Monsters and Armour...

[Spatula]

Just how it works in 4e. Thank goodness they figured out we don't need a friggin rule for every possible situation. DM interpretation worked fine for all editions prior to 3.x. Don't see why it can't work moving forward.

Except that there is a rule for this situation and someone is asking for help on figuring it out.

EDIT: Why even have a rules forum? If you want to talk house rules, great. The house rules forum is thataway. --->

DM interpretation has always worked fine. That's why there's a DM. All the whining about how DMs were enslaved to the rules in 3e was always 100% bull. People didn't have any trouble throwing out the rules in 1e. Hell, you had to in order to have a playable game.

 

[Sashi]

That's a good point, I got to arguing about something else and forgot the original question.

So, on page 174 there's a rule for upgrading equipment, but the rule itself isn't really well written, which you've pointed out. The part of those "changing equipment" rules that's most important is the last paragraph. The part that says "if you change attack, damage, or AC values that's akin to changing the monster's level". So, really, what these rules are saying is "if you want to reverse engineer a monster, you kind of can do it, but it doesn't really work because that's not how we made the monsters".

If you want to change a monster's AC, don't think about "Well if I take off that scale male and put on some plate that will bump his AC by 4" because that's really not the way the game works anymore. Think "Okay, I want this guy to be the leader of this bandit raiding party, I don't want to make him an elite but I do want him to be a little tougher than the other bandits. I'll up his level by 2 and tell the PC's that he's wearing slightly more protective armor and a shiner weapon."

 

[Zurai]

But what if I want to improve one facet of it without improving every other stat it has? Because that's what leveling up a monster does - pretty much everything they do is level based. If I want to increase its AC without increasing its HP, Attack, Damage, Fortitude, Reflex, Will, Skills, Initiative.......

 

[Sashi]

Well then the question is "what are you going to change to compensate for the fact that you've made the monster a bit tougher"?

If you're just bumping a stat to make the monster tougher, without doing anything to mitigate it, then bad DM! *bop on the nose with a rolled up DMG*

Personally, I'd really like them to have included a sidebar in the DMG (or at least published an article) where they took one of the monsters they made and showed how they started with the general monster creation rules and then tweaked the numbers to make a unique monster. It really would clear up some of these questions.

 

[Zurai]

I don't know what I'm going to change. There's no rules for it. Or, at least, no rules that actually work when applied to examples from the books. We're left with throwing spaghetti at the wall.

 

[Sashi]

Not to sound offensive, but is this even a problem, then? 3E was exceptionally explicit about how you could change monster AC and damage (take a CR 7 Hill Giant with Hide Armor and a -1 DEX, replace the hide armor with full plate, now he's got AC 35 instead of 30 ... how do you adjust the CR?). The 3E system of "here are some hard and fast rules for advancement, and it's possible to min/max them to the point that you can easily TPK your party" just doesn't work. It's not how the monsters in the MM were actually created (Monte Cook has been quoted as saying that the MM monsters and DMG magic items were basically created by guessing on values, playtesting, and then guessing some more). It's patently false to claim that adding 4 giant hit dice (4d8+con, +3 BAB, 1 feat, +saves, +stat bump) is even close to being the same CR increase as 1 level of fighter (1d10+con, +1 BAB, 1 feat, +2 fort) and yet the 3E rules do exactly that and then rely on you to call BS on the "hard and fast rules" and make something that makes sense by randomly guessing what it should be from the stats of other monsters.

So now that I've finished ragging on 3E, I'm contractually obliged to point out the superiority of 4E by noting that there are some nice, explicit rules for how to make monsters with all the numbers appropriate for the level you want. This is like making spaghetti by pushing a button on a box and *ding* perfectly cooked spaghetti pops out. The trick then is to season to taste, since tastes differ and seasonings can get very complex and layered there aren't hard and fast rules.

 

[Zurai]

So now that I've finished ragging on 3E, I'm contractually obliged to point out the superiority of 4E by noting that there are some nice, explicit rules for how to make monsters with all the numbers appropriate for the level you want. This is like making spaghetti by pushing a button on a box and *ding* perfectly cooked spaghetti pops out. The trick then is to season to taste, since tastes differ and seasonings can get very complex and layered there aren't hard and fast rules.

Have you actually tried to create a monster using the rules in the DMG? They're actually very vague at certain key points (such as how to assign ability scores and exactly how ability scores should be interpreted to affect the monster) and, because they didn't use those rules to create the monsters in the MM, it is impossible to get an example of the rules used correctly so that you can be sure you're using them correctly. Trying to use vague rules without examples to guide you is like trying to learn calculus without being able to check your work against the answers in the back of the book.

 

[Spatula]

It doesn't tell you how to assign ability scores because the ability scores do not matter. You're looking at monster creation from the bottom-up when they're being designed from the top-down. In fact, I suspect that the monsters in the MM had their ability scores chosen based on the monsters' numbers; i.e. it's a brute and it gets a +6 to damage, so give it a STR of 22-23. That's not to say what the DMG gives us is great - I would have liked to see a more in-depth discussion of special abilities, balacing factors that emerged in playtesting, and so on, to keep DMs creating their own monsters from repeating mistakes the designers have already made.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Except that per the table on DMG 174, the MMT threshold for an 11th level monster like the drow warrior is +2, not +3. So it's still off by one.

You're quite right. Maybe the drow is wearing scale. That would fit.

 

[Zurai]

No. Wrong. It gives a detailed, step-by-step explanation for how to create a monster from scratch, including self-referencing steps, but you can't actually use those rules.

Here, I'll walk you through using the example of a goblin wolfrider I whipped together as a test.

Step 1: Choose Level. This one's easy: I chose level 3. (I also made it elite, but that's irrelevant to this example)
Step 2: Choose Role. Also easy: Brute.
Step 3: Determine Ability Scores. It tells me to work on ability scores in pairs and tells me how to determine the highest ability score of each pair. Good. However, it doesn't even mention the lower ability score of each pair. I ended up stealing the stats for a Goblin Skullcleaver, a level 3 goblin brute (which do not conform to the rules, for the record).
Step 4: Determine Hit Points. As a Brute, it gets 10+Con+(level*10). Well enough ... except I have no guidance on what its Con score should be because the stat I chose for the Str-Con pairing was Str. Again, I settled on the Goblin Skullcleaver's stats, so 53 HP.
Step 5: Calculate AC. Easy, just look up the table and we get 15 AC.
Step 6: Calculate Other Defenses. These are always level+12 and "for every 2 points the ability score varies from the average, adjust the defense by +1 or -1". Well enough... but what's "the average"? 10? If so, his defenses are going to be MASSIVE. They have a base of 15, and the least score is 13 + 1/2 level, or 14, for a +2 bonus, giving us an AC of 15 and 17s in the other three defenses. Looking at the Goblin Skullcleaver's 16/15/14/12 defenses, I'm left utterly stumped. There is no possible interpretation of the rules as presented that leaves me with 16/15/14/12 defenses.
Step 7: Choose Powers. Direct enough.
Step 8: Calculate Attack Bonus. Direct enough. The formula for brutes gives us +6 vs AC and +4 vs other.
Step 9: Set Damage for Attacks. Easy, just look up the high damage value since it's a brute. 2d6+3 or equivalent damage range.
Step 10: Details. Fluff; ignorable for the example.


So we have a major breakdown on everything that has to deal with ability scores. We aren't told how to handle dump stats (which DO matter, initiative, skills, perception, hp are all examples). We aren't given a clear explanation of how to handle stat modifiers to defenses (refers to an undefined "average" stat). Finally, we aren't given any actual example of how to use the rules.