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I love 5E, but lately I miss 4E's monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7015647" data-attributes="member: 6777737"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>can't</em>. All monsters share this same basic design, so essentially everything is a spellcaster in 4e.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>characters</em> 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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bacon Bits, post: 7015647, member: 6777737"] 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 [i]can't[/i]. 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 [i]characters[/i] 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. [/QUOTE]
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I love 5E, but lately I miss 4E's monsters
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