D&D 5E Encounters > Monsters?

[Ratskinner]

So, maybe I'm crazy here...

Having read the article about Legendary Creatures and its attached PDF, and now reading about Monster Mashups...

Are we witnessing a shift away from designing (or at least articulating) monsters as individual units and towards viewing monsters as components of encounters (perhaps encounters++) or chapters of the story.* That is, I could certainly see advantages to using the format we see with that black dragon writeup as a template for things like a Goblin Warren, Orc Tribe, or Ettercap...lair? hive? I also don't think this would be a terrible divergence from a trajectory starting back at the beginning of the game and continuing through 4e.

Would a monster manual that is organized by encounter be more or less useful than the traditional simple list o' critters?

*Possibly only in emphasis.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In some ways, the pre 3e MM's were organized more as "encounters." When you rolled up a bugbear, you determined if it was wandering, who its allies were with, whether or not it was in a lair, where its lair was located....all really useful details for making a bugbear encounter.

I'd be very pro this kind of move in 5e, since it makes turning a monster into an encounter much easier than it has been for the last decade or so. Combined with something like 4e's spot-on estimation of monster power and math, we'd be getting the best of both worlds, I think.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I am not so interested in having monsters presented as encounters, but I think 5e is going in the right direction - with lairs and so on. The reason I am against the "encounter" mindset is that the players should be able to carve up a lair into multiple smaller fights if they are resourceful.

In other words, if you just rush into the dragons lair, you encounter it with all the minions. If you are smart, you instead ambush some of the minions, pull some other ones away on a wild goosechase and hit the dragon all alone in it's lair (or even better, alone, outside of the lair).

 

[Alzrius]

There's almost a sense of irony in how the game started as a wargame, where groups of individuals were represented as one mechanical entity, which then became having each such mechanical set of stats represent a single creature, to now going back to using a single set of mechanics to present tactical groups of creatures.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Are we witnessing a shift away from designing (or at least articulating) monsters as individual units and towards viewing monsters as components of encounters (perhaps encounters++) or chapters of the story.* That is, I could certainly see advantages to using the format we see with that black dragon writeup as a template for things like a Goblin Warren, Orc Tribe, or Ettercap...lair? hive? I also don't think this would be a terrible divergence from a trajectory starting back at the beginning of the game and continuing through 4e.

Would a monster manual that is organized by encounter be more or less useful than the traditional simple list o' critters?

*Possibly only in emphasis.

I disagree that WotC is moving in that direction. More like the opposite.

I don't know about 3.0, because I can't find my old Monster Manual, but in 3.5 monsters such as orcs had an organization entry. It was less complete and certainly had less flavor text than the 2e entry, but it was still there.

In 4e, there was even less of an organization entry. In fact, nothing but implications. Much like 3.5's Monster Manual V, 4e's MM and Monster Vault gave "classed" or "variant" monster entries that you could construct an entire encounter with. In 4e it got more explicit; here's a controller, here's a brute, here's a brute (leader) that you could use as a chief, etc. Although there tended to be too much level variance for some humanoid monsters.

MM3 had some flavor text organization, for instance, a battle with frost giants would probably have two "waves", presumably with a short rest in between, but if the DM wants to bump up the challenge level, no short rest for you. The first wave consisted of regular level 17 brutes, and the second consisted of the chief (a 20th-level controller) and several guards (I forget the level, but they're soldiers).

Threats to the Nentir Vale had at least some organizational flavor text (some got a lot) and included numerous "monster" types of around the same level for each group. For my own purposes, I often found mixing monster sources worked best, although I feel the need to convert all those MM1 and MM2 monsters that I intend to use to MM3+ standard.

D&DN is certainly putting work into some sorts of monsters. Presumably every legendary "solo" is going to be supported by lots of flavor and off-books mechanical text like the legendary black dragon (I expect to see the same thing for monsters like the medusa), but most monster entries just have a regular monster type and a "leader", and some, such as the bugbear, only have the basic monster. At least kobolds have some variety. A lack of defined monster roles means WotC sees little need to create so many monster types.

This is based on the June Bestiary, and of course WotC might come up with a bunch more monster types in the future. There's little organizational flavor text yet, but that's not a surprise, as that's not really stuff you playtest.

 

[Tonguez]

Organised by common terrain,, along with organisation notes and with some notes on lairs would be more modular and thus more useful than per encounter

 

[Ratskinner]

I disagree that WotC is moving in that direction. More like the opposite.

I don't know about 3.0, because I can't find my old Monster Manual, but in 3.5 monsters such as orcs had an organization entry. It was less complete and certainly had less flavor text than the 2e entry, but it was still there.

In 4e, there was even less of an organization entry. In fact, nothing but implications. Much like 3.5's Monster Manual V, 4e's MM and Monster Vault gave "classed" or "variant" monster entries that you could construct an entire encounter with. In 4e it got more explicit; here's a controller, here's a brute, here's a brute (leader) that you could use as a chief, etc. Although there tended to be too much level variance for some humanoid monsters.

I do think that 3e is probably the "weak link" in the trajectory, because it relied on the DM to "level up" many monsters to create a diverse encounter. So it was far less explicit in its advice on building the encounter. However, I see that as 3e falling back on a perceived strength of the stacking multiclassing to give the DM what he needed to diversify those encounters. In 4e...well, I look at my 4e MM and see several pages of orcs all together with their various roles delineated and all I see is the components to the rather general "how to build an encounter" instructions in the DMG.

This is based on the June Bestiary, and of course WotC might come up with a bunch more monster types in the future. There's little organizational flavor text yet, but that's not a surprise, as that's not really stuff you playtest.

Correct. My supposition (given the recent Wandering Monsters articles) is that they would later be adding in all that flavor and encounter information in a grand re-formatting.

 

[Ratskinner]

I am not so interested in having monsters presented as encounters, but I think 5e is going in the right direction - with lairs and so on. The reason I am against the "encounter" mindset is that the players should be able to carve up a lair into multiple smaller fights if they are resourceful.

I understand. That's why I hinted at encounter++. (Maybe an adventuring "day"?)

 

[Stalker0]

I think that 4e really nailed down the concept of monsters as a part of an encounter, rather than the encounter themselves. 4e's mechanics realized that is often takes a party of monsters to challenge a party of adventures.

That said, while it had the mechanics, 4e didn't focus as much on the flavor element. Sure i can throw a rakshasa, a were tiger, a nymph, and a dire snail at a party....but how do you explain that?

With these flavor groupings, it creates natural groups of monsters that a dm can use...flavor already prepackaged. Of course he can always create his own, but it gives a good starting point.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

There are monsters, there are encounters, and then there are set pieces. An encounter can have multiple monsters, and a set piece can have multiple encounters.

The black dragon lair is a set piece. While individual monsters should give guidance as to how they are organized and how to use them in adventure building, there's room for an entirely different set of information regarding set pieces. Goblin encampments, giant ant nests, and a swamp with will o' wisps are all possible examples.