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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 8:47PM
#1
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All the monsters feel almost the same. They're just bags of HP with one (or sometimes two!) very minor abilities.
After all the progress 4e made in making monsters fun and unique, this is very disappointing.
Also, it pisses me off that when I run enemy casters, I have to look up the spells they cast in a separate location. I thought you figured out in 4e that everything should be contained in the stat block for convenience?
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 8:53PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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I have to agree 100%. 4E Monsters while sometimes a trial to run, were dynamic and fun. Currently all they have presented is such a step in the wrong direction. I am not pleased with them.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 8:57PM
#3
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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I disagree completely. I think there's some room for adding more to the monsters, but I really don't think there should be anything like 4e where each monster required 1-2 pages of powers that had to be looked up all the time. I think there needs to be variety (just like fighters need to be able to do more), but give a DM a break with the powers everywhere.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 8:58PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2011
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This is a first bare-bones playtest, so I think we will see a lot of changes in monster blocks as we go. I for one agree that spells need to be in the monster block.
As to them not having a lot of abilities, I'm a little torn. I am DMing a campaign for the first time, and on one hand I love pouring through the monster lists and seeing all the cool and unique stuff out there. On the other hand, in the combat I feel like I forget to do a lot of the cool, unique, situational stuff because I had enough on my plate to balance with just my player's cool, unique, situational stuff. So on initial read I said "Woot those aren't hard to use!" but then it became "Are they cool enough to hold my player's attention..."
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:00PM
#5
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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This is a first bare-bones playtest, so I think we will see a lot of changes in monster blocks as we go. I for one agree that spells need to be in the monster block.
As to them not having a lot of abilities, I'm a little torn. I am DMing a campaign for the first time, and on one hand I love pouring through the monster lists and seeing all the cool and unique stuff out there. On the other hand, in the combat I feel like I forget to do a lot of the cool, unique, situational stuff because I had enough on my plate to balance with just my player's cool, unique, situational stuff. So on initial read I said "Woot those aren't hard to use!" but then it became "Are they cool enough to hold my player's attention..."
Exactly. There should be uniqueness to the monsters, but I don't think powers upon powers was the best way to do it. It was just more than was needed for a lot of the DMs I know and it was more than I enjoyed.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:01PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Dec 21, 2011
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I'm sure finished monsters will have more interesting options and abilities.
I do agree with the idea that spellcasters need to have spells/effects at hand...easy to use. That made running 4e much easier than prior editions. If they can even pick the top 4 spells that the monster would probably use and give a very short reminder of the attack/effect that would be great.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:02PM
#7
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Some 4e monsters (usually high level ones) had too many abilities, but in general most of them had just the right amount to make them unique. Just look at basic enemies like orcs in the 4e MM. They were flavourful and still easy to run.
What we have in the 5e bestiary right now, is utter garbage. It's just lazy and uninspired copy-paste with a bit of number tweaking.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:05PM
#8
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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Some 4e monsters (usually high level ones) had too many abilities, but in general most of them had just the right amount to make them unique. Just look at basic enemies like orcs in the 4e MM. They were flavourful and still easy to run.
What we have in the 5e bestiary right now, is utter garbage. It's just lazy and uninspired copy-paste with a bit of number tweaking.
Yeah looking at orcs is great. What wasn't great was when encounter 1 had 2-3 different types of orc and a displacer beast while encounter 2 had a combination of different zombies and skeletons and encounter 3 had a red dragon. It's not that each monster was too much, but I personally found trying to run an adventure with any variety in monsters to be a difficult task and would like it toned down a little.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:13PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2011
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Some 4e monsters (usually high level ones) had too many abilities, but in general most of them had just the right amount to make them unique. Just look at basic enemies like orcs in the 4e MM. They were flavourful and still easy to run.
What we have in the 5e bestiary right now, is utter garbage. It's just lazy and uninspired copy-paste with a bit of number tweaking.
Whoa now, I wouldn't be that harsh on it quite yet. The copy-paste format doesn't tell us that they were lazy, it says they plan on changing so much they want it in a readily changeable format.
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1 year ago ::
May 24, 2012 - 9:18PM
#10
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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The monsters are ok, for now, but the hit points on some of them are WAY too high for my liking. Goblin King = 60 hps. Sorry, no. It may be a king, but it's still a goblin (only has 5, which is fine). Ogres = 88hps. Minotaurs = 132 hps. Those seem a bit excessive too.
"Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."
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