D&D 5th Edition XII: Peasant Militias Can Defeat Smartphones?

[lesser_minion]

This is the last full page, so should we start thinking about a new thread?

[Felhammer]

D&D 5th Edition XIII: The Mearlspocolypse!

[AuraTwilight]

D&D 5th Edition XIII: You can't have Combat AND Investigating, pffft~!

[Kurald Galain]

I'm saying that I don't see why having things like "push X" and "ongoing fire Y" as standardized monster abilities is perfectly fine but having things like "swallow whole" and "improved grab" as standardized monster ability requires too much system mastery of poor overworked DMs.

Precisely.

Aside from that, it's also a feature to standardize things while still spelling them out in the stat block. If several monsters have an identically-named ability, then it should also work in the same way, except with a higher to-hit bonus if needed. Instead, we get nonsense like five monsters having an "evil eye" ability that does something different every time. And, indeed, wizards having half a dozen "close burst fire" attacks that just act slightly differently.

Bounded accuracy is now key. Low level monsters will still be a relative threat to high level characters (when used in larger numbers).

It also means that any skill-related task can be succeeded at by a level-1 character, and any such task can be failed by a level-20 character. There's nothing so easy that you can ever master it to not requiring a roll, nor is there ever something so hard that you cannot do it without training. Except by DM fiat / Oberoni fallacy, of course.

This is the last full page, so should we start thinking about a new thread?

"An inherently unfinished product".

[theNater]

I'm being partly facetious. I'm saying that I don't see why having things like "push X" and "ongoing fire Y" as standardized monster abilities is perfectly fine but having things like "swallow whole" and "improved grab" as standardized monster ability requires too much system mastery of poor overworked DMs.

It's adding overhead. In your Fireball example, the DM needs to know what long range, radius 4 spread, instant, and reflex half mean and what a Fireball is. Having Fireball standardized doesn't save them anything, they need to know about saving for half whether they're dealing with a standardized effect or not.

Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Sor/Wiz 3; V, S, M
Range Long Area radius 4 spread Duration Instant
Saving Throw Reflex half
Each creature and unattended object in the area takes 1d6/CL fire damage (maximum 10d6). The explosion creates no pressure, and a ranged touch attack is required to launch the fireball through an opening less than a few inches wide.

...assuming you have standardized rules for what fire does, what Long range is, what spells allow SR, etc., which you should have anyway. Straightforward spells like this are easy to remember and easy to reference, and it's faster and cleaner to give a monster a "radius 6 fireball" or a "11d6 damage fireball" or the like than to rewrite everything or come up with some minor variation on the spell for no good reason.

How much alteration makes for a good reason to name a new spell? I think we can agree that if we end up writing "short range radius 6 no save 11d6 acid damage fireball" that we haven't actually gained anything by standardization. But no single change in there is worth building a whole new spell for. If we just build short and long range single and area target spells for each of the fire, cold, lightning, and acid damage types, that's 16 separate spells just to get our basic blasting underway. And remember, that's 16 things above and beyond the basics of what the mechanics mean, which are required knowledge whether the spells are standardized or not.

Aside from that, it's also a feature to standardize things while still spelling them out in the stat block.

I was under the impression that the point of standardization was to make stat blocks smaller. If the information is always present, I've got no beef with it being standardized.

This is the last full page, so should we start thinking about a new thread?

Ashdate made a statement that was getting some traction a while back:

Maybe logic will be added as an optional module in the finished product?

[SiuiS]

Precisely.

Aside from that, it's also a feature to standardize things while still spelling them out in the stat block. If several monsters have an identically-named ability, then it should also work in the same way, except with a higher to-hit bonus if needed. Instead, we get nonsense like five monsters having an "evil eye" ability that does something different every time. And, indeed, wizards having half a dozen "close burst fire" attacks that just act slightly differently.

Yes. While I understand the concept 3e used, I think there is, for once, a middle ground that makes everyone happy.

"An inherently unfinished product".

I like it. Snark aside, it's very apt: D&D is nothing without the human element, which completes it. Even if we all argue for different human elements to be the right ones.

[Raineh Daze]

"An inherently unfinished product".

I like it. I wonder why that is?

[BayardSPSR]

Here's one more vote for "an inherently unfinished product".

I like it. Snark aside, it's very apt: D&D is nothing without the human element, which completes it. Even if we all argue for different human elements to be the right ones.

True. And after all, if we all agreed, where would the fun be?

[Turalisj]

Another vote for vote for "an inherently unfinished product".

[Morty]

I still like the "logic will be added as an optional module in the finished product" idea from some pages ago.

[lesser_minion]

I'm kind of in favour of the "maybe logic will be added as an optional module" one myself.

[Kurald Galain]

I was under the impression that the point of standardization was to make stat blocks smaller. If the information is always present, I've got no beef with it being standardized.

The point of standardization is to make things easier to remember, which makes combat faster to run.

Take a look at Magic cards: they'll say things like "Flying (cannot be blocked by non-flying creatures)". This is spelled out, so it's useful for beginning players; but it's also standardized, which means that advanced players can stop reading after the word "flying".
Similarly, a D&D creature could read "Pack tactics (+1 to hit for each ally adjacent to the target)" and then use this for multiple creatures. What 4E is doing wrong is that they would give "pack tactics" a different effect on other creatures. One of the earlier playtests of 5E said that Turn Undead would have its effects spelled out in each undead creature and they could be different for each; that is completely missing the point of centralized design.

[Raineh Daze]

I think the logic title is way too long, myself. XD

[Felhammer]

Can we not have a truly negative title again? Let's do something happy for once.

[Raineh Daze]

Can we not have a truly negative title again? Let's do something happy for once.

Inherently unfinished isn't truly negative, it's a statement of fact. The playtest is inherently incomplete.

[Felhammer]

Inherently unfinished isn't truly negative, it's a statement of fact. The playtest is inherently incomplete.

I suppose, it just feels negative. I'd rather see something more positive or funny (like the current title).

[Kurald Galain]

Inherently unfinished isn't truly negative, it's a statement of fact. The playtest is inherently incomplete.

Yes. Also, it makes way more sense than the current title. I don't think random non-sequiturs are inherently funny, nor do they make good thread titles.

[Felhammer]

Yes. Also, it makes way more sense than the current title. I don't think random non-sequiturs are inherently funny, nor do they make good thread titles.

Why not just call it "Thread 13"?

[Seerow]

Way back around page 35 or so, someone suggested "Logic is an optional module?", I liked that.

[obryn]

I'm being partly facetious. I'm saying that I don't see why having things like "push X" and "ongoing fire Y" as standardized monster abilities is perfectly fine but having things like "swallow whole" and "improved grab" as standardized monster ability requires too much system mastery of poor overworked DMs. I'm not asking for every monster to have two dozen complex SLAs listed in their entry, but giving monsters more than 4-5 abilities and having most of them be shared abilities would be nice.

It simply is more overhead. Push X and Ongoing Fire X are the entirety of the rule; there's nothing you need to look up for either, once you know the basic vocabulary of the game. Improved Grab, OTOH, gets you into the morass of grappling along with the exceptions for where it's different from your normal grapple. Swallow Whole is likewise an entire separate subsystem ("muscular action" lol) that requires reference.

And as I've mentioned before, individual power/spell blocks are much more bloated than they need to be. The standard 3e fireball stat block looks pretty hefty, but really it's no more than:

Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Sor/Wiz 3; V, S, M
Range Long Area radius 4 spread Duration Instant
Saving Throw Reflex half
Each creature and unattended object in the area takes 1d6/CL fire damage (maximum 10d6). The explosion creates no pressure, and a ranged touch attack is required to launch the fireball through an opening less than a few inches wide.

...assuming you have standardized rules for what fire does, what Long range is, what spells allow SR, etc., which you should have anyway. Straightforward spells like this are easy to remember and easy to reference, and it's faster and cleaner to give a monster a "radius 6 fireball" or a "11d6 damage fireball" or the like than to rewrite everything or come up with some minor variation on the spell for no good reason.

...Or how about something even more concise that doesn't need to leverage a separate fireball spell. Say, "Area Burst 8 in 30, 11d6 damage, Save: Half, sets crap on fire"?

So you have 5 kinds of orc instead of 1. If you're fighting a lot of orcs, or if you fight orcs over the course of several campaigns, they still become very repetitive.

...as opposed to what, exactly, in pre-4e D&D?

3e monster "races" (humanoids and other low-LA critters) had the saving grace of open multiclassing: you didn't need a separate orc chieftain, orc shaman, orc berserker, orc scout, etc. entry because you could just add a level or two of fighter, druid, barbarian, rogue, etc. to the basic humanoid. Other monsters generally have a good handful of abilities (the carrion crawler is something of a "puzzle monster" that's there to drop on PCs, paralyze them, and kill them, but even it has scent+Track, paralyzing tentacles, and Combat Reflexes as options) or have one or two fairly complex or unique abilities (c.f. the chaos beast's 4-paragraph Corporeal Instability and Transmutation immunity). 3e monsters aren't nearly as cookie-cutter as you're making them out to be.

Statting up monsters as PCs is not a saving grace. It's a ridiculous amount of overhead to give your monster a few more hit points and Rage.

Because reskinning is easy in any game (it's touted as a strength of 4e mostly because you had to reskin at the start of the edition to cover lots of the monsters left out of MM1, I think, the same way it was a "feature" that you could reskin your warlord and cleric as the missing bard or druid) and the "easy modifications" are things a newbie DM can come up with (adding one of the same half-dozen keywords used by every other power isn't particularly innovative or difficult). "Precise, simple, standard game language" is one of the exact things I'm arguing for, so you'll find no argument from me except to say that 4e is simple and precise but not standardized enough.

Standardization is unnecessary when every single ability in the game is spelled out in clear, precise language. Standardization gives precisely zero benefit, apart from appealing to OCD-level simulation.

You're right that it's up to the DM to bring statblocks to life, which is why I advocate making those mechanics as unified, straightforward, and memorable as possible. 4e already statted up most character powers as collections of existing keywords with the occasional more unique power thrown in to stand out, then they made every monster a special snowflake when a DM has to learn more mechanics in a shorter time and handle more mechanics at once than a player does, which seems like a fairly backwards approach.

Everything is spelled out. My prep work for an encounter is checking out the monster stat blocks and seeing exactly what they say, without reference to anything outside the stat block.

Past about 4th or 5th level in 3e, my prep work was to read up on overlong spell descriptions, most of which I'd never turn out using, and have the SRD open to read the 3-paragraph spells in the middle of combat.

You can guess which one I think is superior.

-O

[Raineh Daze]

Standardization is unnecessary when every single ability in the game is spelled out in clear, precise language. Standardization gives precisely zero benefit, apart from appealing to OCD-level simulation.

Does this extend to disagreeing with the idea that every ability with the same name should have the same effect and function the same way?

[neonchameleon]

It was a lot more uphill work to bring monsters to life though. There are only so many things you can do with the same old damage+push/pull/slide enemy (for example) that is pretty much coming out the ears of most 4e monsters.

Bwuh? "There are only so many things you can do with damage + forced movement"? Possibly so. But it's a strict superset of the things you can do with just damage on its own

I'm being partly facetious. I'm saying that I don't see why having things like "push X" and "ongoing fire Y" as standardized monster abilities is perfectly fine but having things like "swallow whole" and "improved grab" as standardized monster ability requires too much system mastery of poor overworked DMs.

Apples to oranges comparison. Push and Ongoing are standard game effects not tied to any specific condition and there is nothing you need to look up. They say exactly what they do - and there will be PCs who can do that. You will be using forced movement and ongoing damage almost every fight. (I'd bet on one of the three types of forced movement multiple times per fight, and ongoing damage at least one fight in two). If you don't know the meanings of "Push" "Pull", "Slide" and "Ongoing damage" you arguably don't know the rules of 4e. Because these things come up routinely.

How many PCs have you ever seen with the Swallow Whole ability? I'm prepared to bet that the average table never sees PCs use Swallow Whole. How often do you use the Swallow Whole ability? I'd be surprised if it's once every four sessions.

So you are literally comparing something you might use once in every four sessions and almost invariably from the DM side of the screen to something used almost every fight. And you're claiming that the DM overhead on learning both is about equal. Right.

As for Improved Grab, how often do you wade into the multi-step mess that is the grapple rules? But the thing about Improved Grab is that learning it is almost redundant. You just put under Standard Attacks: "If it hits a creature one size category smaller, this monster may immediately roll to start a grapple." Only a handful of words - but nothing to learn.

And as I've mentioned before, individual power/spell blocks are much more bloated than they need to be. The standard 3e fireball stat block looks pretty hefty, but really it's no more than:

Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Sor/Wiz 3; V, S, M
Range Long Area radius 4 spread Duration Instant
Saving Throw Reflex half
Each creature and unattended object in the area takes 1d6/CL fire damage (maximum 10d6). The explosion creates no pressure, and a ranged touch attack is required to launch the fireball through an opening less than a few inches wide.

...assuming you have standardized rules for what fire does, what Long range is, what spells allow SR, etc., which you should have anyway.

Actually 3e Fireball is more than that - but that would be an objective improvement on the fireball that can melt lead.

Straightforward spells like this are easy to remember and easy to reference, and it's faster and cleaner to give a monster a "radius 6 fireball" or a "11d6 damage fireball" or the like than to rewrite everything or come up with some minor variation on the spell for no good reason.

Not everyone finds it easy to remember numbers like that. And I want to know which spells you would put in such a core of the game.

So you have 5 kinds of orc instead of 1. If you're fighting a lot of orcs, or if you fight orcs over the course of several campaigns, they still become very repetitive.

Indeed. There are ten different pairs of orcs and a further ten different sets of three orcs. Add in the single type of orc and you have twenty five distinct combinations there. They will eventually become very repetative but it takes twenty five times as long to get as used to the combinations as it would the single orcs.

3e monster "races" (humanoids and other low-LA critters) had the saving grace of open multiclassing:

That wasn't a grace. It was a curse. It meant that monsters took as long to build as PCs. It meant that monsters were very cookie-cutter because you forced them into only a limited set of archetypes. It meant that an orc beserker was largely indistinguishable from a human one, breaking down the diversity. And above all it cramped DMs rather than just allowing them to give whatever they thought the monster should do as abilities to that monster.

Because reskinning is easy in any game (it's touted as a strength of 4e mostly because you had to reskin at the start of the edition to cover lots of the monsters left out of MM1

Nope. It's touted as a feature of 4e because 4e uses a consistent level of zoom. You can not reskin Detect Thoughts from a wizard or bard as anything other than a spell because it would take minor house rules such as getting rid of the pun-focus ("a penny for your thoughts") and changing the interaction between Detect Thoughts and Dispel Magic. And the pervasiveness of the Gygaxo-Vancian magic system.

On the other hand 4e zooms to a consistent level and concentrates on the outcomes not the inputs. It doesn't have such fiddly nonsense embedded into the rules and just tells you what happens, allowing you to pick how. There isn't the anti-reskinning "This is a Spell. This is a Spell Like Ability. This is a Supernatural Ability. This is an Extraordinary Ability. This is an Ordinary Ability." In 4e there are just abilities so you can say how you want them to take effect.

You're right that it's up to the DM to bring statblocks to life, which is why I advocate making those mechanics as unified, straightforward, and memorable as possible. 4e already statted up most character powers as collections of existing keywords with the occasional more unique power thrown in to stand out, then they made every monster a special snowflake when a DM has to learn more mechanics in a shorter time and handle more mechanics at once than a player does, which seems like a fairly backwards approach.

But you don't have to learn the monster mechanics. You just have to read them. And unlike any previous edition the mechanics are right there in front of you.

[obryn]

Does this extend to disagreeing with the idea that every ability with the same name should have the same effect and function the same way?

I don't think it's at all necessary, and I see no beneift to it.

I don't find it offensive or whatever, except insofar as it constrains the DM's flexibility to a specific pre-set list of "stuff monsters can do." Like, if I want a monster to hurl a ball of fire, there's no good reason every single monster hurling balls of fire should be throwing 20' diameter ones, 1d6/level up to 10, etc. Putting the "ball of fire" into simple terms dictating range, area, damage, type of attack/save, etc. and putting those right in stat blocks is hardly onerous.

There's only so many ways to say "fireball," you see. If you decide that the word "fireball" must correspond with these specific rules tokens on a simulation level, that's worse than useless, IMO.

-O

[Ashdate]

I want to voice my agreement for agreement for pretty much everything Obryn and neonchameleon said. If there's anything that should be taken out of 4e design (and I think there are plenty of things), monster design is #1 with a bullet.

I can't think of anything being more objectionably worse than being required to look up what a spell/ability does in another book in order to properly run a monster. If you can't describe what an effect does in a monster's stat block (save for very common terminology. "Push 2" is common terminology; "magic missile" is not), then it's too complicated.

If every fireball acting like every other fireball is that critical to one's enjoyment of the system - and I'm not convinced it is - then by all means, give monsters abilities called fireball that have the range, damage, and notable effects spells out in the monster's stat block pre-calculated. But don't make me look it up somewhere else.

[Grod_The_Giant]

There are valid points on both sides. On the one hand, I agree that it's incredibly obnoxious to have to look up the details of spell-like abilities every time. On the other, it's also silly to have five different Evil Eye abilities and a thousand different "damage Y and push X" abilities.

But the two ideas are not exclusive. You can have a monster with standard Swallow Whole and Improved Grab abilities. Present a 4e style snippet statblock for experienced DMs, and include the full text of relevant abilities below.

[Flickerdart]

I don't see the problem with having different names for different abilities. If you want your Improved Grab to grab things of a larger size than normal, call it Superior Improved Grab or Advanced Improved Grab or something.

[The New Bruceski]

Super Bonus Ultra Better Advanced Improved Grab.

[Flickerdart]

Super Bonus Ultra Better Advanced Improved Grab.

Take a look at the names for display resolutions, which feature gems like Wide Quad Extended Graphics Array Plus.

[lesser_minion]

Take a look at the names for display resolutions, which feature gems like Wide Quad Extended Graphics Array Plus.

Is that really the sort of thing we want to be drawing inspiration from for our ability names? Right down to "video graphics adapter" actually being better than "enhanced graphics adapter"?

[Kurald Galain]

Is that really the sort of thing we want to be drawing inspiration from for our ability names? Right down to "video graphics adapter" actually being better than "enhanced graphics adapter"?

Oh, the last edition of the game started out with feat names like "Orange Lizard Expert" (basically adlibs of <color> <creature> <synonym of 'master'>), until the fandom revolted against that...