Monster Design--from a designer's standpoint

[Novem5er]

So far, I'm jazzed about 4e monsters. I'm not tempted to build monsters from scratch for my home campaign (not every monster, just the occasional inspiration). However, I have one concern with monster construction. Seeing the full rules might cure this fear, but I thought I'd bring it up here to see if anyone has any input.

So far, it looks like we can assign a Level and a Role and that will give us a general HP range, AC/Defenses, and damage per round.

But how do we balance all those interesting powers?

Teleportation, grabs, status effects, continuing damage, etc...

I just see so many options, I'm really not sure how the designers (or us at home) are going to keep them in line.

 

[Knight Otu]

People actually complained about monsters having abilities that they couldn't obtain?! I mean, I can be nitpicky about numbers, but I won't complain about my human wizard not being a balor. That's really not sane. On the other hand, if my character for some reason is a balor, or the monster in question is a human wizard, then I might be a bit miffed (there might be prestige classes, feats, templates, or other stuff involved, so the differences can come from those, of course).

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

They weren't even angry rants, a lot of the time. Look at quite a few of John Cooper's reviews/unofficial errata for 3E books; there is a lot of synergy bonus and save DC dickering going on, and those were respected and valued contributions.

That's just what I was thinking. John Cooper's gonna be out of a job.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I totally feel that way.

Scott and I were talking and I was talking with Erik Mona. Here was my rant of the particular day:

"Yeah, in 4E if I want my skeleton to just, I dont know, throw some black ball of banefire I can just say --Banefire, Range 6, 1d10 necrotic damage-- See, now it throws an evil ball of nastiness. Just like that."

It is literally that easy. Yes, there will be some suggested guidelines I am sure. But it is that easy.

And no cheesy rules lawyers can jump up and say, "hey, there is no PC spell for that! That's not FAIR!" and besides that is a 4 HD skeleton and so since it has magic, it is a 4th level wizard and we know 4th level wizards dont get fireballs even if thats what that was!! And on top of that the skill points dont add up!"

Ugh. Just give me my game back.

And they did. And it was good.

Why couldnt you just give it a supernatural ability to do this in 3.5? Slap a DC on it if ya want, give it a bonus to the save if you want, and call it a day. CR? Meh... anyone who read the MM knows CR is eyeballed at best.

I'm rather excited about the simplified monster design. I stopped giving a damn to remember/write down synergy bonus to skills, what low level spells casters know etc a long time ago. However I do think people may have overcomplicated doing some stuff in 3.5. If you want some flying snakes... give them a fly speed. If a player whines about how he cant grow wings... well thats not really a system problem.

 

[malraux]

IME, the problem wasn't giving monsters some special ability, it was giving them all the associated things to make the ability useful. Using the skeleton with that ranged necrotic damage thing, sure you can just add that ability to a skeleton. However, since its a ranged attack, you need to add feats: point blank shot and precise shot. So this means I can't add this necrotic thing to a skeleton (because it can't have feats). In addition, if I'm using a base undead to add this on, I'll have to advance it by 4 to 6 HD so it can get access to feats, assuming I don't want to give it bonus feats.

The point being not so much that you can't just add everything you need to a particular creature, but that the 3e rules strongly imply that there's a "right" way to do something.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The biggest issue with 3E monster design, in my view, was BAB, HD size, and (to a lesser extent) skills being tied to Type. That really hamstrung things to a much greater extent than did standardized powers.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So far, I'm jazzed about 4e monsters. I'm not tempted to build monsters from scratch for my home campaign (not every monster, just the occasional inspiration). However, I have one concern with monster construction. Seeing the full rules might cure this fear, but I thought I'd bring it up here to see if anyone has any input.

So far, it looks like we can assign a Level and a Role and that will give us a general HP range, AC/Defenses, and damage per round.

But how do we balance all those interesting powers?

Teleportation, grabs, status effects, continuing damage, etc...

I just see so many options, I'm really not sure how the designers (or us at home) are going to keep them in line.

I suspect (but have no hard evidence) that the DMG will also contain guidelines for this kind of stuff. And what you don't find in the DMG, you might find in the PHB - look at the spell/exploit/prayer that matches what you like.

In this regard, I think the difference between 3.x and 4E might not be so big, though - it's like adding a spell-like ability to a newly generated monster. The difference might be that you don't have to word it exactly like the spell, and can create a simpler or more eloberate version, depending on what you want for the monster.

 

[Lizard]

IME, the problem wasn't giving monsters some special ability, it was giving them all the associated things to make the ability useful. Using the skeleton with that ranged necrotic damage thing, sure you can just add that ability to a skeleton. However, since its a ranged attack, you need to add feats: point blank shot and precise shot. So this means I can't add this necrotic thing to a skeleton (because it can't have feats). In addition, if I'm using a base undead to add this on, I'll have to advance it by 4 to 6 HD so it can get access to feats, assuming I don't want to give it bonus feats.

The point being not so much that you can't just add everything you need to a particular creature, but that the 3e rules strongly imply that there's a "right" way to do something.

I never thought of it as 'needed to' -- it could just have a normal ranged attack. Give it a high dex score or something. What was nice,to me, was that you could add feats and know they'd work properly.

 

[malraux]

I never thought of it as 'needed to' -- it could just have a normal ranged attack. Give it a high dex score or something. What was nice,to me, was that you could add feats and know they'd work properly.

Well, -8 is pretty big penalty to an attack role, and I'm assuming that you'd put some sort of tanking creature between the ranged attack guys and the PCs. Even assuming that this energy only requires a touch attack, without the basic archery feats, its gonna miss a lot.

 

[Storminator]

The biggest issue with 3E monster design, in my view, was BAB, HD size, and (to a lesser extent) skills being tied to Type. That really hamstrung things to a much greater extent than did standardized powers.

I'm running the Savage Tides adventure path... let me tell you about ninja dinosaurs! Why does a baby Diplodocus have a +9 Reflex save?!? Oh yeah, 16 HD...

PS