D&D 4E Why I hate the Hydra: —and other dumbed down 4E monsters—

[Lizard]

So, on top of all the other math I have to do for every NPC in an encounter, I have to do additional math everytime I deal with this guy and his different forms? No thanks.

No, you just write it up ahead of time, like you (normally) do for every monster.

Or have a much more boring werewolf, your choice.

Not a big deal for me to flip a stat block when something changes shape, and I think the payoff -- in that being a wolf *feels* different than being a human -- is worth it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, you just write it up ahead of time, like you (normally) do for every monster.

This reads like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

Prior to 3E, one didn't need to write up anything for a monster before a session other than their hit points and what kind of loot they had.

"Normally" sitting down to write up all the monsters ahead of time is a product of 3E being way too freaking fiddly for its own good. Things should have that level of granularity as an option, not as a default.

 

[WampusCat43]

Hydras always were big bags of hit points. If anything, they didn't have enough hit points in 3E, because a good party could often take them down in 2 rounds. So now at least they're tough enough to take a beating.

The hydra's big downfall is total lack of ranged attacks, making it meat against a group of ranged strikers. But that's hardly unique for melee brute types.

I don't care if I never see another hydra. My last campaign, the group nuked a good-sized one in two rounds, then animated its dead corpse and sat back and ate popcorn while it destroyed the lizardfolk village I had spent hours preparing for the big battle.

 

[The Little Raven]

No, you just write it up ahead of time, like you (normally) do for every monster.

Except that I'm doing triple the work for a single monster. Three time the effort for minimal payoff is bogus.

Or have a much more boring werewolf, your choice.

I don't find your solution to be interesting at all.

 

[fissionessence]

Well, I've been thinking and reading suggestions from this thread, and what I'll probably do for lycanthropes in my game (where they are also pretty important, especially weretigers) is to have their standard form be a normal human (maybe scaled higher in levels to represent an inhuman strength), then their hybrid and tiger forms can be the same (except for size & tall/long), but have different more unique attack powers depending on the form. For example, losing an attack option (club) is no incentive to switch to animal form . . . so that form will have more cool bestial options that wouldn't be possible in hybrid form. This could give the werecreature more incentive to actually switch between forms for tactical reasons, instead of the purely aesthetic change as presented in the Monster Manual.

~

 

[Kunimatyu]

To be fair, if designing stat blocks are as easy as people claim, creating a "human form" and a "werebeast form" ought to be trivial, without a complex template. Make it minor or standard action to shift, or say it happens on the full moon, or whatever, and presto. Should be as simple as "In human form, AC, Fort, Ref -2, Will +2, Str -4, -10 hit points" or some-such.

Unless it's a cool ability, I'm not interested in micromanaging statlines during combat - it's a waste of my time for no significant benefit.

I'm totally okay with lycanthropes having particular powers only usuable in one form or another. But, as far as I can tell from this thread, that's what they've got in 4e.

 

[Grazzt]

Unless it's a cool ability, I'm not interested in micromanaging statlines during combat - it's a waste of my time for no significant benefit.

I'm totally okay with lycanthropes having particular powers only usuable in one form or another. But, as far as I can tell from this thread, that's what they've got in 4e.

Yep. Agreed. Im ok with the single stat block. It worked fine in all editions prior to 3.x. Don't see why it won't now.

And yep- the stat block tells ya which powers/attacks can't be used in another form (like a werewolf can't bite in human form or whatever).

Pretty clean and simple compared to the 3.x triple stat block fun.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Assuming that the werewolf everyone is talking about is the actual final version, I like the sound of one statblock. I like the human being stronger, faster and healthier than your normal human. All sorts of werewolf movies have the newly infected human find new powers/abilities before everything goes up in flames.

So they don't infect anymore... I hated incubation periods and the like in previous editions. Keeping track of what happens when and to whom was just too much to keep track of. But if someone wants to add infection it seems trivially easy. Much easier than making more statblocks for a single critter.

 

[Grazzt]

Assuming that the werewolf everyone is talking about is the actual final version, I like the sound of one statblock. I like the human being stronger, faster and healthier than your normal human. All sorts of werewolf movies have the newly infected human find new powers/abilities before everything goes up in flames.

So they don't infect anymore... I hated incubation periods and the like in previous editions. Keeping track of what happens when and to whom was just too much to keep track of. But if someone wants to add infection it seems trivially easy. Much easier than making more statblocks for a single critter.

Definitely final version. I got my books a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

The nice thing about my group is that the players never assume that what they read in the manuals is true in my game... even though I rarely go to any real trouble to change things up statistically. It's just the feel of the game. Besides which... if I had a PC suffer a serious bite from a werewolf, I might very well feed their expectations with suggestions of lycanthropy.

I can do that. It's my game.