Grapple: LIVING SHIELD [mearls]

[Plane Sailing]

Well one thing to keep in mind is that just because one group of people have access to a unique and special skill, does not mean that everyone in the world has access to that skill.

I have to say that interposing a grappled foe doesn't sound like a particularly unique and special thing though - it seems like the kind of thing that anyone might have a go at (it is the meat and drink of many action movies, for instance).

Cheers

 

[olshanski]

I'm going to have each monster's stat block in front of me during the encounter anyway, so I don't really see the problem.

As a DM, you only need to memorize the core rules. Exceptions (like unique monster abilities) are only necessary to know for the duration of an encounter.

Of course you'll have a monster stat block in front of you. Voss wasn't saying otherwise.

The question is: Is your statblock a single line of numbers (Initiative, Hit points, AC, Attack modifier, Damage, Saves, Key skill modifier)
Or is your statblock a full page of rules, exceptions, and other special cases.

Finally: in my experience, most gaming systems that rely on "special cases" rules end up with some conundrums that give DMs headaches.

Example:
Player 1 has the ability "Riposte"--whenever an attack against you misses, you get a sudden counter-attack against that foe.
Monster 1 has the ability "lightning attack"--your attack is so sudden that opponents cannot make a counter-attack.
Player 2 has the ability "first blood"--your first attack in any encounter is always a hit.
Monster has the ability "Parry"--the first attack against you in any encounter is always a miss.

Now my example above may look extreme, but the large the rules get, (and the sloppier the proofing), the more likely you are to end up with examples like the ones above.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'd rather take five minutes to change a weapon and some numbers, and have six truly different monsters (each of which I could then customize further) in the rulebook.

That sort of thing is best handled by a book which focuses on providing pre-built variants.

Forex, in the game I'm running, the PCs have met about five different "kinds" of Bugbear -- none of which took me more than few minutes to stat out using standard rules. That's a lot of play value out of one monster entry in the MM. I do not see how I would have been better served by 5 bugbear entries which I could easily have done myself. And if monster customization is simpler in 4e, this becomes even more the case.

I think the reason why such monsters might be "needed" is because they simply take less room in both the MM and your game world.
If you have 5 different type of monsters instead of 5 variants of the same monster, you need to write up the base "fluff" for each monster. You might need extra artwork, a description of its organisation or culture, and a name. If you do this often, you simply get a lower "monster per book" ratio, and the designers spend a lot of their creative efforts coming up with details for a monster that might not be used at all.
Then, if you want to use these monsters in your gameworld, they probably need a place in it. So you end up with 30 humanoid species, 12 reptiloid species and 3 insectile humanoids.

Reusing the same base species (Goblin / Bugbear, Zombie) you don't need to explain this stuff. They are all Goblins/Bugbears/Zombies, they just use different tricks in combat. Now, if you want to introduce a new type of monster, you can just reflavour an existing bugbear variant.
Off course you could do the opposite, and just use the Xorakh Beastmen and claim it's actually a Bugbear strangler. But that still leaves the "space in the MM" problem.

The approach as whole makes it either to run "themed" adventures - and by themed I mean simple things like "Eliminate the Goblin Warband roaming the area" or "Explore the Spiderskull Caves".

 

[mmu1]

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue to drown the throat of (world of) war (craft)!

Is it a problem if this similarity exists? Why?

I really don't see the point of it... In an MMO, you need to be able to tell what a monster is at a glance, and the lack of AI (aside from the threat mechanic) makes that sort of simplified design useful.

Going with a similar design in an RPG seems to me like giving up on what traditionally has been the strength of the medium, compared to computer gaming - depth. At worst, it might mean I won't have any use for the system as a whole. At best, it'll just mean I'll have to re-design the monsters to make them useful to me.

Getting back to the monsters themselves, though - I really don't like the idea of monsters doing mundane things that there aren't core rules for, because it doesn't surprise the players as much as it reveals to them that they're actually ignorant about how the game world works. Perhaps it's just the people I play with, but most of them would be annoyed (some of them very much so) if they frequently didn't find out that the rules actually allow for certain things to happen until an enemy did it to them in an encounter.

 

[Will]

Consider 'cool and extensive unarmed combat rules' to be seconded/thirded/etc.

I'd LOVE to have a character with leg sweeps, blocks, holds, submission, pain holds, and so forth.

I'd love to see a martial artist character at all like someone who does Kung Fu: perfectly capable of using swords, spears, and multiple weapons, improvised weapons, as well as holds, kicks, etc.

Please?

 

[Storminator]

For example, you could say "Bugbear tribes are dominated by the greatest fighters, but duels to the death leave a lot of powerful warriors dead, and the tribe is weakened. Thus, for battles between warriors of the same tribe, bugbears have developed a wide range of brutal hand-to-hand fighting styles, mastering techniques few others have learned. This harsh, painful, style is rarely taught outside the bugbear tribes; only a rare few exiled or enslaved bugbears might be able to teach it to outsiders."

I would go with:

Bugbear children constantly fight and wrestle to see who is the strongest and fastest, to learn who will lead the tribe in future days. The adults indulge the winners and feed them the tastiest portions of elf. Sometimes the younger and smaller bugbears, seeking to earn their place at the nightly campfire, attack their older brethren from behind using trickery to mask their weakness. These 'Stranglers' are especially prized, and often an adult will show a promising youngster special techniques to defeat their rivals.

PS

 

[TwoSix]

Going with a similar design in an RPG seems to me like giving up on what traditionally has been the strength of the medium, compared to computer gaming - depth. At worst, it might mean I won't have any use for the system as a whole. At best, it'll just mean I'll have to re-design the monsters to make them useful to me.

I'm not sure where I see depth is lost in having an "orc archer" and an "orc brute" as opposed to having just an orc.

 

[Lackhand]

I really don't see the point of it... In an MMO, you need to be able to tell what a monster is at a glance, and the lack of AI (aside from the threat mechanic) makes that sort of simplified design useful.

Going with a similar design in an RPG seems to me like giving up on what traditionally has been the strength of the medium, compared to computer gaming - depth. At worst, it might mean I won't have any use for the system as a whole. At best, it'll just mean I'll have to re-design the monsters to make them useful to me.

So then, this is your real complaint. Yay!

I think you're wrong. In fact, I don't understand why "This is an orc archer, here are the tricks orcish archers play, and the equipment that they use." is worse than "this is an orc."
Moreover, since we want monsters to be page aligned, and the only way to get that is to pad out short entries (like those of humanoids...), I really don't see where this complaint is coming from.

In short: Giving up depth because there's greater pagecount? If you say so.

Getting back to the monsters themselves, though - I really don't like the idea of monsters doing mundane things that there aren't core rules for, because it doesn't surprise the players as much as it reveals to them that they're actually ignorant about how the game world works. Perhaps it's just the people I play with, but most of them would be annoyed (some of them very much so) if they frequently didn't find out that the rules actually allow for certain things to happen until an enemy did it to them in an encounter.

To each their own. I know that, hey, there are rules for bugbear-strangulation. Great! While I'd rather they be in the section of the book under "garotting" or "grappling", as long as they're written down somewhere, I can't complain.

And no one in this thread will ever forget where they're written

 

[Slander]

Getting back to the monsters themselves, though - I really don't like the idea of monsters doing mundane things that there aren't core rules for, because it doesn't surprise the players as much as it reveals to them that they're actually ignorant about how the game world works. Perhaps it's just the people I play with, but most of them would be annoyed (some of them very much so) if they frequently didn't find out that the rules actually allow for certain things to happen until an enemy did it to them in an encounter.

If the maneuver wasn't presented in an official monster manual, and instead your DM came up with a similar maneuver for Bugbears, Giants, Humans, what-have-you, would you still cry foul? Is it in bad form for DMs to change their monsters to create [what they might view as] a unique challenge?

 

[mmu1]

If the maneuver wasn't presented in an official monster manual, and instead your DM came up with a similar maneuver for Bugbears, Giants, Humans, what-have-you, would you still cry foul? Is it in bad form for DMs to change their monsters to create [what they might view as] a unique challenge?

I'd cry foul if the the DM decided to introduce a maneuver that represents something fairly basic (strangulation is just grappling) but decided to make it a "secret" and spring it on the players via Bugbear, yeah.

If he decided to create a secret order of ritualistic stranglers and made special feats for them, that'd be a different matter entirely. (though to be perfectly honest, if he decided to make "special" feats for every thing under the sun, I'd find that an annoyance as well)