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

[Jester David]

4e just felt much "clearer" about it for some reason. Monster level=player level for the most part, so tossing a group of equal levels at each other worked. 1/3 CR rating=1 PC just feels off for some reason.

The 4e is a little cleaner, but there's very little difference in play and results. It's mostly a psychological difference. Once you get used to it, it's pretty easy to use in play.

And, really, by-the-books encounter building is really just for people getting a feel for the system. It's never more than a ballpark, and not very useful given the range of abilities available to PCs. Once most people have a feel for the system, I imagine most just eyeball encounter difficulty.

Maybe it's just how I DM but the entire party fighting one single monster is very boring.

Which was fine when you were putting 5 dudes against 5 equal monsters. (Or swapping in guys that filled the slot of 1-2 monsters).
It gets funkier when you might have 5 dudes against 3 equal monsters. Or 8 equal monsters.

You can do that in both systems. It just requires you to run through the encounter budget numbers.

I'd almost be tempted to go through and "re-level" all the Monster Manual creatures to make that a little bit more clear.

Sure.
If you pull the chart of monsters by CR into Excel, add a forumla based on the 1/3 CR rating=1 PC, then round things up or down based on how tough each monster is that should take you an hour or two at most.
Or you could do what Star Wars Saga did and drop the numerical CR in favour of letters. 1/8 is "A", 1/4 is "B", etc. So a group of level 5 adventures might fight a CR G to I monster.

4e used monster variants in two ways: variety and power differential. For humanoids, it was mostly variety - the ones that were significantly higher level than baseline tended to be minions for use in encounters together with monsters that were higher level "for real". For example, orcs had a baseline level of 3-4. But orcs are often found in the company of ogres - and in those cases, you'd mix the level 8 ogres with level 9 minion Orc Warriors instead of with level 4 Orc Berserkers.

Kinda.
There are a LOT of orcs in the Compendium. And you could have a full orc encounter at level 8 pretty easily.

(That's ignoring the weirdness of a level 9 orc minion, which should really have the xp value of a level 1 orc, but is waaay tougher in play than any level 1 orc in every metric except hp. According to the xp budget of 4e, five level 9 orcs should be a good challenge for a 1st level party. )

But the main use of variants for humanoids was variety: if the party got attacked by orcs, you'd have a mix of raiders (mixed melee/short range), berserkers (melee dudes), and drudges (minions), possibly with an Eye of Gruumsh overseeing things.

Some variety is nice. But it's pretty easy to just swap out weapons and armour.

Orcs have hide armour (AC 13), greataxes, and javelins. But it'd be easy to have an orc ranger with a bow and leather armour. An orc blood rager that has a greatsword and higher Strength (+1 attack & damage), or maybe an extra Hit Dice or two.
Or use the berserker NPC and just give it the Aggressive trait and darkvision. There are 19 variants in the MM that can be orcs as easily as they can be humans or elves.

 

[pemerton]

That's ignoring the weirdness of a level 9 orc minion, which should really have the xp value of a level 1 orc, but is waaay tougher in play than any level 1 orc in every metric except hp. According to the xp budget of 4e, five level 9 orcs should be a good challenge for a 1st level party.

Mathematically, a 9th level minion is comparable to a 1st level standard, as far as threat to a 1st level PC is concerned:

The minion does 9 or so damage on a hit (level +8, halved); the standard does the same (level +8) - I'm using MM3 numbers here. The minion has a better "to hit" chance - the standard probably around 60%, the minion around 90% - so about 1.5 times expected DPR. The standard is more likely to have some debilitating effect, however.

The minion has AC 23 or so (14 + level), which means a 1st level PC (with around +6 to hit) takes around four rounds to kill it.

The standard has AC 15 or so, and 25 to 30 hp. The first level PC hits it 3/5 of the time, and needs 2 to 3 hits to kill it, which means the standard takes around 4 rounds to be killed.​

The minion does more DPR but is far more swingy and does fewer effects - there is a good chance that 1 or 2 minions will drop in the first round, whereas this is less likely for the standard creatures.

But in any event, why would a 4e GM build a 1st level encounter using 9th level minions? That's quite contrary to the express encounter-building guidelines, and deliberately mis-using minions.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

4e used monster variants in two ways: variety and power differential. For humanoids, it was mostly variety - the ones that were significantly higher level than baseline tended to be minions for use in encounters together with monsters that were higher level "for real". For example, orcs had a baseline level of 3-4. But orcs are often found in the company of ogres - and in those cases, you'd mix the level 8 ogres with level 9 minion Orc Warriors instead of with level 4 Orc Berserkers.

A major purpose of 5E bounded accuracy was that there wouldn't need to be different regular and minion versions of essentially the same orc. A handful of basic CR 1/2 orcs is a challenge for low-level characters; a large number of CR 1/2 orcs is a challenge for high-level characters. The one thing I've noticed is that a large number of CR 1/2 orcs doesn't give XP commensurate to the challenge. So I just started multiplying their XP value by the modifiers in the encounter budget rules on p. 82 of the DMG, even though it specifically says the multiplier doesn't increase their XP value for some reason. And voila! I can theoretically run an entire campaign using only fractional-CR monsters in increasing numbers.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

While I think 5e on the whole is a lot better than 4e, it is somewhat lacking in the monster department. There are three main things I think 4e did better with monsters:

1. Ramping up humanoids. In 5e, pretty much every natural humanoid monster is an appropriate monster for 1st level characters to fight. Bugbears, duergar, and thri-kreen top the humanoid pecking order at CR 1, and below those we have gnolls, svirfneblin, hobgoblins, lizardfolk, orcs, and sahuagin at CR 1/2, bullywugs, drow, goblins, grimlocks, kuo-toa, and troglodytes at 1/4, and kobolds and merfolk at 1/8. The only ones going beyond that are gith, lycanthropes, and quaggoths. In 4e, you had a progression of humanoids starting with kobolds and goblins at level 1-2, then moving up to orcs and hobgoblins at level 3-4, bugbears, gnolls, and lizardfolk at level 5-6, and shadar-kai and troglodytes at level 6-8. Sure, 4e had a different level scale than 5e does, but it would have been nice to have the humanoids spread out a big more over CR 1/4 to 5.

There are CR 2 Hobgoblin Iron Shadows, CR 4 Hobgoblin Devastators, CR 3 Hobgoblin Captains and CR 6 Hobgoblin Warlords, CR 1 Gnoll Flesh Gnawers, CR 2 Gnoll Pack Lords and CR 9 Gnoll Flinds, CR 5 Drow Elite Warriors, CR 7 Drow Mages and CR 8 Drow Priestesses. Plus anything that you custom-create, e.g. by slapping 7 levels of Thief on the base Goblin chassis, or alternately adding Nimble Escape to an NPC Gladiator to make a Goblin Gladiator.

 

[flametitan]

There are CR 2 Hobgoblin Iron Shadows, CR 4 Hobgoblin Devastators, CR 3 Hobgoblin Captains and CR 6 Hobgoblin Warlords, CR 1 Gnoll Flesh Gnawers, CR 2 Gnoll Pack Lords and CR 9 Gnoll Flinds, CR 5 Drow Elite Warriors, CR 7 Drow Mages and CR 8 Drow Priestesses. Plus anything that you custom-create, e.g. by slapping 7 levels of Thief on the base Goblin chassis, or alternately adding Nimble Escape to an NPC Gladiator to make a Goblin Gladiator.

Additionally, there's a couple other variants in VGTM that aren't given a statblock because they're so easily made. The Booyagh Caster makes a variant to the goblin simply by saying "Hey, this goblin can cast a 1st level spell once per day. You get to pick which."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

4e just felt much "clearer" about it for some reason. Monster level=player level for the most part, so tossing a group of equal levels at each other worked. 1/3 CR rating=1 PC just feels off for some reason. Maybe it's just how I DM but the entire party fighting one single monster is very boring.

I'd almost be tempted to go through and "re-level" all the Monster Manual creatures to make that a little bit more clear.

If you like, you can think of it the other way around: 4 level N PCs vs. 4 CR N monsters is a "fair fight," in the sense that it's hard to predict who's going to win if they just hammer at each other in a straightforward fashion. (It's Triple- or Quadruple-Deadly, and my experience is that it's about a 50/50 for either side winning; if the players are losing they will often pull out one of their trump cards like a Horn of Valhalla, so they don't necessarily TPK even then. And of course players can do much better than 50/50 if they fight smart, since the monsters don't get to think in bullet time like players do--my monsters usually have one or two go-to strategies that they will execute, but I won't let them adapt on the fly in a fight that is over in seconds unless they are super-geniuses like Illithids or something.)

If you do the math on 5E's suggested difficulties, Medium fights are the equivalent of having one or two PCs fight four PCs--call it 1.5 PCs. Plug that into Lanchester's Square Law and you see that the four-person party is about seven times as strong as the 1.5-person party: 4^2/1.5^2 = 7.11. That's because the four-person party has almost three times the HP and almost three times the damage output of the smaller party.

Medium fights are like a grown man beating up on a kindergartener.

 

[dave2008]

3. Monsters that do cool stuff. A lot of 5e monsters are just big bags of hit points and damage. By comparison, most monsters in 4e at least had a little something extra - and in 13th age, almost all the monsters have something cool to do. Perhaps one does not need to go that far, but it would be cool with monsters with more abilities.

I don't know that this is such an issue. Maybe it is because I have been doing a lot of high CR monster conversions lately, but I find that in many cases the 5e Legendary monsters are just as interesting, if not more interesting, than their 4e counter parts. Not to mention that their are a lot of one-trick-ponies in 4e as well.

What I really miss from 4e monsters are the elite and solos. I liked that monsters could be advanced in width (elite & solo) as well as depth (higher level/CR). I've started bringing that back into my 5e monsters.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

But in any event, why would a 4e GM build a 1st level encounter using 9th level minions? That's quite contrary to the express encounter-building guidelines, and deliberately mis-using minions.

Indeed. Certain members here are twisting 4e into strange knots and squinting very hard at 5e for the sake of this edition war.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I tend to agree, though my general solution for monsters has been to simply take the appropriate humanoid stats (per the PHB or Volo) with the basic array and class them 1-20 in whatever class I need. It's a lot of work, but eventually you have a 1-20 handy for every humanoid the players could run into of a class befitting the situation. Orc shamans? (reflavored sorcerers). Kobold assassins? Rogues. This tends to result in more powerful humanoids (since classes are FAR more powerful than monster features in 5E), but it feels more natural since there's no reason sentient races can't have actual classes.

But overall I agree. Monsters, and humanoids especially, are poorly spread out over the game. There's a glut of low CR stuff, 1/8-1, then a gap till CR 4-6 and then a gap till higher levels, and they're all pretty drab across the board. My solution addresses the gap, but not the dullness.

Would you mind sharing this work of yours? It sounds really useful.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

To get around this, I pretty much rewrote the monster creation rules. I have a list of stat templates that represent baselines, HP categories, AC categories, size, attack templates (high hit with low damage, low hit with high damage, high hit and damage, etc), and special abilities (multiattack, breath weapon, spells, enhanced skill, enhanced save, etc).

I also have 3 total "ranks" of monsters; normal, elite, Legendary. Elite and Legendary monsters are basically slightly modified versions of normal, with both having max HP, access to unique special abilities meant to keep them challenging when solo, and some defensive bonuses that are only active while their allies are in play. Legendary monsters are the end-of-tier BBG's that wrap up major plot points, and have access to lair action (which are greatly expanded upon compared to the core rules).

What's nice about the system is it doesn't require too much detail. If you create a monster with 16 AC, it doesn't care if it's natural or armor or magical or whatever; it's up to you to define it with whatever makes sense for the monster, and doesn't have to play by the same rules as the player characters (ie: someone wearing leather might have a 22 AC, and you'd just highlight that this guy is *really* hard to hit.

Would love to see your work.