D&D 4E Thing I thought 4e did better: Monsters

[Argyle King]

For me, I ran into two issues with the 4E numbers.

1) The gameplay narrative often clashed with what was actually going on at the table.

2) The type of game that the preview books and early fluff gave me the impression of 4E being often didn't match up very well with the type of game I was playing while actually sitting at the table and rolling dice.

Those both sound like the same thing, but they are slightly different. One is a clash between fluff/fiction and crunch/mechanics. The other is a clash between mental expectations about gameplay style gained from reading early material and how the game actually worked.

I dunno... I guess what I'm trying to say is that the most success I had when playing 4E D&D is either when I turned off certain parts of my brain so that I couldn't see the things that bothered me or I viewed the action through a somewhat comical lens. The most success I had when running 4E D&D was when I stopped trying to run a D&D setting.

 

[dave2008]

How seriously do you mean this?

100%

 

[dave2008]

Why not? That's more-or-less what Smaug did, and he was able to conquer one of the great dwarfholds of the age.

If the fiction tells me that a dragon defeated a dwarven army, the statblock should somehow express this..

But that is not the fiction of D&D. As you well know D&D PCs are much more powerful than anything displayed in LotR

 

[Jester David]

I think it can benefit the game when it is, in fact, expressed somewhere in the mechanics outside the intelligence score.

*shrug*

Mechanics are good, but they're not that important. I've had riveting games of D&D based on just the story. Mechanics are just a crutch to add tension and drama when there's nothing else more interesting going on in the campaign.
No matter how cool the mechanics say a dragon is, if the story doesn't give context to the fight, it's just a random encounter, and might as well be bandits on the road.

 

[pemerton]

If the fiction tells me that a dragon defeated a dwarven army, the statblock should somehow express this.

As you well know D&D PCs are much more powerful than anything displayed in LotR

Well, the dwarven army that Smaug defeated was, in D&D terms, an army of NPCs. And dwarven NPCs in D&D aren't more powerful than the ones in JRRT - after all, they're pretty closely modelled on Tolkien's dwarves.

From the point of view of mechanical design, I think there are two main options. (Maybe there are others I've forgotten or never thought of or encountered - but these are the two that I can think of at the moment.)

One way: we acknowledge that the mechanics, or at least parts of the mechanics, are solely for resolving conflicts involving the PCs. Eg we might say that the "nat 20 always hits" rule is applied to the players only - so their characters always have a chance to get lucky - but not to generic NPCs - so we can have dragons unable to be shot out of the sky even by an army of 1000 archers.

4e went broadly this way (with a discussion of this approach in an early chapter of the DMG). In this case, the breaking of the dwarven army under Smaug's assault is purely narrated, not resolved mechanically. And part of the power of D&D PCs that you mention is evidenced in the mechanics that give them a chance that generic PCs lack.

A possible problem with this approach becomes - what to do if the PCs recruit an army of dwarves? I think 4e had an easy solution - the army gives the PC an extra power (in my game, it was a squad of drow rather than an army of dwarves, and I let the PC in command of them call in a modest AoE as a minor action), but other versions of D&D don't really support that degree of mechanical flexibility.

The other way: the mechanics of a dragon are, more-or-less, a model of its capabilities in the fiction. This is what I think AD&D was aiming for, what 3E went for, and what (as best I can tell) 5e is going for. In original AD&D it was almost impossible for an army of dwarves to stand against a dragon, because they would break and flee. However, this was handled through giving dragons a fear aura rather than the standard morale mechanics - ie dragons weren't, independent of their fear aura, something against which an army of dwarves couldn't hope to stand. I think that counts against dragons in AD&D, and helps explain why they were beefed up in 2nd ed AD&D and in later volumes of the Mentzer BECMI.

The biggest obstacle to this approach is that simulationist D&D has no easy way of combining "nat 20 is an auto-hit" and "not even an army of ordinary archers can shoot this thing out of the sky".

And 5e has the additional issue that, with bounded accuracy, generic archers might hit a dragon on less than a nat 20.

I think it's an issue if a RPG's generic resolution mechanics make it hard to emulate a pretty standard genre trope (like the dragon who can't be shot out of the sky even by an army of archers, but who is nevertheless vulnerable to the "chosen" or "lucky" archer, ie - in the RPG context - the PC protagonist).

100%

Can you elaborate? Presumably you don't think that a GM could get the same results with a giant rat as with a (traditionally statted) dragon just by playing it a certain way. Or, if you do, could you explain what you have in mind?

 

[karolusb]

I think 4e had the best GM tools of any RPG I have played, not quite as powerful as HERO, but, before the monster builder was wrecked, vastly easier to use.

I miss monster roles, yeah 4e maybe had more than were strictly needed, and they weren't all equally useful as a tool, but 5e seems to suffer, for me as a GM, in the lack a viable variety, and the clues for how thing are intended to work. I was looking at the Nycaloth the other day, and if you miss it's 'tactic' (which is perhaps hard to do, but it is clearly not spelled out) then it is way over CR. So either I figure out how a monster is supposed to be dangerous, or they fail to be dangerous (divine casters have this problem as well, it wasn't till I realized that the cult leader was assumed to cast inflict wounds every round that they made sense, and that does seem like a boring and swingy encounter to me).

5e has some other problems, bounded accuracy feels like it doesn't really live up to expectations, while cr 2 monsters certainly seem like they stay viable forever, hobgoblins are barely viable at 1st level, and with expected frontline AC's quickly going over 20, things with a +3 attack bonus just don't cut it (goblins OTOH stay viable much longer). Lots of things do feel like bags of hit points. And as someone who is running a campaign where 90% of material is adapted Basic and/or 1E modules, I feel that no, 5e does not actually let you run that stuff without modification in any meaningful way.

But 5e isn't too bad.

The UA encounter building rules work out to be very close to the 1/3 CR thing someone mentioned, and once I found them I completely abandoned the write up in the DMG (which is terrible).

Critters are pretty easy to mod, I am a tinker GM anyway, so I loved tinkering in 4e, and I like it in 5e, not as good, far less examples (leader monster powers? there are very very few in 5e. . .), but still pretty easy to do. What I would really like is a broader range of NPC statblocks. When I want a dangerous goblin I fuse the goblin stat block with the scout, or the berserker (or heaven forbid the warleader). But the range of NPC statblocks have huge holes.

But if you aren't a tinker GM, this is all kinda lame, because hobgoblins as written just suck, have little meaningful variety, and become obsolete very very fast outside of absurd quantities or contrived situations.


*** Added Later:

I would not recommend making monsters as PC's for actual use in most situations in 5e. PC's are complicated, fiddly, and balanced around a long encounter day. None of those things are good for most NPC's (though sometimes). Still building some NPC's as PC's can help you learn more about PC's as a gm, it can help you distill the essence down so that the character feels like when it has the PC class, without all the various fiddly bits. You can make a paladin NPC feel like a paladin by taking the knight NPC, adding half hit dice in paladin spellcasting, and giving them the smite power of the NPC priest (~CR4). Not nearly as frontloaded or glass cannony as a similar CR PC build paladin would be, still feels right.

 

[pemerton]

Mechanics are good, but they're not that important. I've had riveting games of D&D based on just the story. Mechanics are just a crutch to add tension and drama when there's nothing else more interesting going on in the campaign.

I don't agree with this theory of mechanics.

I think the mechanics are a device for determining the content of the fiction when the actions (in a sufficiently broad sense) of the GM's characters would push it one way (eg the dragon would eat the dwarves), the actions (again, in a sufficiently broad sense) of the players' characters would push it another way (eg the dwarves stand against and defeat the dragon), and the rules don't give one participant in the game licence to override the other.

Examples of override permissions that make mechanics unnecessary: in most RPGs the player can decide what colour his/her PC is, what his/her name is, and some info about the PC's family. No rolls necessary.

Examples of mechanics because there is no general override permission: in classic D&D, the GM is generally not just allowed to fiat up dungeon encounters, but should either have placed them in advance (therefore making them discoverable by the players) or determined them via wandering monster rolls. There are edge cases here - eg what to do if the PCs go into a part of the dungeon not yet written up - and discussion on how to handle those edge cases without violating the basic tenets of play was a major topic of discuss around 35 to 40 years ago.

I've chosen these examples, rather than more traditional ones (eg combat to hit rolls) because they make it clearer why I think (i) mechanics aren't a crutch, and (ii) I think that mechanics aren't, per se, linked to tension/drama. They're linked to decision-making about the content of the shared fiction.

(Btw, this isn't my original theory or anything. I'm basically parrotting Vincent Baker.)

No matter how cool the mechanics say a dragon is, if the story doesn't give context to the fight, it's just a random encounter, and might as well be bandits on the road.

This doesn't seem very apropos of my post.

Yes, boring games are boring. But let's assume for the sake of discussion that someone wants to use a dragon in a non-boring game. If the fiction is to live up to the genre tropes, that dragon should be able to break armies and breathe fire. How do you propose this should be handled? Most FRPGs handle the fire-breathing, at lesat, via mechanics; and many also want to handle the breaking of armies that way, too, although - depending a bit on broader context (of the game system, of the particular table) I think that is a better candidate to be handled simply by the GM exercising his/her authority to establish backstory without contest from the players.

 

[dave2008]

The other way: the mechanics of a dragon are, more-or-less, a model of its capabilities in the fiction.

D&D has never modeled smaug well. Though D&D may be partially inspired by LotR, it doesn't model it mechanically very well. It is its own thing. If you want to model Smaug (and I do encourage that), you need to make a few changes. You could start with the modified ancient red dragon a made (post #13): http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES/page2

But you would still need to make a few changes. I would make him colossal, up his HP, maybe immunity to nonmagical weapons, fewer spells, and up the damage. Maybe CR 30? That is my target for Great Wyrm reds.

Can you elaborate? Presumably you don't think that a GM could get the same results with a giant rat as with a (traditionally statted) dragon just by playing it a certain way. Or, if you do, could you explain what you have in mind?

Sure! The part of my text you quoted was: "The fact is, 5e, like 4e, requires the DM to make the monsters come alive."

What I mean by that is two fold.

1st: the mechanics in the stat block are rarely, if ever, enough for me to run a monster how I want. I pretty much tinker with every monster of any significance. I like the mechanics to back-up the monster lore, so I modify,

2nd (and more to the point): you can have all the mechanics in the stat block and the monster can still be boring in the game. It is how the DM runs the monster that makes it interesting. I have personally made fairly interesting monsters become rather boring from poor use and very simple monsters interesting with creative use.

 

[Darkness]

Let's take it easy, folks. Please make sure you're aiming at the argument - not at the poster standing behind it.

If you have any questions, PM me.

-Darkness,
EN World moderator

Kobolds are intelligent, and have a natural aptitude and expertise for traps. The only thing that's BS is someone assuming they wouldn't be able to create traps like that and it must be a bad DM. The DMs job is to play the monsters up to how they would normally behave up their capability, which most if not all of those traps in TK were. I also find your argument to be highly disingenuous because it tells you right there in the monster entry that kobolds can do things like that and your essentially blaming the DM (Tucker) for playing them as they should be played.

Then again, you are the same person who thinks monsters are boring unless they have cool powers in their stat blocks, when what makes a monster boring or not is how the DM plays it. You do realize there's entire section before the stat block that is invaluable to show a DM how boring or not a monster can be, right? If you ignore that information, then you don't have much of a leg to stand on when you call the monster boring. That's 100% on you as the DM in how you played them.

It never fails to amaze me that for the majority of D&D's existence, it's official motto was "Products of Your Imagination", and yet so many players refuse to use their imagination and instead think monsters/PCs are limited to what's in an official statblock as to what they can do and nothing else is allowed.

No, I'm sying the PC's essentially auto lose when you use realistic tactics. Kobolds are aware of their environment, and where they put their own traps. Its relatively simple to invent more things to screw over PC's pixel bitching, like the aforementioned tiny explosive runes. Follow that up some grimtooth level crap, and eventually you have a TPK. How clever. The guy with unlimited in game power and endless resources beat his friends. He's king of the lunch table!



Well, actually I said they were pathetic in the stat department, because everything is designed for the stupid 6-8 encounter day of speedbumps.



This is rich from a guy who cant even wrap his brain around marking or other narrative sim mechanics...

 

[pemerton]

The part of my text you quoted was: "The fact is, 5e, like 4e, requires the DM to make the monsters come alive."

What I mean by that is two fold.

1st: the mechanics in the stat block are rarely, if ever, enough for me to run a monster how I want. I pretty much tinker with every monster of any significance. I like the mechanics to back-up the monster lore, so I modify,

2nd (and more to the point): you can have all the mechanics in the stat block and the monster can still be boring in the game. It is how the DM runs the monster that makes it interesting. I have personally made fairly interesting monsters become rather boring from poor use and very simple monsters interesting with creative use.

Thanks for the reply.

The first sentence of (2) seems almost self-evidently true. There are at least two ways it can happen: the mechanics offer the promise of something interesting, but the GM doesn't use them (or mis-uses them - eg uses the dragon's firebreath when everyone is out of range, hence having no concrete impact on the fiction). Or the experience of the PCs engaging the monster is boring despite the GM's use of the mechanics, eg because the situation is unmotivated. I tend to feel that this second way is less common if the mechanics are well designed, unless the GM's framing of the encounter is really terrible. Because if the stakes are at least "Can we (the PCs) survive this?", and the mechanics pose an interesting challenge to survival, that can often be enough to generate at least a modicum of interest.

The last clause of (2) is more intriguing (to me at least). I'm not 100% sure what you would count as a "creative use". Or "simple monster", for that matter. I'm not sure if you count gelatinous cubes as simple monsters, but I remember running a 4e encounter with gelatinous cubes which was interesting because there were holes in the floor that the PCs were in danger of falling down if they wanted to avoid the cubes, but the cubes could just manoeuvre over because of their large, amoeboid bodies.

If you've got in mind non-combat dimensions of interest - eg the encounter becomes, in effect, a puzzle (eg "How do we deal with these wererats, given that they're in human form so we'll look like murderers if we just cut them down, but if we let them escape we may not catch them again?") - then I agree that can be interesting, but the interest is not being carried by the combat mechanics at all.

If my understandings of what you had in mind in that last clause are completely off base, tell me!

(1) is something I generally do in 4e when preparing solo monsters (especially to ensure adequte action economy even if the party pulls out its big stuns and dominates), and when turning something from a standard to an elite; but most published standards and elites I run as published (except for MM3-ing damage for pre-MM3 monsters). Back in my RM days I used to modify monsters quite a bit, especially there spells (like 5e, RM relies heavily on the PC spell lists to supply monster special abilities). So I couldn't really say I have a typical approach as far as modifying vs using as published is concerned.

D&D has never modeled smaug well. Though D&D may be partially inspired by LotR, it doesn't model it mechanically very well. It is its own thing. If you want to model Smaug (and I do encourage that), you need to make a few changes. You could start with the modified ancient red dragon a made (post #13): http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES/page2

I think the 4e Ancient Red Dragon would be a reasonable start for Smaug. It's got quite a bit of overlap with your Ancient Red that you linked to.

I'm not sure about spells - I tend not to like draconic spellcasters (except for Oriental Dragons, whom I tend to see more as natural magicians, connected to their ability to take human form and their place in the spirit hierarchy). The resistance to non-magic weapons I can see (and didn't 3E have this), though personally I'd rather handle their inability to be killed by an army of archers by way of narrative fiat (ie my "method one" in my post upthread) - I'm not sure I want to say that a PC archer can't take down Smaug just because s/he lacks a magic arrow.

One thing I don't really like about D&D dragons is frightful presence - although it now has legacy status, I think it's origin is as a placeholder for a simple morale check based on the fact that - for ordinary soldiers - this things is unbeatable. I don't really think a dragon should have (or need) a magical ability to break morale.