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Message: <blockquote data-quote="karolusb" data-source="post: 6983424" data-attributes="member: 83359">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.</blockquote>

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