D&D 5E Should 5e use monster stat blocks for animal companions?

[dropbear8mybaby]

One of the great difficulties, in my opinion, with balancing classes like the beastmaster, druid and now the artificer, is their reliance on monster stat blocks. The huge amount of variety and variability means it requires a whole different paradigm for limiting and controlling these facets of class design than it would if there was a more tailored solution.

And so you get discussions about what the "best" is for the classes and players who don't or can't indulge in such investigation tend to suffer because of it. The end result at the table is a disparity between optimised and unoptimised characters, which is one of the things I felt was a design goal of 5e to curtail, hence one of the reasons why we got bounded accuracy.

I think the recent addition of the artificer to this paradigm has really highlighted the inadequacies in it. I wonder if people feel there is any need to rectify the situation or if they're happy to continue with it? The solution, of course, being a progressive set of statistics based on class level independent of the type of creature being a companion, with a choice of ancillary benefits like flight, pounce, charge, etc. attached.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I completely agree. The amount of variability and the inadequacy of basing companions on CR (which is iffy at best) really does lead to situations where there are clear winners and losers in terms of choice. I think it would be better to give some standard statistics and allow level dependent customization of abilities similar to feats. It creates the ability to customize and be more modular, while better accounting for power level and standardizing companions across players. Most anything else outside of the stats can be skinned as desired. The difference between a lion, rhino, or some kind of mini-wyvern can be more flavor than how it functions in combat, and as it grows in level and has access to their level dependent abilities/beast feats, it may come to more closely emulate the specifics of the beast it appears as. Hell, there's no reason a beast master ranger, for example, couldn't have some kind of clone act as a beast companion. It could be flavored as some kind of hive mind creature, similar to Hydra from the Dreaming Dark books. The way the beast appears or acts is largely flavor. But by relying on creatures statted in the MM, there's just too many variables and too little standardization between creatures of a given CR range to adequately balance companion-type class features.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

There has been a start on that front in the UAs I think. I believe that the UA beastmaster ranger has a specific list of creatures that they can choose their companion from? And the Artificer, while it has less restrictions on what beast it can pick, states that their mechanical servant can have any form that fits with the statistics.
Combine the two, and I think that you have a much more balanceable system: pick a statblock from a set, balanced list and then describe it as whatever beast or other form you want as flavour.

 

[Dualazi]

I'd definitely agree. 4e botched animal companions somewhat, but wildshape was spot on, being mostly standardized and simply giving the druid access to different abilities. It also made shifting back and forth in combat more viable, so you weren't quite as locked in to the beast shape strategy.

I'd personally prefer animal companions to have basic statblocks that advance with the ranger, so you have a generic giant spider option and wolf option that are roughly balanced and gain appropriate stats as they level with you. More or less the same thing with druids; I'd like to have less cherry-picking of the current power options without the need for GMs to pore over exactly what animals are allowed in the region.

 

[The Human Target]

Yeah, how D&D traditionally does it is stupid.

It's the same thing with summoned creatures.

And wild shape/polymorph/etc.

Weed out the complexity, the imbalance, the clumsy implementation and go with something streamlined and usable.

But unfortunately 5e doesn't do that with most rules.

 

[CapnZapp]

There is of course a reason why 5E doesn't do it the generic way.

D&D has tried it in the past. It doesn't work, simply because it isn't popular.

(Of course, the solution is to offer it both ways. The main spell or feature can reference MM critters, and then a sidebar can offer generic beasts like "canine" "feline" "ursine" "lupine" etc alternatively "flyer" "tripper" "swimmer" "pouncer" and so on)

But please don't just diss the existing method like there wasn't a good reason for it. Thank you

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm sympathetic to the argument that some things are in place because 1) the general gamership wants it some way and (and this wasn't stated previously) 2) perhaps the general, non-optimizing gamership hasn't had a problem.

However, when was the generic way tried in the past?

 

[Dualazi]

There is of course a reason why 5E doesn't do it the generic way.

D&D has tried it in the past. It doesn't work, simply because it isn't popular.

(Of course, the solution is to offer it both ways. The main spell or feature can reference MM critters, and then a sidebar can offer generic beasts like "canine" "feline" "ursine" "lupine" etc alternatively "flyer" "tripper" "swimmer" "pouncer" and so on)

But please don't just diss the existing method like there wasn't a good reason for it. Thank you

yeah... I feel like with you numerous criticisms of the game, you of all people should know that popularity =/= good game design, which is exactly what the default ranger pets fall under, for a variety of reasons ranging from lack of believable independence (the pet just sits there unless explicitly told to do something) to certain niche picks being too good mechanically, like the flying snake. It was just bad mechanically, and also didn't really jive with the intended theme due to how frail the pets were and the meticulous nature of ordering them about.

The main reason they weren't popular in 4e wasn't the use of generic chassis for the beast type, but because it was very weak overall in a system that was more demanding of competence, especially that late in the development cycle. Also hampered by the fact that 4e honestly didn't handle pets or summons very well across the board.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Back in 4e I heard several times "why can't my pit fiend do what the pit fiend in the MM does?" That is a pretty reasonable complaint, so I figure if you are going to go the route of PC specific companions, any summoned/wildshaped monster needs to be something that isn't in the MM, which works fine for a while: angel of [insert domain name], infernal slave, fey servant, bound demon, manufactured ooze,.....then you get to beasts. Somehow "my hound is totally different than the MM mastiff" just doesn't work for me. For the ranger, there is a pretty easy workaround: just like the conjure animals/conjure fey spell, the ranger's pet is just a fey spirit in the form of a critter that gets more fey as the ranger levels up. I think the moon druid would need a pretty heavy workaround, probably in the nature of the 4e warden/druid: I used to turn into an animal, now I turn into a primal spirit. I would be cool with that, but I don't know if it would fly with the wider community.

 

[The Human Target]

There is of course a reason why 5E doesn't do it the generic way.

D&D has tried it in the past. It doesn't work, simply because it isn't popular.

(Of course, the solution is to offer it both ways. The main spell or feature can reference MM critters, and then a sidebar can offer generic beasts like "canine" "feline" "ursine" "lupine" etc alternatively "flyer" "tripper" "swimmer" "pouncer" and so on)

But please don't just diss the existing method like there wasn't a good reason for it. Thank you

The reason is because that's not how D&D traditionally does it.

That doesn't make it a good idea.