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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7287822" data-attributes="member: 12731">What amazes me with the continued defense of the weak MM stats is that it relies on doing things I imagine few groups would find actually fun.Most players of D&D want and expect the BBEG to stand there, daring the party members to challenge it.To me, if the only way a dragon can be a tough combat encounter is if it stays off the combat map, and resorts to cowardly tactics, that is itself a miserable failure.The entire complaint is this: We want iconic monsters (and it doesn't get more iconic than dragons) to be able to land in the middle of the party, and to actually use its claws, bite, breath etc on the heroes, without having to worry about getting instakilled pathetic-style.I'm sure there are some sneaky critters for which underhanded tactics that mostly frustrate the players are appropriate but dragons sure aren't them.To most of us, that's not much to ask. In fact, that's just our minimal expectation.Trying to justify the weak stats by suggesting the dragon should deny the players their big set-piece combat far from salvages the MM stats - instead it just confirms that our complaints are valid and something needs to be done. We expect - nay demand - that each edition's monster design takes into account what the PHB hands out to players. If the PHB gives out ways to, say, shut down flight at mid-level, for instance, then appropriate-CR flying foes better come equipped with a counter to that, built right into their stat block. Having a dragon be helpless to the trivial strategy to immobilize it so it drops from the sky like a rock is piss-poor design.Please don't try to hide this, let alone justify it. Especially cut the crap about "intelligent" foes. I'm dead tired of the notion that all a designer needs to do is to slap "Int 20" onto an otherwise uninspired mediocre stat block, and suddenly it's on the DM to make that work. I call bullcrap! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /></blockquote>

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