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

[The Human Target]

Like, why in the world do "minions" with 1 hit-point exist? I know why the exist in terms of the game mechanics, but how does that fit into the world? Creatures that can do a good bit of damage, but are always on the verge of dying if you blow on them? It's such a game mechanic detached from the verisimilitude of the world the characters are living in; it's a prime example of what I'm talking about.

You mean, like all real human beings?

 

[pemerton]

My problem with 4 edition is that it becomes a boardgame when you have a fight

I'm sorry to read that you had this bad experience with 4e.

one of the things that I think he misses is when he talks about how 4e simply takes certain things like spell descriptions and put them into game mechanics terms, like saying a power is an "encounter" power, instead of saying this spell lasts 10 minutes, which would be about the same thing. His argument is that it's really all the same, but some people didn't like that mental shift from a story-driven terminology to a game mechanic terminology

I feel that is is very easy to exaggerate this point.

For instance: the 4e fireball description and the Moldvay Basic fireball description are almost identical (right down to the point of referring to damage to creatures only). But for some reason the reference to creatures in 4e causes no end of consternation (as if there's some doubt whether a fireball can be used to set fire to stuff) whereas in Basic it caused no issues at all.

the whole point of Dungeons and Dragons as a role-playing game is the immersive aspect of it. The language is a part of that immersive aspect.

Personally, I don't find the description of mechanical effects to be part of the immersive aspect at all. For me (and I think for those I play with), what generates immersion is emotional engagement with the action of the game. The mechanics are a tool for helping to generate that action, but they are not themselves a source of immersion. Having the power say "encounter power" (ie recharge after short rest) is like haveing the fireball spell say "Xd6 damage". It's a shorthand telling you how the thing in question factors into the mechanical play of the game.

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.

The last sentence only follows if one assumes that having mechanically discrete and distinctive abilities = is a spell caster.

Even in AD&D this wasn't true - see eg the martial arts manoeuvres in OA, or a monk's special abilities. In 3E it's not true (see eg feats and some class abilities).

And it's certainly not conceptually true.

Worse, your players are so used to encountering monsters with snowflake abilities that *nothing* seems special anymore because everything is always unique.

This is a complete non-sequitur. If all I read are decent books, each is unique and each seems special!

I meet a lot of people in my job - all are unique, many seem special.

In the context of a FRPG combat, an ability is "special" if, in play, it (i) creates a cool image, and (ii) makes the players think about how they're going to deal with it, and if, after the vent, it (iii) remains memorable. I find this to be the case for a good number of 4e monsters: they create cool images during play, they force the players to think, and the whole event is memorable. The issues of "degree of uniqueness" has no real bearing on this, except that stuff that is the same tends not to be as memorable, because it blurs together in the memory.

 

[Teemu]

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.

A 3e barbarian's non-magical rage ability has daily usage, and is limited to once per encounter too. A 3e rogue can use the non-magical defensive roll ability once a day. A swashbuckler can use the non-magical lucky ability once a day. The 3e prestige class cavalier has a special charge ability -- non-magical -- whose usage is daily. Other examples can be found everywhere in 3e source books.

4e did not pioneer non-magical daily or even encounter abilities. As far as I know, 3e was the first edition to do that extensively.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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



Zapp

Don't. It took all of 10 minutes while I was on a boring conference call. And I'm sure my quick search missed a lot more of those types of quotes.

Point is, is that for a long time you have made statements like that, so you can't really blame people for being under the impression that what you said is what you want, rather than the new shifted position you're taking now that is much less broad and more narrow.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This thread has 4e in the title.

That is what I was referring to, yes.

A 3e barbarian's non-magical rage ability has daily usage, and is limited to once per encounter too. A 3e rogue can use the non-magical defensive roll ability once a day. A swashbuckler can use the non-magical lucky ability once a day. The 3e prestige class cavalier has a special charge ability -- non-magical -- whose usage is daily. Other examples can be found everywhere in 3e source books.

4e did not pioneer non-magical daily or even encounter abilities. As far as I know, 3e was the first edition to do that extensively.

Another example from 3e was Stunning Fist, which could be chosen with a Fighter bonus feat. The classic game was full of n/day and n/turn (which, back in 1e, meant a 10-minute exploration turn, not your initiative count on a round) among other things, not always linked to something that was explicitly magical.

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.

If you state it very carefully, maybe, you can present it as an honest opinion. You have to be clear that its your personal subjective experience of 'feel' that at issue, and that the mechanics do, in fact, present separate & different casting and non-casting options. Once it's clear that the objection is not that 'fighters cast spells,' but that fighters & spells casters are not differentiated by the former being mechanically inferior, and that changes the feel of a game where traditionally such was the case.

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.

You're missing two important differences. 1) the 4e monster's power was right there in its stat block, while the description of a spell is in another book and 2) 4e powers are mostly pretty terse and clear and can be parsed easily, while more traditional spells are less consistent and more ambiguous. So there's the extra step of looking up the spell, and the likelihood that it will take longer to resolve the spell.

Those differences become moot when you've already memorized (in the natural-language, not Vancian, sense) the available spells.

Here and now I am arguing against the notion "it's fine and any change risks alienating customers".

That's WAY overblown.

It's also a meaningless argument, because it always applies. For any given state a game is in, some folks will find it too much, some wanting, and some just right. Like a bunch of bickering Goldilocks.

The right answer is 5e's answer: let people choose how much they want. Had enough? Enjoy.

If they keep coming back for more, give 'em more.

 

[CapnZapp]

Don't. It took all of 10 minutes while I was on a boring conference call. And I'm sure my quick search missed a lot more of those types of quotes.

Point is, is that for a long time you have made statements like that, so you can't really blame people for being under the impression that what you said is what you want, rather than the new shifted position you're taking now that is much less broad and more narrow.

You're way out of line. Are you seriously suggesting I can't have a personal opinion on one hand and make an argument in favor of something else on the other?! I haven't "shifted position"!

You're really out on thin ice if you dig up the posting history to hold against a poster. Stop that nonsense immediately. Now, respond to the actual arguments in this thread, or don't respond to me at all.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I love 5E, but lately I find myself missing some aspects of 4E's monster design. I find this particularly true when I'm looking at 5E's dragons; we've gone back to the days when the main difference between a Red and a Blue is the type of breath weapon they use. OTOH, in 4E (especially later on) each type of dragon had different abilities suited to entirely different types of tactics; Reds were tough front-line fighters, while Blues were like highly-mobile artillery.

(Full disclosure: I've considered simply running 4E again, and I'm not interested. The player-side mechanics just don't scratch the same itch that 5E's do, and ever-inflating-math got old fast. I don't want to go all the way back to 2010; I just miss the monster designs.)

Does anybody else ever feel like 5E slid "backwards" into boring, homogeneous monster design? Aside from converting everything myself, does anyone have suggestions about "4E-ifying" 5E's monsters?

Yeha I think 5e monsters are not as interesting as they could be. You might check out Low Fantasy Gaming RPG for some interesting monster abilities (they all pretty much have something on a natural 19, boss monster template, other individual abilities, monsters can use minor exploits, etc) https://lowfantasygaming.com/

 

[cbwjm]

A 3e barbarian's non-magical rage ability has daily usage, and is limited to once per encounter too. A 3e rogue can use the non-magical defensive roll ability once a day. A swashbuckler can use the non-magical lucky ability once a day. The 3e prestige class cavalier has a special charge ability -- non-magical -- whose usage is daily. Other examples can be found everywhere in 3e source books.

4e did not pioneer non-magical daily or even encounter abilities. As far as I know, 3e was the first edition to do that extensively.

True, there were abilities in 3e that were limited usage. However, with 4e, your fighter might be trained in power that is called Overrun that allows you to once per day charge, deal damage, and knock down your opponents. For many, we ask why can't he continue to use it every round. Why can he only adopt a stance once per day, why can he only do this one physical attack every 10 minutes.

Again, I liked 4e, but sometimes when thinking about the martial classes especially, the system seemed a little odd if you thought too much about it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You're way out of line. Are you seriously suggesting I can't have a personal opinion on one hand and make an argument in favor of something else on the other?! I haven't "shifted position"!

You're really out on thin ice if you dig up the posting history to hold against a poster. Stop that nonsense immediately. Now, respond to the actual arguments in this thread, or don't respond to me at all.

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.

 

[Teemu]

True, there were abilities in 3e that were limited usage. However, with 4e, your fighter might be trained in power that is called Overrun that allows you to once per day charge, deal damage, and knock down your opponents. For many, we ask why can't he continue to use it every round. Why can he only adopt a stance once per day, why can he only do this one physical attack every 10 minutes.

Again, I liked 4e, but sometimes when thinking about the martial classes especially, the system seemed a little odd if you thought too much about it.

And you can ask the same question regarding all the various non-magical daily abilities of 3e base and prestige classes. But usually people don't. Makes you wonder.