D&D 4E I love 5E, but lately I miss 4E's monsters

[The Human Target]

This didn't get nearly enough play, but this is a brilliant observation.

The ONLY reason why Minions become a problem is because their juxtaposition with the rest of the setting's inhabitants makes the absurdities of HPs stand out like a sore-thumb even more (if D&D combat mechanics are viewed through an utterly untenable process-sim/"realism" prism...rather than the abstract, narrative machinery that they are)!

Minion mechanics are MORE realistic (a singular connected strike by a deadly weapon and you're out)!

It is strange what abstract game rules upset people in a game full of abstract rules.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I didn't select my dragons to demonstrate 4e distinctiveness

At least you admit it.

5e is exactly as amenable to "inspired GMing" as 4e was.

Indeed, all games are. Nothing a game could do can really stop it. In fact, you could even say that 5e primes the pump a bit, /requiring/ some inspiration on the DM's side of the screen.

Here's a thing that I'm not sure you're appreciating: if it requires extensive knowledge

...like memorizing 80 page of spells (see below)...

detailed analysis, and careful building to understand why the thing is distinct, it's going to be lost on a huge swath of your audience.

Not so much with monsters, really. The DM needs to handle the monsters and make them interesting. Some may do that via deep system mastery, others by seat-of-the-pants improve, and many things in-between.

But, it doesn't hurt to put a little more into the monsters, especially a few 'extras' at the end of a block say. Could be nice to have. JMHO.

(I'm cool with opt-in complexity)

I think that's all the thread really calls for from 5e.

The issue is that with a list of spells, or a list of feats, you've got one list of abilities that's fairly universal across the entire game. And everybody's basically pulling from the same list.

Everyone doing many of the exact same things is an issue, sure. Not a big one, I don't think - they do them in different combinations, they're still differentiated. (As long as there aren't definite must-have spells, then everyone who has those does 'em a lot, and become defined by them.)

You play the game for a year, and you're going to have about 80% of the feats and spells more or less memorized.
Even better, they're all in the PHB.

In 5e, even with it's slow pace of releases, most of 'em are. There's that elemental supplement with a number of spells, and couple in SCAG. There'll be more, of course.

And, yeah, you can get a lot of stuff like that memorized after a bit. If you're new, of course, you obviously haven't, or if you've gone through the process for a few successive editions, you can get them confused (an affliction I like to call 'versionitis,' when I'm making light of my suffering). The downside with memorizing much of what everyone can do is that, well, you know what some creature you have no logical reason to know things about can do, if I were overly concerned with immersion I might make more of that, but I'm just noting it.

That means it's not just on you as the DM to get every ability right. Your players can correct you, and help you out by reading the spell description.

That is the nicest spin on arguing over spell descriptions I've heard in a while. But that's what you're talking about.

Yes, long, ambiguous spell descriptions can lead to disagreements, debates, even arguments that can suck up game time and even become acrimonious.

I really don't feel like it's out of line to expect that, unless I'm citing references from the books or quoting others to reinforce my argument that I need to explicitly and repeatedly state that I'm relating my personal opinion.

That wasn't directed at your opinions about monsters, but at the old edition war saw about fighters casting spells.
Hazard of multi-quoting.

I did not find 4e's powers easy to parse....
And yes, when I have the spells in the PHB roughly memorized and that's one of the reason why I find that 5e is much easier. That's exactly the point I was making.

If you can be bothered to memorize 80 pages of spells, but not 5 pages of 'how to read a power,' sure, I can understand how you'd find a list of spells simpler to deal with than a few clearly laid out powers using the terminology from those 5 pages you didn't memorize. It's just a matter of sunk effort.

Furthermore, you don't have this situation where the powers of the PCs are completely distinct from those of the NPCs.

You say that like there's something wrong with PCs being distinctive.

I never liked the fact that what NPCs had access to was so stripped down compared to the PCs, while simultaneously several NPCs of player races had access to abilities that had no peer among the powers PCs had access to. I understand why that was -- it was impossible to do otherwise in 4e given the amount of crunch PCs had -- but it challenged my suspension of disbelief.

I always find it interesting what pushes that button and what doesn't. Every caster on earth using mostly the same spells, whether they're conduits for miracles from the gods or studious bookworms or have power in their blood or whatever? OK? An NPC caster having different spells than the party wizard? A problem? :shrug: Ultimately, of course, as DM's we can give monsters or NPCs whatever we want.

But, y'know, there /were/ any number of PC-race entries in the 4e MM that had the same racial ability as PCs of that race, and instances of NPCs of a 'class' using a selection of powers from that class (which, let's face it, any give PC only got a fraction of the available powers) - 4e also left the door open to creating NPCs using the PC rules if the DM felt it appropriate, though it cautioned against it for the reason you site (PCs are created in too much detail), if it were an issue, it was an option. What's more, I don't feel like 5e's gotten as far from that as either you or the OP were suggesting. 5e monster stat blocks /are/ quite different from PC character sheets because monsters need less detail and players need more options and distinctiveness, monsters' multi-attack is different from PCs' Extra Attack, monsters have all sorts of special abilities PCs do not, etc... spells stand out from that by being 'samey,' I suppose, but they're mostly just a short-cut, re-using the closest available system to model something that'd probably be a bit different if the game had the resources to model the monster closer to the 'fiction.'

I don't think the OP is wrong for wanting to go that extra mile.

 

[pemerton]

I've toyed with the vague concept a retro-nostalgic system idea that uses 'hits' in combat. At the mundane level, a hit kills a normal person, some attacks can inflict more than one hit at a time, and some persons (thanks to armor for instance) might be able to negate one or more hits - not a lot more in either case. Beyond the mundane levels you get into attacks doing large, variable amounts of hits, and characters and creatures having the ability to negate lots of hits - and it becomes like hps. I feel like grounding a hp-like mechanic in a more lethal mechanic might help. :shrug:

I think the Modiphius Conan/2d20 system is a bit like this.

 

[CapnZapp]

Wait, what? Take a deep breath man. All I did was point out how you have spent the past couple years talking about the same thing--widespread overhaul of almost all of the monsters in the MM--and how people are going to think that's what you want. So when you say things like "...on the stat block of a few high level critters.." you can't get mad at people who assumed you were talking about most monsters because that's exactly what you've been arguing for since 5e pretty much came out, as I showed with those quotes.

Years of "I want more variations of pretty much everything" to "I'm only talking about a few high level monsters" = shifted position.

Don't threaten me dude, I'm not impressed. And I was very much addressing your actual argument by showing you exactly how you've shifted your position. That's what all those quotes were. Literally the only things we know about each other is our posting history, so it is very much relevant if you change your position. Heck, some of those quotes were only a month or so old. So unless you're gonna say you never made those quotes, I very much am on topic. Also, I never said shifting your position was bad. People do it all the time. I only said it to explain why some people have come the conclusion they did that didn't jive with your most recent position, that's all. So don't take it as a personal insult because it wasn't.

Now is the time where I need you to actually read what I write:

Stop accusing me of shifting positions.

Stop bringing up people's posting history.

Focus on the argument, not the person.

You don't get to say whether somebody is personally insulted or not. If they tell you they're insulted, they probably were.

If you can't do that, stop responding to my posts at all.

 

[CapnZapp]

The issue is that with a list of spells, or a list of feats, you've got one list of abilities that's fairly universal across the entire game. And everybody's basically pulling from the same list. You play the game for a year, and you're going to have about 80% of the feats and spells more or less memorized.

Even better, they're all in the PHB. That means it's not just on you as the DM to get every ability right. Your players can correct you, and help you out by reading the spell description. Nobody's casting a fireball that targets Fort, or has a 50' radius, or uses d10s for damage, or is not a sphere, or has one of two dozen rider effects.

I think you have DMd D&D for too long to realize how big of an ask this is.

Just pasting a spell list into a stat block is incredibly lazy and user unfriendly. Asking gamers to memorize the spell list is an incredibly 1980s hardcore thing to do.

We can and should expect more from WotC in the year 2014 (when the MM was printed).

Especially since only perhaps one in every ten monsters have spells. Adding a short summary line for three chosen spells (much like any other unique action) would have been hugely helpful.

Even something as simple as underlining spells requiring Concentration would have been hugely helpful, since that would have meant DMs could easily see which spells the monster can't cast together (without cheating) and which spells the monster needs to make Concentration checks for when taking damage.

 

[CapnZapp]

Now, yes, you may find 4e's monsters to be distinctive enough, but I certainly did not. I found that they all followed the same template, and that got very dull after awhile. And from the discussions I've had, the sentiment was shared in my playgroup. By the end, I felt like there were only really 5 monsters in the game: Brute, Artillery, Soldier, Controller, and Skirmisher/Lurker (which often played the same, IMX). Everything else was just whatever damage type they dealt and whatever 1 round or save ends rider effects their abilities had. The stats were otherwise basically locked to the CR of the creature. Toward the end of my group's play in 4e, the only distinction the players sought was: "What role is this monster?" That was the only really useful "hidden" information. Once you knew that, the tactical choices were pretty obvious and, therefore, not particularly difficult.

You don't have to agree with me. I'm not proving things deductively here. I'm stating my opinion, and relating my experience.

I think both of you are missing the point

The point isn't to import everything about 4E monsters into 5E.

I fully agree 4E locked things too tightly to level and CR. That's presumably not what people want when they say they miss 4E monster design in 5E.

It is the varied and unique actions we want.

All (or most) low-level humanoids adhere to the basic combat rules in 5E. This means there is little to no variety in how they express themselves during combat. In 5E even something as basal as a pounce attack is rather rare.

That's not good enough.

Compare to how cool it would be (from a game perspective) if some monsters had spiked clubs that caught in your flesh on a good hit and restrained you.

Another complaint is "blood frenzy" type of abilities. Some humanoids and other low-leve critters have them. But it's all so incredibly cautious, like when it only apples when the monster has 10 hp left. That means most monsters will die without ever getting the chance of displaying their blood frenzy, and even for those that do (meaning even after every party member has had a go, they're still left alive and with single-digit hp) they will probably only live for a single round to express it.

What you want in 5E is much more of a variation. Instead of fighting a dozen Grimlocks or Quaggoth, you want them to display variation. This causes "texture" into the fight. Texture from a gaming perspective that is. Some monsters need to be taken out first. Some monsters should be ignored until last.

Sure D&D has always had this - add a spellcaster and a big bag of hp. But 4E greatly increased this variation.

4E also strongly supported the idea that having a humanoid as a foe at different levels is a fun and cool thing to have. 5e is by contrast a sad throwback to the idea that goblins should only be used at low levels; and many humanoids have only a single 1/2 CR stat block.

That 4E also added much more "balance" to this by locking monsters to their CR is actually a completely separate design mechanic, that goes against this variety (just as you say).

But there is no reason why we can't eat the cake (more varied monster versions 4E style) while still keeping it (by sticking to the much greater "unfairness" of 5e core monster building design principles)

 

[DEFCON 1]

But there is no reason why we can't eat the cake (more varied monster versions 4E style) while still keeping it (by sticking to the much greater "unfairness" of 5e core monster building design principles)

Of course there is.

WotC doesn't want to do it.

You can't be handed a bigger or more obvious reason than that.

 

[Nebulous]

I like 5e pretty well, but at higher level the monsters need more OOMPH, especially we are using Feats, and those are just devastating later on.

I wish we had a 5.5 D&D that just tweaked everything across the board, but it's easy enough to ad hoc yourself.

One thing i've been implementing is Bloodied from 4e, and using lots of ideas from 13th Age for monsters. If a monster gets Bloodied (and we use red markers on our minis) then often a secondary ability kicks in. Sometimes it's a reaction, but it usually just makes the enemy substantially more dangerous until it is dead. Advantage on attacks, extra attacks, more damage, increased Crit range, simple stuff like that.