Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Owen K.C. Stephens" data-source="post: 2915668" data-attributes="member: 3190">I -am- a contributing author to the MM IV, and I haven't seen anything but the raw files yet, so I actually can't say if I'm going to like the book or not. On the other hand, I'll get three free copies, so it's not like I have to worry about deciding if I want to buy it. And I hope most of you (that play D&D) are smart enough not to make such a decision until you see a copy and flip through it. Because doing anything else is either stupidity, or mean-spiritedness. Period. Form all the early opinions you want, but the final decision should wait until you SEE THE BOOK.Now I had nothing whatsoever to do with the design, development, or art direction on the dragonspawn, so I do feel I can comment rationally and reasonably about them without being too biased. And here's the point I think most people have missed:The intelligence of the design has nothing to do with one monster.No one set of stats can show you why the dragonspawn are a good idea. They're not, individually, brilliant or new. What they are is an effort to have a flexible, interesting set of foes a DM can easily run, using elements the players have already seen and have some idea what to do with. In other words, their very simplicity and "uninnovative" nature is what makes them good monsters.Most DMs don't have a lot of time to write up foes. Heck, in my experience -most- DMs aren't creative, thoughtful, or even all that smart. They're just typical people, trying to play a game. Oddly, the game insists they spend a lot of time doing math and plotting. Those are both jobs, and a lot of people don't like those jobs. The dragonspawn give them a set of options that don't require the DM to work that hard to have fun.Most DMs are casual gamers at best. Most -gamers- are casual gamers. A lot of them if asked to write up a half-red-dragon-lizardman-sorcerer are going to go play WoW instead. And if they did write one up, they'd forget some important spell, or they'd have made dumb spell choices to begin with. And, likely, they would get the CR wrong, or not give it the right support monsters, or screw-up its treasure, or balk when a player asked what a Knowledge (arcana) check told him about the dragon-type monster in front of him. With the dragonspawn in the new format, none of that is a problem. They'll give you a threat just deep enough for a typical DM to run in a typical game against typical players.Not interested? Fine the book isn't for you. Most books aren't. They're for run-of-the-mill gamers who just want to A: Kill something and B: Take its stuff.There's a big danger if you get -too- innovative. You end up creating things that feel out of place, or don't have good support rules, or take the players so much by surprise they don't enjoy the game. YOU may not like the idea of creatures blending dragons and humanoids, but at least players understand their ecological niche well. You throw too many lucent worms, maulgoths, and ocularons at players and they feel like the world makes no sense. Heck, people on these boards have talked about how many different monsters you can stick in one game world. But most games have humanoids and dragons, meaning you can get dragonspawn somehow, and the players see that.Personally, I may never use dragonspawn. But I sure as heck know DMs who are going dance in the street to see simple bad guys, with the rules for them all laid out, designed to work together. DMs who otherwise look down at the end of a game and say "dang, I never used it's breath weapon," or "shoot, when it was blinking it should have been doing sneak attack damage." If you aren't one of them just be aware they're out there, they outnumber you, as a whole they have more money than you, and they need help.I wrote more monsters than showed up in the MM IV. I think some of the things that got cut were much, much better than some of the stuff that got in. But that's the way these things go. And of all the things that got in, I see what the dragonspawn got their place in the sun.</blockquote>

Verification