The Call of the World Builder

[Spatula]

I'm fairly certain there will be "What monsters do out of combat" existing in the monsters writeup. There is more to the monsters than a stat block - it's called an MM entry.

They're not just giving you a bunch of numbers and then saying "Bye". Each monster's supposed to get what, a page? Considering the size of the statblocks, that's a LOT of area.

We've already seen final MM pages from the DDXP. A paragraph or two describing the creature, combat stats, brief tactics, encounter composition, and some Lore / DC information is about all you get per monster. Or basically, what you see in the phane preview.

Now, there might be a few monsters that have more written about them, but it doesn't appear to be the standard, judging from what we've seen so far.

 

[Victim]

Then why bother having mechanics to allow them to do so?

Mechanically, I can have a 60 HD balor. That balor would trash the strongest of the demon lords. So, which is true? That I have useless mechanics or that the demon lords are under CR'd?

Or, could it be neither. That the CR of the demon lords is based on the needs of the GAME and not the world?

So something is either useless mechanically, or, because it's mechanically possible, it must exist?

The way I see it, not all mechanical outcomes are appropriate for all settings. There are monsters I don't like, so I won't use them in my games. That doesn't make them useless; only useless to me. There's no cap on advancement by levels; that doesn't mean every setting should be dominated by level 1000 Elans. On the other hand, other people might love Epic craziness.

DnD throws a lot of stuff out there; it's important to decide which elements you AREN'T using.

 

[Ipissimus]

The complaint generally went, "How can X possibly be a demon lord when he's only CR 23. A big balor is bigger than that. How can X keep his title. He should be CR 50!"

Make that CR 30 and yes. But the problem isn't just Balors, the problem is other Demon Lords. Why hasn't Graz'zt or Orcus taken a spare afternoon to go hunt Jubilex? It's easy to dismiss the God's disinterest in Demon Lords (they've got bigger fish to fry) but between each other is a whole different ballgame.

But, that point of view entirely ignores one salient point - monster exist to be fought and defeated. A CR 50 Demogorgon will never, ever see play at 99.9% of game tables. You may as well just declare him unkillable and not bother with any stats at all.

This is the point where the argument loses me. When I look at any NPC, monster or not, my first thought isn't about killing them it's about what role they can play in my game. But then, I'm of the opinion that not ALL encounters are about killing something and taking it's stuff. Anyone ever wondered at the roleplaying possibilities Demogorgon represents rather than the big chunk of exp you'd get for killing him?

Yeah, he's big, bad, arrogant (with every right to be), totally insane, MPD, evil demon so ultimately powerful that killing him should be such a major multiverse shattering event that few parties should ever be able to pull off. Or have you considered that a party of low-level characters' proper reaction to encountering Demogorgon should be to attempt appeasement? Or that Demogorgon is so powerful that killing the PCs is really beneath him and turning them to his service for a short period of time might be to his benefit?

So, why do we need stats for that? Well, what happens when the PCs decide to attack against all odds? If you just DM fiat 'you're all dead', the players will be dissatisfied. Even if you DM fiat 'he paralyzes you all with one move', it's dissatisfying. Besides, the way Demogorgon operates should be different to the way Orcus operates. Their styles should be different based on their personalities, in combat and out of combat. Where Demogorgon might intimidate a party into doing a job for him, Orcus might infect them with a rotting undead disease that acts like a Geas.

On top of all that, the really powerful monsters are what suck a lot of people into the game. When I was a kid, for example, generic monsters and lesser beings hardly interested me as much as Demogorgon, Prince of demons (though I liked Graz'zt more). They're powerful and utterly cool, like every good villain. They're characters with personalities that you can latch on to. And the adventures that focus on them are some of the greatest, hardest, longest and most utterly satisfying. Throne of Bloodstone was so jaw-droppingly awesome and hard, my regular party still talks about it.

Ok, sorry, end rant.

In other words, it appears that your world building will actually be far less constrained by the mechanics than it was in 3e. It has to be since the 4e mechanics are less concretely defined.

I agree with you in spirit. I think a better way of putting it might be 'it seems that we will have the mechanics in order to do anything we want without feeling constrained'. Assuming that rituals are everything we hope they are, I agree. WOTC needs to leak a bit of the mechanics for rituals to set our minds at ease, really. But I do like what I've seen of monsters so far and the ability to add different abilities to a monster to make them unique excites me. I'm also excited that Orcus will be in the MM again particularly since epic play is getting the attention it deserves.

 

[LostSoul]

World-builders (of which I count myself one, unashamedly) want setting stuff to make sense because it's good for the game.

Good for your game. Good for D&D as a whole? Who can say. We'll see if 4e is a success.

Tactical flexibility 4e seems to have in spades - strategic flexibility I'm not so sure about.

3e (and previous version's) strategic flexibility are in the hands of the DM. If you don't have a good DM, you don't get any strategic flexibility in the game.

Is that true for 4e? Maybe, maybe not. Increased player authority over resolution (in skill challenges) may give players the ability to resolve strategic decisions.

Now if you only consider "Does the DM think my plan is a good one?" as strategic flexibility, well, 4e seems to have spread some of that authority around the table.

Basically if the player wants to implement a complex plan of that type, the GM is going to have to make up all these rituals and templates you refer to on the fly, and run the real risk (since GMs are not all game designers, regardless of our pretensions! ) of introducing something very broken into the system.

Naw, he can just make it a skill challenge.

 

[Spatula]

But, what about elements that run counter to mechanics. Such as the Fiendish Codex entries which show Demon lords that are in the early 20 CR range? This runs exactly counter to mechanics, because mechanically, an advanced Balor or Marilith should mop the floor with Demogorgon.

That has nothing to do with mechanics - there's no mechanic for being able to lord over vast legions of demons. That's setting information, fluff, whatever you want to call it. There's lots of people who can kick the president's butt, for a real-world example. That doesn't make them president. The "why" of that has to do with all sorts of social stuff that isn't modelled by D&D.

Never minding the difficulties in moving beyond the established baselines. A low magic D&D has been a holy grail quest for years. But, if you vary from those established baselines, you have all sorts of knock on effects that make the game very difficult to run.

You ignore monster CR and eyeball encounter difficulty. There are no other side effects - the wealth guidelines are only there for encounter design purposes. If eyeballing monsters makes the game very difficult to run, how the heck did you ever play OD&D, 1e, and/or 2e? (CR is an unreliable predictor in any case, so there's a fair amount of eyeballing going on even in a standard-wealth game; this is one area where I am very much looking forward to 4e improving)

You seem to have gotten sidetracked onto a rant about magic levels, which is an entirely different discussion, and ultimately a matter of personal taste.

 

[Jack99]

So, why are all the world builder's here pissed off?

No all of us are. Some, like myself, are clapping their hands!

Then again, this statement probably doesn't come as a surprise to you guys

Cheers

 

[Hussar]

That has nothing to do with mechanics - there's no mechanic for being able to lord over vast legions of demons. That's setting information, fluff, whatever you want to call it. There's lots of people who can kick the president's butt, for a real-world example. That doesn't make them president. The "why" of that has to do with all sorts of social stuff that isn't modelled by D&D.

Last time I checked, Demogorgon wasn't elected. He became prince of demons by killing his way to the top. How did he do that if an advanced balor should take him to town?

You ignore monster CR and eyeball encounter difficulty. There are no other side effects - the wealth guidelines are only there for encounter design purposes. If eyeballing monsters makes the game very difficult to run, how the heck did you ever play OD&D, 1e, and/or 2e? (CR is an unreliable predictor in any case, so there's a fair amount of eyeballing going on even in a standard-wealth game; this is one area where I am very much looking forward to 4e improving)

You seem to have gotten sidetracked onto a rant about magic levels, which is an entirely different discussion, and ultimately a matter of personal taste.

You're the one who claimed that the mechanics had nothing to do with how Eberron was designed. I've shown how the mechanics naturally follow into the design of Eberron.

I would point out that you didn't have to eyeball monsters in earlier editions either. You had monster levels all the way back to Basic D&D. Yes, it was far less codified than in 3e, but, it wasn't "just eyeball it" either.

This is the point where the argument loses me. When I look at any NPC, monster or not, my first thought isn't about killing them it's about what role they can play in my game. But then, I'm of the opinion that not ALL encounters are about killing something and taking it's stuff. Anyone ever wondered at the roleplaying possibilities Demogorgon represents rather than the big chunk of exp you'd get for killing him?

Sure, I'll agree with that. And nothing I said is counter to that. But, at the end of the day, Demogorgon is there to be fought. If you set him at CR 30 (or higher) then 99.9% of groups will NEVER get to fight him. They won't even get the possibility of fighting him. So, you set the CR at 23 and now, with a bit of work, you can place Demogorgon at the end of an epic style campaign (perhaps featuring several classic locations in Greyhawk) and the players can step up to the plate.

Because, at the end of the day, "I ran away from Demogorgon" isn't a whole lot of fun.

 

[Spatula]

Last time I checked, Demogorgon wasn't elected. He became prince of demons by killing his way to the top.

Sounds rather unimaginative to me. It would seem he didn't have to kill any 60 HD Balors in a straight-up fight in order to get to the top, at least.

If you can only conceive of power structures based on who can beat who up in a duel, well I'm not sure what to say. You can make Demogorgon any CR and I can always produce some advanced demon that's tougher. His rule, or that of any other demon prince-like creature, is ultimately going to be based on setting details (divine mandate, political mastermind, valuable alliances, etc.) unrelated to combat stats.

And, a president is just one example of someone who doesn't rule by being the ultimate badass. There's plenty of other real-world examples that acquire & hold power through non-elected, non-badass means. Human civilization realized a long time ago that being the biggest & toughest doesn't make one a good leader. I would think that hyper-intelligent immortals would have figured it out even quicker.

You're the one who claimed that the mechanics had nothing to do with how Eberron was designed. I've shown how the mechanics naturally follow into the design of Eberron.

You did? I must have missed that.

The idea that Eberron is designed to implement the 3e ruleset-as-setting is false; all the features that make Eberron unique are all Eberron-specific plot devices that do not exist in core 3e at all, in any form. Aside from that, the cosmology is completely different (which invalidates the text for most of the outsiders), it changes expectations for various monsters, it throws out the alignment guidelines for monsters, it adds in new classes to make magic item creation easier, etc. etc. In short, it deviates noticably from the mechanics of core 3e, so it rather fails at what you say it was designed to do. It doesn't even use 3e's class demographics that you cited previously, as the setting is generally lower-level than the core 3e assumes.

But getting back on topic, Eberron is a fine example of how the rules do not (and never will) constrain you, as the setting changes and adds all sorts of stuff to the core to give it a unique flavor. Airships powered by enslaved elementals? Cool idea, and we can create some feats to support it. A race of free-willed golems created to fight a war that's now over? Awesome, let's make up some stats for them. Extraplanar mind flayers? Great, and let's give them some material-based DR while we're at it. Whatever crazy ideas you have, the D&D mechanics can handle it without any "twisting" involved.

I would point out that you didn't have to eyeball monsters in earlier editions either. You had monster levels all the way back to Basic D&D. Yes, it was far less codified than in 3e, but, it wasn't "just eyeball it" either.

Monster levels? You mean HD? Or is that some bit of old-school D&D that I've forgotten.

 

[hong]

That has nothing to do with mechanics - there's no mechanic for being able to lord over vast legions of demons. That's setting information, fluff, whatever you want to call it. There's lots of people who can kick the president's butt, for a real-world example. That doesn't make them president. The "why" of that has to do with all sorts of social stuff that isn't modelled by D&D.

And all of this also applies to how a succubus can seduce a king. IOW, there is a lot more to world building than just blind application of a rules framework, so the lack of that rules framework shouldn't hurt world building any.

 

[Steely Dan]

The walk-up-to-monster-and-beat-on-monster style.

That was the monotonous stand and hack/blast combat of 3rd Ed, thank god that's over.