DMG Excerpt: Customizing Monsters

[Lizard]

But what if you don't like the answers to the questions? Just change them right? So make it up, and let the PCs figure it out in your world instead of looking the MM.

PS

Then why bother with the MM at all? Just make up all the monsters you want/need.

The attitude from both 4e designers and supporters seems to be that nothing outside of the combat round matters.

I find non combat abilities to be among the most interesting parts of a monster's description, because it is THOSE that inspire stories. When I'm desperate for a plot, I will flip through various monster tomes until I find something with an interesting 'hook' to it, something that says "I can build a great adventure around these guys". Note -- not "a great fight scene". A great *adventure*.

Even something like "A vampire must feed once a day or perish" tells you something useful, something you can use to drive the plot. (If we get any fluff, it will probably be akin to "Vampires are the product of Vecna's early attempts at immortality" -- in other words, useless. History, religion, culture...those are things I can easily create. Give me solid bones of crunch on which I can build my world. Tell me how often vampires make spawn, and from that, I will derive vampire society.)

 

[hong]

The attitude from both 4e designers and supporters seems to be that nothing outside of the combat round matters.

To be precise, combat mechanics outside the combat round do not matter.

I find non combat abilities to be among the most interesting parts of a monster's description, because it is THOSE that inspire stories.

That's what the fluff is for.

 

[beverson]

Then why bother with the MM at all? Just make up all the monsters you want/need.

Maybe because there is only so much space available in the books? Somewhere along the line, you're going to anger someone with what you included and what you left out - you can't please everyone. Have they made some choices on included vs. left out stuff that you don't agree with? Sure. Does everyone disagree with them? Certainly not. It seems to me that the things they are leaving out are things that are most logically going to be changed by a significant amount of GM's anyway, so save the space and use it for something else more valuable.

But yet again, we. don't. have. the. books. yet. All will become clear once we can read the darn things. Will everyone agree on everything at that point? Hell no - but it will be much clearer seeing the whole picture.

 

[Storminator]

To be precise, combat mechanics outside the combat round do not matter.

That's what the fluff is for.

Just imagine that I had responded exactly like this.

PS

 

[Spenser]

I think Lizard has a good point. You can always make things up, but it's nice to get a baseline, particularly for fluff like the monster's ecology and society.

The 4e philosophy seems to be, monsters are designed to live for a short time anyway, so each entry has to be short and self-contained. This is a huge advance over 3e, where monsters had enormous stat blocks and were often almost as complicated as the PCs.

But "short and self-contained" can be taken too far. Maybe we'll need a lot more "The Ecology Of..." articles to fill the gap.

 

[Lizard]

To be precise, combat mechanics outside the combat round do not matter.

How long it takes a vampire to make spawn can impact combat. If it's a minor action and he has minions to spare...or, as others have noted, if the vampire is alert to invaders. If it takes a minute, he can turn his domestic staff into spawn while the heroes are distracted with a single fight. If it takes an hour, he might have time to get one new ally before they get to his sanctum. If it takes a week...he's SOL.

I don't want to turn this entire thread into a debate on vampires. It's just another example of the consequences of assuming the combat round is the building block of the world and scaling everything accordingly.

We're having an earthquake. Again. In Southern Indiana.

 

[Ingolf]

Ok.

-> Gamist rules which are completely unlogical

Magic Threashold makes no sense. Why do high level monsters not benefit from magical weapons? One explanation is that their magical "monsterousness" overpowers the magical attributes of the weapon. That works for monsters but it is very likely that NPCs will be build with the same system and I can't think a reason why a human level 20 NPC can't benefit from a +2 Weapon.

The conceit in play is that any monster has a built-in bonus to its attacks and damage consistent with what a monster of its level should get from magical gear, but it doesn't actually have the gear.

Given that as a starting point, there is nothing illogical about subtracting that inherent bonus from the bonus it gets from wielding actual magical items when you advance or otherwise customize the monster.

It solves that PCs get piles of magical weapons but in a very clunky way.

Actually it solves it in a very elegant way. 4e is taking the power imbalnce created by the PCs access to magical gear into account in monster design in an explicit way. Earlier editions handle this issue very poorly, typically by ignoring it.

->Fluff text and game rules mismatch

Vampire lords create armies of vampire spawns......how? Certainly not through their blood drain ability.

As is so often the case, you look at one three-paragraph excerpt from the rules, find it lacking, and come to the conclusion that the missing information just doesn't exist. That seems to be a fairly typical attitude around here, and no matter how many times it gets pointed out, the 4e detractors just keep doing it. For all you know there are extensive rules for creating vampire spawn in the vampire spawn entry in the MM or elsewhere in the rules. I'd be surprised if it isn't at least mentioned somewhere, and there is no particular reason why it has to be part of the vampire template if there is a good reason to provide that information someplace else.

And I fail to see how the Lich template is in any way geared for arcane casters considering that a fighter with a /encounter ability also benefits from it (but that is more of a case of the Lich being bland instead of flavor text mismatch)

You have a point in that the suggestion in the articel that the lich template works best with arcane casters isn't supported by the template itself, but that's a pretty weak complaint. I sort of like the idea of a Paladin Lich myself. There may (or may not) be a Death Knight template or some other way to create a non-arcane undead warrior, but having multiple options is always a benefit, particularly if they are easy to implement.

 

[DandD]

I agree that having rules for seeing how fast or how many vampire spawns will be created officially is nice. But they're now just showing combat-rules, which is the meat to D&D whatever-edition. There surely is an official rule for how to create underlings, but that's something not practicable in a battle, and is either more-ritual like, or a condition that has to happen, like needing to be helpless/a willing victim and then getting sucked or so.

Anyway, we'll see.

 

[Storminator]

We're having an earthquake. Again. In Southern Indiana.

You're complaining about 4e... and there's an earthquake... coincidence?!

PS

 

[eleran]

Then why bother with the MM at all? Just make up all the monsters you want/need.

The attitude from both 4e designers and supporters seems to be that nothing outside of the combat round matters.

I find non combat abilities to be among the most interesting parts of a monster's description, because it is THOSE that inspire stories. When I'm desperate for a plot, I will flip through various monster tomes until I find something with an interesting 'hook' to it, something that says "I can build a great adventure around these guys". Note -- not "a great fight scene". A great *adventure*.

Even something like "A vampire must feed once a day or perish" tells you something useful, something you can use to drive the plot. (If we get any fluff, it will probably be akin to "Vampires are the product of Vecna's early attempts at immortality" -- in other words, useless. History, religion, culture...those are things I can easily create. Give me solid bones of crunch on which I can build my world. Tell me how often vampires make spawn, and from that, I will derive vampire society.)

But, if you don't like the fluff/crunch they put in the MM what are you going to do? You're going to change it. Right? They skipped a step for you.

Are you told how often Elves eat before they perish? Do you have human societies? How did you come up with that society?