Monte Cook: Guidance for Monsters and Treasure

[KidSnide]

I'd be OK with guidelines for high, average and low/no magic rewards.

The more I think about it, the more I think there are two different parts of guidelines.

Encounter guidelines need to tell the GM whether a given encounter will be trivial, definitely-winnable-but-resource-exhausting, challenging, near-impossible or impossible. That's mostly about figuring out the "level" of the encounter, with modifications if certain monsters are used. (E.g. monsters that can only be hit by silver or magic weapons will fight above their level if characters don't have the necessary equipment.)

In the same way, magic item guidelines need to tell the GM how the amount of magic in the hands of the PCs effect the PC's ability to handle encounters. In other words, how much magic do I need to give the PCs to let them fight as if they were a level higher.

Those are evaluation guidelines and I would like to see them as vigorous and accurate as 4e encounter guidelines. Completely separate from that is the question of how GMs select encounters and treasure.

One GM is going to select "level appropriate" encounters, while another GM is going to spread encounters of all levels around the game world and let the PCs figure out which ones they will take on. A third GM might create encounter tables for the various areas. These areas might have an effective "level" representing the challenge of the most common opponents, but that wouldn't preclude the possibility of encounters far outside that band.

In the same vein, some GMs will want predictable treasure, keeping the PCs at a certain wealth level (whether that level is high, medium, low or impoverished). Other GMs will want treasure that can be predicted (at least to a certain extent) based on the monsters faced so players can make an informed choice about whether the rewards for a given encounter are worth the risk. Random tables may be the choice of others.

In all of these cases, the GMs should have the tools to evaluate how difficult encounters are and how much treasure will affect the PC's capabilities. But using those tools to select monsters and treasure is just one of several perfectly viable design decisions.

-KS

 

[tlantl]

And minions/standards/elites/solos are just FUN. Look at some of the epic encounters that have been made with them.

You got film?

I don't use monsters called minions, standards, or solos. I don't even know what those are.

I tried the CR method, encounters would either wind up being a cake walk or a TPK.

Never in 31 years have I used experience point budgets to design encounters, adventures, or campaigns.

I don't expect that I ever will.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Sometimes I'm actually surprised at the comments coming from the designers for this "hallelujah" edition that will unite all others. When I see their comments it's almost as if their only experience with the game started about 10 years ago.

The "level" system for monster placement was explicit.

Yeah, I can't even start to agree with Monte's premise, because I believe he completely misunderstands the uses of the level system in place in AD&D and is too quick to dismiss it.

It served me well as an AD&D DM, much in the same way CR and 4E Monster Levels helped me gauge what challenges were appropriate. Not necessarily to make sure the party ONLY faced appropriate challeges, but so I as DM would know when to give cues that something dangerous lurked about.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking at 1e with rose colored glasses and saying that finding that information was easy. I admit that had it been formatted in a much more "precise" manner it would have been much better.

The monster's level was part of its enter in every MM after the first. And that information was summarized in the back of the DMG for those monsters in the MM1.

Each monster also had a treasure type that could be used by the DM to determine what type of treasure the creature had. He could roll randomly for the treasure or pick from the multitude of tables.

I'd like to see the return of Treasure Types or information in the individual monster entries indicating what a typical monster of that type likes to collect.

It's not that GMs were given little info and thus "New DMs are left out in the cold without it. They can make grievous mistakes that end up wiping out entire parties, and campaigns can become unbalanced by a powerful magic item." It's that player character survivlbility wasn't thought to be as much of an issue.

And this was no matter whether it was story driven play as outlined in "modules" or sandbox play as created by GMs who simply populated worlds and allowed players, through their characters, to explore them for what they were.

This was most definitely a factor in the placement by module writers and individual DMs, but I'm not sure how much it effected the advice given in the DMG. I was able to use that advice to create 'balanced' dungeons just as easily then as I was using CR or 4E Levels. And none of the three systems left me feeling any more or less compelled to make each encounter 'balanced.' Sometimes you do meet the powerful green dragon in the forest if you ignore all signs of his presence.

 

[nightwalker450]

With flattened math, compared to 4e, I'm hoping that Items won't have such an effect on the characters power curve. Bonus to hit was the big thing in 4e, and having lower items, or higher items threw that off, as well as throwing in higher level or lower level creatures.

If the math is indeed flatter, than level of creature, and level of item shouldn't affect things quite as harshly. So I'd be find with randomly rolled treasure, if I don't have to worry about an item breaking the game in half (insta-kill weapons as an example).

For monsters I want a rough idea of what party they are an optimal challenge for. That way I can know ahead of time if my party is too many levels lower it might end up as a fight they need to retreat from or get creative with. And likewise if my party is too high, I know that it might be a very quick fight.

 

[Paraxis]

I always thought it would be a good idea to use 4E's XP budget system and just make the treasure budget the same so if an encounter is built on 1200 XP then award the party 1200 in silver (default silver standard). Just make the cost of magic items work so this is the right amount of treasure. I would love a web based tool that if you told it the value of a treasure horde then it would randomly populate it with various items of magic, art, jewels, gems, tools, ect...

So just to be clear don't base XP on treasure given like old days make treasure given based on XP given.

 

[Connorsrpg]

[MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION]

Totally agree with the 'Guidelines' being spelt out - especially for the players. This info seems to be for DM....and then the players may feel the DM is still doing it wrong.

BUT, then WOTC and others must follow this up with adventures/modules atat aren't just a bunch of appropriate challenge rating fights. I want to see some with easy fights (b/c those creatures would be there) and fights they aren't just meant to turn up and wade through.

Yes, all this advice to 'go outside the norm' was there in 4E, but not a single published adventure I saw did so. Boring. Cristopher Perkins' articles even did it regularly, so why can't published adventures?

 

[FireLance]

That's not the objection. It's the funneling and requirements toward particular aspects that is constant and unnecessary inherently in the concept of the game.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by that. "Funneling?" "Requirements?" We are still talking about:

(1) How much treasure to give the characters; and

(2) How to adjust the difficulty of the monsters and challenges faced by the characters to the power of the magic items they possess, right?

 

[avin]

Nevermind.

 

[Mark CMG]

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by that. "Funneling?" "Requirements?" We are still talking about:

(1) How much treasure to give the characters; and

(2) How to adjust the difficulty of the monsters and challenges faced by the characters to the power of the magic items they possess, right?

In a sense it is deeper than that. In a more restrictive system, the manner in which characters are built dictates the narrower range of items they will find useful, thus funneling them toward those items. This is one type of requirement set on the GM, to give them specific things because the builds will disallow a wider range of options. Another related type of requirement is how monsters and challenges built in a certain manner then funnel PCs toward needing specific powers-level (plusses, generally) of items by particular level-milestones. The GM is again foreced to consider yet a narrower subset of items. The more spcific the system regarding builds and expected challenges, and the tighter the formulas for helping the GM design the expected encounters and challenges, the fewer options for players and GMs.

 

[FireLance]

In a sense it is deeper than that. In a more restrictive system, the manner in which characters are built dictates the narrower range of items they will find useful, thus funneling them toward those items. This is one type of requirement set on the GM, to give them specific things because the builds will disallow a wider range of options. Another related type of requirement is how monsters and challenges built in a certain manner then funnel PCs toward needing specific powers-level (plusses, generally) of items by particular level-milestones. The GM is again foreced to consider yet a narrower subset of items. The more spcific the system regarding builds and expected challenges, and the tighter the formulas for helping the GM design the expected encounters and challenges, the fewer options for players and GMs.

What I'm not seeing is how this restricts the DM at all. Fairly simplistically put, there are four variables in this system: PC power, magic item power, monster power and level of challenge. The system doesn't (and can't!) force a DM to give specific magic items to the PCs or throw specific challenges at them. However, if three out of the four variables are specified, basic math pretty much determines the fourth (although the DM can always apply situational factors to specific encounters).

If PC power is given, and the DM wants the PCs to encounter a specific monster and he wants the fight to provide a specific level of challenge, then yes, he needs to ensure that the PC's magic items are of a specific level of power (or adjust the situational factors). If, however, he is willing to change either the monster power or the level of difficulty, he can keep magic item power constant.

Given this set-up, I think it is fine for a system to advise what is the baseline assumption, e.g. PCs of a particular power level equipped with standard magic items for their level should be able to take on monsters of a particular power level at a standard level of challenge. Maybe it could also explain how reducing magic item power will change the level of challenge if monster power remains constant, or how monster power can be adjusted to maintain the same level of challenge. However, I don't see the fact that such advice exists as "restrictive" or as "funnelling".