MonsterEnvy
Legend
I would have liked to have them, but I don’t need them.
C'mon Micah, you know game design isn't a formula you plug numbers in and get results. 10 years of Unearthed Arcana should tell you the whole process is art more than science and FAR more complicated than 20 pages in the DMG can teach. One need only look at how much chaff exists amongst the wheat of fan designed stuff on the DMs Guild to see that.You know who's supposed to have some knowledge of game design? The game designers at WotC. You'd think they have the know-how you put together some rules in the books for their game, especially after 10 years of iteration.
That's no excuse to give up on providing anything alltogether.C'mon Micah, you know game design isn't a formula you plug numbers in and get results. 10 years of Unearthed Arcana should tell you the whole process is art more than science and FAR more complicated than 20 pages in the DMG can teach. One need only look at how much chaff exists amongst the wheat of fan designed stuff on the DMs Guild to see that.
I think monster creation is as least as complicated and hard to balance as species or feat design. The DMG rules created a false sense of procedure to a process that was often complicated and prone to failure. It's the illusion of process that ended up basically being "write down numbers and compare to the MM"The argument that it's not a problem because there are other rules that weren't included isn't compelling in the slightest.
And too bad - planar stuff is a complete waste of time.Because five is math was not built on a very stable easily managed math model, It would take 15 to 20 pages including artwork in order to fit in a monster creation system of the quality that the D&D fan base would desire.
Grayhawk, Bastions, and Planar stuff ate that additional page count.
I'm not sure what you're reading or whose points you're contesting, but I never said that you can only reskin, nor that it's impossible to give strong monster creation guidance.With you pivoting away from what you said before I'll take as your point being indefensible even by you.
So I stay with my statement -- it has been demonstrated in similar games that it is clearly possible to give strong guidance in order to help GMs who want to create their own monsters have guidelines towards fitting in the math.
The idea that you can only reskin is false.
This. Right here. It keeps getting repeated and ignored.My suspicion is the dnd beyond numbers showed them that the number of people who both homebrewed and actually used the monster creation rules RAW was miniscule enough that for them it would have been a waste of effort and space to include them.
It is true that that outcome (them giving up) doesn't give the result you or I would like to see. I would love some working monster creation guidelines, and while we're at it, also spell, magic item, feat and class creation guidelines. I would love to see these, even though I'm not likely to use them much or ever. I'm simply curious about seeing under the hood.That's no excuse to give up on providing anything alltogether.