"How to make a Monster Manual Pt II" article

[Pants]

I can see both sides of the issue:

On one side, monsters should not be hard to run. Some monsters have way too many abilities, many that are just too hard to keep track of during a battle. For example, most outsiders have arseloads of SLA's and other supernatural abilities. A month or so ago, I ran a combat where 6 PC's faced off against a pair of vrocks , a homebrewed chasme demon, and a homebrewed babau demon. Now, mainly this my fault since I adhered to the philosophy of 'stripping critters of their non-combat abilities strips them of their flavor' at the time, but actually using them in combat was an entirely different matter.

During this one encounter, I had to keep track of:
1) The Babau's gaze attack and who was within it
2) The chasme's abyssal wound and who was affected by it
3) The chasme's ability to grapple and drain blood
4) All the SLA's and other supernatural abilities

The combat bogged down as I'd continually scan each statblock for appropriate abilities to use each round and I'd consistently forget abilities and then say 'F**k it, the babau doesn't have a gaze attack anymore.'

So I can certainly appreciate a mantra of 'more focused monsters.' But, I still think that some should be a little more complicated to run. Some should have a few combat useless abilities to round out the flavor, but not every creature should have them.

 

[Glyfair]

So I can certainly appreciate a mantra of 'more focused monsters.' But, I still think that some should be a little more complicated to run. Some should have a few combat useless abilities to round out the flavor, but not every creature should have them.

But don't we have enough of them now, already? In fact, wouldn't it be reasonable to say we have too many?

 

[Pants]

But don't we have enough of them now, already? In fact, wouldn't it be reasonable to say we have too many?

Perhaps, though that's a question that could be aimed at many aspects of the game.

I'd think that having a few complicated creatures won't be too bad.

 

[Felon]

Well if I just want to run a game which is a series of random encounters, all of which are 5-rounds fights, then the article is perfectly right.

You know, I don't have a problem with Noonan explaining that they designed the MMV this way. I am much more bothered about the way the way he, Mike Mearls, and other designers feel completely comfortable pigeonholing gamers in such absolute terms. They actuallly sit there and tell DMs all over the world "the reality is that your players don't care about what you think they should care about, they actually only care about getting loot and killing monsters and feeling powerful". It's a self-assured sentiment that has become part of a pattern found in darn near every Mearls or Noonan web article and Podcast.

Particularly in the case of the podcasts, where they're speaking extemporaneously, I get a strong sense that they genuinely and confidently believe that there is just that one type of player: a bloodthirsty, loot-hungry builder of killing machines. They do speak of other archetypes occasionally--the explorer, the socializer, the problem-solver, the caregiver, and so forth--but they only seem to do so as a sort of mythical, rarified, pie-in-the-sky player that doesn't exist in the real world. A tiny fringe element at best.

There's something about that attitude that's easy to resent.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If your favorite gaming style is very combat-oriented, it's perfectly ok! But the article is quite implying that the game should go into a direction where everybody plays the same game...

And if it's not very combat-oriented...

Why in the nine hells would you need another book of monsters?

 

[Hussar]

there is just that one type of player: a bloodthirsty, loot-hungry builder of killing machines.

While I do believe this is hyperbole, there is a fair level of truth here. I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who play D&D want to kill stuff. There are obviously different levels, but, at the end of the day, every module, every source book, pretty much everything that is produced for D&D is about killing stuff and taking its treasure.

Why buck the trend?

 

[Felon]

While I do believe this is hyperbole, there is a fair level of truth here. I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who play D&D want to kill stuff. There are obviously different levels, but, at the end of the day, every module, every source book, pretty much everything that is produced for D&D is about killing stuff and taking its treasure.

Why buck the trend?

You quoted a snippet of my post while not really taking in the rest of it. Sure, great fantasy adventures contain action. Coflict is the heart of the excitement. However, that's not the same thing as the extreme "killing machine" sentiment that I was referring to.

And we have indeed had varied content in the past. Planescape was a game that at its heart was about the joys of taking one huge road trip where sometimes you made enemies and sometimes you didn't. That is in fact part of the revelation that the designers want to share with us: past source material has been all-too-diluted by lofty ambitions that focused on stuff the players don't care about, namely things not about killing and loot.

But perhaps you're touching upon what I find easy to resent. There is a self-fulfilling element to this. If the designers push current and future content to advance the "five rounds" paradigm, then certainly that engenders a cause-and-effect relationship. If you put a lot of soup on the menu and offer little else that's tasty, then people will wind up eating a lot of soup. And then at the end of the day, you can tell everyone "see, I told you everybody loves soup".

 

[Hussar]

Fair enough I suppose.

OTOH, after what, seven, eight monster books from WOTC before MMV, plus umpteen other monsters contained within various other books, do we really need complicated monsters anymore? There's several thousand to choose from already. I'm thinking that if you are into very broad abilitied monsters, you've got lots to choose from.

The biggest complaint we see about 3e is how difficult it is to DM. There's are just too many things to keep track of, prep is too difficult, etc. etc. Why shouldn't products address this complaint? Instead of plopping down a 3e style Marilith which has way too many abilities, let's get a book full of stuff that's pretty much plug and play.

I would also point out that the "5 round paradigm" isn't something that was created out of thin air. It's the result of looking at how combat plays out in play. I've got a couple of hundred combats logged on my last campaign, contained nicely within the OpenRPG transcripts. The vast majority are 5 round fights. While I know that's just my campaign, it does seem to fit to me. People talk about longer fights because that's what sticks in their mind.

 

[Felon]

Like I said originally, I don't mind having books focused solely around the 5-rounds-of-existence paradigm. I do enjoy combat, and building combat-oriented characters. I just get bothered when these guys speak in such absolutes about how players don't care about details, they only see NPC's as nameless pinatas, and in general have little attention span, small aptitude for problem-solving without resorting to brute force, and zero appreciation for pacing.

Sure, there are a lot of gamers like that. I have some in my groups. But I think it's wrong to foster the mentality that they are the norm while the guys who like to interact, like to investigate, like to explore, like to avoid needless bloodhed, and so forth are just oddball mutants not worth regarding as part of the whole.

 

[Glyfair]

I just get bothered when these guys speak in such absolutes about how players don't care about details, they only see NPC's as nameless pinatas, and in general have little attention span, small aptitude for problem-solving without resorting to brute force, and zero appreciation for pacing.

Speaking at the microcosm of this series of articles, where are these absolutes?

Let me look at an slice:

But here comes the cold water: It’s often useless at the game table. Unless the shaedling queen is sitting on a pile of eggs, it doesn’t matter how the shaedlings reproduce. The players will never ask, and the characters will never need to know. Taken too far, that sort of world-building detail can actually be counterproductive. If I say that these oozes are spawns of Juiblex, then many DMs who use a cosmology without Juiblex feel like they’d somehow be playing “wrong” or “out of canon” if they put one in their next game session. I find this attitude both ridiculous and infuriating, but I can’t deny its existence. If you need my permission, you have it: Use Monster Manual V monsters however the heck you want. You aren’t doing it “wrong” if you change stuff.

The only absolute here is "The players will never ask, and the characters will never need to know." However, that's clearly not meant to be taken literally. Sometimes in writing you make absolute statements to make a point, when clearly meaning it figuratively and not literally. Do really think he doesn't believe that no player, anywhere will ever ask this question?

However, it also clearly points out they agree with you in some area. He finds certain attitudes "ridiculous and infuriating" but acknowledges they are out there and they have to consider them in design. He even explictily tells you to use the monsters "however you want." You want to add these sort of abilities because they make sense, go for it.