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<blockquote data-quote="Xyl" data-source="post: 4019166" data-attributes="member: 55828">I agree that those are good things, but I don't think giving the monsters specific out-of-combat abilities is the way to solve either.Your a) doesn't require that the out-of-combat abilities have any sort of rules support. All it requires is a lot of information on the monster's ecology and society, and some suggestions about what abilities it might have. Even if someone gave you abilities with specific rules for how they worked, you'd usually find yourself either changing them to fit your campaign or looking for a different monster with abilities that work the way you really want. So suggestions to inspire the DM are better than hard rules on what the monster can and can't do. I definitely think there's room for third party books about monster ecology and society, but that's not what the OP is suggesting.Your b) really has nothing to do with out of combat abilities. It has to do with adventure pacing. You have the same problem whether the party has to wade through a bunch of traps created by the monster, or a bunch of minions, or a bunch of totally unrelated monsters. What's needed here is general guidelines for what sort of encounter sequences are fair, not specific information on monsters. It's a very good bet that those guidelines will be in the DMG.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Xyl, post: 4019166, member: 55828"] I agree that those are good things, but I don't think giving the monsters specific out-of-combat abilities is the way to solve either. Your a) doesn't require that the out-of-combat abilities have any sort of rules support. All it requires is a lot of information on the monster's ecology and society, and some suggestions about what abilities it might have. Even if someone gave you abilities with specific rules for how they worked, you'd usually find yourself either changing them to fit your campaign or looking for a different monster with abilities that work the way you really want. So suggestions to inspire the DM are better than hard rules on what the monster can and can't do. I definitely think there's room for third party books about monster ecology and society, but that's not what the OP is suggesting. Your b) really has nothing to do with out of combat abilities. It has to do with adventure pacing. You have the same problem whether the party has to wade through a bunch of traps created by the monster, or a bunch of minions, or a bunch of totally unrelated monsters. What's needed here is general guidelines for what sort of encounter sequences are fair, not specific information on monsters. It's a very good bet that those guidelines will be in the DMG. [/QUOTE]

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