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

[Mouseferatu]

To me, that's a demonic grunt, not a demonic captain. Contrast the d20 Marilith, that mirrors a high-level fighter in that it gets what we now would call extra attack, it sees through illusions and invisibility, it can even throw up a blade barrier for some battlefield control of its own.

I'm confused. The marilith in 5E gets seven attacks on its turn; how does it not have the "extra attack" equivalent? (Or more, if it chooses to use its reactions for opportunity attacks instead of parries.) And it has Truesight to 120 feet, so it does see through illusions and invisibility.

Seems to me that all it's lacking is the blade barrier, in comparison.

(I'm not trying to say you're wrong across the board. I'd like some added complexity in a few high-level monsters myself. But I'm not sure this is the best example.)

 

[CapnZapp]

But I'm not sure this is the best example.

Agreed.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Because, once again, I'm not suggesting any low-level critter be changed.
.

I am positive the success of 5th edition is completely independent on the stat block of a few high level critters, none of which will feature in a new campaign for many, MANY sessions.

But you're not just talking about a few creatures, or only higher level creatures. For a long time, you've been arguing for wholesale changes in general to the MM. Things like:

Alternatively phrased:

"I've come to the conclusion that the designers have decided that there is a way to get away with not spending the effort to build monsters capable of challenging all but the softest, newbiest of parties. So they created a bunch of lowest-effort lowest-denominator bare bones creatures with some starting ideas and offloaded the entire monster design finetuning process entirely on individual DMs and then just spun those cost-savings as something good for the consumer"

The "it's easy to modify" excuse only goes so far. We who want to pay money not to have to do things ourselves, we who actively enjoy the officialness of an official take on things, we still need WotC to step up their game and offer much more thoroughly developed products.

Just because I generally like 5th edition doesn't mean WotC gets a pass when they don't meet minimal expectations.

There is an alternative, and that is confident self-assured monster design, where the knobs are turned just right, and where the monster is given just a few more abilities.

The goal is for the monster to stand some chance of overcoming standard player tactics, to have a small chance of catching them by surprise.

…

The key to fixing the MM isn't just wholesale doubling everybody's HP or something crude like that. Some monsters should remain fragile and/or glass cannons.

But there are too many monsters that ARE big sad sacks of hp today, that would benefit immensely (both from a game perspective and a story perspective) from getting a do-over, where they're given a few tools to get out of tight spots, and where they're given the stats to actually last long enough to actually do something (especially if they're supposed to work as a "boss" monster).

We need CR 5 - 10 versions of bugbears and grimlocks and shield dwarves that aren't NPCs but distinct "high level" versions of bugbears and grimlocks and shield dwarves.

That is, they shouldn't aim for "bugbear rogue" or "grimlock warlock" so much as distinct high level bugbears and grimlocks.

If I want to apply class levels to a bugbear, I can do that myself. (Or, more likely, I'll simply reuse the Assassin NPC). What I want is a cooler meaner bugbear that does more unique stuff.

But one thing was lost.

The idea to have "elite warrior" stats for many monsters was still a good one.

I would have loved a second Ogre stat block, for an "elite Ogre" of perhaps CR 7.

Or Grimlocks. Or Gnomes. Or Tigers.

The way all elite guard dwarves are given the same old Veteran NPC stat block gets old, fast. The way all mid-level spellchuckers are given the same Mage stat block, with minor racial tweaks, gets old, fast.

I want specific Grimlock Cannibal CR 5 statblocks, or perhaps a cool CR 15 Gnome Master Illusionist statblock (complete with a three-round spell tactics sidebar), and why not a CR 10 Dire Tiger...

I want the 5E rules and the 5E way of thinking, but I also want the wealth of different statblocks that 4E gave us.

(Minus minions)

So, leafing through the 4E Monster Manual at random, I spot the Eladrin section (the High Elf of that edition).

It contains a very satisfying spread of such Elf NPCs:
* the Eladrin Fey Knight (probably similar to a 5E Veteran and thus CR 2-3; level 7 out of 30)
* the Eladrin Twilight Incanter (probably similar to a sturdier 5E Cult Fanatic and thus CR 2-3; level 8 out of 30)
* the Bralani of Autumn Winds (probably similar to a high-level Fighter/Wizard multiclass and I'd peg it at least at CR 8-10 depending on spells; level 19 out of 30)
* the Ghaele of Winter (probably similar to a high-level cold-themed sorcerer and thus CR 15ish; leve 21 out of 30)

4E sure sports impressive NPC class names, huh?

More to the point, here we have a single humanoid race writeup, with no less than four distinct stat blocks, CR 2, CR 3, CR 8 and CR 15; for loads of fun variety!

We desperately need "elite" versions of many many more humanoids, with CRs reaching (and sometimes surpassing) CR 5. Gnolls, Dwarves, Grimlocks or what have you. The Orc War Chiefs and Drow Elite Warriors are just a start. We need more. Many more.

Also,

I am not contesting the MM design was not intentional.

But you are, when you say things like "they never thought about..." or "they totally dropped the ball on." You are literally saying they never even thought about doing it your way, so how can it be intentional to not design monsters that way if they never thought about it in the first place? That doesn't logically compute. It I'm going to intentionally ignore something, that means I have to be aware of what I'm ignoring. So you can't have it both ways. Either they never thought about it, or they did and decided it wasn't want their goal was. So if the answer is the latter, you need to stop accusing them of the former.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is what I was getting at earlier in the thread when I said they just disguised things that are essentially similar/identical. Hell, your descriptions themselves are the same justifications posited by people defending 4e: “At least in 5th the fighter can only do his second wind and action surge once per short rest because it takes a lot out of him to push himself to those levels”, yeah, kinda like a fighter in 4e can only do certain attacks once per encounter or day because of the effort required.

To be fair, the 5e fighter only ever gets two such abilities, and their fairly different in concept, one being offensive the other recover, even if both are 'pushing himself' or using deep reserves or whatever just like the description of martial encounters and dailies in 4e. The idea that there are two, distinct, reserves of different nature is isn't pushing it as far as 3 distinct encounter reserves, and 3 distinct daily reserves - that stemming from the general 4e design rule of thumb of each power being usable only once, that is not being able to swap uses of one encounter for another, like spontaneous slots or something.

What’s weird to me about all this is how blithely people accept the justification worded one way, but reject it when described in a different fashion.

I don't think it's the wording...

This is just bizarre to me, because of all the sweeping changes made to class structure in 4e, casters probably changed the least in my opinion, save having fewer spells than before. (and even then, wizards still got extra dailies from their book).

Having fewer spells than before is quite the understatement: topping out at 4 comparatively balanced dailies versus dozens of wildly overpowered ones is a profound drop in power, even if it isn't a vast conceptual change (Wizard dailies remained Vancian in concept, for instance - arguably more so than they are in 5e). But, yes, the conceptual change to non-casters in gaining encounters and dailies, and the increased versatility and power that entailed, was more significant. Both were just a matter of bringing the classes into closer balance than they'd been in the past.

4e was also the first to experiment with separated rituals, which lead to the compromise of ritual casting in 5e, which was an excellent change in my opinion. Pretty sure spell cards have become pretty popular for casters as well, and there’s no functional difference between that and a power card.

Spell cards existed before 4e, too. So, for that matter did the idea of casting a spell 'directly out of a book' outside of combat which is kinda close to ritual casting. Kinda. But, yes 5e retained at-wills for casters and rituals, while scrapping dailies for non casters. The game giveth, the game taketh away. ;P

Tl;dr: Presentation isn’t meaningless, but I find a lot of the complaints about it to be strange and borderline hypocritical. That’s not directed at any individual either, just what I’ve seen here on enworld and elsewhere.

The edition war discussions crawled deep into such rabbit holes. I'm glad 5e isn't getting the same treatment. But bringing up 4e in a thread like this was probably a mistake in the first place. (sorry, OP)

 

[The Human Target]

This thread has 4e in the title.

 

[CapnZapp]

But you're not

I guess I should feel flattered you dug up my post history.

But no. Here and now I am arguing against the notion "it's fine and any change risks alienating customers".

That's WAY overblown.

Sure - I might want more comprehensive changes than you. But here and now I am ONLY shooting down the argument that the current level of complexity was the best choice for WotC.

It most assuredly was not.

What really happened was that the designers were so obsessed with "quick and simple" that they forgot to pull back from that stance when it came to the higher tiers of play.

The most basic criticism against the stat blocks remain: "I see scant evidence of the designers being aware of what a high level party can and will do, and providing boss-level monsters with enough tricks up their sleeves to be able to challenge the players".

After all, the 5E PHB is incredibly generous in heaping abilities on player characters. Excepting 4th edition, heroes have never been given so many ways to turn failures into successes and vice versa (with rerolls and extra bonus dice and all) - any monster that can be described as "straightforward" simply can't compete.

If you then add how monsters are completely denied feats and multiclassing, the gulf between heroes and monsters have probably never been greater (at least not in modern times). This needs to be discussed openly.

But I'll give you this - I AM flattered.

Zapp

 

[Bacon Bits]

I prefer 5e's combat, sure. But i definitely prefer 4e's monster design. Partly for the complexity (having stat blocks for five different types of level-appropriate goblins makes for some very interesting encounter design philosophies) but mostly, if I'm being honest, for their simplicity. My eyes roll out of my head every time I see an enemy stat block that contains the feature Spellcasting. Who has time for that? If I'm designing a spell-casting enemy and I assign them more than three-four spells (or really any kind of out-of-combat utility magic) it is because they are a major villain and I need to know what they're capable of in reaction to the PC's. But her dime-a-dozen necromancer goons? A cold-based cantrip, and two-three recharge-based higher level spells (a debuff, raising some skeletons, maybe a area attack) are all they really need.

See, I find this really interesting because I completely agree with you, but your reasoning is why I dislike 4e's monsters and prefer 5e's.

I more or less know every common spell of levels 0-5. I can read a list of spells and that, combined with knowing what I want from the remainder of the encounter, lets me know what I want to use for that encounter. If I want something different, it's pretty trivial to swap one spell out for another since all spells are categorized by spell level (i.e., ability power). Additionally, if I decide that I don't want to deal with spellcasting, I can do that super easily. I just don't run monsters that have spellcasting.

With 4e monsters, on the other hand, I can't just read the name of the ability. Every monster has a different name for it's abilities, even for similar sounding abilities. Lots of monsters create blasts of flame, but they'll have different areas of effect, target different defenses, have different rider effects, possibly have a recharge, use different size dice, etc. At some point every monster has 4 abilities like this, and you'll be running 3-4 different monsters in an encounter. You've got to re-read every ability every time it's used because they're all different abilities that have slight differences. The really bad part is that if I don't want to play with creatures that don't have this problem, I can't. All monsters share this same basic design, so essentially everything is a spellcaster in 4e.

Worse, your players are so used to encountering monsters with snowflake abilities that *nothing* seems special anymore because everything is always unique. All the abilities are slightly different, but they're not wildly differing power levels. The abilities on one CR 17 creature of a given role are roughly on par with the abilities of any other CR 17 creature of the same role. As No Man's Sky should tell us, being unique in a world of infinite variety is neither interesting nor noteworthy. So suddenly it's difficult to make creature abilities interesting or noteworthy. Everything is just a more or less powerful version of the same template. Your area of effect blasts? "It's a fireball." "It's a cold fireball." "It's a fireball that sets you on fire." "It's a psychic fireball that targets Will." "It's a necrotic fireball that slows you for a round and targets Fort." "It's a sonic fireball that pushes." "It's an extra large area fireball that lasts two rounds." "It's a fireball that rolls d10s." I understand that the idea is to curb metagaming, but it also means that characters can't rely on past experiences, either. You're almost always fighting new creatures with abilities you don't know, but that all fit at the same point on the power spectrum.

 

[Eubani]

"so essentially everything is a spellcaster in 4e" This statement was, is and will always be one of the biggest dishonest statements about 4e and those who use it need to be called on that lie. If a persons argument against an edition is based on a dishonest argument a lie, then the issue is probably different than what is actually being discussed.

 

[cbwjm]

It's not a lie, it's an opinion. An opinion I can understand. When a warrior is only able to do a manoeuvre once a day, it feels like they are casting a one off spell instead of using a skill that they've practised in the training yard.

I'm not against 4e, I think that they had some great ideas there, but to many it seems weird that a variety of martial powers can only be used once a day or once per encounter. We can see that with magic, we're used to the vancian style of spell casting, but with martial skills it seems a little jarring.

 

[Bacon Bits]

"so essentially everything is a spellcaster in 4e" This statement was, is and will always be one of the biggest dishonest statements about 4e and those who use it need to be called on that lie. If a persons argument against an edition is based on a dishonest argument a lie, then the issue is probably different than what is actually being discussed.

Mm... that's not the same argument I'm making though. I'm reusing [MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION]'s phrasing because I'm reusing his argument.

Gradine had the complaint that when they saw a monster with the Spellcasting ability, they knew they were going to have to stop and read the spell descriptions. Since that's exactly my complaint with 4e's monsters -- all of them, more or less -- my complaint is that all 4e monsters have the same problem. Therefore, if their argument against 5e's monsters with Spellcasting held water, the same reasoning should apply to all of 4e's monsters. I probably should have been more clear by saying, "Essentially, everything in 4e has 'Spellcasting.'"