D&D 5E New Spellcasting Blocks for Monsters --- Why?!

[Vaalingrade]

It's interesting. I had a discussion with my group's DM this past week over the merits of running 2E vs something like Castles and Crusades. His response was that he likes the little bit of extra difficulty in the 2E system, for example, like sometimes having to roll low and other times roll high, because he considers it a filter of sorts: it chases away people not smart or mentally agile enough to handle playing in that sort of game. And after playing in a couple of other different groups with some players who almost literally couldn't add the numbers on three dice, I'm beginning to think he may be onto something.

The gate must be kept! The game must be an exclusive affair that necessarily dies on the vine due to lack of interest.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Or a system where these variables don't explodicate the challenge of a given encounter?

So a system where character abilities, monster abilities, tactical situation and player skill have no effect one the outcome?

Sounds slightly less interesting than Noughts and Crosses.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So a system where character abilities, monster abilities, tactical situation and player skill have no effect one the outcome?

Yes. I said 'no effect'.

No. Of course not.

But you can remove the magic and monster 'I win' buttons and have some parity between classes. Good tactics absolutely should make the encounter easier and that's the reward for doing so.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That, the bolded part, is not what CR is based on. The encounter guidelines are geared around this assumption when determining encounter strength. However, the 6-8 is note required, it just the assumption the threat levels used in the guidelines use. It is easy enough to take the daily XP budget and break it down differently. You can break that budget into 1 or 2 encounters if you wanted to. I actually hope the '24 DMG goes into this idea into a bit more depth.

Ok... you think it is easy enough. I just ignore the whole thing, because it is more trouble than worth it. The whole system needs an overhaul.
Keep CR as a measurment of individual power, but do away with the whole daily XP budget. That is terribly useless and if you would follow it, theb you are 0 to 20 in a few adventuring weeks. It just makes no sense. And it does not help me as a DM in any form.

 

[Jmarso]

The gate must be kept! The game must be an exclusive affair that necessarily dies on the vine due to lack of interest.

Hasn't happened yet for him. Games are consistently well attended, usually by 30+ year old players from various professional backgrounds, genders, and orientations. Everyone gets along, has an adult sense of humor (no perpetually offended or triggered snowflakes), and everyone is a solid critical thinker. I've been playing in this guy's games for close to a year now, and it's been a far more pleasant and rewarding experience than any of the 5E groups I've tried. If that is an example of gatekeeping at work, then it's working for him.

 

[Vaalingrade]

(no perpetually offended or triggered snowflakes)

Well there's a big heaping spoonful of nope.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But you can remove the magic and monster 'I win' buttons.

Not without neutering class abilities and monster abilities. Fire elementals? They can't be immune to fire because it's an "I win button" against a party with all fire damage. AoE Stun? Can't have that, it's an "I win button" against parties that are unfortunately positioned and roll badly on their saves. etc etc etc.

and have some parity between classes.

Can a fighter ever have a party with a wizard against monsters that are immune to weapons? What about monsters that are immune to fire?

There only way to achieve parity in all situations is to either have no monster special abilities at all, or to have no player special abilities at all.

Good tactics absolutely should make the encounter easier and that's the reward for doing so.

It becomes a punishment if the reward for being good at the game is everything is easy.

 

[Jmarso]

Well there's a big heaping spoonful of nope.

Well, the adulting is always best left to adults.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Or a system where these variables don't explodicate the challenge of a given encounter?

Like maybe a system with consistent rules instead of 'ask your DM' with little to no help for the DM?

By "system" do you mean the CR system, or D&D itself.

Personally I wouldn't want to play a game where all those variables don't have a huge impact on encounter challenge.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well, the adulting is always best left to adults.

Namecalling: The Adult Thing To Do.

 

[dave2008]

Ok... you think it is easy enough. I just ignore the whole thing, because it is more trouble than worth it. The whole system needs an overhaul.
Keep CR as a measurment of individual power, but do away with the whole daily XP budget. That is terribly useless and if you would follow it, theb you are 0 to 20 in a few adventuring weeks. It just makes no sense. And it does not help me as a DM in any form.

Well I just ignore it too, as I have stated early.

My point is that it does actually work reasonably well for a certain segment of players. I also think it would be pretty easy to give advice on how to modify it to expand its usefulness.

For me, I just don't feel the need to balance encounters.

 

[Maxperson]

But is there anything to suggest we are seeing it regularly? Or even at all?

It seems to be much more commonly reported problem that players kept to CR and encounters were too easy.

If any change is needed, it would be to clarify in the rules that CR is just a rough guideline.

They've already said it multiple times. The DMG states multiple times that it is a book of guidelines, which includes the "expected CR" section under the monster creation guidelines. And indeed in the monster creation section under Average Challenge Rating says, "Creating a monster isn't just a number-crunching exercise. The guidelines in this chapter can help you create monsters, but the only way to know whether a monster is fun is to playtest it." Heck, even the PHB states that the DMG is guidelines.

How much more clarity do you need?

Edit: And I just looked at the Challenge section at the beginning of the MM. It even calls them guidelines there twice.

"A monster's challenge rating tells you how great a threat the monster is, according to the encounter building guidelines in chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Those guidelines specify the number of adventurers of a certain level that should be able to defeat a monster of a particular challenge rating without suffering any deaths."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well I just ignore it too, as I have stated early.

My point is that it does actually work reasonably well for a certain segment of players. I also think it would be pretty easy to give advice on how to modify it to expand its usefulness.

For me, I just don't feel the need to balance encounters.

I think expanding it is not enough.
It needs to be revised.
The guidelines as they are now are not useful. We are seeing the first signs of such a correction.

Going from 1/short rest abilities to prof bonus/long rest acknowledges, that adventuring day at lower levels tend to be shorter. It also allows easier adjusting of rest mechanisms to your groups needs.
At least I hope that I interpret those signs correctly. I could be wrong however.

 

[Reynard]

Well there's a big heaping spoonful of nope.

I was THIS CLOSE to weighing in the side of "it's okay to gatekeep your own game to ensure you have a group you mesh with" but then that happened. Oof.

 

[Voadam]

I have found 3e CR, 4e monster level, and 5e CR useful tools for estimating a baseline power level for monsters that can be used for judging how tough a monster challenge will be. In Basic/AD&D I mostly went off of what was in modules, then estimating based off of HD, special powers, and getting a feel for the system after years of DMing fights. I never really used the 1e monster levels as a tool, a little bit of the BX HD with maybe an asterisk or two to show special powers. I knew a bunch of special powers could be spoilers in AD&D, especially poison, energy drain, paralysis, aging which were a flag against using a bunch of creatures casually as combat opponents instead of specific story elements, but I got a feel for how well a crocodile or giant octopus would do in fights against the parties I was DMing.

3e got a lot more variables with increasingly swingy numbers and options for variability with complex mechanics from monster feats, adding class levels, templates, and increased HD. CR was a useful tool for getting a better baseline than just eyeballing complex stat blocks, even though party baseline could vary widely.

4e's monster levels were even tighter with their monster math and monsters designed for specific monster roles without using full PC mechanics.

5e is back to similar to 3e, looser than 4e but more to work with than AD&D.

5e's charts pretty much have the bands I want for a combat estimation: easy, medium, hard, deadly. I just find it cumbersome to go through the whole process to get there. Look up a monster's CR, look up separately how much xp that CR is worth, go to the DMG and find the chart for the xp budgets, repeat for each monster that is planned to be used, and then alter the xp calculation for an increase in the number of monsters in the encounter.

So in practice it is fairly cumbersome in 5e to calculate the expected risk of a gnoll leader, a gnoll shaman, a hyenadon, and a couple of gnoll grunts and how much of an expected risk change it would be to add or delete specific monsters from the planned combat.

 

[Reynard]

Honestly, the most important piece of information given by CR (which it generally does a good job at providing) is how likely a creature is to just gank PCs of a certain level. Whether it is high save DCs for save or suck effects, or huge amounts of damage per round, CR generally does a good job of letting you eyeball that stuff. Everything else is relative to the party, the location, the numbers and how fresh the PCs are -- none of which the designer or module writer can know.

 

[Maxperson]

I was THIS CLOSE to weighing in the side of "it's okay to gatekeep your own game to ensure you have a group you mesh with" but then that happened. Oof.

Of course it's okay to gatekeep your own game to ensure you have a group you mesh with. Nobody, player or DM, should have to play with people they conflict with. That's not fun for anyone at the table. Not the two in conflict, and not those who have to watch it and potentially be affected by it in-fiction as well.

 

[Faolyn]

Key aspects of Tucker's Kobolds involve exploiting the fact that some action resolution in classic D&D is level-dependent (eg fighting with swords, evading or resisting poison, avoiding some traps) but some is not (eg making one's way through mud and snow, avoiding some other traps, breaking out of nets, avoiding damage from flaming oil). The difference between what is level dependent and what's not isn't based on some deep game play principle. It's ad hoc.

I would assume "play monsters as intelligently as they should be, based on their listed Int score and/or description" would actually be a "deep game play principle." Otherwise monsters wouldn't have Int scores or descriptions that list how they act in combat. It's also irrelevant. D&D isn't a game of strict mathematical precision. It's not chess. It's role-playing, which means it is literally designed to be "ad hoc," with rules in there to avoid arguments and create a shared experience.

And honestly, I can't even tell what your complaint even is. Are you saying that playing monsters in something other than a toe-to-toe slugfest... shouldn't be counted when determining balance? Is unfair in some way? What?

 

[Faolyn]

And I will quote my self again.

You might do fine without adding blue water, as long as there is some the problem will not arise. Being lucky does not mean you might not need some.
Same with anti-viruses and VPN, you might never need one. Being lucky does not mean the problems will never arise.

No one says you're a magical DM (neither am I). A tool is there to help you. CR system is a bit wonky with some creatures (especially solo ones) having experience in other systems and/or depending on the focus of your games (I know one DM that almost never run combats while some others are more on the tactical combat with no RP and others within the both extremes) the CR system might not even be needed. But at least it's there to help and guide you. But if someone feels the game is too wonky and swingy, maybe a look at how things are actually proposed to be might help.

So basically you're saying that, because I don't use the so-called budget, I'm a disaster waiting to happen who has only managed to survive this long on pure luck. Wow, rude much?

 

[Faolyn]

I was lucky enough to be able to read English an have a good mentor. Not everyone can claim that much.

I'm pretty sure that, nowadays, there's a ton of DM advice blogs, videos, and other media in all sorts of languages.