Flavor text is just as important as the statblock.
<snip>
There is a HUGE functional difference between an ogre and a bugbear. It's called intelligence, of which the bugbear is much higher and thus functionally will act different in the game.
anything even remotely resembling a ‘taunt’ effect against players has almost always been rejected, doubly so for nonmagical ones.
<snip>
I could probably think of a dozen reasons for an ogre to be intelligent, from finding a headband of intellect, to divine meddling/lineage, demonic possession, being the subject of arcane experiments, the list goes on and on. Outside of combat there are so many dizzying factors from campaign theme to setting to character intervention
Isn't the difference of INT between an ogre and a bugbear expressed first and foremost in their statblocks?
In any event, I incline to agree with Dualazi on this issue. Given the efforts that many GMs put into crafting the ficiton of their campaigns, the fiction presented in the MM flavur text is at best a starting point for thinking about what one might do with the monster.
Whereas the mechanics tend to be prety central to resolving a whole lot of actions at the table. For instance, flavour text saying that ogres are notorious wrestlers is going to fall a bit flat if they don't get to add the Prof bonus to checks to grapple or shove. Various posters upthread (I think one was [MENTION=6778479]Shadowdweller00[/MENTION] - yep, post 32) have suggested giving the ogre fetid breath that stuns or otherwise debuffs the PCs - and those suggestions all involved mechanical expression.
And yoou (Sacrosanct) have, in other recent threads, talked about your preference for giving dragons spellcasting ability. Clearly you don't think that flavour text alone (eg "Dragons are sorcerers of ancient power and might") is enough to do the job here. (NB. There are RPGs where that
would be enough. But D&D is not one of them.)
The system should be able to able to model a reasonable range of combat and noncombat tactics such as "I try to grab the orc's spear out of his hands." Or "I try to make the hobgoblin angry at me by insulting his paternity." The system should offer viable alternatives to "hit things" that are open to everything.
<snip>
4e went the completely wrong direction by squelching any non-hit things action
I'm sorry that you had bad experience with 4e, but what you describe doesn't fit my experience at all - so far from "squelching an non-hit things action", 4e had the most mechanically robust set of improvisation guidleines (p 42) and non-combat resolution guidelines (skill challenges) of any edition of D&D.
And your own example of an ogre being able to inflict the frightened or poisoned condition by breathing on its enemies and succeeding at an opposed skill check does not count as a generic tactic the system should model, does it? It's not as if the PC fighter can eat a clove or two of garlic and then make this sort of debuff attack vs a group of kobolds (is it?). And what stat/skill would the PC use? not Intimidate, presumably, as (i) they're not trying to intimidate the ogre, and (ii) that would suck for fighters, who should be the best at resisting this: it looks like it should be resolved like any other AoE debuff in 5e - the ogre sets a DC and the PCs have to make CON saves.
At which point the game has a fairly standard set off expectations about how save DCs are set, what sorts of AoE debuffs are appopriate at what levels, etc - and it wouldn't seem to me to do any harm to include this in the ogre's statblock (or, perhaps like 4e monster themes, in some list of abiities that can easily be grafted on to certain sorts of creatures).
The text of the bugbear could be reduced to they prefer ambushes, worship Huggrek and enslave goblins, in their stat block they already have the surprise attack feature. The flavor text doesn't make the combat less boring, it doesn't add anything to it. The ogre could be reduced to a stupid, glutton and hot blooded creatures who gang with other creatures to bully or prey weaker creatures, after more than 1/2 page to tell the same thing the flavor text doesn't add anything to spice combat.
I agree that D&D monster books often suffer from flabby writing masquerading as "lore". The 4e Monster Vault had the same issue. Given the roots of the game, they could take a leaf or two out of REH's book.
It's the difference between:
"The ogre moves 30ft and attacks Thorn. Does AC 17 hit? Ok, 8 damage."
and
"The brutish ogre turns and yells, 'Baaarrrrghhh! Squishy and smooshy hoomans dare think you beat Gruumash! now you dead!'. He waves his giant hand and suddenly from hidden outcroppings you are peppered with arrows from his goblin companions as Gruumash grabs the cow carcass he was previously feasting on and hurls it at Thorn!"
If you're only doing the first, then no wonder why you find monsters boring. It's the difference between roll-playing and role-playing, and role-playing shouldn't stop once combat starts.
For some of us, even many of us,
roleplaying is not primarily about the players listening to the GM's florid description of ingam events, It's about the actual resolution of the game evoking an experience in the paticipants that, in some way and to some extent, correlates with what is going on in the shared fiction.
I mean, in your second example, how did it become true,
at the table, that the PCs are peppered with arrows? Did the GM just make that up, and decide by stipulation that each PC takes (say) 7 hp of damage from goblin arrows? (That can be permissible in Dungeon World, but would be unusal in D&D.) Or were dice rolled - first to hit, then to damage? In which case, how is it an example of flavour text being more important than mechanics?
And to build on the example: if the GM engages in the sort of narration you've offered, but the PCs all are wearing Plate Armour with Heavy Armour Mastery damage reduction, have defensive fighing style, and are carrying shields - so the goblins hit only on a 17 or better, and have a good chance of dealing minimal damage even on a hit - then something has gone wrong. The GM's narration has misfired (unless s/he was going for comic effect) and the players (quite properly) won't be intimidated by the ogre and its troop of goblins.
And to pull back to a more general point: I don't think many of the posters in this thread are looking for advice on how to narrate the resolution of combat. Nor on how to set up encounters. I think they are looking for advice and ideas about how to handle mechanical resolution of conflict, especially physical conflict, in ways that go beyond to hit and damage rolls. 5e clearly has the resources to do so: a complex action economy, rules for opposed checks, saving throws, and so on. It even has a whole extensive subsystem that puts this to work: the spell mechanics. And many monsters exploit that subsystem. But it's not the only mechanical framework available for doing these things, as (eg) the bandit captain's Parry ability illustrates.
