D&D 5E Why I love monsters in The Witcher RPG

[CubicsRube]

Counterpoint: A lot of what you like about the Witcher monster manual is highly setting-specific. Which is good for a game that comes with a specific setting. But D&D is supposed to be setting-agnostic in order to allow DMs to develop their own lore for the monsters. For example, you liked having the typical price for a bounty, but that assumes that monster bounty hunters exist in a setting, which in turn implies a lot about the economy and the attitudes of society in general. Even "monster lore" locks away a lot of options that DMs might want to homebrew.

For D&D purposes, it would make more sense to put most of this stuff into a setting book. I definitely wouldn't say no to having a section in each of the various setting books talking about common monster lore, crafting options, bounty lists, etc., but I'm actually glad it's NOT in the Monster Manual.

I think D&D sits on the fence with this one. D&D however DOES have a very specific setting, and I wish it embraced that.

Default options are good for me as you don't have to use the default.

And as mentioned many of the things such as typical combat tactics and how many appear (as well as morale! Much missed!) have already existed in earlier versions of D&D.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I was really impressed by how they made such disparate classes all viable. It seemed a tall order, but the game managed it pretty well while maintaining flavor.

Man at arms statted out correctly can be tougher than a witcher. But it's heavily skill based. So even a bard who excels at swordsmanship, they can beat an equally skilled witcher pretty close to 50/50

 

[jayoungr]

D&D however DOES have a very specific setting

I disagree. A lot of what is written assumes the Forgotten Realms, but the PHB and Monster Manual were clearly written with the goal of being fairly generic so that DMs could use any of the referenced earlier settings or build their own. And WotC has been walking that back even further since those books appeared. With the recent debates over alignment (for example), the trend is to move further away from FR-specific lore in the core books. All of WotC's surveys have shown that homebrewing is considerably more popular than running games in any given published setting.

Default options are good for me as you don't have to use the default.

I don't disagree with that for my own playstyle. But again, the current trend appears to be moving away from default options.

Like I said, though, I think the information you were wishing for would be great to have in setting books.