Monsters with spell lists is not a good sign

[vagabundo]

Yeah I agree. The word is that monster design isn't even close to being done. So It's just something worth keeping an eye on.

 

[Pour]

I thought the monster design overall was lackluster compared to 4th, but granted this is bare bones, seeing spell-lists really worries me. My fingers turn the page when I see them, as I simply refuse to spend my prep time referencing and bookkeeping when I've more important things to tackle before a session. Having designers 'help' me think up spells monsters know, then allowing me the 'fun' of looking them up feels like lazy design after 4e. Put everything I need on one or two pages. Honestly, I want any important diseases, poisons, or curses on that same page, as well, and some evocative art, and fluff involving habits, locations, treasure approximations, and the going rate of its salvageable body parts.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And since you mentioned Pathfinder: You might find some things "quick" and "simplified" but they aren't enough for me. That's just how I see it. People who play Pathfinder tend to see things as simple when others find them extremely complicated.

Personally, it's definitely a game I hope DnD Next does not take inspiration from.

I've never used the quick templates and I don't play PF; I'm merely expressing what their intent was.

On the broader perspective, given that PF is basically a repackaging of a dating and flawed game that is outselling the titular D&D despite being available for free and having no name recognition, I would hope that WotC would be looking very hard at their business and their game. and learn from both. They'd be fools not to. (Again, I don't play it, or own any of the books, and I have mixed feelings on it myself).

That might be where the disconnect comes from. To me, it's not the stat blocks that make the creatures, monsters, NPCs populating the world interesting. There's different ways to flavor things other than stats and rules.

That's definitely not how I want to spend most of my prep time. To me it's more about backstory, motivation, context, personality and all the ramifications that come with this. Not to mention how those things are impacted when the PCs are interacting with the world and those characters and creatures.

That's all well and good, and others above expressed similar sentiments, but if you start planning too much character and plot, you run the risk of railroading the PCs, and not having it be truly a game or truly interactive. What I'm expressing here is not that monster stats are incredibly important, but that I prepare them because they need to be prepared. The rest I try to improvise as much as is feasible, to keep the session engaging and meaningful for everyone, including me.

Which is why I don't understand when people complain about prep time. I don't spend a ton of time prepping, because I think too much prep detracts from the session itself. If you don't want to prep, prep less. Simple as that. No edition makes any difference in this regard.

I do think there is a balance to be had. I'm not saying monsters should be bland. But I'd rather have a stripped down approach that I can build upon and focus on what's important for me.

I'd definitely rather have a stripped down monster that I can build upon.

I'm sure others might prefer something else but heh, this is a good time to tell WotC what we each prefer and hopefully, they figure out what's best.

Absolutely.

 

[Ahnehnois]

As for all monsters in the monster manual being average, not in 4e they aren't. The kobold writeup in Monster Vault has IIRC the Kobold Minions (semi-combatants who can wield slings), kobold quickblades (really nippy skirmishers who shank you harder the further they move in a turn), Kobold Dragonshields (Defenders of the Eggs), and Kobold Slingers (complete with slinging pots full of stuff). And, I think a chieftain and dragon shaman.

These aren't average kobolds. This is an organised force of kobolds of varying types - which tells me far more immediately how kobolds organise themselves than a single statblock - it certainly isn't wasted space. For that matter it shows me about the social organisation what the 2e Monstrous Manual only tells me. And certainly doesn't lead to average kobolds. It instead leads to a force of kobolds with some elites wandering around.

And here's my problem. If I buy a monster manual, I'm paying for someone else to make a bunch of kobold shamans and quickblades that are useless to me. Books of monster stats are fine, but that's not what a monster manual is for. A "manual" is a small reference book, especially one giving instructions. A monster *manual* gives you instructions on how to do something (in this case, to make and run monsters). It's not supposed to contain the finished product. If you want to pay for a Monster Vault or the like with finished stats for 12 different versions of each species, that's fine, and it is good for WotC.

And to me it's like compaining that the restaraunt we are used to using is overrun with cockroaches and we're being redirected to the old grocery store that sold bland food at an extortionate markup to the point that eating at the restaraunt was actually cheaper.

In this analogy, you should definitely be cooking your own food. Maybe growing it as well?

Or perhaps, if a restaurant is so overrun, we should find a path or blaze a trail that leads to a better one.

4e monster design philosophy IME, and in the experience of many other DMs, simply leaves 3.X or pathfinder monster design in the dust. And what we're getting is a huge step backwards on current showing.

That's certainly a valid opinion. However, 4e monster design is also one of the major reasons why we are where we are (4e being abandoned for this new edition after an unprecedented short run, D&D losing the top spot in the market). It is obviously a positive for some people, but an absolute non-starter for many others, including myself. The 3.5 treatment of monsters as characters with HD, feats, and skills delivered in the same method as PCs, was one of the biggest meaningful steps forward (not just a change in tone or cleaning up an old mechanic) in D&D's entire history. The 4e treatment of monsters as not being full characters was a correspondingly big backwards step.

Hopefully, there is a way to render monster statblocks that are as robust and customizable as the early 3.5 ones, while maintaining enough readability to satisfy the 4e niche.

***

In any case, I write all these posts about general issues not having actually read the playtest, which I have finally been able to download. I will probably go read it before continuing this line of inquiry.

 

[Ahnehnois]

It seems to me that you're running together the player and the GM roles.

They aren't really that different. The player plays one character. The DM plays all the other characters, and determines all the non-character-based events, and interprets the rules. He's just a really powerful player plus a referee. They really aren't that different, and the character creation process for either really isn't that different.

And, since generally no one knows how long a character is going to last or how much use it will see, there really isn't any difference in the time for creating a PC or another character (monster/NPC). Of course, the time for both could stand to come down, which is why we need to cut back on magic items, spell slots, and other things that require a lot of time.

this suggests that you're not that familiar with the 4e Monster Manuals.

These are far and away the best monters books I've encountered for an RPG.

I only ever looked at them in the store, but even if I were somehow playing 4e, I would still be using my 3e monster manual an trying to find some way to convert stats (as I am now for my 3.X that requires almost everything to be redone). Again, it's an opinion, and the market as a whole has spoken plenty on this and will continue to.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And after having actually skimmed the playtest bestiary, I thought it looked good with one meaningful exception.

Where's level/HD? That's kind of a more important question than how the statblock is formatted and referenced. What am I supposed to do with a monster that has no level?

The XP value is better than a CR, but ultimately both are easily ignored. The intro notes there are some on-the-fly modifications to the base monsters, which is good.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've never used the quick templates and I don't play PF; I'm merely expressing what their intent was.

Ah. So you're talking about things you don't actually know about. Right.

That's all well and good, and others above expressed similar sentiments, but if you start planning too much character and plot, you run the risk of railroading the PCs, and not having it be truly a game or truly interactive.

So don't prepare them then and spend your extra free time down the pub.

Which is why I don't understand when people complain about prep time. I don't spend a ton of time prepping, because I think too much prep detracts from the session itself. If you don't want to prep, prep less. Simple as that. No edition makes any difference in this regard.

And here you have been told by many, many people with experience DMing both 3.x and 4e that you are completely wrong. The edition that makes the biggest difference is 3.X because you are meant to spend as much time on most statblocks as you would on a PC of that level.

And here's my problem. If I buy a monster manual, I'm paying for someone else to make a bunch of kobold shamans and quickblades that are useless to me.

Now I see the problem. You think everyone can and must prepare as you do right now when you have no experience of what you use as examples.

That's certainly a valid opinion. However, 4e monster design is also one of the major reasons why we are where we are (4e being abandoned for this new edition after an unprecedented short run,

Um... no. The abandoned edition after an unprecidentedly short run was 3.0. That lasted three years before it was replaced by an incompatable game where they went far enough to change the shape of a horse. There are greater differences IMO between 3.0 and 3.5 than between 1e and 2e.

Meanwhile 4e is still having material published for it - and much of the crunch in the most recent book is compatable with the PHB but not usable with only Essentials. So you can't claim Essentials is a new edition. Will 4e last longer than 3.5? I don't know. I expect so - just. I'm expecting a January 2014 release date for 5e for the 40th anniversary. Meaning 3.5 lasted from 2003 to 2008 and 4e will have lasted from 2008 to 2014. The longest run of any WoTC edition.

D&D losing the top spot in the market

If you publish next to nothing, that's what you get. Pathfinder took the top spot in part by publishing much more stuff - the 4e release rate has recently been anaemic. And Pathfinder publishers have IIRC gone on record saying that a lot of their customers do not currently play D&D.

It is obviously a positive for some people, but an absolute non-starter for many others, including myself. The 3.5 treatment of monsters as characters with HD, feats, and skills delivered in the same method as PCs, was one of the biggest meaningful steps forward (not just a change in tone or cleaning up an old mechanic) in D&D's entire history. The 4e treatment of monsters as not being full characters was a correspondingly big backwards step.

As a DM I find this assertion laughable. The 3.X treatment of monsters as PCs is the single biggest waste of time in the history of D&D. It sounded like a good idea at the time (like a lot of 3.X) but getting rid of it was just accepting that an experiment had failed.

They aren't really that different. The player plays one character. The DM plays all the other characters, and determines all the non-character-based events, and interprets the rules. He's just a really powerful player plus a referee. They really aren't that different, and the character creation process for either really isn't that different.

They aren't that different. Except that the DM needs to do hundreds of times more things, each of which should have about a hundredth of the spotlight. You do not need that detail.

And, since generally no one knows how long a character is going to last or how much use it will see, there really isn't any difference in the time for creating a PC or another character (monster/NPC).

We can take a pretty good guess. And it's not length that matters. It's screentime.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And here you have been told by many, many people with experience DMing both 3.x and 4e that you are completely wrong. The edition that makes the biggest difference is 3.X because you are meant to spend as much time on most statblocks as you would on a PC of that level.

I'm being told by a couple of people who in no way represent anyone other than themselves (nor does anyone) something that goes against my empirical observations and my understanding of the theory behind this game. I don't know the people, but despite the evident partisanship in the posts, I don't see any observations or reasoning here that have convinced me that a monster with a spell listing and a reference associated with it is the doom of 5e.

 

[keterys]

I'd actually be fairly happy if both "monsters" and "PCs" didn't have to wade through immense lists of abilities. I'm okay if, for example, a wizard's spellbook has a hundred spells in it, or whatever, but I'd just as soon he never had more than 7 (or whatever) different spells prepared.

I know it won't fly, but there ya go.

 

[Campbell]

My big issue with 3e style stat blocks with preponderance of SLAs for supernatural creatures is that I think it encourages laziness in monster design. I want monsters with unique features that set them apart. They don't all need a lengthy list of unique features but fighting an ogre should not be indistinguishable from fighting a 3rd level fighter. Likewise Dragons and Demons need to have some features and unique powers that separates them from wizards and clerics. Dragons as super sorcerers does not work for me. That being said I would definitely like some more detailed information about out of combat abilities where warranted. Just don't make PC level complicated.