

Monster skills is an underdeveloped area. Looking at Monster Vault, there are even fewer monsters with trained skills than in the previous MMs.

What irks me is that monster skills aren't used even if they actually have trained skills:
Published adventure modules are written to use the easy/moderate/hard skill DCs from the table rather than monster skills for opposed skill checks.

Monster ability scores follow the monster design guidelines but they hardly ever matter. So, my advice would be to change them to whatever you see fit. Similarly, grant them any trained skills that would make sense.

Interestingly, monster themes always add skill bonuses apart from additional powers. So, that's another way to add more variety within the RAW.

 

[delericho]

In hindsight, I agree WotC were wise to have 4e monsters use different rules from the PCs. Having done that, I suspect they would do well to break the link entirely - don't bother working out skill modifiers from "Attribute + Level + Trained", and instead just assign them the result that the creatures 'should' have.

Thus, it would be possible to give Vecna an outrageously high Arcana skill check without skewing the rest of the stats to "make it happen".

Frankly, the players unlikely ever to see what's happening behind the curtain, so why worry too much about "rules correctness"?

Indeed, they could even go so far as to ignore the individual attributes entirely, and instead give a "baseline modifier" for all skills, and then list the few that are exceptions to this value.

 

[NexH]

That being said of course, the DM is always free to alter monsters as he or she sees fit, so there's nothing stopping you from upping Vecna's History or Arcana skills. You can also give items to your monsters to help boost their scores, etc.
The real question though is, how will this help your game?

The problem with giving items to monsters is the one that inspired the Monster Magic Treshold (DMG): something that it is there only for providing a mechanical justification becomes entangled with the treasure assignation.
The usefulness of appropiate skill bonuses for monsters is, for me, not often about combat encounters, but rather for inspiration and campaign building. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I get various ideas for adventures and world building by looking at the stats of monsters. Altough information about the extreme glibness or arcane knowledge of a creature may be conveyed via flavor text, I think that merely assigning appropiate skill bonus is in many cases the most practical (and easily referentiable) way.

What irks me is that monster skills aren't used even if they actually have trained skills:
Published adventure modules are written to use the easy/moderate/hard skill DCs from the table rather than monster skills for opposed skill checks.

When monsters are reprinted for their use in an adventure, it would certainly be better if their stats were either already appropiate or changed to reflect the DCs used, but they may be some problems (fear of inducing confusion?) with monsters with the same name and different stats.

In hindsight, I agree WotC were wise to have 4e monsters use different rules from the PCs. Having done that, I suspect they would do well to break the link entirely - don't bother working out skill modifiers from "Attribute + Level + Trained", and instead just assign them the result that the creatures 'should' have.

Thus, it would be possible to give Vecna an outrageously high Arcana skill check without skewing the rest of the stats to "make it happen".

Frankly, the players unlikely ever to see what's happening behind the curtain, so why worry too much about "rules correctness"?

Indeed, they could even go so far as to ignore the individual attributes entirely, and instead give a "baseline modifier" for all skills, and then list the few that are exceptions to this value.

Although I find the baseline of (1/2 level + attribute score bonus) helpful and flavourful, I agree about the usefulness of using different rules for monsters and PCs. As a matter of fact, when 4E wasn't yet out and I heard about this characteristic of the system, I actually thought it would be a little more radical.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, I only looked at a couple of the Demon Lords. Mostly their trained skill bonuses (the only ones that are specifically called out) are pretty close to 1/2 level + modifier + 5, but with some small variations. Phraxas for instance has Arcana 32 with INT bonus of +25, giving a +7 modifier (interestingly all his trained skills are at +7). All the non-unique demons I checked had trained skills at bonus +5. So it seems the exceptions are the unique demons only. Even there many seem to follow the normal rules (Zuggtmoy for instance has all trained skills at +5). Pazuzu seems to be the main oddball with his +21 Intimidate bonus, but note that normally it should actually be a +41 assuming +5 bonus for training, so this may simply be a typo.

As others have said, basic physical skills aside there's not really much point to monsters (or NPCs for that matter) actually having skill bonuses defined. It is at best a hint to the DM about their main strengths. Beyond that the whole thing with say escape DCs and such you can think of this way. A monster is rather different physically from a typical PC. Skill rules work well for PCs as they were designed for them. How hard it is to escape the grasp of some 8 armed tentacle monster probably has less to do with its strength/dexterity and more to do with its body structure or magic or whatever. Granted that begs the question of why we need to know how strong such a monster is, but I don't see where it hurts anything to have such a number. Again, it is just a hint to the DM.