D&D 4E WotC_Rodney: 4ed "take only what you want" monster design good

[Corinth]

Wonderful, another MMORPG element appropriated for tabletop use. MMO bosses work this way, and no one that deals with them likes this adaptation of that fraud Pollack's excuse for painting to RPG design. Soon there will be talk of "tuning", combined with talk of buffing and nerfing, when talking about encounters in this or that module and it will be answered with stuff as useless as saying "Just add/subtract/divide by the cosign of (X)".

Not impressed. Old and busted design is old and busted.

 

[Einan]

But if I told you, "Monsters of level X have a baseline of Y hit points," then also told you that monsters filling a certain role have Z% more/less hit points, and gave you guidelines for how to make it tougher without completely breaking the encounter...doesn't that solve that problem as well as a formula? I mean, if the issue is judging appropriate power levels, and I tell you what the appropriate power levels are, doesn't that resolve the issue?

That IS a formula. It's just a different, less psuedo-mathematical formula. While I can see where people would like this, it seems to me that it leaves a lot of handwaving to the DM. And if you're the sort of DM who digs that hand-waving, you're already doing it without a rule to tell you to do so.

EInan

 

[Einan]

Not impressed. Old and busted design is old and busted.

But THIS is an entirely new edition of busted that's got 120% more cool than the last busted system! And since this busted mechanic wasn't actually used in this genre, it's entirely new to you!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Sounds good to me. Complex monster design is a huge waste of time. Just give the monsters the characteristics you want and be done with it.

 

[SteveC]

I'm not really surprised by this discussion, but at the same time I have to wonder what the thought process behind a lot of it is. The thing is, 3X monsters didn't use the same system as player characters for a lot of things, and where they intersected there were a lot of problems.

In my last game session I ran the group against a group of gray render zombies. These creatures are CR6, the same as a level six fighter, and yet have 20 Hit Dice. Those hit dice are there because they're meant to be absolute brutes of monsters, but they also give them saves of: Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +12. My group laughed because the render's reflex saves were the same of of the characters' pseudo dragon familiar. Yep that makes sense to me. On top of that, the render should have seven feats, but by virtue of being a zombie he loses all of them, and gets ... wait for it ... toughness. One toughness feat.

So that's the system as it exists now. The idea where you can have creatures with hit points by role and level, combined with racial talents can work just as well, and be just as "real" as a fully developed player character.

Why can't your player character have Awesome Blow now? Because he's not big enough! Why can't he have Powerful Charge (barring a splat book, mind you)? Because he's not a minotaur. That second one is a good example of what I expect to see in 4E over time: racial talents and abilities will gradually become talents and feats that characters can learn.

So I guess I'm at a loss to see what's so great about the current system: if you move any significant distance from the baseline, you begin to see how many of the underlying assumptions behind it don't work. Characters aren't the equivalent to monsters now, and they won't be in the next edition either. What you'll have is greater transparency behind their abilities so that John Cooper can get some well-deserved rest.

Just my $.02 ...

--Steve

 

[small pumpkin man]

That IS a formula. It's just a different, less psuedo-mathematical formula. While I can see where people would like this, it seems to me that it leaves a lot of handwaving to the DM. And if you're the sort of DM who digs that hand-waving, you're already doing it without a rule to tell you to do so.

EInan

The problem was the hitdice formula was based off the PC version (yet the amount of hitdice wasn't tied to anything) and what the hitdice gave you was based of some thematic version of what that type of creature should be, as opposed to what you wanted the monster to do.

You could make a system where one hitdice = one monster level, and what you got from that hit dice was based off the monster's role, not it's race, or whether it's an aberration or anything, especially in 4e where it seems that one monster is supposed to be a challenge for one character, as opposed to the the entire party, and that would be a fine system.

The point is while that wouldn't be bad, and people would enjoy it, there's no real reason to, those rules and restrictions are there to create a structure and limitations on players making their characters, there's no reason to put those restrictions on the creating monsters, you choose how powerful relative to the party you want the monster to be, and what it's supposed to do, and the monster creation creation rules explain approximately what stats a monster like that has, and you give them those stats, anything more is pointless jumping through hoops.

 

[smetzger]

I don't know if i will be good or bad.

But I expect a big reason for a less codified approach is because WOTC had such a hard time making monsters the correct way by the rules.

 

[Wormwood]

But I expect a big reason for a less codified approach is because WOTC had such a hard time making monsters the correct way by the rules.

I don;t know about that, but I do know that I gave up trying about three years ago in favor of published scenarios or just plain "wingin' it".

A MUCH simpler, results-oriented system is the only thing that will make me want to run D&D again.

 

[pemerton]

The problem was the hitdice formula was based off the PC version

<snip>

You could make a system where one hitdice = one monster level

<snip>

The point is while that wouldn't be bad, and people would enjoy it, there's no real reason to, those rules and restrictions are there to create a structure and limitations on players making their characters, there's no reason to put those restrictions on the creating monsters.

QFT.

GM-controlled game elements are not PCs. Therefore they do not need to be built under the same strictures as PCs. They need to be built under strictures that make them work as GM-controlled game elements (which, in D&D, is first and foremost, though not solely, foes in combat).

The comparisons of the 4e system to 1st ed and 2nd ed are off-base - in earlier editions, monster not only didn't use the same build rules but frequently didn't use the same action resolution rules (eg there was no way of judging their WIS - thus an ad-hoc table for it appeared in the Psionics section of 1st ed DMG - or of judging their STR, both of which came up from time to time in action resolution). In 4e, from all that's been said, monsters will have all the info required to interface with the same action resolution rules as the PCs.

Comparisons that are sometimes made of 3E to RQ are also off-base - like 4e (as hypothesised above), RQ monsters use the same action resolution rules as PCs (skilll bonuses, stat mods etc) but different build rules (ie give them whatever numbers seem right for a dinosaur, a dragon, etc).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know if i will be good or bad.

But I expect a big reason for a less codified approach is because WOTC had such a hard time making monsters the correct way by the rules.

Well, our group used to say that the actual CR of a monster was its listed CR + Monster Manual Number. (Though I'd say the formula is closer to 1d6-4 + Monster Manual #).

But boy, have you ever looked at non-WotC monsters? How off they sometimes were?
- Okay, let's take the Gargoyle, slap on some HD and to compensate, reduce its CR by 1.
- Let's take a monster with n HD and give it a spell-like abilities whose caster level is equal to its HD, then give it a spell that's effect is 100 % dependend on the relation caster level to targets HD/level, and then give it's a CR 4 or more points below its HD. (But to be fair, that might be an actual usage of RAW)

The 1st example is just general incompetence (and unfortunately, it wasn't the only one that caught my eyes), the second one is an example where the 3E "transparency" and guidelines to create monsters just failed. The rules for applying templates are a very cool tool for creating monsters, but the whole system fails because the numbers don't "try" to meet reasonable benchmarks.