D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[Remathilis]

Well when someone is quoting someone to support an argument, and the quote is in fact stated to be misquoted by the speaker of said quote, it can help to share the origin and the actual quote for full context.

Sigh. Alright. Here is the Quotes:

1. If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron. A monster or spell or magic item from the core rulebooks might feature a twist or two to account for Eberron’s tone and attitude, but otherwise everything in the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual has a place somewhere in Eberron. Also, this is the first D&D setting built entirely from the v.3.5 rules, which enabled us to blend rules and story in brand-new ways.

(Eberron Campaign Setting, pg 8)

1. If it exists in the D&D world, then it has a place in Eberron. Eberron is all about using the core elements of the D&D world in new ways and interesting combinations, with some unique elements thrown in. It's still a D&D setting, so any information for players that appears in another D&D core rulebook or supplement—from the classes and races in a Player's Handbook to the new powers and other features in a book such as Divine Power—should fit right in to your Dungeon Master's EBERRON campaign. (Of course, your DM always has the final word about what parts of the D&D game are allowed and not allowed in the campaign.)

(Eberron Player’s Guide, pg 4)

7. D&D with a Twist. Every race, monster, spell, and magic item in the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual has a place somewhere in Eberron, but it might not be the place you expect. Eberron has a unique spot in the D&D multiverse, and many familiar elements of the game play different roles in the world. In particular, mortal creatures are products of culture and circumstances, rather than the direct influence of the gods. As a result, you can't assume that a gold dragon is good or a beholder is evil; only in the case of celestials, fiends, and certain other creatures whose identity and worldview are shaped by magic (such as the curse of lycanthropy) is alignment a given.

(Eberron: Rising From the Last War, pg 5)

So yeah, it all has a place in Eberron UNLESS the DM says otherwise.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Looking back at this thread, I think that one major thing is that this is, in some ways, an outgrowth over how the concept of an abstraction middle man between the world portrayed by the game rules and the world we imagine has played out. I'm seeing an underlying difference in how different participants not only view a desirable level of power in the game world, but also what level of power 5e and 2024 actually portray (e.g. the dickering over the level of A Song of Ice and Fire's strongest characters in the early section of this thread.)

For a while, I've noticed that in DND-like spaces, there's a recurrent conversation that people tend to use the concept of abstraction to 'nudge' the fiction based on different values-- we talk about HP as being your luck running out because it's considered unrealistic to take a sword to the face and continue, or to recover from a flesh wound that quickly, and there's a preference for a low level creature getting in a lucky shot on a high level character as a verisimilitude feature.

But then on the other hand, I kind of see things going in a different direction, where maybe the game world is just fundamentally a higher level of power, and its dawning on people that this is actually happening and that their mental image of the fantasy world isn't really supported by the rules or the fiction.

Like, picking up on how Pathfinder's troops, like 'Line Infantry' of like 20 dudes or whatever collectively being one level 6 statblock, and a level 10 party being able to fight a handful of those troops as a moderate encounter and hundreds of guys as an extreme, or noticing their new cinder archdragon art portrays a figthable dragon who has houses under his feat that you're going to hit with a sword-- while optimized 5e characters punch way above their weight class in a lot of weird ways by murking balors 10 levels above themselves, there was a conceit that second thing isn't 'real.'

Of course, this has been an ongoing adjustment of expectations in the fantasy fiction space as a whole, with higher power worlds and protagonists (specifically ones that casualize magic use, and put parallel martial systems on par with it, or simply don't explain their super-human fighters) but its interesting because some online spaces have really held out on the expectation that the abstraction actually distills to a fairly down to earth fantasy world.

I think that maybe what changed for the author of the quote, is the degree to which they felt they could justify the power elements as abstractions of a fundamentally down to earth fighter, or a game conceit without setting implications, due to the way it was presented, rather than because of a fundamental shift in power. The complaint about spectral abilities rings this way in particular, because I think it's keying off a fundamental frustration with what might be reminiscent of some higher power video game animations where magic use is very casual, but acknowledgement of the power being thrown around is limited.

 

[Clint_L]

I avoid all of the issues about character power vs. creature power leading to unrealistic results by simply looking at the story narratively and choosing/adjusting the creatures as needed. For me the story always comes ahead of the game.

So let's say the party, currently level 8 in my home game, are trying to sneak into an enemy base and have to get past some guards. I want this to be a bit of a challenge - not too hard, but not a walkover either. Because that's a good story, and if the party could just sneeze at the guards and they fall over, then why bother with the guards at all? I could just narrate, "Okay, you easily take out the guards, and then..."

So I pick my guards accordingly. I figure CR 2-4 will probably give me an appropriate challenge, so I plug that level range into DDB and restrict the option to humanoids. Knights and archers fit the bill - great! I use those stat blocks for these particular guards.

Had this been a level 3 party, the knight might have been a knight. But the party got stronger, so now that's a guard statblock.

The last thing I worry about is justifying why a statblock has 18 strength or whatever. I could care less, and neither could my players, not that they would know. The important thing is the challenge: figuring out how to get past these guards.

Edit: it's like an Indiana Jones movie - a Nazi soldier is always going to pose a certain level of threat. Indy doesn't "level" past them completely.

Edit 2: On occasion, I might want the players to feel how much better their characters are compared to where they started, so I might throw in a really easy challenge. Guards they can one-shot. Locks they can pick in their sleep. Whatever. These typically wind up feeling either like comedic moments and/or a waste of time, so I'm pretty sparing with such trivial story beats.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I avoid all of the issues about character power vs. creature power leading to unrealistic results by simply looking at the story narratively and choosing/adjusting the creatures as needed. For me the story always comes ahead of the game.

So let's say the party, currently level 8 in my home game, are trying to sneak into an enemy base and have to get past some guards. I want this to be a bit of a challenge - not too hard, but not a walkover either. Because that's a good story, and if the party could just sneeze at the guards and they fall over, then why bother with the guards at all? I could just narrate, "Okay, you easily take out the guards, and then..."

So I pick my guards accordingly. I figure CR 2-4 will probably give me an appropriate challenge, so I plug that level range into DDB and restrict the option to humanoids. Knights and archers fit the bill - great! I use those stat blocks for these particular guards.

Had this been a level 3 party, the knight might have been a knight. But the party got stronger, so now that's a guard statblock.

The last thing I worry about is justifying why a statblock has 18 strength or whatever. I could care less, and neither could my players, not that they would know. The important thing is the challenge: figuring out how to get past these guards.

Edit: it's like an Indiana Jones movie - a Nazi soldier is always going to pose a certain level of threat. Indy doesn't "level" past them completely.

Edit 2: On occasion, I might want the players to feel how much better their characters are compared to where they started, so I might throw in a really easy challenge. Guards they can one-shot. Locks they can pick in their sleep. Whatever. These typically wind up feeling either like comedic moments and/or a waste of time, so I'm pretty sparing with such trivial story beats.

Are we discussing whether story or mechanics are coming first? Or are we talking about our mutual understanding of what the story is in the first place?

 

[Belen]

How did the 5e vs 5.5e thread somehow randomly morph into the "Circus Troupe" thread about Setting Lore?

There are a subset of folks who think everything that WOTC produces should be legal in any game and that a DM should never be allowed to set any restrictions on “D&D” for players.

They often believe D&D is its own setting rather than a TTRPG toolbox.

WOTC may wish this to happen but a big tent toolbox keeps them on top.

 

[Senior_WotC_Janitor]

I have seen some of the frustrations Keith has with the revision on some Discords before, and I understand him.

I think he's just left behind in another way of playing the game. When I read How To Defend Your Lair by him this summer, I bounced off of it hard. There is nothing in that book that actually helps me run a good game. The most egregious example, to me, was that he said that caves made for poor lairs.

I don't play the game for realism, neither do my players. 5e24 seems to be designed with our kind of play in mind.

I had to laugh when I saw that he was surprised about monster stats. To me, they are just numbers that I add to the dice. I don't think they are exact manifestations of the laws of physics.

The more I read his latest posts, the more I realize that I can't use any of his advice anymore. Not because the advice is bad, but because the revised rules and my preferred play style do not require the kind of analysis that Keith does. It's very in-depth and often imaginative, but not for me. I wish there was someone as talented who did make a blog, but with my style of play!

I hope he does Bigby's, only because it's probably my favorite monster book after reading it, but Book of Many Things would be interesting too.

I think he will have success reviewing 3rd party books as well, but it might not be as much of a financial success.

I wish him all the best.

Nobody cares that you just broke up with your parasocial boyfriend or whatever.