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DUNGEON's NEW STAT BLOCK FORMAT
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Emirikol
Adventurer
TRAP stat blocks
Since we're on the subject, I'd like to see the stat blocks for Traps become easier for DM's to read too.
As for mechanizing the rest of the DM's text, I'm not quite sold on that yet. DUNGEON tried the layout for each and nobody really commented either way.
"Lighting: blah blah
Sound: blah blah clanking from hallways east #42z
Auras: slight evil coming from the tapestry"
I think it's because D&D, although it has a LOT of dungeons, people eventually tire of long ones and move back to combination story(with a little dungeon) scenarios in which the DM's text becomes more complicated.
ANYTHING that makes the job of the DM easier is good for me and for the game and making stat blocks easier to read and even more logical is great!
jh
lakewood, CO, USA
..
Since we're on the subject, I'd like to see the stat blocks for Traps become easier for DM's to read too.
As for mechanizing the rest of the DM's text, I'm not quite sold on that yet. DUNGEON tried the layout for each and nobody really commented either way.
"Lighting: blah blah
Sound: blah blah clanking from hallways east #42z
Auras: slight evil coming from the tapestry"
I think it's because D&D, although it has a LOT of dungeons, people eventually tire of long ones and move back to combination story(with a little dungeon) scenarios in which the DM's text becomes more complicated.
ANYTHING that makes the job of the DM easier is good for me and for the game and making stat blocks easier to read and even more logical is great!
jh
lakewood, CO, USA
..
A'koss
Explorer
Heh... Y'know, I went through the entire 3e playtest and probably some months afterward thinking Kim was a woman. Kim was cooridinating the playtest at the time. Around the table we would say, "Oh, we better get this week's notes off to Kimmy! I wonder what Kimmy's baking today...?"Grazzt said:Kim Mohan?
Cheers!
Monte At Home
Explorer
Vigwyn the Unruly said:
And I don't. While I haven't read any of John's reviews, I've heard about them here and thus understand that he's great with stats. And that's cool. I'm not trying to slam anyone with my attempt at humor.
Rules are rules and they should be followed unless there's a good reason not to.
However, that said, I think it's a waste of space to provide information (like listing Toughness as a feat, or Iron Will) that's only there to "show your work." While I don't object to people checking stats, there's no good game-play reason why an adventure NPC needs that kind of information or even the ability to be checked for accuracy. Ultimately, if an NPC has a +3 instead of a +2 in a skill, or what have you, while it affects game play, it won't disrupt game play. If I run an orc in an adventure with a +1 initiative bonus or a wizard with one too-few feats, the adventure's not ruined. In fact, there's a HUGE chance that no one will even notice.
I don't think anyone's going to accuse me of not caring about the rules any time soon. I'm not saying this to justify poor use of the rules. I'm saying it because I want the right tool for the right situation. In this case, I want as streamlined a tool as possible. Monster stats in a monster book, or fully-fleshed out NPCs in an NPC book are one thing, but stat blocks in an adventure are another.
I'm certainly not trying to pretend not to be interested in editing. For the reason you've listed and others, we take editing pretty seriously, and (I hope) it shows. (And thanks on her behalf for the compliment. There's a lot of people, professional and non-professional alike who agree with you, and I'm, of course, one of them.)
James Jacobs
Adventurer
The new stat block is here to stay, but you can expect some minor adjustments over the next few issues as we settle into the new format. At this point, I'd agree that the main concern is how the short stat blocks get lost in the page. We won't be putting the stat blocks into boxes (this format wreaks havoc on layout, and it's why we went to our current format for read-aloud text). Changing the color of the text is an option, but doing that risks readability. Anyway... we'll figure it out, one way or another.
As for the space issues... it's true that these new stat blocks take up more space than the old ones. That was actually a major concern for me, but in the end it looks like the stat blocks'll rarely be larger than 125% the size of the old ones, and often they'll be much closer in length than that. It's a balancing act; deciding how far to go to make the adventures easier to use over how much text to cram into each one. For something as crucial and integral to the game as a stat block, the choice was simple.
To answer a few specific questions...
Combat Gear is any equipment that the NPC might use in combat in place of an attack. Most wands, staffs, potions, and scrolls go here, as would beads of force, most rods, and anything else you have to give up an action to use. Stuff like magic weapons, armor, ability enhancers, and defensive items go in the possessions list at the bottom, since their effects are generally factored into the statblock elsewhere already. There's a range of items that don't obviously fit into these two categories; the brooch of shielding being one of them. We'll get it figured out eventually, though.
Non Combat Data: One incarnation of the stat block ommitted non-combat stuff like Brew Potion, skills like Knowledge and Craft, and the like. While this information may eventually evolve away like tails or body fur, I'm going to try to keep them in the stat blocks in Dungeon as long as I can, simply because not every encounter with every NPC is always going to be a combat encounter. Putting in all the parts lets people reverse engineer the NPC to make them fit in their campaigns, and increases their utility beyond the scope of an adventure. For example... if one of your players anounces "I took Leadership as my feat... where's my cohort?" you can just grab an appropriate stat block from some random issue of the magazine without having to worry about what we left out.
Calling out miss chances from displacement and the like is a great idea; it'll be showing up in the Armor Class line.
"Missing content": Stat blocks are an important part of an adventure, but not the MOST important part. That award goes to the adventure's story, or plot. It's like a knife twisting in my gut every time we're forced to cut part of an adventure's story in order to make the thing fit in the magazine. This is the primary reason we've been a lot more draconian in enforcing word counts for unsolicited adventures. It's not there to force the writer to abbreviate his work. It's there to help make sure we won't have to cut any of that work for him to make the adventure fit. Given the choice, I'd much prefer the writer of an adventure decides what stays and what goes from his words than leaving that choice to the editors.
Trap Stat Blocks: Agreed. We'll probably develop a new trap stat block eventually as well. And when we do, it'll probably look similar to the creature stat blocks.
Room Stat Blocks: We have no immediate plans to alter the format we use for rooms. Truth be told... a lot of people read adventures for fun, and turning every room into a stat block may make an encounter easier to run, but I have my doubts it makes the adventure easier to read. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. In any case, instituting such a drastic change at this point isn't going to happen in the magazines simply because we don't have time to re-write every adventure in the magazine. Which is what adopting this style of format would ammount to.
Ability Scores: I actually prefer the concept of listing ability scores as Str +3, Dex +1, etc. I doubt this change'll make it into the magazine though.
Stat Block Police: I honestly don't mind if people reverse engineer stat blocks to double or triple check the math. Reworking stat blocks is actually a great way to familiarize yourself with the rules. What DOES bother me is when someone posts a huge review of a product that lists 50 tiny little stat block errors in a product, but neglect to mention that of those 50 things the product got wrong, it got 5000 things right. If this happened on a test, that'd equate to a score of 99%. Only in the RPG industry is a score of 99% a failing score. It's weird.
As for the space issues... it's true that these new stat blocks take up more space than the old ones. That was actually a major concern for me, but in the end it looks like the stat blocks'll rarely be larger than 125% the size of the old ones, and often they'll be much closer in length than that. It's a balancing act; deciding how far to go to make the adventures easier to use over how much text to cram into each one. For something as crucial and integral to the game as a stat block, the choice was simple.
To answer a few specific questions...
Combat Gear is any equipment that the NPC might use in combat in place of an attack. Most wands, staffs, potions, and scrolls go here, as would beads of force, most rods, and anything else you have to give up an action to use. Stuff like magic weapons, armor, ability enhancers, and defensive items go in the possessions list at the bottom, since their effects are generally factored into the statblock elsewhere already. There's a range of items that don't obviously fit into these two categories; the brooch of shielding being one of them. We'll get it figured out eventually, though.
Non Combat Data: One incarnation of the stat block ommitted non-combat stuff like Brew Potion, skills like Knowledge and Craft, and the like. While this information may eventually evolve away like tails or body fur, I'm going to try to keep them in the stat blocks in Dungeon as long as I can, simply because not every encounter with every NPC is always going to be a combat encounter. Putting in all the parts lets people reverse engineer the NPC to make them fit in their campaigns, and increases their utility beyond the scope of an adventure. For example... if one of your players anounces "I took Leadership as my feat... where's my cohort?" you can just grab an appropriate stat block from some random issue of the magazine without having to worry about what we left out.
Calling out miss chances from displacement and the like is a great idea; it'll be showing up in the Armor Class line.
"Missing content": Stat blocks are an important part of an adventure, but not the MOST important part. That award goes to the adventure's story, or plot. It's like a knife twisting in my gut every time we're forced to cut part of an adventure's story in order to make the thing fit in the magazine. This is the primary reason we've been a lot more draconian in enforcing word counts for unsolicited adventures. It's not there to force the writer to abbreviate his work. It's there to help make sure we won't have to cut any of that work for him to make the adventure fit. Given the choice, I'd much prefer the writer of an adventure decides what stays and what goes from his words than leaving that choice to the editors.
Trap Stat Blocks: Agreed. We'll probably develop a new trap stat block eventually as well. And when we do, it'll probably look similar to the creature stat blocks.
Room Stat Blocks: We have no immediate plans to alter the format we use for rooms. Truth be told... a lot of people read adventures for fun, and turning every room into a stat block may make an encounter easier to run, but I have my doubts it makes the adventure easier to read. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. In any case, instituting such a drastic change at this point isn't going to happen in the magazines simply because we don't have time to re-write every adventure in the magazine. Which is what adopting this style of format would ammount to.
Ability Scores: I actually prefer the concept of listing ability scores as Str +3, Dex +1, etc. I doubt this change'll make it into the magazine though.
Stat Block Police: I honestly don't mind if people reverse engineer stat blocks to double or triple check the math. Reworking stat blocks is actually a great way to familiarize yourself with the rules. What DOES bother me is when someone posts a huge review of a product that lists 50 tiny little stat block errors in a product, but neglect to mention that of those 50 things the product got wrong, it got 5000 things right. If this happened on a test, that'd equate to a score of 99%. Only in the RPG industry is a score of 99% a failing score. It's weird.
GlassJaw
Hero
The problem is that many times the errors aren't that small. As far as no one noticing, that may be true, but the chances for an error affecting the game (or a character's life) increases dramatically as the stat blocks become more complicated.
It's the nature of the d20 beast. To be perfectly honest, I don't trust developers to get stat blocks right. I've just seen too many errors. Now if you suddenly don't list things like Toughness or Iron Will because it's not "needed" for the stat block in question, how am I supposed to know if the developer worked it into the stats already or just plain forgot it?
Even suggesting that certain elements of a stat block should be removed hint at the cumbersome nature of the d20 system, especially in high-level play.
John Cooper
Explorer
Since I'm working under the assumption that you're referring to my reviews (I'm the only one I know of that habitually lists "50 tiny little stat block errors" in a review of a product), I'll respond. It seems like your "test" analogy is assuming an English essay test, where the teacher can give you partial credit for the things you got right in your explanation. I look at it more as a math test: either you arrived at the correct answer, or you didn't.
So if a given stat block has 100 things listed, and two of them are wrong, your "answer" isn't graded as "98% correct" - it's just "incorrect." And certainly not all stat block errors can be qualified as "tiny little."In any case, I'm not trying to sway you to my views, merely explain where I'm coming from.
helium3
First Post
What's the big deal? I've been using stat blocks like this for some time now. And yeah, they do eat up a ton of space. The best solution I've found is to compress the horizontal material in some sense so that it makes more sense to use two columns. Then you can generally get an NPC on a single sheet of paper. Not much room left over for flavor though.
Vocenoctum
First Post
John Cooper said:Since I'm working under the assumption that you're referring to my reviews (I'm the only one I know of that habitually lists "50 tiny little stat block errors" in a review of a product), I'll respond. It seems like your "test" analogy is assuming an English essay test, where the teacher can give you partial credit for the things you got right in your explanation. I look at it more as a math test: either you arrived at the correct answer, or you didn't.
In any case, I'm not trying to sway you to my views, merely explain where I'm coming from.
I think your method works fine in say, a monster book. But I think it detracts greatly from a review of say, an environment book, or setting book, where the stats really aren't as important.
I don't think it's your fault though, so much as your cheerleaders that trumpet every time you find errors in a book. I don't know you from anyone else, but your reviews seem matter of fact, and contain what they will. The bad part is then when someone follows up your matter of fact review with taking shots at the book based on it.
Also, to continue with the offtopicness, when you list a half page of errors, then give the book a good rating, I think you've misrepresented the book with the list of errors. If the review names the book a good buy, but 50% of the review is errors, I think it's a bit unbalanced.
Back ontopic> the new statblock looks handy, but they do need to be boxed or otherwise set off. The text blends togethor. The optimum would be a much reduced Encounter block, with a more expanded NPC entry as appropriate. If you're just going to encounter the thing as a combat entity, just the bare facts are needed. It'd also be handy to do this with some of the MM monsters when used.
But, that'd take even MORE space.
John Cooper
Explorer
I have cheerleaders? Crap! Don't mention that to my wife!
It does sound like the new stat blocks should make things run smoother during use, which is obviously a good thing. I'm also glad to hear that the new system doesn't eat up too much more space, as that was a concern. I'll have to wait to comment further until I get my hands on the latest Dungeon and see them for myself, but all in all the changes sound like a good thing.
It does sound like the new stat blocks should make things run smoother during use, which is obviously a good thing. I'm also glad to hear that the new system doesn't eat up too much more space, as that was a concern. I'll have to wait to comment further until I get my hands on the latest Dungeon and see them for myself, but all in all the changes sound like a good thing.
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