Mike Mearls' monster redesign seminar

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Anyone here attend the remaking of the beholder seminar?

From what I've heard, the beastie sounds a lot more reasonable and easier to use, but would love to hear more opinions.

Did Mearls mention whether the new beholder will appear on the WotC site?

And any chance these redesigns will go in as subraces of the various critter types in MM5?

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'd love to hear about this too. I meant to go to that seminar, but I spent a good chunk of Saturday sick in my hotel room.

 

[Klaus]

I missed the seminar, but ran into Mearls at the airport on Sunday and he said that while they didn't actually finish the beholder, he'll take the ball and run with it, and post that later on the WotC website.

 

[Beckett]

Among the many reasons I would have liked to have gone to GenCon, this seminar was of chief interest. But then, I am something of a Mearls fanboy.

Hopefully he'll post up something from the seminar, and maybe I can make it to GenCon next year- I doubt I'll be getting married and buying a house again, so time and money should be a little more available.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Eegad man, is there any D&D staple he doesn't want to tweak?

I wonder how big the revolt will be when he tries to touch dragons.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Eegad man, is there any D&D staple he doesn't want to tweak?

I wonder how big the revolt will be when he tries to touch dragons.

I think the beholder is a lot harder to argue with changing: It's kind of cumbersome in its current implementation.

Dragons, on the other hand, already have been tweaked quite a bit. I'm not sure how much more tweaking they'd get.

 

[Graf]

The beholder sucks for DMs to run.
From all the random abilities (sleep?) to the different arc facing to the it-opens-its-AM-eye it-closes-its-AM-eye it’s unfun.

Looking forward to the new beasty.

 

[Vigilance]

Not to mention, redesigning a creature doesn't mean "Mearls things it sucks" it means "I think this will open a lot of good conversations about game balance and the way DMs run the game".

Which is a good conversation to have under ANY circumstances.

Chuck

 

[zoroaster100]

I have to run a combat featuring one or more beholders soon for my players, and what I'm dreading the most is having to figure out basically entirely new stats for the player characters everytime they are in the antimagic cone of the beholder's central eye. I'm thinking I'll have to ask the players to prep an alternate character sheet for their character with no boosts from magic items in order to run the combat.

 

[TarionzCousin]

... a lot more reasonable and easier to use....

In my opinion, this is what Mearls has done to the previous monsters he's altered. I threw a rust monster or three at my players in 1st Edition, but it was a different game. I wouldn't use the "official" rust monster in 3.5 unless the PC's knew about it well in advance; it's just too heartbraking to ruin their swords and armor. That's not my idea of fun.

I'm looking forward to the new beholder. I have held off designing the Beholder's lair in a future dungeon (okay, procrastinated), but now I'm glad I did.

By the way, did Mr. Mearls hint at what other monsters might be revisited in the near future?