The New Design Philosophy?

[Plane Sailing]

Vrocks? Ugh. One vrock is a fine opponent. Multiple vrocks? Not so good.

Hey, how are you going to get to use the awesome 'dance of ruin' if you don't have multiple vrocks? Plus multiple spores eating away at everyone?

Multiple vrocks are far more fun to DM for me than a singleton!

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Consider a 1 HD monster with a death attack. If you look at it, you must make a Fortitude save or die. The problem with this monster is that it has a glass jaw. There's no interest in the actual combat - it's just a coin-flip. Heads, you win. Tails, you die. That's bad design.

If this is true, do you anticipate that Mike will attempt a redesign of the Remorhaz, which has often been found to be an 'oops I killed a party member' style monster?

 

[Plane Sailing]

A monster is supposed to be easy for an equal CR fight, regardless of how it's defeated. I would give the PCs bonus XP if they beat it "smart", though. This is in addition to other advantages (eg taking less damage, using up less healing, etc).

I think that 'easy' is supposed to be for lower-than-your-level fights.

A fight where CR = party level is 'supposed' to use up about 20% of resources, and if the suprise attack means that all those 'resources' happen to go from one PC, he can be in a pretty bad way.

20% resources isn't really 'easy' IMO.

Cheers

 

[FireLance]

I am firmly on the side of any design philosophy that aligns a creature's CR more closely to its actual performance in combat.

That said, I do recognize that an interesting game needs more than just combat challenges, so perhaps what is needed is a system to determine the CR of non-combat challenges as well.

Such a system exists for traps and hazards, where the challenge is not so much to defeat the trap in combat (although combat-like mechanics in the form of skill checks, attack rolls, saving throws, hit point and ability damage, etc. are used), but to survive it. This is where I would place challenges like the 1 HD creature with the death attack, and I would probably peg it higher than CR 1.

A fiendish hawk is not much of a threat in combat. However, if part of the challenge is for you to find it (Hide +11) before you can fight it, it could be worth CR 1/2.

Mediating a dispute between a 1st-level druid and a 2nd-level expert shouldn't require you to defeat either of them in combat (unless negotiations go badly wrong), but could still be considered a CR 1 challenge.

Finding a well-hidden troglodyte lair could be considered a separate challenge from defeating them in combat, and should probably earn you a separate experience award.

If a creature uses its abilities to lure you into a trap, you should earn experience for surviving the trap. If you subsequently defeat the creature, you should get experience for that as well.

So, let a creature's CR be determined by its combat performance. If you need to unravel its lies, reverse its influence on innocent villagers, or neutralize its supporters, that should be a separate challenge, with a separate CR, and a separate experience award.

 

[Hussar]

But, on the other hand, 20% isn't exactly a knock down, drag out fight. It's a couple of hit points and spells. I would hazard to say that a difficult fight should be into the 50% range or possibly better. I wouldn't think that after a hard fight, I blow off a couple of cure spells and keep going. For me, a hard fight means that I want to rest RIGHT NOW.

The problem with niche creatures is that unless the DM specifically creates situations to use them in, they aren't all that useful. I violently detest Aha Gotcha creatures. I always have. The cone of cold from the old OM was exactly that - an Aha Gotcha. It doesn't take any great tactical genius to have the OM turn invisible and get into position then blast away with a cone of cold. I mean, come on, this is pretty basic stuff. Even if I don't worry about the turning invisible stuff, using the cone of cold is a no brainer.

Only problem is, once I've use it, there's nothing else. The creature has absolutely no depth. It pops up, alpha strikes and then dies.

In other words, it's a trap. It doesn't have the hp or the AC to last more than a round or two against the party and, even if it does, it can't do any significant damage anyway. It's basically a mobile cone of cold trap.

This was the same problem with the Rust Monster. It's not a creature, it's a trap. It pops up, maybe whacks an item or two then dies.

Why bother making these into monsters? Trap stat blocks are five lines long. Strip out these one hit wonder creatures and put in stuff that's actually useful in the game and put them in with Green Slime in the DMG. If a creature has no real use beyond a single action, it's not a useful creature IMO. Creatures should be standing up for at least the five rounds of an average fight, not going down halfway into round two.

As I see it, unless you add in lots of mooks and whatnot to make the OM useful, the OM pops up, gets off its Cone of Cold, then dies. How is this a memorable encounter?

I shouldn't have to engineer entire scenarios around a given creature to make it useful. If I want to, that's fine, I can. But, a well designed creature shouldn't require the DM to completely engineer the encounter to its advantage in order to meet it's CR.

 

[MerricB]

Hey, how are you going to get to use the awesome 'dance of ruin' if you don't have multiple vrocks? Plus multiple spores eating away at everyone?

Multiple vrocks are far more fun to DM for me than a singleton!

Hey, I like vrocks (single or multiple), but they could stand to lose a couple of abilities that would allow them to concentrate on things like the spores that make them cool and distinctive.

Cheers!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

But, on the other hand, 20% isn't exactly a knock down, drag out fight. It's a couple of hit points and spells. I would hazard to say that a difficult fight should be into the 50% range or possibly better. I wouldn't think that after a hard fight, I blow off a couple of cure spells and keep going. For me, a hard fight means that I want to rest RIGHT NOW.

The problem with niche creatures is that unless the DM specifically creates situations to use them in, they aren't all that useful. I violently detest Aha Gotcha creatures. I always have. The cone of cold from the old OM was exactly that - an Aha Gotcha. It doesn't take any great tactical genius to have the OM turn invisible and get into position then blast away with a cone of cold. I mean, come on, this is pretty basic stuff. Even if I don't worry about the turning invisible stuff, using the cone of cold is a no brainer.

Only problem is, once I've use it, there's nothing else. The creature has absolutely no depth. It pops up, alpha strikes and then dies.

In other words, it's a trap. It doesn't have the hp or the AC to last more than a round or two against the party and, even if it does, it can't do any significant damage anyway. It's basically a mobile cone of cold trap.

This was the same problem with the Rust Monster. It's not a creature, it's a trap. It pops up, maybe whacks an item or two then dies.

Why bother making these into monsters? Trap stat blocks are five lines long. Strip out these one hit wonder creatures and put in stuff that's actually useful in the game and put them in with Green Slime in the DMG. If a creature has no real use beyond a single action, it's not a useful creature IMO. Creatures should be standing up for at least the five rounds of an average fight, not going down halfway into round two.

As I see it, unless you add in lots of mooks and whatnot to make the OM useful, the OM pops up, gets off its Cone of Cold, then dies. How is this a memorable encounter?

I shouldn't have to engineer entire scenarios around a given creature to make it useful. If I want to, that's fine, I can. But, a well designed creature shouldn't require the DM to completely engineer the encounter to its advantage in order to meet it's CR.

Weird, huh? That goes for roughly 30% of the monsters in the MM1...they all are creatures that, if used correctly, are not just dungeon fodder that you meet while turning a corner or entering a room, and that would go "Aha, gotcha!" with some ability and then try to vanish to either reach their mooks, or to simply run for their lives instead of duking it out with a group of heavily armed adventurers with magical firepower.

And sorry, if you as a DM don't use the powers of the monster to its utmost advantage in an encounter...why are you awarding full XP for it again? Or does that just go for powers with direct combat applicability? If I have a monster with some kind of charming ability (vampire, mind flayer, ogre mage), I damn well will have mooks around it...if I have a monster with a summoning ability, it will call for help, too, after all. And no necromancer will be met without a few undead around to defend him.

 

[Belen]

I shouldn't have to engineer entire scenarios around a given creature to make it useful. If I want to, that's fine, I can. But, a well designed creature shouldn't require the DM to completely engineer the encounter to its advantage in order to meet it's CR.

This is the problem with your argument. If you want an effective combat monkey, then you have plenty of monsters that you can use. The good thing about an Ogre Mage or Rust Monster is that they deviate from the norm. These are monsters that require the DM to plan something special. If you force them into a single "mold" then you're taking away a tool that helps a DM learn how to manage different encounters. Some monsters should force DM and players to think outside the box.

The development philosophy at WOTC seems to believe that everything should be in the box, relate to the box, and sleep in the box.

What we're seeing now is a redesign of creatures that were more effective when the box did not exist. In older editions, when wealth was not so tied into party CR, a rust monster (while painful) was less of an issue. The spells used by the Ogre Mage were also more effective. For instance, sleep was far more effective in 1/2e. It is a joke in 3.5 and I have yet to see a mage take sleep over other first level spells that can remain effective for a longer period of game time.

Personally, I detest the homogenization that is occuring with 3e. I love the better rules, but I do not see why monsters cannot have special abilities that the PCs cannot have, or why spells cannot be cool and maybe take a few rounds to cast or have an RP negative effect to them.

Hell, even identify went from 8 hours to cast to 1 hour from 3e to 3.5. I guess WOTC thought that was an undue burden too!?

Monsters, spells, and abilities that are outside the box is fun. The new development philosophy is not fun.

 

[Mad Mac]

Yeah. The Ogre Mage should have lots of minions with his ability to attempt to charm one person (Who is not an Ogre) for a couple of hours, once a day. And his ability to transform for a few minutes a day. It's full of unbridled depth and unrealized power....

Sorry, but I still say it's a wimpy monster that is vastly over CR'd simply because of the Cone of Cold attack being completely out of line with it's other abilities. And all this talk about awesome Mastermindry is just silly. There's a bazillion other creatures who can out-mastermind the Ogre Mage in their sleep, including really exotic stuff like humans with class levels.

There's no implied Mastermind theme in the fluff text for the creature over different editions, and playing it that way goes against the Oni concept as well. The Ogre Mage is just a badly designed creature. That said, I don't have any objection to giving the redesigned version a Charm Monster ability.

 

[Garnfellow]

It sounds like a few people in this thread don’t think D&D is too complex right now, and that any attempt to make it simpler is a deplorable dumbing down of the game, a thumb in the eye of tradition.

But I am really starting to wonder.

Just because D&D is less complex than Aftermath (and what the heck isn’t) doesn’t mean the game is as simple as it could or should be.

I’m thinking of a couple of specific examples that might demonstrate this point:

• The continuing inability of WotC to get its monster stat blocks right – even in the wake of the MMIII fiasco. Pull out any three John Cooper reviews at random from the last year and you’ll see what I mean. Although I still think Hordes of the Abyss is a fantastic book, the numerous stat block errors are a big annoyance.
• The unreliability of the “official” FAQ. I think there are at least a couple of threads going on right now detailing the many contradictions, inconsistencies, and just out-and-out blunders that have appeared in the FAQ.

Up until fairly recently, I’ve pretty much blamed these problems on shoddy quality control back at WotC. And I’m not ready to completely let them off the hook.

But lately, I’ve begun to wonder about the game system itself. If professional game designers at the largest RPG company in the industry -- smart people working very hard on something they presumably enjoy very much -- if these same designers continue to make errors at an unacceptably high rate, doesn’t that suggest something about the game?

In this light, I think simplifying the game isn’t a goal that will only benefit the poor, hypothetical “beginning DM.” It seems like all DMs, veterans and newbies alike, could use some help. In isolation, one or two oddball monsters don’t seem like much of a burden on DMs. But in aggregate? This is a game currently bursting at the seams with oddball monsters, despite all the attempts to standardize and codify the rules.