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

[dave2008]

Humaniods get to double digit HD and caster levels fast and at low CR.

That was why I said CR =/= level. Again I am confused about your point, but I probably just jumped in to the conversation to late.

 

[Minigiant]

That was why I said CR =/= level. Again I am confused about your point, but I probably just jumped in to the conversation to late.

Yeah.

CR = Caster Level for half casters. For full caster, it's 150%-200% CR.

That's why WOTC dropped mentioning caster level in NPCs and stopped using spell slots. It grows too dang fast even with Tier 1 & 2.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Look at the CR.

Humaniods have HD around double their HD/level.
A CR 3 ranger enemy could easily have 10-15 HD and be a 5th-7th level caster.

An Enemy ranger NPC will have 4/3/3/2 slots by the time the PCs get Extra attack.

Even if a ranger NPC had mostly utilty spells and only 1 combat spell per spell level, you'd have tons of slots to burn on them. That's why NPC design can't match PC design in 5e.

The Albino Dwarf Spirit Warrior has a CR of 1 and an apparent class level of around 4.

Anyway, I made a ranger statblock the same level as the veteran fighter (around level 5-9), I avoided the spellcasting trait, but modelled on hunter's mark, speak with animals, speak with plants, goodberry and pass without trace.

Veteran Ranger
Medium Humanoid (Any Race), Any Alignment

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Armor Class 16 (studded leather)
Hit Points 56 (9d8+18)
Speed 35 ft. climb 35 ft. swim 35 ft.

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STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
13 (+1) 18 (+4) 14 (+2) 11 (+0) 14 (+2) 9 (−1)

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Saving Throws DEX +6, Wis +4
Skills Athletics +3, Perception +6, Stealth +6, Survival +4
Damage Resistances Determined by the ranger’s Local Terrain trait
Senses passive Perception 16 (26 in Local Terrain)
Languages Common, Sylvan, can communicate with animals and plants native to their local terrain

Challenge 3 (700 XP) Proficiency Bonus +2

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Local Terrain.
The ranger selects a terrain type with which they are intimately familiar. Whilst in that terrain they gain a +10 bonus to Perception and Stealth checks, ignores the effect of difficult terrain, can use their Hide in Plain Sight action, and can always find sufficient food and water for themselves and up to six other creatures. In addition, they gain resistance to an element associated with their local terrain and do an extra 1d6 damage of that type on each of their attacks. Typical local terrains include forest/jungle(poison), desert (fire), arctic (cold), mountain (lightning), ocean (thunder), planer (psychic) and darkness (necrotic).

Actions
Multiattack. The ranger makes two longbow attacks or two shortsword attacks. It can switch between its bow and dual shortwords at will.

Longbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 4) piercing damage plus 4 (1d6) damage of a type determined by its local terrain.

Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6 + 4) piercing damage plus 4 (1d6) damage of a type determined by its local terrain.

Hide in Plain Sight (recharge 4-6). The ranger takes the hide action.

Reactions
Skirmisher. If a hostile creature ends it’s turn within 5 ft. of the ranger the ranger can move up to half its move without provoking an attack of opportunity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You started seeing that trend even before 3e.

See BG2: Throne of Bhaal.

the spell augury is often nigh-useless

I would say "seen as useless as players". As a DM, I frequently see points where augury could save the party a whole lot of time and effort. "Turn left?"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This is why I liked the 4e approach to skills. The half-level bonus applying to everything means that yes, your "clanker" Paladin (as a rogue-favoring friend of mine says) does actually get better at sneaking, so against weak or particularly unobservant foes she actually CAN learn to sneak around. And then Training is a solid, respectable +5.

yeah I have this thing that I like that idea of adventurers ALL pick up little things here and there to be better at level 10 then they were at level 1.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm not sure I understand why it is desirable to have characters get better at everything, even if it is not their forte.

as long as it is still worse then the others the idea being you pick up a lot of little things. I think the 'everything gets 1/2 level' was a bit much but if trained got 1/2 level or 1/3 level while untrained got 1/5 level (or the +1 at the cantrip level ups of 5,11,17)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have to admit that this thread has become somewhat eye opening for me. As I mentioned, in my last session I used one of these Deathlock Masterminds in the encounter. Now, a bit of background - the party has entered the Shadowfell to follow a quest for one of the PC's and have come to the attention of Vecna (I won't bore you with the details) who is very interested in capturing said PC. So, since the Deathlock got away, I figured I'd use him to taunt/talk to/expository infodump on the party during their next long rest.

I wanted to have some way for the baddy to communicate with the party without actually being right there and getting pretty much instantly killed. So, the first thing I did was look at the stat block. It's a caster, after all, so, does it have something like Message, or whatnot? Nope. Hrm, nothing in the statblock is going to help me. Darn, guess I'll have to change my plans.

But, wait. Isn't a lot easier to just not worry about the stat block? The Deathlock Mastermind animates some small animal, sends it into the party and talks through it. Poof, problem solved. How does he do it? No idea. Don't know, and, really, really don't care. Why should I rewrite my adventure just so some stat block isn't changed?

It's funny though. In the past, I absolutely would have done that. The game says that the monster can't do X, so, it can't do X. Now? Yeah, rulings over rules baby. Full DM power ahead. I don't have to restrict myself to the stat block. Poof, instant change, and my fun idea is full steam ahead.

To me, THAT'S the liberating point about truncated stat blocks. Making that absolutely clear to DM's that the stat block is just meant for combat. All the other stuff? That's what those paragraphs of information written in nice descriptive text is for.

I agree with the point made way, way back that the 2e monster write ups were fantastic. Very evocative. Lots of information. But the stat blocks? Hell, the 2e stat blocks didn't even tell me what the stats of the monster were. Nothing in the game had a Dex score unless it was a PC. And that didn't ever seem to matter too much. So, again, if the baseline is a combat of 3-5 rounds, why does a monster stat block (not the monster itself, that's a different story, but, just the stat block) need more than 5 discrete actions?

You can do that and I would do the same. But let's say the PCs have captured an NPC wizard. Are you at that point going to just invent new capabilities for said wizard, that let them escape or communicate with their allies? That is the sort of situation some people (rather understandably, I feel) want to avoid.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ah, but static DCs is how you get every door being adamantine with a mastercraft artisanal locks in every city by level 10.

I'm not sure if you are jokeing but I have seen it...

back in 3e we had a DM that had us in a dungeon at lowish level (I want to say 4thish) and we left it half explored and ended up coming back to it many level later expecting everything to be a cake walk (since we had made it through at 4thish) but somehow all the locks and traps were now at DCs we could not have hit before...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't know that that is what they are doing here.

CR 26 Vecna has prestidigitation, mage hand, and 1 action scrying. The scrying is quick enough to be used in a combat, but I am not sure that is something that will ever be used in the middle of a combat.

These seem more like things for a wizard NPC to use in a noncombat encounter (the cantrips) to show he is a wizard with casual narrative magical effects, or to give him narrative excuses to know what the PCs are up to (the scrying).

The statblock is mostly combat oriented, but there are non-combat elements there as well.

yeah a big pet peeve I have is that we have non combat things listed under action I want them spelled out but in an out of combat section

 

[EzekielRaiden]

See BG2: Throne of Bhaal.

I would say "seen as useless as players". As a DM, I frequently see points where augury could save the party a whole lot of time and effort. "Turn left?"

This is a fair criticism, but it falls prey to a weakness of its own: players often struggle to know what the real utility of such things might be. That is, because augury may be excellent at one table (which is generally the direction I personally would lean as DM, I want my players feeling awesome when they try something unexpected or exploit an interaction), totally useless at another (and not just because "bad DM is bad" either: feeling it's "cheap" or "too easy," or fearing the story will lose its interest and momentum without it), and unreliable in the middle (which is, for many players, equivalent to it being useless: if it may lead you astray 20% of the time, risk aversion will make every answer too risky to heed.)

And that's one of the fundamental problems I have with a lot of D&D's design. It's not that it relies on not having a bad DM. You cannot fix bad faith through rules. My issue is that much of its design depends on having extremely good DMs, and that's a standard a lot of folks, particularly new DMs, are going to fall short of. Particularly when I find the DM support content is lacking (and doubly so in 5e, where the gaming culture was actively antagonistic to the idea of helping DMs improve for several years after publication and IMO still retains a major strain of that sort of thinking to this day.)