WotC Blogs II

[Glyfair]

The last thread was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I decided to start afresh this week. These will just be 4E hints and tidbits from WotC's blogs. There are lots of other good things in there, so I recommend you go there to read the whole blogs.

Matthew Sernett had a lot to say about monsters:

We are not going back to a 1st or 2nd edition means of creating monsters. Those editions had no standards for monster design. Everyone just eyeballed it and hoped it was fair and fun (often it wasn't).

Third edition gives the illusion of fairness by giving you formulas to rely on, but you can use all the formulas perfectly and easily end up with an unfair or unfun monster. Advancing monsters by hit dice is a great example. Depending on its type and ability scores, the CR raise you give it according to the formulas might work out okay, but just as often the monster ends up too tough for its CR or too weak.

CR is often just a shot in the dark. We usually get it right, but I'm betting you can think of some critters that are way out of their weight class.

For each level of play we're devising a range of numbers for monsters that provide fairness and fun. Those numbers are based on what the PCs bring to the fight in terms of their potency and defenses, and upon the general role in the fight a monster is likely to be in.

Thus, the ogre, who is most likely to be the tough brute in melee, uses the “brute” range of numbers for its level. The numbers in that range and their distribution are designed to be fair and fun in a fight while at the same time allowing the artillery monster (like maybe a gnoll archer) of the same level to feel different but still be fair and fun. Of course, an ogre can chuck spears and that gnoll archer can charge up and hit you, but the numbers are devised in a fashion to produce great results when the monsters are used how people normally would use them. The ogre that’s in your face has more hit points than the gnoll archer that is using the ogre as a shield.

Changing a monster will be easier and more fair that ever. Rather than jumping through hoops and doing a lot of math with uncertain results, you can just look at the numbers for where you want to be and put the monster there. You might get there by adding a class, by "advancing" a monster, by adding a template, or some combination. The key is that you'll know where you need to get to in order to make the monster work right.

David Noonan has a bunch of stuff dealing with his playest:

For this playtest adventure, there's no radically new state of the art in adventure design--at least, not that I've thought of yet. But it's just a lot easier to do the stuff that we usually identify as the hallmarks of artful adventure design: a wide variety of encounters, a dynamic environment, interesting bad guys. Oh, and cool loot. Can't forget that.

And you can bet that I'm going to throw some noncombat challenges in there. I'm still fired up about last week's social challenges--and the framework for noncombat encounters that makes 'em possible.

Wanna help? Give me some structural elements appropriate for a low- to mid-level adventure. Tell me your favorite monsters, sure, but realize that I'm fairly constrained there by some specific demands of the playtest. But if you really want "chasms," "rivers of lava," "peristaltic tube-hallways"--that's stuff I can get in play for playtest pretty quickly. Tell me about your favorite traps. Give me a tense negotiation situation.

And (here's a big one I've been thinking about a lot) give me a cool hazard/obstacle that tests both the characters and the players--something you've got to think your way through. Especially if it's something we can put under time pressure or dudes-are-shooting-at-us pressure, that's solid gold. I want the player thinking to be organic--none of this "you must solve this sudoku to get through the door" stuff.

Post your ideas here. I realize that what I'm asking for is pretty vague, but I'll browse that thread and use it to dress up the adventure. So have fun.

 

[blargney the second]

For those who are feeling lazy, here's the actual thread to help Dave (rather than wading through the entire forum).
-blarg

 

[Glyfair]

For those who are feeling lazy, here's the actual thread to help Dave (rather than wading through the entire forum).
-blarg

Sorry, just plugged in Dave's link without following it.

BTW, here is something Mike Mearls posted about PC races vs. monsters in the "Monster blog."

Do I wave my hands and say "Suddenly, the Ogre Warrior in front of you can't take a punch as well, and also has for some reason forgotten how to use Awesome Blow, and maybe has gained a barbarian's Rage! Poof!"

Nope. In all the situations you cite, the ogre would be an ogre.

The only case where the ogre might not get a theoretical Awesome Blow ability is if, for some reason, it caused problems in the hand of a PC. However, that is much more likely to be the case for beholders, mind flayers, and other critters with really weird, powerful abilities that would be big problems if used every round throughout an adventure.

I think this discussion points out the flaw in 3e's handling of monsters as PCs. LA works fine for *some* monsters, particularly those like giants, ogres, and minotaurs, who don't have any outlandish abilities. It breaks down for really magical, weird critters.

I think the ogre is a bad example, because he's on the very simple scale for monsters. He's basically a big, dumb fighter, and I imagine that a PC write up for him would be close to, if not precisely, just taking his stat block and playing as a level X character.

However, take the troglodyte as a counter example. Let's say I create a level 1 troglodyte fighter, the equivalent of a level 6 character. He probably has around 30 hit points, not great for a fighter at that level, but not too awful. His attack bonus is 4 points behind the equivalent human fighter. That's not so good, a 20% lower chance to hit on average.

In return, the trog has an AC of about 30 or so if he carries a shield. That's before any buffs. Thanks to the wonders of a +6 natural AC bonus, he is 30% less likely to be hit than the equivalent human fighter.

So, the trog gains +6 AC for -4 on attacks and 12 to 15 hit points.

Is that an even balance? Who knows. It might be. It probably isn't. But the key is, there's no design here. It's just numbers chosen to make a good CR 1 monster clumsily converted into a character.

In the future, we'd rather *design* this stuff to do what it does, so that when you play a trog you have a fun, interesting, reasonably balanced character.

The monster trog works fine as an NPC. He can join the party, follow you as an ally, gain character levels if the DM wants a trog wizard or fighter, and so on. The key is that, to form a fun play experience over session after session, that trog doesn't work. You need a different tool.

Some monsters are much closer to being playable. Others are farther away. We'd rather create mechanics to deal with each situation, rather than try to manufacture a one size fits all solution when it's plain that monsters need wildly different changes from case to case to become usable PCs.

 

[Reaper Steve]

I'm having a hard time following Mike here...is he talking about 3.5 Ogres and Trogs, or 4E Ogres and Trogs?

 

[Glyfair]

I'm having a hard time following Mike here...is he talking about 3.5 Ogres and Trogs, or 4E Ogres and Trogs?

I think he's talking about why races and monsters have different entires, using 3.5 as an example (since we don't have 4E stats for monsters),

 

[blargney the second]

Sorry, just plugged in Dave's link without following it.

No need to apologize! I surf in parallel with huge numbers of tabs, and Dave's link to the forum befuddled me when I got around to it.
-blarg

 

[Reaper Steve]

I think he's talking about why races and monsters have different entires, using 3.5 as an example (since we don't have 4E stats for monsters),

I hope so...that seemed much more old-way than new-way.

It's been a while since I looked at Trogs...Currently, a Trog Ftr 1 would be the equiv of a Ftr 6 and have AC 30? Yikes!

 

[Grog]

In the future, we'd rather *design* this stuff to do what it does, so that when you play a trog you have a fun, interesting, reasonably balanced character.

This sounds to me like a hint that monsters as characters might be included in the PH2 (or MM2 or DMG2).

 

[Jer]

Thus, the ogre, who is most likely to be the tough brute in melee, uses the “brute” range of numbers for its level. The numbers in that range and their distribution are designed to be fair and fun in a fight while at the same time allowing the artillery monster (like maybe a gnoll archer) of the same level to feel different but still be fair and fun. Of course, an ogre can chuck spears and that gnoll archer can charge up and hit you, but the numbers are devised in a fashion to produce great results when the monsters are used how people normally would use them. The ogre that’s in your face has more hit points than the gnoll archer that is using the ogre as a shield.

This is confirmation of what I've been hoping the new monster design paradigm would look like. In the more recent podcasts, Mike Mearls has been "complaining" about monster progressions by "type" - like how the "vermin" type has a horrible BAB, so to get a Giant Scorpion of sufficient "scariness" to attack the party, you end up giving it huge saving throws as well. Or how he's used the "monstrous humanoid" progression to build new Drow villains for his game.

This tells me that they're not getting rid of all of the formulaic aspects of monster design, but instead changing it from "advance by type" to "advance by role" - you might have a "brute" role, an "artillery" role, a "mastermind" role, etc. each with a progression for BAB, saves, and feats that are pertinent for their particular combat role. I like this idea - it's similar to the "creature career" idea that is used in Warhammer FRPG, and it focuses stat creation around something "real" instead of the mostly artificial constraint of "monster type".

 

[coyote6]

I also think that what they're saying is that PC race versions of a monster won't necessarily have the exact same abilities as the monster version. Thus, you can have githzerai and troglodyte PCs, without sticking them with nigh-crippling LAs, and without giving them ginormous amounts of Dex or natural armor.

(With the idea of races granting additional abilities as characters level, you can also have troglodytes grow into their ginormous natural armor bonuses over the course of 20 30 levels.)