worlds and monsters is in my hands

[Kaodi]

The interesting thing to do might have been to eliminate chromatic dragons altogether and go with more metallic dragons...

Black --> Iron Dragon
Blue --> Cobalt Dragon
Red --> Cadmium Dragon

 

[A'koss]

- The Elemental Chaos I find to be the most interesting change to the core cosmology. Elemental Evil written into the core books fills me with giddy glee.

- The City of Brass gets mentioned... awesome.

- Creating a wider range of elemental mosnters... even more awesomer.

- Demon Lords as corrupt Primordials... I need to see more on this before saying one way or the other.

- Including "at least one" Demon Lord in the MM, okay. But once again I pray that they are created powerful enough to be able to believably control their realms. That means they have to be head and shoulders more powerful than any generic monster. The one thing that always gnawed at me was that WotC published loads of Fiend Lords who weren't even as powerful as Elder Dragons.

- Demons with immunities of their choice? Odd... I'd like to know more to see where they're going with this.

- Mezzo/Nyca-demons or daemons? Are Daemons getting folded into Demons now? What about the Arcanadaemon (the most interesting of the lot)?

- Astral Dominions sound cool, a nice Epic Level playground.

- The Gods and the Good & Evil Angels we knew about - it'll be interesting to see what Angels they come up with.

 

[Tuerny]

I must admit I am sad to see the yugoloths go. But not so much that I won't adopt 4e.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Oh no!

A game that encourages imagination?! What ever will we do!

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I can't help but feel a little...puzzled, by the attitude that GMs have all these rigid limitations to what they can do. In the olden days, and in every other RPG on the market, a GM was supposed to come up with new stuff all the time. It was expected.

As for the other side of the debate- if a monster ability doesn't come up in combat, why even bother to stat it out at all? If you want a dragon to be able to, I dunno, create mountains or something, just say it can do that.

Well, yeah, that's why 4E rocks. It's moving things back in the direction of encouraging (or even requiring) DMs to improvise, and away from requiring everything to use the exact same mechanics.

Again: 3E had the rule zero, but the perception was that using that rule was a last resort. DMs were "supposed" to follow the mechanics, and if a 1 HD orc simply cannot have a +20 Craft check because his max rank is +4, then that's the way it's supposed to be. A DM (particularly, a Living Greyhawk DM or module writer) would be required to level up that orc or patch in all sorts of crazy feats if his adventure called for a skilled blacksmith orc.

No longer, it seems. I get the strong impression that 4E doesn't use PC the ruleset for generating NPC abilities, or even generally stat up anything but combat stats. And to be clear: I think that's a very good thing.

From a mechanical standpoint, I imagine that there are monster combat stats, and then there are general suggestions for monster role. For example, the white dragon is described as a brute. I imagine the white dragon will have hard combat stats, and the brute--a separately-referenced stat block--will have it's own combat ability or two, plus suggestions for noncombat abilities. Something like "Generally, brutes have Intimidate at [party level +4], physical skills such as climb and jump at [party level +1], and knowledge, bluff, and diplomacy social skills at [party level -6]." This way you can have, say, an Orc Brute, Orc Leader, and Orc Sneaker, and be able to quickly generate stats and abilities. One entry for Orc that's specific for that particular monster, and three entries for the monster's role (essentially templates).

But even that might be too much rules. However it turns out, I like the direction they're going.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Bronze and brass were fine for legacy value...but that's about it.

I don't care one whit about legacy, but I'm still gonna miss these guys.

Because their concepts (A coastal dragon that manipulates the weather and is close friends with mortal races, and a dragon of the rocky deserts who carves their home into living rock and likes to tell riddles from secluded caves) are really cool concepts.

Missing that from the game is sad, though I'm willing to give them a chance to make it up with the new dragons.

I've looked at the same information and come to the opposite conclusion.

I *prefer* monster stats to be limited solely to combat stats. That way, I can--within the rules--give my monsters whatever noncombat abilities I wish.

If I want a standard orc to also be a master craftsman with a +20 Blacksmith check, I can.

If I want a Dragon to be a dullard bully with a zero ranks in any social skills, I can.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times:

I want RULES. "Make Stuff Up" is a profoundly crappy rule.

And you're looking at it backwards. It's not that I need an orc with a +20 Blacksmith skill. It's that I look at an orc, see that it has +20 blacksmith, and infer a whole host of world details from that. These world details ground the creature, and give me dots to connect to other features of the world. If it has +20 blacksmith, that must mean that it has a forge somewhere, makes a lot of weapons maybe, that other nations will buy because they're very good, and if other nations buy them, this orc must be fairly friendly with regards to at least some other nations, but if he's still Evil, maybe these nations are Evil too, meaning he's the chief blacksmith of a vast goblinoid empire.

I took a skill bonus, spun it into an Empire. These are things that I can do on the fly easily in 3e. It's something 4e will make harder for me, it seems, and this means that it will take longer to prep a game for me, and thus 4e will fail miserably at it's goal to reduce the fiddly bits in D&D by not giving me what I need out of the game, forcing me to create it myself if I want it.

In 3E, neither of those would be possible. In order to "earn" the required skill points, that blacksmith would have to be advanced with HD and class levels, which would add unwanted HP, BAB, Saves, and other nonsense. The Dragon would have to have a humongous penalty to Int and Cha, or suffer some kind of curse, of something.

This completely untrue.

You're forgetting the most prominent rule in any edition of D&D:

The DM can do whatever the heck he wants.

This has always been ESPECIALLY true with monsters. No part of 3e or any other edition prevented you from having an orc or a dragon like you describe, and many, many parts actually encouraged it.

It seems like 4E is going toward giving monsters what they *need*--combat stats--and leaving the noncombat bits intentionally vague, for DMs to fill in as the adventure warrants.

I realize that 3E had rule zero, and certainly DMs can (and have) been improvising since the dawn of time. My point is that 4E seems like it's going to explicitly encourage such improvisation. The tone seems to be "This monster has these combat stats, but it fills whatever noncombat story role you as DM require."

You see, that's the problem. I don't have a specific story requirement I need filled. My games are flexible, on-the-fly kinds of things, rather than heavily pre-planned and pre-meditated. I don't know what I'm going to need a monster for. That's why I rely on the designers to tell me what the monster is supposed to be doing.

They're going to do an admirable job of telling me what the monster should be doing in combat, I'm sure, but I am going to need more than that. I'm going to need to know what the monster is doing in the world, in the woods, in this neighborhood, what it's doing interacting with the PC's, what it's dreams and goals are, what it's life is like before it meets the PC's, and what it will be doing when they are gone.

If they ignore that, then they've made me pre-plan my games more than I have had to before, increasing the prep time I need to run a game.

This is a problem.

 

[PeterWeller]

I'm going to need to know what the monster is doing in the world, in the woods, in this neighborhood, what it's doing interacting with the PC's, what it's dreams and goals are, what it's life is like before it meets the PC's, and what it will be doing when they are gone.

Do you need rules for that? Isn't that what the background fluff and ecology information are for?

The way I look at it, the only thing I need a stat block for is if my players end up fighting that monster. This allows me to assign situationally appropriate out of combat abilities when they are needed and not create a tie between those abilities and combat abilities.

 

[Monkey Boy]

Since removing racial gods was the *first* thing I did in my initial 3e homebrew, that's another point in the '4e looks like my house rules' column.

Hold on a second - 3 of those gods are racial specific. Grumush, Correleon and Moradin. I'm coming to the thread late but I would guess the halflings will get their own god too (the Raven Queen?) I haven't read the book but I would be surprised if worshipping Grumush was a logical possibility for the human in the party.

Looks to me like they have kept quiet a few racial specific dieties which I don't mind.

 

[Sonny]

Hold on a second - 3 of those gods are racial specific. Grumush, Correleon and Moradin. I'm coming to the thread late but I would guess the halflings will get their own god too (the Raven Queen?) I haven't read the book but I would be surprised if worshipping Grumush was a logical possibility for the human in the party.

Looks to me like they have kept quiet a few racial specific dieties which I don't mind.

Those deities are no longer just for elves, dwarves and orcs. Heck, the elf write-up even mentions evil elves sometimes worshiping Gruumsh.

 

[Roman]

I want RULES. "Make Stuff Up" is a profoundly crappy rule.

I agree completely.

The DM can do whatever the heck he wants.

This has always been ESPECIALLY true with monsters. No part of 3e or any other edition prevented you from having an orc or a dragon like you describe, and many, many parts actually encouraged it.

Yes, the DM can do whatever he wants - that much is obvious and need not even be stated. I buy a D&D game, however, to give me rules, not to be forced to make them all up myself.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Inahbitants include: Primordials, Elementals, Efreet, Djinn, Demons, Slaads, Titans, Githzerai

The City of Brass is mentioned as a location of note

Good. I want more info on these Primordials, though.

Mezzoloths and Nycaloths are now Mezzodemons and Nycademons (of which the first is confirmed to be in the Monster Manual)

Closer to their original names and, hopefully, closer to their original concepts. Does anyone know if they'll have the correct number of limbs this time?

The pantheon mentioned is: Bahamut, Vecna, Avandra, Zehir, Ioun, Pelor, Tiamat, Gruumsh, Lolth, Corellon, Moradin, Kord, Bane, The Raven Queen, Asmodeus, Torog

Asmodeus, a deity? The devil, you say... :\

and Lolth should get back down in the Abyss where she belongs!

The gods are less connected with Race

That's a positive step.

Sam