Stat Block Envy

[Patlin]

I'm working on preparing for tonight's age of worms game, and I'm confronted by several 2 dungeon magazine column long stat blocks for a single encounter. Not only that, but a lot of that space is dedicated to short phrases that I'll probably need to look up if I want to use them, such as names of spells.

I found this sufficiently anoying that I logged on to enworld just to stare at the kobold skirmisher's stat block again. It's so neat, usable and little. Even the pit fiend stat block looks a heckuva lot easier than the stuff I'm DMing tonight.

Sigh.

 

[Snarls-at-Fleas]

I feel you pain, bro.
I have an Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game tomorrow. Man do I wish it to be 4E already!
(It's 3.75, but that not nearly th thing)

 

[Darrin Drader]

Yep, that's one of the major reasons I finally caved on 4E. Smaller stat blocks means greater ease of play and faster design. It's a win - win.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

It's also a first level monster. My 3rd edition kobold skirmisher (kobold war 3 IIRC) stat card is pretty short too.

Compare that statblock to the list of powers and subreferenced summoned monsters and their lists of powers that you'll be facing in 4th edition (the pit fiend's statblock is deceptive because you really need to pull out the soldier devils in order to run a pit fiend and who knows what's in their statblocks?) by the time we have 6 months of splatbooks out and Age of Worms won't look so bad anymore.

I found this sufficiently anoying that I logged on to enworld just to stare at the kobold skirmisher's stat block again. It's so neat, usable and little. Even the pit fiend stat block looks a heckuva lot easier than the stuff I'm DMing tonight.

Sigh.

 

[Sitara]

I totally agree with Eledr-Baslisk. Wotc probably knows statblocks are an issue, but IMO they don't seem to have done much about it; I feel we will be seeing the same problem in 4e, especially after a few years of supps.

Couple that with the fact that in 4e all critters have individual powers, so you really wont be able to use abbreviations in their blcoks (I personally hate abbreviations though) and so they will be even longer.

Justcheck out the pregenerated characters. Now compare that with a 1st level 3E pc statblock; the 3E one will be considerably smaller!

Nowimagine statting up count strahd von zarovitch with 4e; he has the vampire template and 14-15 levels of wizard. Thats a ton of powers, paragon paths, unique abilities, etc. You will need to type the powers out as well so you know what they do.

I say it should take up a lot of pages,more than the one in exp to castle ravenloft.

 

[Dalamar]

The difference is going to be that Strahd most likely won't use the PC building rules. He'll probably have wizard powers, but his stats would be those of an Elite Controller or Elite Artillery (Elite because of the Vampire template).

 

[Bandreus]

Nope, I do think the 4E way will make encounters handling a lot more easy.

*D&D 3E. Try, building a CR 26 encounter (and take note of how much time you will need and the math you will have to deal with). Keep at hand all the rules for regarding skills, feats, abilities, spells for the creatures you choose.

*D&D 4E. Pit fiend? ok, take his statblock, take the statblocks for the mobs he's going to summon. U're done :|

 

[DreamChaser]

Nope, I do think the 4E way will make encounters handling a lot more easy.

*D&D 3E. Try, building a CR 26 encounter (and take note of how much time you will need and the math you will have to deal with). Keep at hand all the rules for regarding skills, feats, abilities, spells for the creatures you choose.

*D&D 4E. Pit fiend? ok, take his statblock, take the statblocks for the mobs he's going to summon. U're done :|

For 3e that should be CR 17-18 which is the equivalent 3e CR to 4e's level 26 monster...but your point stands.

DC

 

[Lord Sessadore]

I agree with Bandreus. As someone said above (though with negative connotation) most 4e critters will have their own unique abilities, so you have to have the whole ability writeup in the stat block. However, that means that, for an extra line or two for each ability, you don't have to look anything up for monster abilities. You just look at the stat block!

Also, with the Pit Fiend, compare that to the 3e pit fiend. The stat block probably takes about 75% as much space, and needs no referencing outside of his stat block, except for the buddies he summons. 3e pit fiend block is longer, has a ton of abilities you either have to be intimately familiar with or reference constantly, a whole bunch of stuff that isn't really useful in combat (which is really the point of a stat block), and he still summons allies that you have to reference, and their stat blocks are similarly big and reference full.

Gotta say the 4e stat blocks and combat are looking a lot more user friendly to me.

As for PCs, I don't think they're going to gain new powers at nearly the rate that you do in 3.x. It seems to me that the intention is that some powers scale with level, some you'll replace with better versions up the line. I don't think we're going to be seeing, say, an extra power slot every few levels. Maybe when you cross tiers, or something.

 

[Henry]

One of the 4e design tenets that Mearls blogged about was simplifying all stat blocks for monsters down to just a few "tricks." As long as no one makes a design faux-pas and reverts back to 3e's writing out dozens and dozens of abilities, and not assuming them into the stat block, then I imagine 4e blocks will never get as big as 3e's. I mean, 3e stat blocks are meant to play the monster EXACTLY like a PC, for goodness' sake. You know every little skill point, every feat, and what his dinner plans are for the next week.*

Something many DMs like me have done for years now (stand up and bow, S'mon!) is to simplify stat blocks down to bare essentials anyway. They've taken this AD&D trope and re-incorporated it back into 4e, apparently. It may be the one strongest selling point for 4e to me.