The need for monsters as beings rather than statblocks.

[Aberzanzorax]

Forked from:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/324875-monster-design-d-d-next.html

It's a curate's egg. I like that they're keeping the 4e approach to the XP budget. But the monster itself? Urgh. No. It's slightly less flavoursome than the 4e version of the same monster, printed effectively as filler in the worst monster manual ever produced for 4e (the MM1). And this is what they use as a Showcase?

What the designers think is important about the Hook Horror in order:

* You can't hide from it (screwing the rogue)
* It gets two attacks that grab
* The grab does damage
* It gets to bite grabbed foes
* It can climb
* Its level
* Its stats

Which are fundamentally the least important parts.

If you want to make a monster interesting you start with its psychology. How it moves - not just its movement modes. How it hunts. Those are what make a monster. Not having mechanics that are identical to an oversized crab that scuttles up to people, grabs them in its claws, and squeezes. Oh wait - it does impaling rather than crushing damage. There's literally your only mechanical difference from a giant crab with a carapace.

I was REALLY optimistic earlier on for D&DN (and when Monte was on board) with their "flavor first" philosophy.


Now I read this:

What makes a hook horror what it is? In reading over the Monstrous Compendium entry, here's what stands out:

• Hook horrors make a clicking noise that functions similarly to a bat's sense of echolocation.
• They embed their hooks in prey, allowing them to tear a foe apart with their follow-up bite attack and then rend with their hooks.
• They are excellent climbers.
• They have a rudimentary language and simple, tribal social structure.

That's what makes a hook horror what it is? Clicking, hooks, climbing, and their language/tribe (pack)? THAT?

Then there's:

Step Three: Story Elements
I don't see any need to alter any of its story elements from the Monstrous Compendium entry

Here I agree. Keep its cool story as is. No need to go mucking about with fluff.

But then:

, so we can assume that hook horrors live underground, they prefer to eat meat, they attack unless a potential victim is obviously powerful, and they live in small groups.

That's the story elements? Seriously?

Apart from that, for story, all we get is "they climb, so they'd live in perches high up in caves."




So I wondered. Is that all they had to go on? Was the monster always this boring and flavorless...essentially nothing more than "semi-intelligent hook crab"? I was going to go through all my old monster manuals, but I figured I'd start with: Hook horror - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia since others have already done just that for me (and for the current designers...hint hint)!

At minimum, the wiki gives us a bunch of sources for the hook horror. It seems that the most useful for stuff other than pure stats would be "the ecology of the hook horror" in dragon 131. I don't have access to that, but I do have access to this:
Hook horror - The Forgotten Realms Wiki - Books, races, classes, and more


Now, I'll admit...it's a pretty boring monster even reading its ecology. It's sort of a slow moving familial hunter gatherer. However, some interesting points: 1. It's likely related to the cockroach. 2. They prefer to ambush their prey from above 3. They work together as a group. 4. They must molt. 5. Their exosleketon can be used as material for armor.

Most interesting among my boring facts, but more interesting than those in the article, is #3. They work together as a group. That means, rather than approaching hook horror design from the perspective of "a monster" it needs to be addressed as "a family of the same type of monster" at a minimum. Their two primary motivations, it would seem, are protecting their eggs (which are in a central location during whatever egg-laying season they might have) and gaining food, particularly the more flavorful meat as an alternative to bland fungus. As a group, they either molt at the same time or separate times. If so, that would impact how they fight: do they all go into hiding when molting? Do they protect the one guy who is molting? Alternately, player motivation to intentionally interact with these guys could be to kill them for their carapaces, bargain with them for their molted carapaces, or steal some eggs to enslave for their molted carapaces.


Now, I may be overreacting. The Hook Horror isn't a particularly interesting monster. But in the article it is once again stripped down to its stats and combat efficacy. This was deemed a problem by many in the first 4e monster manual, and was corrected to some degree in later 4e MMs.

I wish he'd picked a monster that could really showcase fluff better. I want to see that they're paying attention to monsters as "beings" rather than just "statblocks". I don't see that here, but I do see that, even with this monster, more care could have been taken to avoid that.


I'm really hoping that 5e follows the mantra of "story and adventure first, rules supporting that second." I'm worried it is (at least in this article) currently following the mantra "Rules first, plot/story maybe."



On thinking on it a bit more, I see the article's monster as "a crab that has a family and attacks with claws". I see, from the ecology article "a modestly intelligent group of opportunistic hunters who will callously add intelligent prey to their larder, so long as it helps, rather than endangers, their tribe of alien-thinking cockroach beings." Which of those two monsters would you want to use in an adventure?




Fundamentally, I want the following question(s) answered in every single monster manual entry: "1. What are the monster's main motivations (especially related to interacting with pcs)? and 2. What are the player character's motivations in interacting with this monster?" In no case should the answer be solely "1.To kill pcs. and 2. To kill monsters/survive monster attacks." These might be the inevitable results of the more relevant motivations (e.g. in this case "To eat meat" "To kill for its carapace".) However, it gives a different flavor to each monster, both making them more interesting, and also potentially giving non-combat potential for conflict resolution. (e.g. in this case...We'll bring you a cow if you let us pass. We'll pay you in cows for your molted carapaces.)

4e is often (unfairly) criticized as "not having roleplaying" or "being all about combat". I don't agree with this, but once thought that way. I think this concern I have, right here with monsters, is a big part of that (again, unfair) overall criticism. Though I think it might be a fair criticism of that one book (the 4e MM1).


When a monster's motivation is "kill pcs" how do you problem solve around that? How CAN you decided to bring it cows, for example? THIS is the importance of ecology and motivation. If monsters are, as the designers once said, "primarily just there for combat, so we'll focus on providing that" and are stripped of, say, out of combat spell like abilities and ecology then all you really have available to do with them is to kill them.





EDIT: Mea Culpa. Several posters have convinced me that I've overreacted about the article, in assuming that it meant an inattention to fluff/ecology. I'm convinced that while the article did not address fluff/ecology, that was intentional. It was pure numerical conversion based on priorities of stats and combat abilities. That's a great thing to hear about from WotC regarding how they're doing the maths. Even if that was not in the article does not mean it was unimportant. With that in mind, please feel free to contribute in any way you like to this thread, but I'd hope that the majority of contributions would be ways to incorporate fluff and ecology meaningfully (or at least to yell at me or disprove their importance). In any case, I'd like this thread to be about the title: "The need for monsters as beings rather than statblocks." and how that might be accomplished (or whether it should be accomplished if you think it's bad or unneccessary).

 

[Yora]

Hook Horrors are established creatures with a long history. However unlike goblins, they are not that particularly well known. I guess there's a good chance that all the background fluff was on his mind, but he did not spell it out all again, mistakingly assuming everyone would be on the same page as him.

In the old AD&D monster manual, every creature had 2/3 of a full page for fluff text.

 

[Gold Roger]

Sometimes you just need a bunch of monsters to throw at the PC's and hook horrors are a prime example for such a monster. They are weird looking and have a quirk (hooks) that affects how they fight, but in the end they are a classic random encounter.

I agree that many monsters need more fluff and different design from what we've seen. But for now, I'd relax. Mearls shows how they are currently doing quick and dirty conversions for monsters, not how they want to do it for the finished product.

 

[KesselZero]

Honestly, I read the article as simply a look at the mechanical design. My reading of Mearls saying "there's no need to alter the fluff from the 2nd edition Monster Manual" was actually that they know players want more ecology in their MMs (Monster Manuals, not Mike Mearlses) and they're going to cop the 2e approach, since basically everyone in the universe agrees that the 2e MM was the best. I'm expecting that the 5e MM will have lots of fluff of the sort you describe; I think that's just not what this article was about.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I'm in agreement with all three posters above me. It's entirely possible that the article was one where he was SOLELY talking about the mechanical conversion, and not writing up a full statblock. That hadn't occurred to me at first. If that's the case, then I certainly wish to reign in my critique of the article, but I'll leave my OP unedited in that regard, because it does address the concern I have that the article (rightly or wrongly) brought about.

So, even with that admission (that Mearls might know exactly what he's doing, and the article might have been SOLEY conversion, not a full writeup), I sincerely hope that all of the old ecologies and statblocks and even (especially) the "silly little powers" are considered.

For "silly little powers" I include things like:
the Hook Horror's carapace as "treasure"
a Genie's ability to create food and wine 1/day
a Solar's ability to cast continual flame at will

and so on.

A lot of people defended the removal of these types of things...the out of combat abilites and low level abilites of powerful monsters that they'd "never use".

However, these are a major point that I'm trying to highlight with the OP: that such things can dramatically add to the roleplay and out of combat potential of the creature.

I guess, what I'm trying to say (in addition to the motivation components) is that if you remove out of combat abilities...well, you remove out of combat efficacy for the monsters. And hence, most motivation to interact with any monster becomes combat.

 

[keterys]

Looking over all those references:
What, if anything, would change about the stat block given as a result of any of that? I'm not seeing it. Maybe something for hunting together, like a wolf pack type ability? Doesn't seem necessary, but that's the only thing that sprang to mind.

Hook Horrors aren't that interesting. They're bipedal crabs that leap from the ceiling in the Underdark.

I think it's safe to say that his decision to not change the fluff, then not reprinting it, means he's talking about the functional stat block, and only that.

 

[howandwhy99]

In defense of statblocks, they're are trying to get the greatest amount of information to you as quickly and easily as possible. I don't hate 'em, I love 'em. But I am far from the belief that they are all that is necessary to detail any one character or overall monster.

What gives me hope is the Playtest Bestiary. They included combat (tactics) habitat & society (climate, terrain, culture, and habit), and legends & lore (a history and knowledge foundation) for each and every monster.

That bodes very well for D&Dn even if it's not really fleshed out yet on what those mean in the game. Perhaps we could use this thread in part to assist some?

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Sometimes you just need a bunch of monsters to throw at the PC's and hook horrors are a prime example for such a monster. They are weird looking and have a quirk (hooks) that affects how they fight, but in the end they are a classic random encounter.

I agree that many monsters need more fluff and different design from what we've seen. But for now, I'd relax. Mearls shows how they are currently doing quick and dirty conversions for monsters, not how they want to do it for the finished product.

I've responded to the second paragraph already (in agreement, sorry can't xp you again...too recent).

But to address the first paragraph: I agree. Sometimes it's just "here's a random encounter". I'm TOTALLY fine (and frequently do) use monsters in that way. Not every monster needs to be used in a grander scheme nor do we need to pay attention to the "feelings" of a monster being important.

However, the way a monster is used versus the way a monster is written up is quite important, IMO. There should not be a monster whose purpose in its writeup is "this is a random enounter monster whose purpos is to be thrown at pcs." Actually, I take that back. They could even write that, and I'd be ok with it. That might even be a cool thing at the end of each monster entry, how they forsee the utilization of each monster in the context of adventures (might make things easy on DMs).

I see no reason why it can't be both: a monster with a motivation and a rich ecology, and the fact that the motivation and rich ecology just don't matter a whit in a given encounter. e.g. The players are too close to the eggs, or the hook horrors were recently attacked by similar looking humans (or any humans...we all look alike to hook horrors) or whatever so it becomes "monsters vs pcs, random encounter style".

What a motivation and rich ecology provides is a background for a DM to understand how they might work in a more meaningful way. Having meaningless random fights is fun too. I don't think anyone would want to be given "The Big Book of Meaningless Random Fighting Creatures" though.

 

[Gold Roger]

So, even with that admission (that Mearls might know exactly what he's doing, and the article might have been SOLEY conversion, not a full writeup), I sincerely hope that all of the old ecologies and statblocks and even (especially) the "silly little powers" are considered.

For "silly little powers" I include things like:
the Hook Horror's carapace as "treasure"
a Genie's ability to create food and wine 1/day
a Solar's ability to cast continual flame at will

and so on.

A lot of people defended the removal of these types of things...the out of combat abilites and low level abilites of powerful monsters that they'd "never use".

However, these are a major point that I'm trying to highlight with the OP: that such things can dramatically add to the roleplay and out of combat potential of the creature.

I guess, what I'm trying to say (in addition to the motivation components) is that if you remove out of combat abilities...well, you remove out of combat efficacy for the monsters. And hence, most motivation to interact with any monster becomes combat.

Yes, "silly powers" are great. They are also absolutely unneccesary on a stat block, which they really just clutter up. 4e removing such from the statblock was a good thing, 4e completely removing them and leaving DMs without guidance was a horrible thing.

My solution would be to add a "other abilities" section at the end of a monster entry. This would include minor utility magic, rituals and other miscelanies.

A solar entry would describe all the blessings they can perform, be it casting lights, conjuring food, healing all kinds of conditions or whatever. The ankeg would describe how much it burries in a given time. For the vrock I'd add the dance of ruin, which causes damage, but rarely comes up and is hard to pull of in a combat. Hags get rules for covens and weird sorcery.

In short all that stuff that adds tons of flavor, plot hooks and cool scenes, but rarely figures into combat.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A monster has two parts (at least).

The first part is the part you use at the table.

The second part is the part you you read between games to get inspiration for running your game.

I have some controversial opinions about how to present the first, but if the team is going tried-and-true, giving you a combat statblock followed by paragraphs of story information hits the best of it.

For the purposes of combat stats, the family information (and even the leaping information) isn't very important.

Mearls explicitly stated that the story information would go elsewhere in the monster's entry, and that the statblock would be the combat thing.

So, I don't think there's anything much to worry about.