Monsters

[Mort]

Room after room of humanoid monsters with precious little to differentiate them other than a handful of hit points.

"But it's up to the DM to differentiate them in how he describes and presents them to the players," I hear you cry. "For room after room after room after room."

As a DM I was left cold by this playtest. The prospect of running the game is not an exciting one.

1) Playtests can be boring, as the designers are looking to test a specific set of conditions (in this case, I believe, how the classes interact with each other and the setting) which necessitates controls that may well not be ideally fun (such as samey boring monsters).

2) That said, this is a valid criticism that should be conveyed to the designers a la: "These monsters seem like boring bags of hitpoints as opposed to the dynamic monsters I really like in x eddition which do y much better than these!" The whole point of the playtest is to hopefully improve the mechanics for both playability and fun!

 

[Gold Roger]

Remember that this is just a quick and dirty conversion of a classic module for a playtest round not meant to test monsters.

As far as I can tell, every playtest wotc has done so far used such converted classics. It's not indicative of monster, adventure or encounter design in 5ed, because those things are not even considered right now.

No one has payed money so far. No one is going to be asked to pay money for 5th for some time. Right now have the opportunity to participate in a limited playtest in a limited enviroment (using CoC or whatever we do with the bestiary monsters), nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Mort]

Room after room of humanoid monsters with precious little to differentiate them other than a handful of hit points.

"But it's up to the DM to differentiate them in how he describes and presents them to the players," I hear you cry. "For room after room after room after room."

As a DM I was left cold by this playtest. The prospect of running the game is not an exciting one.

I will say, the module, the characters and the exposed rules have a very old school feel (to be expected from the module, as it is a very old school module). To some this is the best thing to happen to D&D in some time, to others it's an unacceptable step back.

One of the biggest current design goals is to bridge that gap, and you have to start somewhere!

 

[gideonpepys]

I was not being condescending, and I don't appreciate you tarring me with that brush. I was trying to be helpful

I apologise. I misinterpreted the tone of your email. Earlier posts in the thread had been pretty hostile towards my point of view and I unfairly lumped your comment in with them.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I apologise. I misinterpreted the tone of your email. Earlier posts in the thread had been pretty hostile towards my point of view and I unfairly lumped your comment in with them.

OK, no harm, no foul; we'll carry on as normal

Thanks!

 

[Ratskinner]

Room after room of humanoid monsters with precious little to differentiate them other than a handful of hit points.

"But it's up to the DM to differentiate them in how he describes and presents them to the players," I hear you cry. "For room after room after room after room."

As a DM I was left cold by this playtest. The prospect of running the game is not an exciting one.

While I disagree with your assessment. I believe we have been told that monster design isn't done yet...or really even started. So really, this is pointless to worry about at this time.