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

[Helldritch]

Why didnt the shadow dragon use a cantrip over magic missile? Or the claw bite combo.

If it is due to not having a ranged attack well that's a separate problem. Because it still means lower level slots aren't useful to anyone who have both melee and range attacks.

Simple, the dragon was using flyby attack pattern while it's breath was recharging. And it recharged only three time in 24 rounds. I was very unlucky with it. Anyway, a dragon will not turn around easily so it used its only magic missile to kill the wizard while the cleric was down and the barb was trying to put Keogtom's ointment on her. The second wizard had fell too and the group was now relying on torches to see the dragon. Allowing him to use a bonus action to hide in the shadows between attack rounds. It even took time to get the bodies further away to avoid reviving spells from the cleric. Result three dead, three very exhausted PC and the dragon was hurt enough to flee to get back. Characters had to retrace their steps to a smaller tunel where the dragon would be hard pressed to fit. The dragon almost caught them before they could reach it but they got lucky and they entered the 5 feet tunnel with the almost fully healed dragon attacking them with its breath weapon. If they had taken a day's rest aka long rest, they would have been killed for good. But they had the good idea of fleeing right now but it also meant going in the fleeing dragon direction to get to the small tunnel.

 

[Reynard]

A Wizard player's gonna show at the first battle with Vecna and be like "I prepared Dispell because I knew we'd be fighting Vecna" and the DM's gonna be moaning and malding about 'Meta-gaming'.

If the player read the stat block first, they weren't metagaming, they were cheating.

A fight isn't a 'quest'. If you need a special weapon then there's a whole adventure to get there and you got a goal to work towards to and a ton of obstacles to overcome. Taking a rest and getting Wish or Dispel is not.

Were you imagining they were going to run into Vecna because of a random encounter roll?

 

[Reynard]

Just because they have the data does not mean their interpretation is correct. On what evidence are you basing your assertion that WoTC is making the right changes for the game?

No thanks. I am not going to let you flip the logic. "Prove they are doing it right." When D&D is literally at its most popular it has ever been? Lol.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think maybe a good way to come at the broader question of how to build a caster stat block is to ask what the stat block is for. What is it supposed to represent?

On the one hand, you could consider the stat block to be the complete total game statistics summation of the entity. In that case, it makes sense to want to have as much information in the stat block as possible. This quickly becomes unwieldy because not only do you need to include all spells prepared, but all spells known, as well as all items owned, all resources available and so on.

On the other hand, if you think of the stat black as a snapshot in time of the entity when it is going to be encountered by the PCs, you are free to trim it down and make it more utilitarian. Is it for a combat encounter? load upon on theblasting! Is it an ally? Buff buffet! Like that.

Very true. To me, a stat block is a quick-reference sheet of the information I’m most likely to need to reference when the PC encounter the monster or NPC. The old spellcasting trait was basically useless for this purpose, because how many 1st level spell slots the CR 26 lich has is basically never relevant information when the PCs encounter him, and listing what spells he has at each level doesn’t help as a quick reference if I have to look the spells up in another book anyway. That information might be more useful while I’m doing prep work, but in that case I don’t need that to be in a stat block format.

For me, the new stat blocks are a huge improvement in terms of usability during encounters. For prep work, it’s sufficient to note somewhere that Vecna is a 17th level Wizard (or whatever) because then I can work out for myself how many spell slots he has and what spells he might have access to outside of an encounter.

 

[Thomas Rainsborough]

Simple, the dragon was using flyby attack pattern while it's breath was recharging. And it recharged only three time in 24 rounds. I was very unlucky with it. Anyway, a dragon will not turn around easily so it used its only magic missile to kill the wizard while the cleric was down and the barb was trying to put Keogtom's ointment on her. The second wizard had fell too and the group was now relying on torches to see the dragon. Allowing him to use a bonus action to hide in the shadows between attack rounds. It even took time to get the bodies further away to avoid reviving spells from the cleric. Result three dead, three very exhausted PC and the dragon was hurt enough to flee to get back. Characters had to retrace their steps to a smaller tunel where the dragon would be hard pressed to fit. The dragon almost caught them before they could reach it but they got lucky and they entered the 5 feet tunnel with the almost fully healed dragon attacking them with its breath weapon. If they had taken a day's rest aka long rest, they would have been killed for good. But they had the good idea of fleeing right now but it also meant going in the fleeing dragon direction to get to the small tunnel.

That sounds like a truly awesome session. In fact, 24 combat rounds, I am betting that was more than one session.

 

[DND_Reborn]

"Prove they are doing it right." When D&D is literally at its most popular it has ever been? Lol.

I'll be the first to admit some of the changes in 5E WotC has made are pretty good, but as numerous threads have been started about how popular =/= good (or in this case "right") you can't really count on the "popular" argument, either.

So, yeah, I would just drop the discussion (on both sides LOL!).

 

[Shardstone]

According to Crawford.... who cares? How many of these will stay in 3 years from now? COVID helped our hobby a lot, but as I'm the '80s, the vast majority of the new player influx will leave. A sad but undeniable truth. Better work/build/develop for those that will stay.

You work 40 hours, so do I (42 on average, actually sometimes a lot more if you count overtime) And yet, I have two groups + 1 exhibit game every 2 or three weeks. My wife does not play and yet we spend a lot of time together. All it takes, is time management and how to organize yourself. Playing a high level caster or 5 at the same time is not an impossible feat if you prepare yourself just a bit. But the main problem is exactly this, no one prepares his games...
The game does not need to be lighter, people need to be more concise and take the hobby more seriously. And if you still believe Crawford, the vast majority stop playing at level 7 to 10. They will never see Vecna type casters anyways... So why's the change in the stats blocks?

As for the feats in Dragonlance. If you associate this with complexity... I am sorry but it is not. And I am not sure people really want feat chains and feat taxes again. I am really not sure. But I do welcome Dragonlance with open arms.

And no I am not acting like a selfish spoiled child. On the contrary. I speak for those who don't and believe like I do that major changes in an edition requires a new one. And I want to be clear, I will jump on the train if 6ed without a second thought. But the changes started from TCoE are not what was in the playtests for 5ed and are a major step away from the philosophy of 5ed and add the stat block to that and we are awfully close to an entirely new edition if D&D Noth even worth naming 5.5ed but worth a full name, that is 6ed.

As for the last paragraph. No it is not easy. It is not hard either. Again, all it takes is a bit of prep time and time management. Heck, if I can do it, so can anyone else.

You shouldn't use your limited experience as the criterion for how the game should be designed, built, and played. Just because you are privileged, yes, PRIVLEGED enough to be able to carve time out of your day to prep and play D&D does not mean everyone should be. And D&D is not mean just for people like you. It is meant for everyone to enjoy it as they want, or to put it down as you want.

As for how many people will play in 3 years? Give me a break with the arrogance. Even if players leave and come back, the game is growing faster and harder then ever before, and people are sticking with 5E and only spreading it out. This idea that new blood doesn't matter is contrived if not silly.

Dragonlance isn't bringing in real feat chains. That is another hyperbole by you, one of many in this post. It is hard to take some of these opinions seriously when you guys exaggerate so much and try to use arguments like "If I can do it so can you!" No, man, that has never been true of most things and never will be. Respect other people's time, and respect the people who are actually keeping the game afloat with their interest.

 

[Voadam]

So we are stuck with a slot system that is designed for 8 encounters on a monster designed for 1-2?

I think you are looking at caster NPCs the wrong way.

Generally PC wizards are designed so that slots at wizard level x are balanced against other characters level X across eight encounters on average.

Monsters are balanced to be within a power window for their CR when facing a party in one encounter.

The typical wizard PC is actively going in expecting multiple fights in the day and spaces their slot expenditure out with that in mind. If they are expecting one fight per day or are facing being overwhelmed then the rational move is to nova instead. The default baseline though is multiple encounters within one adventuring day for PCs.

The typical monster/NPC wizard facing a party is either targeting just the party (expecting one fight) or being jumped by the party and seeing death coming in as they are overwhelmed in the fight. In either case novaing is a rational tactic for an NPC mage in the baseline expected encounter. Exceptions like an NPC mage fighting in one skirmish after another in an active war battlefront where they would need to pace out their slot resources are not the default NPC encounter assumption for the party that CR is based on.

So an NPC mage should be expected to nova with their spell slots (if they have them) and the CR evaluation should be designed to expect that.

So different considerations for PC wizard power expectations per PC level versus NPC CR calculation using the same spell slot chasis that is common to wizards.

That is the default 5e design.

Switching to tracking X/day spells may be more convenient to run in many circumstances but it is not inherently more balanced for CR purposes if NPC mages go full out with the powers on their stat blocks the way noncaster monsters do.

 

[Shardstone]

I apologize if this is long winded, but I've been thinking about this stat block thing for a while and feel it's a symptom of a larger problem at WOTC. I don't think they really know who their audience is.

Way back in 2014, WOTC released 5e based on a not so great reaction to 4e (and the resulting loss of market share). Player feedback led them to create a game with much simpler mechanics then 4e. At the same time (by blind luck), streaming content begins to take off. So here's WOTC with a known IP and with a ruleset that is easy to use and easy to understand. The result, 5e takes off on streaming.

At the same time WOTC uses a licensing model to distribute content digitally (either as a pseudo-pdf equivalent on D&D beyond or as a VTT with Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds). So now they have streaming and multiple revenue streams through licensing that enable on-line and streaming play.

Then 2020 happens.

So, WOTC, through luck has positioned themselves to enable on-line play with minimum expenditure of resources on their part. Sure, they are developing content, but platform maintenance, billing, and customer service are all being serviced by the license holder. Better yet in addition to the revenue stream generated by the license, they're taking in revenue from purchases of WOTC content on the licensees platform. So, low overhead and lots of cash coming in.

This whole time, the player base is exploding. These new players (and some old) start looking at some aspects of D&D content and have issues with how race and culture are portrayed. Feeling a need to be response to the player base WOTC begins the process of making changes to what race means from a mechanics standpoint and changing lore.

So here's where I think WOTC made their first incorrect assumption about who their player base is. Historically, a majority of D&D books went to individuals who never used them for the purpose of play. I was one of those way back during 2e. However, I would argue that with the rise of streaming, VTTs, and COVID that these customers are dinosaurs. If they're not completely extinct, they are not long to the world. It's easier than ever now to find a game. In the content re-write, I think WOTC missed an opportunity to service the current customer. Think how great it would have been if rater than re-writing lore, WOTC just deleted it all and replaced it with instructions as to how to run a monster to achieve their determined CR score. To run your game, do you really care what spider god an elf worshiped to give a +2 to deception? Or would you rather have a monster stat block that had explanations of how to maximize the monsters play potential like that supplied by Keith Ammann?

As for stat blocks, are they really too complicated. I look at D&D beyond and the VTTs and I see that its pretty easy to navigate even extremely long stat blocks. On top of this, understanding that in a typical encounter a monster will take between 3-6 rounds of actions its not hard to plan out what they'll use in an encounter. (Wouldn't it be great if WOTC supplied instruction as to what a monster would do in an encounter!) I really don't think the modern player, who has all these resources in front of them is intimidated by long stat blocks. As further evidence of this, Matt Coville just ran a kickstarter that makes stat blocks more complex and it made 2 million dollars.

So the TLDR version. WOTC doesn't know it's player base, is misreading what the problems with the game are, and aren't making changes that will make the game better.

At least there's always third party content!

The assumption that new players don't want lore is a mistake by 5E. However, I agree the game does need more detailed instructions on how to actually play it.

 

[Nuclear Monkey]

No thanks. I am not going to let you flip the logic. "Prove they are doing it right." When D&D is literally at its most popular it has ever been? Lol.

Oookay. Personally, if I was going to attack my own argument l would focus on the assertion that content is now being purchased more for play than for reading. I think this is true, but unlike the rest of my argument I don’t really have evidence to back it up. I wouldn’t mind getting a read from the members of this forum on whether they think that this is true or not.