D&D 5E (2014) Humans and Demihumans as Monsters in DNDNext

[Jeff Carlsen]

Some of the most common should probably belong in the Monster Manual, but I personally would benefit more from a book dedicated to NPCs. Something akin to the NPCs in the back of the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide, only bigger.

 

[Tovec]

A lot of people did indeed. But they were wrong - those pregenerated 'advanced' monsters in MM4 and MM5 are very very useful. Indeed, I made more use of those advanced monsters than I did of the entirety of the Fiend Folio or MM3.

Fortunately, WotC saw this, and so the 4e Monster Manual featured several different versions of common monsters, at different power levels and often covering different roles. So I would expect (and certainly would hope) that they would do so again.

(What I liked rather less about MM4, though, was the inclusion of pregenerated lairs for several creatures. They weren't really detailed enough to be used as-is, and so took up space in the book without saving the DM enough time to be worthwhile. IMO, of course.)

And yet, as Li Shenron said, those were by in large a waste of space. By the time the MM4 and 5 came out people had years of experience creating new NPC/monsters with levels. What would have been better is to give simple creation rules, something far superior to the crappy rules in the DMG. Or if they gave an entire book of humanoid NPCs to just crack open and use. After the first couple of levels (and I would argue largely at level 1) it doesn't matter what their racial abilities are as the creature won't last long enough to really use the ability to find secret doors or stonecunning. That is why I think Pathfinder released a great book with the NPC codex, which gave 20 examples for every class they have. 20, that is one NPC per level per class. Some of them had multiclassing, some had NPC levels, but in general they are really simply made and really effective quick NPCs. I'm surprised WotC never thought about something like this. The only thing it doesn't solve is that "any monster with X levels in Y class". But that is something I haven't seen a solution for at all, especially with MM4+5. 4 and 5 were just a couple of humanoids with pregen blocks that were taking up space that could have been filled with cool NEW monsters. I know, new monsters in a new monster manual, quelle surprise.

 

[zoroaster100]

No, I want and need pre-made easy to use human/demi-human opponents for all levels (not every level, but for low, mid and high levels at least). They are not a waste of space. To me this is a lot more useful than yet another bizarre monster I'll never use in my campaign. Sure, most of the classics from the first edition monster manual need to be in the DNDNext monster manual or people will be disappointed, but beyond that I'd far rather have a variety of humans, or even a variety of orcs, than yet another critter like a bonesnapper or flail snail.

Sure, having rules or guidelines for creating our own monsters with NPC-like powers would be nice, as would rules and guidelines for creating all kinds of monsters, but I want my human and demi-human monsters for all levels of play ready to use out of the box without extra work. Why should I have to do so much extra work to be able to throw a wizard at my players than to throw a dragon?

 

[Li Shenron]

Covering all levels for all classes is out of the question... for that, easy rules and maybe some tables, or nothing at all.

Rather than focusing on classes, they could focus on a small number of archetypes: the guard/warrior, the cultist/adept (i.e. spellcaster), the brute/bandit, and that's pretty much although maybe they could differentiate between a divine cultist and an arcane adept. Essentially, these roughly correspond to the four old classes... there might be need for archers, but these could also just be achieved by simply swapping weapon.

Thanks to bounded accuracy, there really is no need to have sample NPCs of each level. What changes mostly in PC by level is the amount of abilities (i.e. complexity) which is exactly what people don't want from these NPCs (otherwise they'd use PC classes for them), while combat statistics i.e. numbers change slowly. Hence, having an adept for level 1, another for level 3, next for level 5 (quite close to what we have now) is enough. 3x4=12 entries already in the MM and that's only for humans... I wouldn't want 12 entries for each humanoid race honestly. Other races can get less, maybe only one level 5 orc cultist (probably going to be the leader) and no orc arcane adepts for instance.

I also wouldn't go beyond level 5 with these. After that, just put a "customization" sidebar for advancing them. By that time if the rules are simple enough the DM can continue with more.

Otherwise really the number of pregens gets out of hand... If they want to make a book of NPCs fine for me, but I certainly want a MM with >90% monsters, not NPCs.

 

[zoroaster100]

Li, I agree we don't need every level of every class. But I do need humans at low, mid and high levels for each archetype that is a combat opponent. For example, I want an "arcane caster" at low mid and high level, a "warrior", and a "cultist or priest". Beyond that, I'd be fine with some examples of a few others, such as a low level merchant or noble type, a mid or high level "warrior/spelcaster", etc.

 

[steeldragons]

...and just to go with this for a minute...What constitutes "low, medium and high" levels?

You need the MM to tell you what stats and abilities a 1st level cultist has? A 1st level thief? Gonna throw a bunch of those at a party of 6 1st level PCs? Or maybe you mean 3rd level is "low", but might still challenge a 1st level party, so that's ok?

Is 10th level high? 15th or 20? If 15th is "high" then shouldn't "low" be, like, 5th instead of 3rd?

And mid...well, you see my point. Old school "mid" started at 4th. That's not really the case anymore and would be foolish if 3rd is a "low" level NPC.

Now, I'm sure we can just say "whatever the default of the game will be" and that will be perfectly acceptable to everyone. Right? So everyone knows/wants the default of the game to be low levels at 3, mid levels at 6 and high at 12. That's fine right?

OR are we wishing for a 30 level game and so "low level" could be anywhere from 1 to 10th! Mid levels 11-20 and "high" 21-30?

Generic Bandit 1: has a sword, crossbow, chain mail vest and a secret dagger in his boot. Want him low level? Give him 15 HP. Mid, give him a dex bonus to up the AC and make the sword magical, HP 40. High, more magic, more hp, more AC...

This really needs to be in the Monster Manual? 3 each (low mid and high, soon as we determine what you mean by low/mid/high which will automatically be hunky dorry fine with every other person's game out there, I am sure) for a generic fighter, a generic thief, a generic cleric and a generic mage?

I dunno. I'm down with the types being in there. Ok fine. But, as easy and clean as it sounds, "low, mid, high" levels is hardly easily done.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Some of the most common should probably belong in the Monster Manual, but I personally would benefit more from a book dedicated to NPCs. Something akin to the NPCs in the back of the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide, only bigger.

Paizo did exactly that with its NPC Codex. Probably their greatest DM product ever.

 

[delericho]

...and just to go with this for a minute...What constitutes "low, medium and high" levels?

Surely it's not beyond them to pick a representative set of levels?

Now, I'm sure we can just say "whatever the default of the game will be" and that will be perfectly acceptable to everyone. Right? So everyone knows/wants the default of the game to be low levels at 3, mid levels at 6 and high at 12. That's fine right?

One of the great weaknesses of 4e was that although they had their tiers defined, they never quite locked down exactly what the tiers actually meant. One of the great weaknesses of 3e was that although the game effectively had tiers, they never actually spelled this out (never mind getting as far as locking down what they actually meant).

If they're wise, WotC are spending some significant time calibrating the levels of their PCs against the capabilities of "everyone else" so that they can build a coherent universe. What level is the average guard? What level is the king's champion? If the PCs need a high-level priest to cast raise dead for them, is that one in ten, one in a thousand, one in a million? At what level do PCs (without using explicit magic) go from "this is theoretically possible" to "this is simply impossible"?

Once they've got that, it should be reasonably clear what the default definitions of low-, medium-, and high-level are. (And, as an added bonus, once they've got that, they can then provide DMs with meaningful advice for how to change those defaults for their game.) If they fail to do that, then there's no point in them defining tiers because they're just names with no meaning. Or, worse, we're back to the insanity of the game regularly throwing up 20th level Commoners in any settlement of sufficient size.

 

[delericho]

And yet, as Li Shenron said, those were by in large a waste of space.

Less so than the new monsters in those same books. Much less so than the Dragonspawn of Tiamat that took up so many pages in MM4.

By the time the MM4 and 5 came out people had years of experience creating new NPC/monsters with levels.

It would indeed have been better had those sample advanced builds been in MM1. 4e did that, and it was an improvement. Hopefully, 5e will take the same route, as we're advocating here.

Nonetheless, those builds were still very useful. While it was indeed the case that almost any DM could readily build those monsters by hand by that time, it was still a significant time-saver not to have to.

That is why I think Pathfinder released a great book with the NPC codex, which gave 20 examples for every class they have. 20, that is one NPC per level per class.

Such a book would indeed be good. But while we can be reasonably sure WotC will produce at least one Monster Manual for 5e, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will ever produce any specific supplement (that is, we can be reasonably sure there will be some supplements, but cannot be certain there will be an "NPC Codex", or "Draconomicon"... or even the previous no-brainers like "Monster Manual 2" or the splatbooks). It would not be unwise to ask the question "what should be in the Monster Manual if it were the only monster book ever to be produced for the game?"

And, in that case, it is my contention that stats for 'bandits', 'cultists', 'knights' and similar subgroups of "human" should be included.

But that is something I haven't seen a solution for at all, especially with MM4+5. 4 and 5 were just a couple of humanoids with pregen blocks that were taking up space that could have been filled with cool NEW monsters. I know, new monsters in a new monster manual, quelle surprise.

By the time MM4 and MM5 came around, 3e had thousands of monsters out there, and hundreds of templates just in case those weren't enough. The game simply did not need any more new monsters. Worse, WotC were quite obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel - have you seen the new monsters that actually did make it in to MM4 and MM5?

So where they could indeed have dropped the advanced humanoids in favour of more new monsters, they would have been new monsters on a par with the Dragonspawn of Tiamat. Or, worse, monsters that were less good, since they would have been selected from those culled from the books for lack of space.

 

[CAFRedblade]

What I'd love to see either in the DMG or MM, are some of the guidelines used to create the Monsters, and additional guidelines for leveling and adding templates ( Class, Racial, Theme or Condition[lich for example])
Can we have a few examples the most commonly encountered Dwarves, Elves and Humans, sure, do I personally want nearly a third(exaggeration) of the MM book taken up with such examples, not really.

However, perhaps like the Paizo Pathfinder NPC book, and the 3ed NPC book, create a Humanoid Centric MM which covers most Humanoids and Demihumanoids with various combinations, and generic sample organizations.
Personally I'd rather have Generic Thieves Guild for a city of population # size would have this many members, and rough organizational structure.
And in a side bar - Example Guilds of this size can be found in these campaign worlds' cities. FR- Waterdeep, EB- Sharn