D&D 5E monsters with feat and class abilities

[CapnZapp]

Seriously though, all you know is that the knight and the squire fought two frost giants and one giant died and the squire died and the other giant was wounded. You have no idea what environment the battle took place in. I think once you get out of this mindset of all battles take place in a white room, you'd see how other things might be possible. Battles are not just one stat block against another. Not in any D&D game I've every played anyway. The environment, and preparation has been a huge factor in just about every single one. Maybe the knight ambushed the giants, using rolling logs, or whatever, to put the battle in his benefit.

Maybe I wouldn't have complained if the NPC was written to be clearly pleased with himself, "I thought I was dead, but then I saw that rock fall and got an idea..."

In other words, please don't try to pretend the stat block was appropriate for the description. In many other cases, it isn't clear-cut, and I'm not complaining. But this is not one of those cases.

The text pretends it's nothing out of the ordinary having a Knight and a Guard defeat two Frost Giants. That's nothing short of laughable.

Why not reuse the same encounter for Ogres (or stretching it, Hill Giants)? Or make him commander of a squad of mounted infantry? There are a thousand ways to make it work.

But nooo... your choice of approach is to go "could totally happen, nothing to see here"?

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm sure they would have preferred another statblock. Such as the gladiator with better armour.

But, they're limited by the options they have and couldn't devote pages in SKT for a single unimportant NPC.

I would far have preferred your solution.

The characters encounter a knight of the order (use Gladiator stats in full plate, AC 18) mounted on a warhorse clad in chain mail barding (AC 16).

Very little extra text. But the small token of recognition would have gone a loong way.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Thing is, NPCs are never at risk of outshining the PCs, not in 5th Edition.

Sure a Veteran NPC could boss around a couple of level 1 characters, and a Champion NPC owns any party still at third level or less.

But we have to judge the stat blocks in context. This NPC arrives sometime around when the PCs themselves can start picking off Frost Giants, so I see no upstage risk at all.

I appreciate how 5th edition so clearly (but not expressly, AFAIK) have scaled back the world and its NPCs. No longer is the tavern keep a "Fighter 12", for instance.

It's only when said tavern keep has a subdued Frost Giant out back doing yard duty, she really needs those levels...

There is a place for scaling back NPCs and putting the spotlight squarely on the PCs. What there isn't a place for, is giving NPCs that have a defined job stat blocks that can't handle that job.

But this expectation ignores any number of elements that could have played a part in the encounter. Perhaps the giants were overconfident in their attack on Sir Jordeth and his squire, and they reveled in killing the squire and/or their mounts (if they had them), dismissing the puny human as not much of a threat. Jordeth then managed to score a couple of hits on one giant (maybe a critical or two in there) and managed to kill one of the giants, causing the other to flee.

I think there's plenty of room to allow narrative elements into the situation to help explain the outcome instead of assuming that the giants and the knight face each other in an arena and each seeks to optimize their actions during the fight.

 

[LordEntrails]

I think PC's should be special. They SHOULD stand out from the crowd. I've got no problem with the standard goblin or dwarf stat blocks. They are to goblins what commoner is to a PC.

You should make variants of these NPCs. Like a Dwarf Soldier that has some trait(s) that has some sort of phalanx trait. Or an Orc Buiser that has something like GWF.

The MM is not a definitive listing of creatures, it's (to me) nothing more than a starting point for the most commonly found variants of the creatures listed.

 

[CapnZapp]

But this expectation ignores any number of elements that could have played a part in the encounter. Perhaps the giants were overconfident in their attack on Sir Jordeth and his squire, and they reveled in killing the squire and/or their mounts (if they had them), dismissing the puny human as not much of a threat. Jordeth then managed to score a couple of hits on one giant (maybe a critical or two in there) and managed to kill one of the giants, causing the other to flee.

I think there's plenty of room to allow narrative elements into the situation to help explain the outcome instead of assuming that the giants and the knight face each other in an arena and each seeks to optimize their actions during the fight.

All of that can still be true. But there's always a limit to what you can smooth over.

Besides, we all know the truth - they really did not care, thinking "as long as nobody ever sees that Knight fighting, nobody will ever know the stat block is completely inadequate". It's just like Out of the Abyss all over again, where you're given Scouts (!) to "help" you move on Menzoberranzan and a bunch of Demon Lords. Pleeze. Bounded Accuracy and all, but those precious little babies have no place anywhere near monsters that can even slightly inconvenience a level 10-15 party. "How in the nine hells will we keep these greenhorns alive?!" is the only reasonable question. That, and "Can we return them before they break?".

And that's the charitable explanation. The incharitable explanation is that section was written by an intern that simply never realized CR 3 NPCs don't hunt CR 9 monsters.

What we don't need, though, is people trying to justify any of it. Again, I would not have brought it up if the text had shown even the slightest inkling that the outcome was unexpectedly favorable.

 

[Jester David]

I would far have preferred your solution.


Very little extra text. But the small token of recognition would have gone a loong way.

It is also a random encounter. One sample (non-mandated) knight you might meet as early as level 6 who is given a small paragraph of text the length of two tweets. You've probably given that encounter five times the thought and energy as the writer whose main concern was thinking of 19 other random encounters as quickly as possible before returning to the main story and not blowing their deadline...

 

[Ancalagon]

But again [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] if those scouts *did* have "good" stats, they could overshadow the PCs.

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[hawkeyefan]

All of that can still be true. But there's always a limit to what you can smooth over.

Besides, we all know the truth - they really did not care, thinking "as long as nobody ever sees that Knight fighting, nobody will ever know the stat block is completely inadequate". It's just like Out of the Abyss all over again, where you're given Scouts (!) to "help" you move on Menzoberranzan and a bunch of Demon Lords. Pleeze. Bounded Accuracy and all, but those precious little babies have no place anywhere near monsters that can even slightly inconvenience a level 10-15 party. "How in the nine hells will we keep these greenhorns alive?!" is the only reasonable question. That, and "Can we return them before they break?".

And that's the charitable explanation. The incharitable explanation is that section was written by an intern that simply never realized CR 3 NPCs don't hunt CR 9 monsters.

What we don't need, though, is people trying to justify any of it. Again, I would not have brought it up if the text had shown even the slightest inkling that the outcome was unexpectedly favorable.

Sure, I understand your point. But I also think that sometimes outcomes are unexpectedly favorable. That kind of thing happens sometimes. Sometimes the little guy is able to defeat a greater foe. It's pretty much one of the oldest and most well known stories in the world. Sure, circumstances are a little different here, but someone punching up and overcoming a superior foe is not unheard of. Yes, I'm justifying it a bit....but why is that so bad? If the encounter works for someone as designed, great. If it doesn't, then come up with some explanation for how things played out as they did, or else change them.

And if the PCs never see Jordeth's statblock, then would there really be an issue? Perhaps when they attack the remaining giant along with Jordeth, they'll expect a bit more from him....but perhaps they'll realize he "got lucky" or that something else was at play here. You can even have Jordeth tell the PCs that he got lucky by managing to kill one of the giants.

As far as WotC's decision on it...I don't think your commet on this being "written by an intern" is very fair. I just think that given the level of importance of this encounter combined with how many people won't share your view on the comparative CRs, they just decided it was good enough as is, and didn't feel the need to devote more page space to this one off minor encounter by creating a new statblock for Jordeth. I can understand criticizing that decision, but I think perhaps you're overstating their negligence in this regard.

 

[CapnZapp]

It is also a random encounter. One sample (non-mandated) knight you might meet as early as level 6 who is given a small paragraph of text the length of two tweets. You've probably given that encounter five times the thought and energy as the writer whose main concern was thinking of 19 other random encounters as quickly as possible before returning to the main story and not blowing their deadline...

And you have spent an equal time defending the indefensible, no?

(Had you said "it's probably a misprint" there wouldn't have been more to say)



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[Sacrosanct]

Maybe I wouldn't have complained if the NPC was written to be clearly pleased with himself, "I thought I was dead, but then I saw that rock fall and got an idea..."

In other words, please don't try to pretend the stat block was appropriate for the description. In many other cases, it isn't clear-cut, and I'm not complaining. But this is not one of those cases.

The text pretends it's nothing out of the ordinary having a Knight and a Guard defeat two Frost Giants. That's nothing short of laughable.

Why not reuse the same encounter for Ogres (or stretching it, Hill Giants)? Or make him commander of a squad of mounted infantry? There are a thousand ways to make it work.

But nooo... your choice of approach is to go "could totally happen, nothing to see here"?

Besides, we all know the truth - they really did not care, thinking "as long as nobody ever sees that Knight fighting, nobody will ever know the stat block is completely inadequate".

No, that is not "the truth". That's you once again ascribing negative motivations on the developers/writers based on your own limitations. This isn't some great conspiracy where you know "the REAL TRUTH!" And quite frankly, it's getting very tiring that any and every time something isn't written the way you want, you insult the team either by calling them incompetent or lazy, and calling anyone who disagrees with you as being apologists or "defending the indefensible"*. To be honest, you are the worst of armchair quarterbacks, because people have said to you over and over, "CapnZapp, you have put a TON of time and effort in trying to find solutions, so why are you releasing your ideas on DMs Guild so others can benefit?" And you refuse. You just keep complaining about the design team and the game. Maybe if you released your own stuff, you might have a sense of appreciation as to what actually goes into designing a game rather than insulting the people who do, acting like you know the right way of doing it.

You also seem to fail to realize that it's the DM's job to narrate what had happened if the PCs end up questioning how or why a knight could kill a giant. It's not hard. Two of use have already given you examples that we spent all of 2 seconds thinking of to make it plausible. You are either unwilling, or unable, to be able to come up with a reasonable explanation as to what may have occurred. It is clear you're hung up on the statblock and pay absolutely zero attention to how a game world exists--the environment, the motivations, etc. Not just this thread, but pretty much every thread. Unless the writers specifically tell you how to handle a situation step by step, you act like there is no way it could have been done and/or it can't exist. From threads like this where you can't conceive of a way a knight could ambush a pair of giants, to monster threads where you complain that if something isn't in the statblock of a monster, they can't do anything. In a game all about imagination, I would think that they wouldn't need to spell out every possible thing you can do with living intelligent creatures in a game world.


*Edit* Holy....that didn't take long did it? In the time of me typing out this reply, you just did it again.