Monsters are more than their stats

[MerricB]

So, how many successes do you need to break a succubus' charm? How many failures until the king tells you to get lost and orders his guards to attack you?

THAT'S the kind of mechanical detail needed to make the system work -- and that's what the OP views as an anathema (and the MM doesn't seem to think of as necessary).

Rubbish. I just think it's part of adventure design, not monster design, and is likely covered in the DMG, not the MM.

Consider a possible seduction ability that's written out in the MM:

Seduce Mortal: Daily. Cha vs. Will; if this is successful the seduced mortal will follow one suggestion of the succubus per day; if the Succubus successfully uses this power on the same mortal seven days in a row, further successes are automatic and the mortal will follow any suggestion of the Succubus automatically. This may be broken by the Break Seduction ritual.

Now, how much of that is actually useful in the adventure? Only the very last sentence! And then you have additional problems if it falls into the hands of the adventurers (I polymorph into a succubus and take all her powers!) All the actual usage of the power is off-screen. If you actually use the power against a PC (and properly) then what you get is a way of turning a PC into an NPC which is NOT FUN to the extreme.

As it stands, the succubus does have abilities it can use against the heroes (and in a non-campaign-destructive fashion), and the plot-abilties are left up to the DM. The one thing that is left out is "how do you break the succubus's hold on the king?" and that is part and parcel of adventure design. Standard D&D players will be very happy with "Kill the succubus", but for the DM who wants a more epic plot (and the designers at Paizo are happy to oblige) then you can have the find-the-artifact gambit.

If it does boil down to a non-magic issue and it's just the succubus's skill use, and you "just" have to persuade the king that he's been misled, then we've been explicitly told that such interaction is handled in the DMG... and the Succubus does actually have a skill rating. Of course, the default succubus isn't brilliant at it, but she does have all the Charisma skills at their default level.

 

[Kordeth]

Rubbish. I just think it's part of adventure design, not monster design, and is likely covered in the DMG, not the MM.

I agree. I remember a quote from one of the 2E books, I believe it was one of the Player's Option books, where it basically said "if the story calls for the PCs to discover a demon trapped in a giant glass ball by a rival demon lord, it isn't necessary to calculate the level of the spell, its saving throw, duration, or precise effects. It's enough to say that the demon lord did this, and the PCs must discover how and why." It looks like 4E is going back to that, and I for one couldn't be happier. On the other hand, I think this is going to be easily the biggest dividing factor on 4E for a lot of people. Players who don't/can't/won't accept "outside of combat, monsters can do what is a) appropriate to their role and theme and b) important to the plot" as a tenet of the game's design philosophy just aren't going to get behind 4E in general, I think.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Rubbish. I just think it's part of adventure design, not monster design, and is likely covered in the DMG, not the MM.

Why shouldn't notes and details on how to run a monster be included alongside a monster's statblock?

Why separate them?

 

[bramadan]

Why shouldn't notes and details on how to run a monster be included alongside a monster's statblock?

Why separate them?

Because every (interesting) monster can be used in a great number of situations and adventures. If they wanted to cover all the things succubus could do and all the possible resolutions to those situations entire MM would be renamed The Book of Succubus.

If I want a single Succubus based adventure then 5-6 pages will suffice to tell me what did she do and what can be done about it. It makes sense to put those 5-6 pages into the adventure though, not into the core book. Alternatively it makes sense that a DM who makes their own adventures will make up the off-stage monster behavior and abilities as well guided as ever by the vast fictional/mythological precedent.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

This well-tread ground and I don't feel the need to rehash it too much, but I will address your points.

And with this latest assurance that the contents of the DMG Will Explain Everything(tm), I think the final tally will be something like 15,000 pages.

It's going to have advice on how to DM. I think it's fair to assume that it will advice specific to 4th edition. I never said it will explain everything.

To be more clear, I was using the example put forth in this thread to hint at a general principle that has been stated before: the realm of encounters for PCs belongs in the MM, the realm of story resolution and plot belongs in the DMG. Beyond combat, the succubus entry might include some information on a basic skill challenge. If you want to talk about how the succubus has seduced the king's general and the PCs need to stop a civil war... that's story resolution.

That doesn't say anything. If you want information on how, specifically, a succubus uses men as her puppets, a Monster Manual is a pretty logical place to look for it. It sure beats crossreferencing.

I don't think there will be cross-referencing, specific monsters in the MM with specific monster-related plots in the DMG. That'd be overkill and unnecessary. I think what the DMG will have is general advice on creating stories around the monsters in the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because every (interesting) monster can be used in a great number of situations and adventures. If they wanted to cover all the things succubus could do and all the possible resolutions to those situations entire MM would be renamed The Book of Succubus.

No one ever asked for everything the succubus could do, per se.

But I will need *something* to be able to run the critter.

That's what the MM should be, right? A collection of ready-to-run monsters? A monster with only a statblock isn't ready to run.

 

[The Little Raven]

A monster with only a statblock isn't ready to run.

Yeah it is. I don't need the book to hold my hand and tell me what I should be doing with it, I just need the book to tell me what it can do.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah it is. I don't need the book to hold my hand and tell me what I should be doing with it, I just need the book to tell me what it can do.

*sigh*

No, it's not.

And the reason is right in the thread title.

Monsters ARE more than their stats.

That's why I need more than stats in my manual for monsters.

And, I'm pretty sure that at least most of the time, the 4e MM is going to give that to us. We've had hints of hobgoblins that engineer beasts, we have copius amounts of information on fire archons and formorians, we have hints that gnomes are getting a lair...

That's WAY more than stats.

Because the 4e designers, unlike, apparently, some of 4e's most rabid supporters, truly and really know that monsters are more than their stats.

Or would you like to pretend like you know what I need at a gaming table some more?

 

[webrunner]

No one ever asked for everything the succubus could do, per se.

But I will need *something* to be able to run the critter.

That's what the MM should be, right? A collection of ready-to-run monsters? A monster with only a statblock isn't ready to run.

The MM is a collection of ready-to-run-in-an-encounter monsters. A monster with a statblock is ready to run in a monster.

Monsters are in the MM.

Non-player-characters are DMG material.

A given succubus may part-times both roles..

It remains to be seen how specific the information is, but the information in the MM that we've seen is mostly about combat.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The MM is a collection of ready-to-run-in-an-encounter monsters. A monster with a statblock is ready to run in a monster.

No, it's not. Because an encounter is more than just stats vs. stats, and encounters don't exist in a vacuum.

Again, from what we've seen of the 4e MM, it seems to realize this, even if some of the apologists here don't. It gives, for instance, allied monsters that it might show up with. That's useful information - I can look at a page in the MM and have a group of monsters to fight my PC's.

It gives, for some monsters at least, lairs! That's more than just stats, that's basically an entire night's gaming in one page! Traps and allies!

Take a look at the information that the MM5 gives! Or go even further with the Exemplars of Evil/Elder Evils books! As some of the pre-sages of 4e, the team was quite evidently thinking in terms of "complete" monsters that weren't just stat blocks!

I do believe the new, non-mythological monsters it DOESN'T do this for -- perhaps critters like the phane -- will end up being the "ythraks of 4e," creatures that are out there, but that nobody really uses, because their main reaction is "WTF?"

A statblock is not a complete monster. Allies, motives (preferably more diverse that "it kills because it likes to kill!"), lairs, setting information (even if you ignore it, it's good to steal), unusual ideas the monster holds, this doesn't always take up much space (3-4 sentences can convey it if you're efficient and you don't want to go any farther), but it makes it so that as the players are meeting each other in town, I can flip through the MM to a random creature of an appropriate level and have a night of gaming laid out in front of me.

And what better place for that than alongside the stats of the monster itself? The less page-flipping and book-juggling I have to do, the better!

The thing is, 4e seems to realize all of this, and agrees with me, at least for some of the monsters (dare I hope most?).

Honestly, sometimes I think 4e's worst enemies can sometimes be its staunchest defenders.

A given succubus may part-times both roles..

Every single monster part-times both roles. Heck, PC's triple time, they play the role of adversary, NPC, AND player character. This is part of why some people have been a little wary of 4e's "different strokes" approach, since the line is not an in-game line, but rather a metagame line that they don't want to see.

But I don't see why I should have to turn to the DMG and my own devices to run a succubus out of the MM when 4e is supposed to be easier to run with less cross-referencing.

I want the designers to give me a game, not to give me bits and pieces I need to kit-bash together into a game in my spare time.

I don't have spare time.