Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9447793" data-attributes="member: 20323"><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" /> I appreciate the sentiment of what you're saying. It's difficult to parse where the line here is between opinion and actual improvement, as there are definitely things that are improvements (CR/XP in the top line), and definitely things that are opinions, but there's a great deal of grey space. I'll try to offer clear succinct responses to your points...I... does that come up much for you? I remember doing that back in AD&D where we'd compare ability scores themselves on rare occasion. But in modern D&D / 5e-alikes? I haven't seen other GMs do that and haven't done that myself. Could be I'm an outlier in that regard.There are a TON of monsters (mostly constructs & undead) who basically justify an extra line in their stats for:Damage Immunities poisonCondition Immunities exhaustion, poisonedIt seems like a no-brainer to condense that to one line for me, and I have no difficulty parsing the intent in the Skeleton case. Does condensing this to...Immunities poison(ed), exhaustion...make it harder for you to parse what's going on?Wellll... yes it will not work all the time... but two things.... (1) There are a lot of monsters where there's "close enough" between two attacks that combining makes sense (imo) to save space (e.g. bugbears, cambions, iron golems slam/sword, maaany bite/claw monsters, etc). (2) This isn't as uncommon as you're making it out to be. Here is a list of 2014 5e monsters I can quickly think of that would be candidates for a similar streamlining of various attacks... primarily humanoids...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ettin (battleaxe/morningstar)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Goblin (scimitar/shortsword)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hobgoblin (longsword/longbow)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kobold (dagger/sling)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lizardfolk (bite/club/javelin/spiked shield)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Werewolf (bite/spear)</li> </ul>The Maneuver DC is cool.This is getting into that grey area... because the Skeleton example is manageable enough that I can look at this and find what I need readily.... pretty much regardless of the layout / design choices.The problem - for me - emerges when the designers get locked into this format for monsters of much higher complexity. That's when I notice - again, for me - the breakdown starting to happen. I have delays during play trying to visually track what I'm looking for due to clutter. I feel more mentally fatigued after running the big stat block monster in a fight.I agree the goal isn't brevity for brevity's sake... but I just see the modern D&D design space repeating this format like it's a divine mandate... and - at least for me - it takes a willingness to radically redesign (and yes make mistakes along the way) to get to something better.Ultimately - while discussing with simpler examples is helpful to establish baseline attitudes - my eye is on those 1/2 page, 3/4 page, and full-page monsters that are just... ugh, so awful for me to run.</blockquote>

Verification