You're missing what's in my mind the critical point - DM prep time and overhead.
When you boil all effects down, as in your last paragraph, to PC rules, you're putting an added research burden on the DM for game prep. If I need a 10' burst of lightning, I should be able to just put that in there instead of looking up what spell (if any) fits those characteristics. If my bugbear can do extra damage when backstabbing, I should be able to do that instead of worry about rogue levels. If I want a ray that weakens, why should I need to know anything about ray of enfeeblement or any of its relatives?
This sort of setup has a cost in DM overhead I'm not willing to pay right now. (Especially since I think it's a worse way of doing things in the first place.)
Reading a dozen brand new powers also increases DM prep.
Reading through dozens of monster entries to find powers that synergize well together increases DM prep.
Having to make up a brand new lightning based effect and mechanic also eats prep time when you could just adjust
lightning bolt. Otherwise you risk making a power that does something identical to a spell but of lower/higher power. The rules are there for you to use so you don’t
need to reinvent the wheel for every monster. (But, if you want, you can
choose to make up all new effects and spells with overlap. Just because the game doesn’t does not stop DMs from doing their own thing.)
No set spells would be easier. Many other game systems have already done that. Heck, flexible spellcasting in a D&D environment was used in
Dragonlance SAGA so it pre-dates 3e.
5e could do something like “you cast a spell. It affects an adjacent creature and does 1d10 damage +2d10/spell level.
“If cast at range or affecting multiple creatures, drop the die size down by one. If both, drop the die size by two.
“You can immobilize by reducing the number of dice by 1, stun by reducing by 2, and paralyze by reducing my 3.”
Reflavour what the spell looks like and the damage type according to preference.
There. That’s the only spell D&D actually needs. A little number checking and fine-tuning and it would be balanced, it prevents quadratic wizards, and doesn’t give spellcasters cooler toys than martials.
But does that make the game better? Not really.
The opposite direction, with hundreds of thousands of unique powers has the same effect. It makes the game bland and boring. Because 90% are going to do the same thing: some damage and a little extra side effect.
If a monster needs to do something cool, by all means GIVE THEM SOMETHING COOL. But that should
need to be unique. It should be something impossible to replicate by a class feature. But if it’s just fire damage over an area… call it a freakin’
fireball and save everyone time. If it’s not their A-ability, don’t give it too much thought.
I know. I gave a story reason - "it's magic".
That’s not a story reason, that’s a justification for continuity errors in Xena.
“Magic” in a world should have rules, and all magic should obey those rules.
Aboleths are hulking amphibious creatures that hail from the Far Realm, a distant and unfathomable plane. They live in the Underdark, swimming through drowned crannies or creeping through lightless tunnels and leaving trails of slimy mucus in their wake. Malevolent and vile, aboleths bend humanoid creatures to their will, and more powerful aboleths can transform their minions into slimy horrors. . . Sometimes aboleths live together as a brood or even in a collection of broods. . .
That tells me what they are and where they live but little else.
But what do they eat? What are their goals? How do they live? Are they social: how often is “sometimes … live together”? Are they civilized or savage?
Obviously what counts as a "story idea" is to a significant extent in the eye of the beholder. But these monsters seem to me all to have pretty clear and strong places in the world, with associated lore. I don't see the oft-mooted contrast with earlier MMs.
Look back at the aboleth entry. It tells me how to use them in an encounter, with each monster’s tactics called out, but not how to use them in an adventure or campaign. It’s basically “this monster lives underground and bends humanoids to its will.” Coming to that uninitiated (and unfamiliar with Lovecraft) one might get the impression of a dull-witted creature meandering through the underdark and turning people into zombies.
It doesn’t mention their intelligence, their cities, or how the creatures bent to its will are its slaves that do its bidding. It doesn’t suggest Lovecraftian cults or the implied age of the aboleths.
Most of the early 4e monster fluff just fell flat in that regard. It told you what the monster was, but not its place in the larger world. Now, the 3e MM wasn’t much better, often having shorter entries. Both failed compared to the 2e
Monsterous Manual.
I think some monsters have challenging powers - some MM3 ones especially (eg Chained Cambion, Pact Hag). But some of these abilities are also very worthwhile - the Chained Cambion played incredibly well when I used it, and it power (of psychically chaining two PCs together, therefore causing them to vicariously experience it's own suffering) was awesome. But these are precisely the sorts of abilities that you lose if you confine yourself to PHB abilities.
Again, monster abilities that need to be unique should be unique. Of course. But monster abilities that are almost identical to PC powers should just be PC powers.
Whereas the stock-standard PHB stuff (force missiles, fireballs, hold person etc) should be trivially replicable in a stat block, as @
Obryn and @
Incenjucar have indicated, without needing cross referencing at all.
Again, I think that eats up too much space and is needless.
Now, as I said, I admit that if the power is something the monster is likely to use each and every combat, it’s helpful to call it out and give it a quick write-up. If it’s something it *might* use in a very situational occasion or is a flavourful spell that it uses outside of combat, that can be something just listed by name. Which is a compromise between the design of 1-3e and 4e.
Which is really the best of both worlds. It gives skilled DMs a greater number of choices but without overwhelming as most are not called out and you can run a monster right from the statblock. It moves the extra prep from mandatory to optional.
Engagement is neither of those things, but who is engaged by what varies by individual and context. But certain things have a long history of being engaging for a large portion of the species (and, indeed, animals too). Surprises and mysteries are universally appealing, albeit in different doses and contents for different people.
I was literally writing that post in bed minutes from sleep. My iPad has ruined me.
My point was that many things can engage people, many things can be fun. Kids can be endlessly entertained by a cardboard box. Especially as inevitably comes up, there is not badwrongfun. (Drink!)
So… as fun and engagement are so relative, so personal, and so broad and never wrong, they’re all but useless as measuring sticks when defining (and designing) a game. The end product should be fun and engaging yes, but you can’t just say “this game is fun” and expect people to know what the game is. That’s like saying “this car drives” or “this food has flavour”. It’s everything else that defining, the why it’s fun and what makes it unique from all the other “fun” activities and quadrillion games and hobbies.
The fluff and crunch were never very firmly attached, and "I have a Fireball spell" is not significantly different from "I have a spell that creates a ball of fire" except for nostalgia, which irritates as many as it endears. Having most of the old tricks of the old days is fine, and having spells that create those effects is fine, but making spells the source of effects rather than universal descriptions which are produced by those spells just makes things clumsy and unwieldy.
It’s not “nostalgia” it’s “familiarity”. You’re not nostalgic when you recognise the spell the evil wizard throws at you, you’re familiar with that spell.
After a new player has seen a couple fireballs they don’t need it described again, but will also recognise it by the description. The player know that you need to make a Dex save, how much damage it will cause, and the area it will affects.
Realistically, the player never really need to hear what’s written down in the monster’s stablock. The DM is unlikely to say “the elf wizard uses his
burning orb of doom power”. If a DM is describing something that looks and acts like a
fireball the players will just assume it is a
fireball. Even if the DM is no describing things and is just doing the mechanics, if the power does d6s of fire damage in an area it’s thought of as a
fireball and mentally envisioned as a
fireball.
So if the name does not matter in play… KISS and just call it
fireball.
I don't think that every magic-using monster needs to be a spellcaster. A demon summoning up a ball of fire shouldn't be casting Fireball unless they are ALSO a wizard or whatever. A demon summoning a ball of fire should be summoning a ball of fire in a way that a demon would. It's like if every punch to the face has to be using a monk ability. And, frankly, the lore of the game doesn't explain it all. People are used to it, but it doesn't make any freaking sense with the actual story material in the game. I can't speak much on earlier versions of the games, but 2E and 3E did not have an explanation for why monsters were born with powers that happened to exactly replicate spells. Now if D&D wizards were said to be running around ripping off natural magic instead of inventing their own, that would be one thing, but that's not part of the core lore.
Depends on the monster. Many have a long history of casting spells so it’s just expected. A pit fiend should probably be lobbing balls of fire.
Others… if there’s nothing else going for them, then maybe they could spit fire or summon flame or do crazy things. But if they already have 2-3 cool abilities, defining abilities that may or may not be attacks, it doesn’t hurt to slip in a few spells.
You're better than hyperbole. I'm 100% for the idea of different damage types having their own explicit effects, but even without those "Fire" still means something to the trolls. Moreover, damage spells usually have a rider effect or other special trait that makes them unique beyond the damage. There's nothing special about Fireball that makes it more interesting than a 2d6 30' sphere or a 10d8 10' sphere. Throwing bat poop just isn't that interesting.
It’s only half hyperbole.
Reading through the RPG
Shadows of Esteren right now and spells are a list of effect names (humidity, ice, spring, gust, sculpt earth) and the difficulty to cast is based on area, duration, number of targets, and damage. So there are really five different spell mechanics. Variables really.
This is not the first game I’ve seen like this; many other game systems do things very similar.
If there are too many AoE fire spells, if every single fire creature that makes an area fire attack uses a different variant, then
fireball means as much as if it were a 3
rd Ciricle spell doing 3D10 damage.
Edit: disregard, wrong edition.
Or... is it?
@
Jester _Canuck which edition were you talking about when you said:
"Monsters should of course have unique abilities, so long as they're actually unique. The bugbear has an ability that could very well just be Sneak Attack, and the death knight has a renamed fireball."
Is this about 4e or Next?
I was talking about Next. Although, I believe death knights could just cast
fireball in earlier editions as well (as well as a few dozen other spells). And checking now, the bugbear has lost the ability I was referring to along the way. Oops. Sorry.
Death knights are actually a good example of my point. They have “Eldritch Fire”, which has the area of
fireball and comparable damage to
fireball cast as a 7
th-level spell. It has half the range, but that doesn’t make it a new spell.
But what does
eldritch fire look like? What does it do? Is it a burst of fire or a wave of necrotic energy that bursts into flames? Do creatures just catch ablaze? Is it an exploding ball or a radiating pool of flame or expanding ring of fire?
We have no idea because there is just the mechanical game effect as it pertains to the PCs. Which is fine because adding a descriptive line is needless and wastes space. But this means NAMES are super, super important to monsters. Monster powers need to be descriptive and evocative but also explanatory. Because they’re all the flavour you are going to get. Something like
breath weapon might work but
panther strike or
cunning blow don’t. Which could be problematic in 4e and I’d rather not see it repeated.
Another trope is things man was not meant to know. Which is why I loved the 4e ritual/ordinary breakdown. You learned the rituals.
I love “that which man was not meant to know”. But you can’t just throw it around all the time. You can’t break it out to explain every spellcaster other than you. That’s something you reserve for the really Cthuloid s**t.
If the party is fighting a 10,000 year-old larval mage from antediluvian times then, yeah, the mad scribblings in his spellbook should probably not be read. But if it’s just some punk elf conjurer… his spells should be garden variety.
So tell me. How do we measure the fireball? By radius, or by volume? Will it melt lead things the PCs are carrying, and if so how? We all know what a burst of fire looks like - but fireball itself has been paved over with layers of D&D cruft that means that it's actively harder to work out what a fireball is than what a ball of fire is.
Given that Monster Vault fires the 2e Monstrous Manual for "Best plot hook official D&D monster manual ever" and Nentir Vale then slams the door behind the 2e MM, I'd agree. Then I'd point out that 4e has all this in spades.
I have a fondness for
Monster Vault. But its fluff was done in reaction to the 4e books.
I’m less fond about the organization of the MV fluff. While good, it’s not consistent. You have to read the entire entry to find what you’re looking for, as the headings are descriptive not informative. A little more structure would have been nice.
It's not about phenomenal cosmic power off camera. It's about in just about any magic system other than D&D magic being a complex business that takes more than six seconds. A succubus doesn't snap their fingers and cast Charm Person on their target. They seduce them (and have the skills and powers to back this up). What they aren't is Generic Enchantment Magic User #28 using only spells wizards can cast. .
Which is fine if they’re using a special racial ability. If they’re casting a spell then it should act like a spell.
I actually find the 2e lore really frustrating and pointless compared to the 4e lore. It comes with such an absurdly strong implied setting that there are few campaigns I can use it in at all. Unlike the 4e monster lore, which is dedicated to plot hooks and what the monsters motivations are.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I never got much world lore from the 2e, aside from monsters copied from campaign specific accessories. While 4e monsters never gave me many plot hooks and motivations, mostly just backstory and how the monster fit into the new cosmology.
The tagline on my blog is "D&D rules, Call of Cthulhu play paradigm." I consider most of my setting endeavors to be a hybrid between typical sword & sorcery and Lovecraftian horror (and sometimes other things too. Like noir, or Westerns.) That right there that I quoted is right up my alley.
I enjoy DMing 4e most, but I have noticed the same thing about monsters being divorced from noncombat abilities. At least compared to 2e which, albeit individual monsters were hit or miss, I feel had much greater lore. The ultimate question for me is: How usable is this?
