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Jul 22, 2012 -- 10:39PM, Asterionasien wrote:

I dont like the new article. I cant point anything specific,sorry, but it feels "wrong" to me.
Maybe it reminds me too much of 4th ed monsters?.

that cant be it. this looks nothing like 4e monster creation. in 4e, you can give me a monsters level (apparently saying 'monster level' is not allowed in 5e, kind of like healing surges) and i can derive almost every basic statistic from it. level 2 monsters will average 16 AC, 14 NADs, +7 to hit AC, +5 to hit NADs, 1d8+6 average single target damage, etc etc.

here i have to contemplate, then create, a Minotaur's ability scores, a process i find so soul-killing that i blogged about it last week frothsof4e.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-new-wa...  , literally doing it the long, hard, complicated, boring way, just so we can derive its AC and to hit numbers, saving throws, etc like a PC would do it. we can only assume this is for nostalgias sake, bc it sure isnt for the love of simplicity or clean design. THEN, as if i wasnt having enough fun already, i have to take the Minotaur shopping for axes. god forbid you use average damage, no, we need it all to be different. then, if you dare, you get to experience d&ds equivelent of a root canal: calculate all of the xp for the creature (no doubt complete with dreary formulas dictating the xp bonuses for special abilities, and all those other fun nostalgic xp minutae to pour over). now, we have a reaaaaly accurate number to balance against....wait for it...a full day of adventuring! bc doing it by encounter would look too much like 4e. cant have that.

yeah, that is about as far from 4e as it possible to get. the way this is shaping up, id personally rather bang my head into a wall than create a 5e monster. back to the old drawing board mearls.

frothsof, the fact that people confuse this process with 4e monster creation is I think at the heart of why there is so much disagreement here.

It's pretty hard to come to common ground when people have no clue whatsoever where the other side is coming from.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 1:58AM, thespaceinvader wrote:

On what level should it appear in a generic dungeon, Mike, really? We're really going to go back to that second-strip-in-OotS joke about levels, levels, levels, and levels in D&D? I don't entirely like the implication there that generic dungeons should be designed with multiple, one-after-another floors.

I don't like the implication that ability scores, which have probably the biggest mechanical impact in the game (i.e. whether or not you hit the monster) are determined purely on a fluff basis, and in this case, leave the monster with 3 very low defences, the lowest of which is SIX POINTS lower than the highest. So, the PC which attacks STR in this instance, is stuffed, where the PC who attacks INT is fine. TO snark a little, I wonder which PCs are most likely to attack which defence...

I don't like the equating of size with 4e role, and therefore with how many PCs something is worth. It breaks my brain a little - if whether it's a mook, an elite or a solo is how big it is, then the terms are pretty meaningless - why not just use size, and save those terms to give them a meaningful role? But if those terms are how big something is, why do they also carry across to how *good* something is at fighting, and how much HP it has (bearing in mind that HP is abstracted by RAW.  Except when it isn't...)? There is (well, there should be) no reason why you can't have a tiny solo, or a huge mook.

The attacks seem pretty random, and once more we have a thing which could have been a bloodied-save-or-die attack (a concept which actually sounds interesting to me, and sounds like an excellent way to speed up fights without entirely boiling them down to 1d20 and go home), and is now a straight-out save-or-suck (knocked prone, can't get up and, for no apparent reason, can't attack whilst prone).

Where's the actual design work, here?

Yeah, except even in 4e it was not a good idea to make a tiny solo for instance. It didn't 'feel' right. You COULD do it, and you CAN apparently do it in DDN as well, but the point is that IN GENERAL it feels right to have big tough monsters and small weak monsters. You may of course make the NPC halfling thieve's guild master an elite stat block. He's a big story element that is meant to have a substantial impact and if done right it works fine. OTOH making him a solo in 4e really didn't work that well, even if it fit in OK with the encounter building concepts. Having a halfling with 500 hit points just kinda didn't go down well... A 500 HP dragon OTOH? That worked fine, thematically.

Anyway, you certainly should be ABLE to make a small solo, you just need to actually think hard about the feel of that monster. You will want to build up the player's image of it and expectations of it with story so that when they fight it this feels natural enough to them. For instance a halfling guild master that is possessed by a demon and starts growing weird tentacles and whatever as the fight progressed could be a fine solo of small size. It is just not TYPICALLY the case that solos are small creatures.

Remember, any monster design system will be guidelines. It is going to tell you what generally works well. It isn't going to force you to do things a specific way.

Jul 22, 2012 -- 10:40PM, Seerow wrote:

Jul 22, 2012 -- 10:00PM, Saelorn wrote:

Jul 22, 2012 -- 9:52PM, pauldanielj2 wrote:

Can someone bring me around to understand they're building a roleplaying game? Because this reads like a tactical combat simulation to me.

Not every day is an "adventuring day" - if you're playing D&D, though, the assumption is that some days will feature combat... because PC characters are good at fighting.

Remember, "role" has two definitions: an actor plays a role as in a stage production, but four characters also assume roles whenever one defends another while she picks a lock and a third strikes an opponent while the fourth inspires them all to keep going.  The latter is not less valid of a definition than the former, especially if you consider the origins of the medium.

But if that day does involve fighting, it better involve at least 15 rounds of it!

Why?  Why can't there be an easy day of fighting of say 5 rounds, followed by a day with no fighting, followed by a day that has 18 rounds of fighting, followed by ones of 12, and 20?  It's okay to have easy and hard days.  The DM can design his encounter days to be as long as he wants. 

Jul 22, 2012 -- 11:04PM, Lawolf wrote:

Hyothetical: 2 level 5 fighters vs a minotaur.  Each fighter will have roughly 40 HP, +7 or so to attack rolls, AC of about 16, and do around 12 damage per hit (they have lowered damage and HP across the board for characters and monsters).  The minotaur has 57 HP, +4 to attacks, an AC of 16, and does around 17 damage per hit.  If we assume the level 5 fighters each have about 35 HP in reserve (from HD), then the fight against the minotaur should only do about 17 HP in damage to each fighter during the fight.  Any more and the "adventure day" is screwed (4 encounters with at level challenges per day).  This also means the damage must be spread around evenly somehow.  It takes team fighter about 5 hits to take out the minotaur.  2 good hits from the minotaur will drop a fighter (which will also mess up the "adventure day").  

The math looks off.  It also looks like the "adventure day" will be a rather poor means of determining  how many possible challenges a party can overcome.  Unless monster damage is toned way down, adventurers will face a HP 5MWD problem quite often.  It would be highly unlikely that 2 level 5 fighters could take down 4 minotaurs over the course of a day.  If some portion of HP refreshed after every short rest this might be more manageable, but as of right now the math does not work.  

First, fights can be harder or easier, depending on die rolls. That's okay.  It will balance out in the end.  Second, if played properly, the minotaur will rage for some or all of the fight, fighting at disadvantage and dealing only 5 damage if it rolls poorly, 0 if it rolls really poorly.  It will open up with the charge if possible and then follow with a normal or rage swing.  Then if/when struck, it should rage for the rest of the combat. 

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:01AM, frothsof wrote:

this looks nothing like 4e monster creation.

To me, it looks just like monster creation, but described narratively.

Let's look at the article.
Step one: Choose a level and power rating (solo, elite, mook).  This is the equivalent of choosing a level and role (solo, elite, standard, minion), except that minions are now created by choosing a mook of a level much lower than the party.  Note that he says "You can also think of the categories by size".  That's a guideline, not a rule.  Elites tend to large.  Solos tend to be huge.  But he's not saying that you can't have an elite swordsman or a solo halfling.

Step two: Choose Abilities.  These are chosen narratively, but I don't think it's the be-all end-all.  (See below)

Step three: Craft Attacks and Defenses. Mearls uses the minotaur's Strength to determine attacks, but he always checks it against "its level and power rating".  In other words, he's measuring the creature, not based on its Ability, but on its level/power rating.

I imagine that there is a chart where you look up a creature by level and power rating, and it tells you a DPR for the creature.  You can then get the creature to the DPR however you like.  High attack/low damage, low attack/high damage, multiple attacks, area attacks, etc.  Mearls used the Ability scores as a base because... why shouldn't he?  As long as the creature ends up fitting the guidelines, how he gets there is just a matter of taste.

He goes through the same exercise with defenses.  In fact, we now know the name of the mechanic that lets us ignore the Abilities to get attacks and defenses in like with the by-level guidelines: proficiencies.  You need to up the hobgoblin's attack to match the guideliens?  Say he'sproficient in the weapon.  You need to downgrade a giant's attack so he doesn't exceed guidelines?  That's a lack of proficiency. 

Heck, with respect to minotaur AC, he gives even that only lip service.  A minotaur is supposed to have a 16 AC.  So Mearls just decides that his hide is equivalent to chainmail.  He could have said that the minotaur is "proficient" in defending itself.  He didn't bother. In short, the guidelines dictate that a balanced 5th level creature should have AC 16, so it does.  That is 4e monster design.

Given that, you can see that the narrative choice of Abilities is pretty much irrelevant to the attack values.  All the Abilities are really going to be used for are skills, and given flat math, that's probably going to work out fine.

Step four: Choose special abilities.  Here is where DM skill is neede, btu that was true in 4e as well.  4e didn't tell you how to give a creature condition-inflicting powers.  It was all sort of touch and go.  I think it is very difficult to assess how such powers will affect a creature's difficulty.  Howefully, the DMG will give DMs a lot of advice in this regard.  It's one of the few areas I felt the 4e DMGs lacked advice.

Step five: Calculate XP.  So, like 4e, XP is primarily a function of level and role, with a boost based on the special abiltiies you choose.  XP is, like 4e, used to determine encounter budgets (though in this case, it appears ot be an adventuring day budget).  Still sounds pretty much like 4e.

The only difference is 4e had an additional role: brute, artillery, skirmisher, etc.  But the effect on monster stats was minimal.  Brutes get lower defenses and more damage.  Skirmishers and lurkers get better initiative.  It was pretty fiddly stuff.  Most of this will be encapsulated in the creature's special abilities, with lurkers getting surprise attacks, brutes getting extra damage, soldiers get better defenses.  It's just that the monsters won't be explicitly labeled as such.  But I do expect that the Monster Manual entry will have guidance on how best to use a creature.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 4:12AM, pilgaard wrote:

I really like the idea of size becoming a more important factor when determining the threat level of the monsters. It has always bugged me that some small or medium solo humanoid monster should have as many hp as a dragon. However, of course I would like to see medium monsters that equals elite threat (although only in very special cases solo threat), eg an orc chieftain etc. and I can't imagine size being the only, solely determining factor on whether the monster being a mook or elite threat - more of a guideline, I am sure (especially since the general approach is to define the monster's mechanics based on the right feel of the monster - exactly the right way of doing it, I think, as opposed the 4th ed approach of 'level and role determines everything').

As for the time required to create a monster on the fly, this seems very easy to do to me: of course stats have to be assigned, but precisely the principle of assigning this as to what 'feels right' is a great strength here - simply assign whar 'feels right' AC, damage etc pretty much equals the equipment or what corresponds to such equipment for natural attacks etc (taking size into account). HD requires a bit more thought, but should be handleable by comparing to existing monsters (and after a bit of playing one quickly get the feel of this as well, I think, so assigning on the fly will be quite easy).
Personally I only rarely create monsters on the fly (although it sometimes is necessary), but creating the monsters beforehand seems to be fairly easy and rather quickly to do as well, I think. 
Assigning an xp-value will probably be the toughhest part, and the design team has focus on this, so usable guidelines will be available, I think (in addition to comparing to existing monsters).
 
The 'Hill Giant-always-miss'-issue requires some further design considerations, I think. I like the concept of the big brute being poor at hitting but when it hits it really hurts (50% of more of a character's hp is fine I think - makes the combats much more exciting, with the players having to consider different tactics when facing such a monster, rather than just charge it as they are used to). It means that the low-AC wizard (I would very much like to see that int is removed as an AC-stat - otherwise it makes the Wizard as good as a decent fighter when it comes to AC, and it just doesn't seem right to me) will be hit fairly often and lose a very great deal of his hp.
The problem arises when the concept of the low hit chance of the brute collides with the way AC works in D&D: AC represents both the ability to dodge attacks altogether, but also the protection of armor when one is hit by the attack but suffers no damage due to this protecion (the 3rd ed. 'touch-AC' reflected this).
So when the big brute has a hard time hitting, it is the agile dodger he can't hit. The plate armor would, one could imagine, provide less protection against a huge (I hope giants will be huge again, and not puny just large like an ogre   ) hill giant's club than a club wielded by a goblin. So perhaps something like a touch-AC could be reintroduced, or a lowered effectiveness of armor vs. such extremely hard-hitting attacks. The trick is how to do this in a balanced, elegant and non-complex way (since or course having to pretty much roll a natural '20' to hit a well-armored fighter won't work in actual game-play) - but I have faith in the design team   They have done excellent work so far, imho.

All in all, I find the principles of monster design mentioned in the article much - much! - better than the 4th ed 'mechanical' way of doing it (where the individuality of the monster itself doesn't come to its right at all when it comes to stats - eg all soldiers have the same AC no matter whether it is a full plate-wearing knight or a medium-dex and -int, leather armor-wearing city guard (with fx a mark-power, so he fits the soldier-concept)). 

'touch AC' was an abomination, lol. 4e's reflex defense dealt with that whole issue quite cleanly. All you have to do is make the attack vs reflex and voila! you have a huge ponderous attack with a telephone-pole-sized club. You can dodge it, but if it comes down on you no amount of armor is going to do you jack good.

This is another argument for why the whole reversion to saving throws is a crap idea. If it means you now have to REINTRODUCE extra defenses (because that's all 'touch AC' was) then the whole point of the thing is clearly bogus. Of course then the whole UNDERLYING problem with having 6 defenses really borks you.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:34AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:01AM, frothsof wrote:

this looks nothing like 4e monster creation.

To me, it looks just like monster creation, but described narratively.

Let's look at the article.
Step one: Choose a level and power rating (solo, elite, mook).  This is the equivalent of choosing a level and role (solo, elite, standard, minion), except that minions are now created by choosing a mook of a level much lower than the party.  Note that he says "You can also think of the categories by size".  That's a guideline, not a rule.  Elites tend to large.  Solos tend to be huge.  But he's not saying that you can't have an elite swordsman or a solo halfling.

Step two: Choose Abilities.  These are chosen narratively, but I don't think it's the be-all end-all.  (See below)

Step three: Craft Attacks and Defenses. Mearls uses the minotaur's Strength to determine attacks, but he always checks it against "its level and power rating".  In other words, he's measuring the creature, not based on its Ability, but on its level/power rating.

I imagine that there is a chart where you look up a creature by level and power rating, and it tells you a DPR for the creature.  You can then get the creature to the DPR however you like.  High attack/low damage, low attack/high damage, multiple attacks, area attacks, etc.  Mearls used the Ability scores as a base because... why shouldn't he?  As long as the creature ends up fitting the guidelines, how he gets there is just a matter of taste.

He goes through the same exercise with defenses.  In fact, we now know the name of the mechanic that lets us ignore the Abilities to get attacks and defenses in like with the by-level guidelines: proficiencies.  You need to up the hobgoblin's attack to match the guideliens?  Say he'sproficient in the weapon.  You need to downgrade a giant's attack so he doesn't exceed guidelines?  That's a lack of proficiency. 

Heck, with respect to minotaur AC, he gives even that only lip service.  A minotaur is supposed to have a 16 AC.  So Mearls just decides that his hide is equivalent to chainmail.  He could have said that the minotaur is "proficient" in defending itself.  He didn't bother. In short, the guidelines dictate that a balanced 5th level creature should have AC 16, so it does.  That is 4e monster design.

Given that, you can see that the narrative choice of Abilities is pretty much irrelevant to the attack values.  All the Abilities are really going to be used for are skills, and given flat math, that's probably going to work out fine.

Step four: Choose special abilities.  Here is where DM skill is neede, btu that was true in 4e as well.  4e didn't tell you how to give a creature condition-inflicting powers.  It was all sort of touch and go.  I think it is very difficult to assess how such powers will affect a creature's difficulty.  Howefully, the DMG will give DMs a lot of advice in this regard.  It's one of the few areas I felt the 4e DMGs lacked advice.

Step five: Calculate XP.  So, like 4e, XP is primarily a function of level and role, with a boost based on the special abiltiies you choose.  XP is, like 4e, used to determine encounter budgets (though in this case, it appears ot be an adventuring day budget).  Still sounds pretty much like 4e.

The only difference is 4e had an additional role: brute, artillery, skirmisher, etc.  But the effect on monster stats was minimal.  Brutes get lower defenses and more damage.  Skirmishers and lurkers get better initiative.  It was pretty fiddly stuff.  Most of this will be encapsulated in the creature's special abilities, with lurkers getting surprise attacks, brutes getting extra damage, soldiers get better defenses.  It's just that the monsters won't be explicitly labeled as such.  But I do expect that the Monster Manual entry will have guidance on how best to use a creature.

i dont know wrecan, i give you an a for effort, but to me, calling this 4e monster creation is kind of like getting really drunk and squinting at an ugly chick until she looks hot.

i will admit though that some of this is tbd, such as xp calculation. youre assuming it will be simple, i am assuming an abysmal retro-hell hole. we will find out soon enough

See, it's statements like that that confuse me greatly, since you play and enjoy retro games regularly.

XP budget for building the adventuring day is great.  It's not for every style of adventure or playstyle, but it's usefull.

I really like how ability scores will be the main factor in what defines a monster.   Hit Dice that are based on creature size is also a great improvement.   I also like the fact that you can create a monster with high hit points and a low attack bonus or vice versa and still gauge its level.    You can build everything from the clumsy Hill Giant to the low hit point Quickling.

It looks like rolling for monster hit dice is an option too    

Doubling the damage dice of a weapon for a large creature might be a bit too much, but I'm sure they will play test it.   I wonder... does that mean they will triple the damage dice for a huge creature?

In addition, it's great to read that you don't need to define a class for the monster.  At the same time, it's also clear that there will be class options for monsters because attack bonus from a class are not added into the monsters by default.  -  "We generally assume that any creature that lacks a class also lacks an attack bonus" 

It's great that AC, damage, and stats are now determined more organically and not simply based off a forumla that changes evey level and for every role.   Because of that fact, it should be very easy to create a monster design table for on the fly monster creation.   I tried to create one in 4e, but it got far too complicated.      

As for mook, elite, and solo monsters and the size relationship issue, I wouldn't look too much into that.   Mike made it clear, that they are just playtest terms at the moment.   Mike should have picked other names for the article because all it's done on these forums is soe the seeds of confusion among the 4e players. 
 

So far I have no complaints. 

Keep up the good work Mike!      

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:42AM, Mand12 wrote:

See, it's statements like that that confuse me greatly, since you play and enjoy retro games regularly.

and i love them. i love to play and DM them. but that isnt to say i dont have problems with some pieces, the same as i have problems with some pieces of 4e. i dont like xp calculation of old-school monsters, and i also do not like 4e skill challenges.

i would rather each HD monster (1 HD, 2 HD, etc) have a set xp total rather than to have to calculate it all out based on bunch of tiny variables, especially when making my own monsters. it very well may end up a clean xp chart, which i think would be way the hell better, but based on the rest of the article i think its just as likely to be the old excruciating way. well find out.

Jul 22, 2012 -- 9:52PM, pauldanielj2 wrote:

I wish I could talk about the article, but I still can't get past the introduction:

"When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures."

Can someone bring me around to understand they're building a roleplaying game? Because this reads like a tactical combat simulation to me.

Honestly, I dont understand the gist of your comment. Heh, is your version of D&D so old you didnt have that new-fangled thing called “combat”?

Tactical combat is a traditional aspect of D&D, indeed part of it comes from a wargame. Even experience points is part of D&D. Even levels. What exactly is the problem?


 
If you want noncombat encounters to be a *viable* way to gain experience and advance thru levels, instead of combat. Well, I agree with you. I hope 5e can make this happen.

Noncombat experience systems are difficult to do (well) and will take time to develop and playtest. They seem unlikely to be core. Designers have said a module with adventure paths will focus on intrigue, for example.

On Adventure Design Guidelines: This reinforces earlier articles about XP budget and adventure design. It also makes it clear that the budget is for an “adventure day” (as opposed to the more indefinite “adventure” ). This creates a clear unit of measure that can be designed around. It also makes it very easy to modify this unit to accomplish differing story paces. You could easily make this an “adventure hour” or an “adventure week” if that fits your campaign. The conclusion of an adventure “unit” allows daily resources to refresh. This goes back to my idea of modules as dials. You simply set the “story pace” dial to hour, day, or week (or non-time based measures, such as “session” or “chapter” ) and have guidelines on how these positions on the dial interact with other parts of the game.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:41AM, frothsof wrote:

i dont know wrecan, i give you an a for effort, but to me, calling this 4e monster creation is kind of like getting really drunk and squinting at an ugly chick until she looks hot.

How is it really different?  You have a level and power rating, just like in 4e.  Those stats are used in determining balanced AC, hp, attack, damage, and XP, just like 4e. 

The only differences are...

• Dropping monster roles (which had only a minor effect on a creature's numbers)
• Dropping minions in favor of low-level mooks
• Adding an XP factoring for special abilities
• XP budgets are based on adventuring day, rather than encounter (and this is really more pertinent to encounter/adventure design than to monster design).

That's it.  Other than that, Mearls describes how you can use the abilities to determine stats, which is designed to make folks like dmgorgon happy, while keeping the balanced level/power matrix of 4e to keep those of us who liked 4e monster design happy.

Sure, we don't know how fiddly the XP factor for special abilities will be... but wouldn't that have been something nice to have had in 4e?  Wouldn't it be nice to know that if you have two creatures who are identical in every way, except that one has a power that lets it inflict a stun effect, that the creature who can stun you is significantly tougher to defeat, and thus should eat up more of your XP budget?  I suppose you could simply ignore the XP additives for special abilities, and then you'd have a system even closer to the 4e system.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:41AM, frothsof wrote:

i dont know wrecan, i give you an a for effort, but to me, calling this 4e monster creation is kind of like getting really drunk and squinting at an ugly chick until she looks hot.

haha! "design googles"

Jul 23, 2012 -- 1:16AM, Saelorn wrote:

These are specifically big, heavy hitters.  As a necessary drawback, anything that hits really hard is going to have fairly lousy accuracy.  Otherwise, it just goes around beating people into paste, and that's not a ton of fun.

Remember, +1 magical armor is not the assumption.  Magic armor is supposed to feel like a big advantage against anyone not weilding a magical weapon.  I suspect that they're going to back away from the stacking benefits of a magical armor and shield, simply because that lets the math get out of control way too quickly, but they may have not realized that part yet.

Solid comment.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:57AM, wrecan wrote:

How is it really different?  You have a level and power rating, just like in 4e.  Those stats are used in determining balanced AC, hp, attack, damage, and XP, just like 4e. 

You and I read a different article, I think.  By my reading, Mike Mearls said the Minotaur's AC should have been 12, but he decided to boost it to 16 because he felt like it, and because checking other monsters at a similar XP value it seemed right to him.   If your very optimistic view of this article is accurate, then I will be pleased.  However, I would prefer to remain critical during the writing stage of 5e.  I want 5e to be a great game, as a DM and a Player, and blindly trusting in the optimistic view to be the accurate view is not going to accomplish that.  

I fully believe WotC is on the right track for this game.  If the new stuff they're adding in for Fighters in the next playtest makes them really fun and dynamic, I will be really excited for all aspects of this game except the Rogue (and I'm hoping they're going to make the Rogue just as dynamic).  But I find it absolutely necessary to look for the flaws in what they're saying at this level, not to tear the game down, but to promote the game's betterment.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 7:57AM, GilbertMDH wrote:

On Adventure Design Guidelines: This reinforces earlier articles about XP budget and adventure design. It also makes it clear that the budget is for an “adventure day” (as opposed to the more indefinite “adventure” ). This creates a clear unit of measure that can be designed around. It also makes it very easy to modify this unit to accomplish differing story paces. You could easily make this an “adventure hour” or an “adventure week” if that fits your campaign. The conclusion of an adventure “unit” allows daily resources to refresh. This goes back to my idea of modules as dials. You simply set the “story pace” dial to hour, day, or week (or non-time based measures, such as “session” or “chapter” ) and have guidelines on how these positions on the dial interact with other parts of the game.

Frankly I don't put a lot of stock in the whole "adventure XP budget" thing. If an 'adventure' is nominally 4 at-level encounters worth of stuff, then the budget is really just 1/4 of what they say, per encounter. 4e already for instance told you that a good guideline would be party level * 4 +5 levels worth of encounters, so in essence there's no fundamental difference. The thing that I am not seeing is any realization that 10 small encounters DOES NOT equal 1 big encounter, and never will unless the combat system is so swingy that no other factors really matter either. At least 4e was living in reality where the size of each encounter was the major factor in difficulty. This adventure XP budget thing is VERY unlikely to be workable. Actual practice is more likely to be it is paid lip service and then you're told outright that "this basically only works if you have the recommended 4 encounters, if you have more or less than that you'll have to follow this other rule of thumb as well..." lol.

On Monster Creation: This part of the article reads more like Mike’s instructions to his design team for making monsters, rather than an early draft of the DMG entry on making monsters. From this perspective, I really like this view inside the design process.

I don’t really like conflating monster power (mook, elite, and solo) with monster size. Monster size should affect the statistics, but that might be better as a separate consideration. Or perhaps a subset; there won’t be a lot of small solos, but there should be guidelines for how monster size and monster power interact.

Ability scores are more central to the design of Next than in past editions. Particularly for monsters or NPCs what will interact with characters outside of combat, more consideration has to be given the assignment of ability scores. At this stage (while they are still working out the basic math), an approach of “what feels right for a monster” is fine. But at some point that needs to graduate to “how will this monster interact with the PCs, and how will the ability scores reflect that.”

The other thing not to overlook here is the narrower range of ability scores. I think we can forget about frequent ability score raises (either inherent or through magical items). If your ability scores are not going to significantly change over the course of your career (and more dangerous monsters won’t have substantially higher scores), this reinforces the need to find other ways to define increased potency. This probably also means first level characters with any ability score above an 18 will be rare.

The rest about attacks, AC, and special abilities look good right now. I like the direction of the rage attack; it opens up new ways to make use of the fact that you are rolling two dice.

XP calculations that take everything into account (if extensively playtested and done right) allow for more granularity in monster levels. I always felt in 4e that varying monsters of level X were just not the same threat (particularly leaders), and this could help achieve that differentiation.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:19AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Frankly I don't put a lot of stock in the whole "adventure XP budget" thing. If an 'adventure' is nominally 4 at-level encounters worth of stuff, then the budget is really just 1/4 of what they say, per encounter. 4e already for instance told you that a good guideline would be party level * 4 +5 levels worth of encounters, so in essence there's no fundamental difference. The thing that I am not seeing is any realization that 10 small encounters DOES NOT equal 1 big encounter, and never will unless the combat system is so swingy that no other factors really matter either. At least 4e was living in reality where the size of each encounter was the major factor in difficulty. This adventure XP budget thing is VERY unlikely to be workable. Actual practice is more likely to be it is paid lip service and then you're told outright that "this basically only works if you have the recommended 4 encounters, if you have more or less than that you'll have to follow this other rule of thumb as well..." lol.

On one big encounter not equaling 10 little encounters: This depends on how non-daily powers refresh and how hitpoints are regained over the course of an adventure day. If these things can recover at similar rates in combat as outside of combat, then the biggest difference is in how the big encounter is structured. If everything hits you at once, then it is absolutely a harder encounter regardless of refresh mechanics. If things come in waves, then it is more manageable for the party. And this comes down more to DM guidance than mechanics.

One thing that strikes me as odd about the mention of monster types (mook,elite,solo) is it seems unneeded in terms of a bounded accuracy system. If the system really doesn't provide much attack and defense progression then a "solo" is just basically a higher level monster. The designation may still be relevant in terms of how you envisage using the monster and thus what abilities you give it, etc. but unlike 4e where level had a big impact on all the numbers in 5e basically it is going to determine hit points (roughly at least) and damage, and may suggest whether defenses are higher or lower in the range. If the goal is to be able to fight orcs still at 10th level and have them be 'minions', then likewise the same design should result in fighting a dragon at level 5 making it effectively 'solo'.

Also, I am still heavily advocating for the inclusion of monster roles. They were and are an invaluable guideline both for creating monsters and for designing encounters. Sure, they don't have a lot of effect on the core numbers of 4e monsters, a brute and a skirmisher at the same level have pretty similar defenses, attack bonus, and only moderately different hit points. The 2 types of monster DO however feel quite different because the designer was clear on what he was designing. Thus their traits, powers, etc all contribute to clearly defining the method of fighting used by that monster. It is particularly useful when designing a family of monsters like a humanoid race. Each type of hobgoblin clearly fits into the overall hobgoblin fighting scheme, making them a team of monsters instead of the all-to-common AD&D situation where the monsters are just a collection of either identical mooks or some sort of random hodge-podge that pretty much never had any real synergy except by sheer luck. I mean CLEARLY this minotaur IS a brute. What's the big problem with just friggin saying so?

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:30AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Also, I am still heavily advocating for the inclusion of monster roles. They were and are an invaluable guideline both for creating monsters and for designing encounters. Sure, they don't have a lot of effect on the core numbers of 4e monsters, a brute and a skirmisher at the same level have pretty similar defenses, attack bonus, and only moderately different hit points. The 2 types of monster DO however feel quite different because the designer was clear on what he was designing. Thus their traits, powers, etc all contribute to clearly defining the method of fighting used by that monster. It is particularly useful when designing a family of monsters like a humanoid race. Each type of hobgoblin clearly fits into the overall hobgoblin fighting scheme, making them a team of monsters instead of the all-to-common AD&D situation where the monsters are just a collection of either identical mooks or some sort of random hodge-podge that pretty much never had any real synergy except by sheer luck. I mean CLEARLY this minotaur IS a brute. What's the big problem with just friggin saying so?

+1

Jul 23, 2012 -- 6:23AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Jul 22, 2012 -- 10:39PM, Asterionasien wrote:

I dont like the new article. I cant point anything specific,sorry, but it feels "wrong" to me.
Maybe it reminds me too much of 4th ed monsters?.
If i'll understand what's wrong i'll edit my post.

Edit: now i got it.

Mr Mearls,while i have all the possible respect for your professionality and design capabilities (i approve almost all you have done until now about the design choices for DDN), i also strongly  believe that you are off target now.

When i was younger,i had many fun afternoons going to the beach with my friends,and while taking sun we had fun playing D&D.
My equipment was: 2nd ed DM Screen,a pencil,a set of dices and some sheets.If i had to design a monster,let'say a sewer worm, my reasoning was: hp=average hit dice?check. damage? 1d6 for wrmlings,1d6+1/1d8 sting( mature ones)? check. roll to hit?look thaco table. check. saving throws?look table. check.
Design time? 30 second or maybe less.
In the article instead,i see several problems:

• I have to guess characteristics
• bonuses for stats have to be added to the math
• i have to invent "+" for proficiency
• different sizes means different roles and math
• different hit dices for various creatures
• and so on..

While The system given in the article is perfectly fine imho is suitable for long term monsters,but not for "on the fly" ones.
The flavor of a monster is NOT in the math,but in the dm capability of painting a scene..i couldn't care less for a complex,overdetailed enemy. That's imo is a gamist approach legacy of more recent editions.
But i care MUCH about easy and fast play.
So,my idea is:leave that system for detailed,long term,reusable monsters, but give me also a fast system (a table maybe?) with all the math already done that i can reflavor as i see fit,and who can be inserted in a dm screen,as it was in 2ed screen.
It's a bit off? who care, they are just for fillers..and DM eventually can tune up the results.
Strive for semplicity.

I cant play with 3.5ed or 4ed on the beach with my nieces,but you could let me play with them at DDN.
Your choice.
 

I think Mike hinted at this, though he didn't go into a lot of detail when he talked about generic stat blocks. In other words your quick monster could simply be "level X mook stat block" and that gives you a quick baseline for all the various numbers. You can simply use it as is, maybe slap something interesting on it quick, decide how to flavor the generic parts, and you should have your "30 second monster". Seems like that SHOULD do the trick?

In this vein, the quick baseline can advise which abilities to use, whether to use the “mook” array, the “standard” array, the “elite” array, or the “solo” array. If DMs deviate from the guideline they can tweak the overall xp value accordingly.

Also “Brute Smash” (aka Power Attack) simply trades attack for damage. Usually the DM can throw it on top of a monster design, and not worry about any other numbers.

Probably “Brute Tough” trades AC for hit points. Likewise, the DM can throw this on top of a monster design.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:30AM, GilbertMDH wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:19AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Frankly I don't put a lot of stock in the whole "adventure XP budget" thing. If an 'adventure' is nominally 4 at-level encounters worth of stuff, then the budget is really just 1/4 of what they say, per encounter. 4e already for instance told you that a good guideline would be party level * 4 +5 levels worth of encounters, so in essence there's no fundamental difference. The thing that I am not seeing is any realization that 10 small encounters DOES NOT equal 1 big encounter, and never will unless the combat system is so swingy that no other factors really matter either. At least 4e was living in reality where the size of each encounter was the major factor in difficulty. This adventure XP budget thing is VERY unlikely to be workable. Actual practice is more likely to be it is paid lip service and then you're told outright that "this basically only works if you have the recommended 4 encounters, if you have more or less than that you'll have to follow this other rule of thumb as well..." lol.

On one big encounter not equaling 10 little encounters: This depends on how non-daily powers refresh and how hitpoints are regained over the course of an adventure day. If these things can recover at similar rates in combat as outside of combat, then the biggest difference is in how the big encounter is structured. If everything hits you at once, then it is absolutely a harder encounter regardless of refresh mechanics. If things come in waves, then it is more manageable for the party. And this comes down more to DM guidance than mechanics.

My point is that this makes a HUGE difference. You can easily illustrate that with an abstract fight, but I'm sure everyone can figure out that excersize. So yes, a similar consideration exists for 'wave' encounters. In 4e they're not quite exactly the same as separate encounters, but not the same as a single standard design encounter either. Still, they're somewhere in-between, which makes it not too hard to sort out the details.

It really doesn't matter much how powers refresh etc. The reason 2 small encounters are FAR less dangerous than one big one is simply concentration of firepower. In fact you can derive a fairly simple mathematical model for that, but what you end up with is something like say in 4e 2 small encounters at 1000xp each are maybe only half as challenging IN TOTAL as one 2000xp encounter (XP actually isn't this linear in 4e, but for the sake of argument).

AD&D XP guidelines for monsters acknowledged basically this same fact by giving PCs an XP multiplier when they faced more dangerous opponents. A level 1 PC facing a level 3 monster got 3x normal XP for winning. Given that most monsters were typically designed to be stand-alone 'solo' type challenges the overall result was that 1 big tough encounter with a bit higher level monster netted you a LOT more XP than 3 smaller encounters with at-level monsters.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:09AM, damnedmage wrote:

You and I read a different article, I think.  By my reading, Mike Mearls said the Minotaur's AC should have been 12, but he decided to boost it to 16 because he felt like it, and because checking other monsters at a similar XP value it seemed right to him.

That's not what he wrote: "I peg its AC at 16, average for a level 5 creature".  Nowhere did he say he preused the other 5th level creatures.  He had a number for the average of the creature and on that basis he simply declared the minotaur to have an AC 16, and justified it by saying that a minotaur's hide is as tough as chain mail.

Based on the creature's Dexterity (11/+0), it would have an AC of 10.  He gave it an AC 16 because that's the guideline for 5th level creatures.

If your very optimistic view of this article is accurate, then I will be pleased.  However, I would prefer to remain critical

I prefer to remain accurate

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:41AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

My point is that this makes a HUGE difference. You can easily illustrate that with an abstract fight, but I'm sure everyone can figure out that excersize. So yes, a similar consideration exists for 'wave' encounters. In 4e they're not quite exactly the same as separate encounters, but not the same as a single standard design encounter either. Still, they're somewhere in-between, which makes it not too hard to sort out the details.

It really doesn't matter much how powers refresh etc. The reason 2 small encounters are FAR less dangerous than one big one is simply concentration of firepower. In fact you can derive a fairly simple mathematical model for that, but what you end up with is something like say in 4e 2 small encounters at 1000xp each are maybe only half as challenging IN TOTAL as one 2000xp encounter (XP actually isn't this linear in 4e, but for the sake of argument).

AD&D XP guidelines for monsters acknowledged basically this same fact by giving PCs an XP multiplier when they faced more dangerous opponents. A level 1 PC facing a level 3 monster got 3x normal XP for winning. Given that most monsters were typically designed to be stand-alone 'solo' type challenges the overall result was that 1 big tough encounter with a bit higher level monster netted you a LOT more XP than 3 smaller encounters with at-level monsters.

I think I see what you are getting at. A full day's worth of combat in a single encounter should be worth more XP to the party because it was a bigger challenge (i.e., bigger challenge equals bigger reward).

This gets to the tension between using XP as a way to structure adventures and using XP as a reward. Something like a multiplier might be a good way to handle this. Or it may prove necessary ultimately to de-couple adventure building from rewards. Perhaps adventures are structured around "challenge points" and the rewarded XP can be based on CP plus other factors.

A few people have expressed concern about this monster being too powerful for 2 lvl 5 characters.  Taking the simplest of premade characters, the fighter for example, I would assume at lvl 5 that the figher would have plate armor (if not some decent magic armor).  Also it wouldn't be stretching it for him to have a magic weapon, let's just say plus 1.  The fighter in such gear would do about 9 damage a turn (probably much more, considering damage is supposed to scale with lvl and I think the damage boost will probably come at lvl 4 or 5, or sooner if the playtest is just missing it).  While the poor minotaur will have problems hitting and only do about 3 damage a turn if it uses rage (rage is very bad on low attack bonus creatures vs decent armor hitting only 1/16 of the time, and only doing the min 5 damage 1/4th of the time).  If it doesn't use rage then it will hit only 1/4th of the time for about 5 damage on average a turn.  So in a one-on-one fight the fighter probably beats it--it would be close and with some luck the minotaur could smash it. But on the side of power I don't see it as a huge mathematical problem.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:30AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

One thing that strikes me as odd about the mention of monster types (mook,elite,solo) is it seems unneeded in terms of a bounded accuracy system.

We won't know that for certain until we see the math.  Then we can see what the mechancial difference is between a 10th level mook and a 5th level solo.

Also, I am still heavily advocating for the inclusion of monster roles. They were and are an invaluable guideline both for creating monsters and for designing encounters.

I would like that as part of narrative guidance on encounter and monster building, but I don't want a return to the labels, which I often found unhelpful.

I mean CLEARLY this minotaur IS a brute. What's the big problem with just friggin saying so?

I see neither a great problem nor a substantial benefit to just saying so.  My biggest issue is that it make you force a creature into a box that ight not quite fit.  Sure, this minotaur is a brute, but often I found the distinction between soldier and brute, or controller and artillery, to be so granular as to be useless.  I could design a creature that works somewhere between a soldier and a brute, or a creature who has a controller power or two, but is otherwise a lurker.  I fear that labels become constraining.

I'd rather have a "tactics" paragraph in the monster manual explaining how this creature typically operates in combat.  And also a section in the DMG describing basic monster roles and how to design for them.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:59AM, GilbertMDH wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:41AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

My point is that this makes a HUGE difference. You can easily illustrate that with an abstract fight, but I'm sure everyone can figure out that excersize. So yes, a similar consideration exists for 'wave' encounters. In 4e they're not quite exactly the same as separate encounters, but not the same as a single standard design encounter either. Still, they're somewhere in-between, which makes it not too hard to sort out the details.

It really doesn't matter much how powers refresh etc. The reason 2 small encounters are FAR less dangerous than one big one is simply concentration of firepower. In fact you can derive a fairly simple mathematical model for that, but what you end up with is something like say in 4e 2 small encounters at 1000xp each are maybe only half as challenging IN TOTAL as one 2000xp encounter (XP actually isn't this linear in 4e, but for the sake of argument).

AD&D XP guidelines for monsters acknowledged basically this same fact by giving PCs an XP multiplier when they faced more dangerous opponents. A level 1 PC facing a level 3 monster got 3x normal XP for winning. Given that most monsters were typically designed to be stand-alone 'solo' type challenges the overall result was that 1 big tough encounter with a bit higher level monster netted you a LOT more XP than 3 smaller encounters with at-level monsters.

I think I see what you are getting at. A full day's worth of combat in a single encounter should be worth more XP to the party because it was a bigger challenge (i.e., bigger challenge equals bigger reward).

This gets to the tension between using XP as a way to structure adventures and using XP as a reward. Something like a multiplier might be a good way to handle this. Or it may prove necessary ultimately to de-couple adventure building from rewards. Perhaps adventures are structured around "challenge points" and the rewarded XP can be based on CP plus other factors.

Yeah, you could look at it the opposite way too, a single encounter should have a lower XP budget to make it give the same overall challenge level as 4 smaller encounters. It is really just semantics at that point.

Actually I think if you look at the 4e XP system you'd find that basically this is effectively what exists now, you have XP budgets, which are 'challenge points' effectively and then you have XP reward, which is based on the budget primarily, but the DM has whatever amount of leeway he wants to take in terms of adding in story based awards (major and minor quest XP). DMG2 also talks about other possible reward mechanisms like XP bonuses for clever ideas, good RP, etc. In truth a lot of us don't really bother too much with the XP awards part of the equation anyway in 4e. While I do DM for a group that loves to calculate XP 'by the book', my other games have pretty much just run on "this seems like a good time for us to level up!" and that basically reflects what the PCs have accomplished and how significant it was, as well as how many encounters they've had since the last level up.

So, anyway, yeah, I don't feel like it is necessary for the 'XP budget' to be tightly coupled to the XP award. 2e certainly didn't follow that model, nor 1e for that matter, and they worked fine.

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I just want to say. I really like playtesting 5e in this public way. Where we can all examine the various aspects from various points of view, while the game is coming together - long before we become trapped with difficulties because they became published in hardcover.

Phil: they have stated that they have reduced HP and damage across the board. If monsters and PCs use the same rules for HP a PC fighter will have only around 35 HP. A 16 strength fighter will have d12 + 3 + 4 = 13.5 average damage (from what we have seen so far). Also chain mail seems an appropriate armor for a level 5 character so 16 AC seems good as well. The Minotaur can take out the fighter in just two hits. The Minotaur should never attempt to rage. And due to daily adventure exp budgets, the swingy ness in damage from the Minotaur will cause 5 minute work day problems.

Remember with adventure day exp budgets each combat should be a breeze until the last one of the day.

The Minotaur looks appropriate for an encounter based design however. If HP had a significant encounter based component and if fighter's surge required a short rest to recover so it could be reliable used every fight then I would say 2 fighters vs 1 Minotaur was a level appropriate challenge.

Something like a minotaur/ogre/giant should have the slayer bonus all the time, not just in a rage.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:08AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:30AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

One thing that strikes me as odd about the mention of monster types (mook,elite,solo) is it seems unneeded in terms of a bounded accuracy system.

We won't know that for certain until we see the math.  Then we can see what the mechancial difference is between a 10th level mook and a 5th level solo.

Also, I am still heavily advocating for the inclusion of monster roles. They were and are an invaluable guideline both for creating monsters and for designing encounters.

I would like that as part of narrative guidance on encounter and monster building, but I don't want a return to the labels, which I often found unhelpful.

I mean CLEARLY this minotaur IS a brute. What's the big problem with just friggin saying so?

I see neither a great problem nor a substantial benefit to just saying so.  My biggest issue is that it make you force a creature into a box that ight not quite fit.  Sure, this minotaur is a brute, but often I found the distinction between soldier and brute, or controller and artillery, to be so granular as to be useless.  I could design a creature that works somewhere between a soldier and a brute, or a creature who has a controller power or two, but is otherwise a lurker.  I fear that labels become constraining.

I'd rather have a "tactics" paragraph in the monster manual explaining how this creature typically operates in combat.  And also a section in the DMG describing basic monster roles and how to design for them.

Yeah, I tend to find that it helps me in monster design to start off with a statement like "this monster is a brute" or "this monster is a controller". It doesn't have to be a box you have to live in, but OTOH it gives you a basis for thinking about "how would this power fit into the sort of beasty I want to portray".

I mean, sure, an artillery monster and a controller MIGHT both be using ranged attacks. They are accomplishing different things, and of course a controller might NOT be using ranged attacks at all, it could be using other things. You might then wonder how it is different from a soldier for instance, but again the goal is different, the soldier is tough and would naturally mix it up with the party and expect to get hammered on, the controller being less tough and thus played differently. There are no absolutes, but IMHO the monster roles were a good quick succinct way of expressing the essence of the creature's tactical raison d'etre.

And honestly, while the MM1 tactics sections were not bad I didn't find them hugely useful in general. It always took far too much time and energy to go read the tactics block of every monster you wanted to consider using. By the time you got to the table generally you had a bunch of stat blocks and had long since forgotten whatever the tactics section might have said. At least if I see "Lurker" on the stat block and some power that lets the monster get the jump on PCs then I pretty much know what I'm doing. I thought that was more effective, and frankly I didn't mourn the passing of the tactics section. The best tactics blocks were more interesting from the perspective of what they said about the creature's personality and such anyway.

How can the labels do anything but help newbies... come on guys.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

I see your point. I suppose what defines a “solo” is the number of attacks it can deal in a single round. Similarly, its ability to be only “partially stunned”, sotospeak.

Heh, if so, low-level solos are little tasmanian devils.



Huh, this sort of reminds me of the Berserker archetype. A “solo”.



On examination, this isnt so much the mechanic of a “solo”, but the mechanic of a kind of “striker-defender”. It has the ability to deal damage to multiple targets and also the ability to absorb multiple attacks and keep on ticking. In other words, it is simply a “close-quarter combatant” that can attack multiple targets.

I think size=role is just there to say hey a large creature has 2x the hit dice for its level so should probably count as 2 creatures worth of challenge. I don't like it myself, but it is something I guess...

For fun though let's make some level 5 hobgoblins! 5d8 HP 25
Str 16 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 14 Cha 10 AC 18 Attack: +6 Damage: 1d8 + 3
Chain mail, heavy shield, and long sword.
Special Ability (tactics): +1 to attack rolls for each ally adjacent to the target
Special Ability (hold the line): when an adjacent enemy in melee reach moves away, the hobgoblin may use a reaction to make a melee attack against the enemy.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:34AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

I see your point. I suppose what defines a “solo” is the number of attacks it can deal in a single round. Similarly, its ability to be only “partially stunned”, sotospeak.

Heh, if so, low-level solos are little tasmanian devils.

Here is my ideas but I think they undermine bounded accuracy.

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels..
I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack
level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.
 

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:34AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

I see your point. I suppose what defines a “solo” is the number of attacks it can deal in a single round. Similarly, its ability to be only “partially stunned”, sotospeak.

Heh, if so, low-level solos are little tasmanian devils.

Here is my ideas but I think they undermine bounded accuracy.

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels..
I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack
level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

Something like that - extra attacks (at different targets) when fighting lower level creatures. That can be a fundamental combat mechanic that applies to everyone, whether adventurer or monster.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:42AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

I see your point. I suppose what defines a “solo” is the number of attacks it can deal in a single round. Similarly, its ability to be only “partially stunned”, sotospeak.

Heh, if so, low-level solos are little tasmanian devils.



Huh, this sort of reminds me of the Berserker archetype. A “solo”.



On examination, this isnt so much the mechanic of a “solo”, but the mechanic of a kind of “striker-defender”. It has the ability to deal damage to multiple targets and also the ability to absorb multiple attacks and keep on ticking. In other words, it is simply a “close-quarter combatant” that can attack multiple targets.

A solo needs to be able to be resistant to many special effects... that disable... whether close quarter or long.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:42AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:10AM, Haldrik wrote:

Because of “boundedness” (both accuracy and damage), I dislike “rank roles” in 5e. I dislike the ranks: mook, standard, elite, and solo. These ranks worsen the mechanics of the game.

Rather, the “mook” is simply a lower-level monster, whose attacks are still likely to hit, and who still deals respectable damage.

Oppositely, the “elite” and “solo” are simply higher level monsters, with a slightly bigger punch.

What is an “elite” for low-level adventurers becomes a “mook” for a high-level adventurers. It is unnecessarily complicating - and self-contradicting - to even have rank roles.



It seems more helpful to eliminate rank roles from the game. Instead give the DM a chart that lists how many same-level monsters are equivalent to other levels monster.

Not only that, the experience point values (!) convey this information. When the experience of a higher-level monster is worth the experience of two lower-level monsters ... then that monster is worth two lower-level monsters. It is that simple.

I am picturing  a level 5 minion with its hit points transformed...  and trying to figure out why you think it makes a good solo? Frozen in place by pc attacks (especially with bounded numbers so he is eminently hitable) no special resistances insufficient attacks to launch against the pcs...

How are the differences in role somehow magically just level.

I see your point. I suppose what defines a “solo” is the number of attacks it can deal in a single round. Similarly, its ability to be only “partially stunned”, sotospeak.

Heh, if so, low-level solos are little tasmanian devils.



Huh, this sort of reminds me of the Berserker archetype. A “solo”.



On examination, this isnt so much the mechanic of a “solo”, but the mechanic of a kind of “striker-defender”. It has the ability to deal damage to multiple targets and also the ability to absorb multiple attacks and keep on ticking. In other words, it is simply a “close-quarter combatant” that can attack multiple targets.

Well, there is certainly a sense in which a monster that is intended to operate alone is a 'solo monster'. OTOH I agree that it doesn't require different math, if it is going to challenge the whole party then it can just be higher level.

Consider a dragon. This monster surely fights primarily alone. Generally you encounter them as high threat opponents, so you'd use one that is a good bit higher level than the party. Likewise a giant might be the same level but typically you run into several of them or they are accompanied by other types of monsters. The dragon can probably dish out damage to a whole group of PCs at a time, the giant probably cannot, but it is still quite threatening to one PC at a time when met as a higher level opponent.

Of course you could also want to have a solo lurker monster that is not a huge threat but operates alone and can toss off a nasty surprise when it pops out of the darkness. This could also be a 'solo', and might have some things in common with the dragon if it is going to be challenging, but is usually not met as a higher level threat.

I'm not sure what the best way to label all these things is in a BA system. It was fairly obvious with 4e, but I was never incredibly fond of the way they had to create the ranks of monster types with such deep mechanics. It works, but to a certain extent it felt a bit klunky.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:51AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:42AM, Haldrik wrote:

On examination, this isnt so much the mechanic of a “solo”, but the mechanic of a kind of “striker-defender”. It has the ability to deal damage to multiple targets and also the ability to absorb multiple attacks and keep on ticking. In other words, it is simply a “close-quarter combatant” that can attack multiple targets.  

A solo needs to be able to be resistant to many special effects... that disable... whether close quarter or long.  

By close combat, I mean, the combatant can absorb multiple attacks, including multiple disabling attacks.

Disabling attacks could either act like the frost ray.. or disable one attack or similar. That gets us part of the way. The characters resistances are in his hit points... because the attacks against him make it so.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 1:58AM, thespaceinvader wrote:

I don't like the implication that ability scores, which have probably the biggest mechanical impact in the game (i.e. whether or not you hit the monster) are determined purely on a fluff basis, and in this case, leave the monster with 3 very low defences, the lowest of which is SIX POINTS lower than the highest. So, the PC which attacks STR in this instance, is stuffed, where the PC who attacks INT is fine. TO snark a little, I wonder which PCs are most likely to attack which defence...

To contrast, I think this is the greatest thing since to happen to D&D since... about 2006 or so.  It encourages players to treat living creatures as actual living creatures and parts of the world, with various natural strengths and weaknesses, rather than mere numbers whose abilities are always comparable to those of the party.

I mean, you'd have to be pretty dumb to try and grapple something that's obviously bigger and stronger than you are, right?  The rules here just support common sense.  As for game balance, I'm not sure that the player characters will have enough attacks against Int that they could afford to really exploit that weakness (unless they introduce psionics or something).

"When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures."

You know what assuming does to u and me right?

"The adventure design guidelines give an XP budget for an entire day, a range of XP values for easy, average, and tough fights, and a suggested maximum XP value for a single monster. In other words, you have a daily budget you can spend, guidelines for how much of that budget to spend on a given fight, and a limit of how much XP you can spend on a single monster. As with everything that focuses on the DM, this is all advice to use as you see fit."

Yep and sometimes you will have to spend that entire budget in a single encounter...

"Here’s a way to frame it as a question: In a generic dungeon, on what level does the monster most commonly show up?"

There's your second mistake. "Generic Dungeon" only those found in dungeon magazine, never at my table...

"A mook is the equivalent of one character, an elite the equivalent of two, and a solo the equivalent of four."

So then you have level, level +1, level +3. Why do you have categories?

"The ability scores form the basis of the minotaur’s attacks. Its 18 Strength gives it a +4 attack bonus, which is on target for its level. I settled on the greataxe as the default minotaur weapon. Since minotaurs are size Large, their weapons deal one more die of damage than normal size weapons. Thus, the minotaur attacks at +4 with its greataxe, inflicting 2d12 + 4 damage on a hit. Those are in line with its level and power rating."

Greataxe with +4 to attack and damage. Well there goes the wizard and the rogue in a few hits. Sure hope they don't mind rolling up new characters...

"Another alternative in this case would be to increase the minotaur’s damage. It swings wildly, but hits hard. In some cases, a creature’s lack of training might translate into an attack roll penalty. A dim hill giant with a 20 Strength might swing only with a +3 to hit, since it is too clumsy and dense to make the most of its strength when it comes to accuracy."

Yeah, increase the damage that way it will still do zero damage when it misses 19 rounds in a row against the full defense plate mail and sheild weilding defender cleric...

"For hit points, a level 5 elite monster should sit somewhere in the 50s. Note that this is lower than what you’ve seen in the playtest so far. As mentioned in our latest podcast, we’ve deflated hit points and damage across the system. Character and monster hit points are lower, while damage has also come down a notch. It’s worth noting that we did not change magical or Hit Die healing for now. We’re interested in seeing if dropping overall hit points makes healing feel more useful."

But damage hasn't gone down, so guess what. The wizard and rogue are both going to die easily now...

"The minotaur uses the default d10 Hit Die for size Large creatures. Having 10d10 Hit Dice plus its Constitution bonus puts it at 57 hit points (hit points per d10 Hit Die averages to 5.5). As you can see, the Constitution score has a much smaller effect on a monster’s overall hit points. Instead, a tough monster has more Hit Dice and therefore more hit points."

Well at least they are beginning to realize how the math works behind the game, too bad they haven't put it together yet and seen how horrible a jumbled mess it is when it is all together...

"It’s worth noting that in this system, armor does not stack with other types of armor. Armor gives you a base AC. If you have multiple armors, you take the one that gives you the highest base AC."

This is about the only good news I've seen...

"Rage +5/5: This creature can choose to take disadvantage on a melee attack to gain +5 damage. If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage. The attack still counts as a miss for determining other special effects or abilities.Goring Charge:On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack. This melee attack is a gore attack (+4 attack, 3d10 + 4 damage). If it hits, the target must also make a Strength save (DC 12) or be knocked prone and, on its next turn, the target cannot use its movement to do anything other than stand up or crawl.

Keen Senses: This creature has a +5 bonus to all checks to detect hidden creatures, and the minimum of its d20 die roll on such checks is a 10."

Again there goes the Wizard and the Rogue... dead....

All in all another let down article... why do they not understand the basics of math?

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels.. I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

I am intrigued.  That's a very elegant idea.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

They have talked about damage thresholds for certain conditions, and I think that should stay.  It would certainly help preserve a solo's ability to act until the end of battle.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:04AM, lokiare wrote:

"When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures."

You know what assuming does to u and me right?

"The adventure design guidelines give an XP budget for an entire day, a range of XP values for easy, average, and tough fights, and a suggested maximum XP value for a single monster. In other words, you have a daily budget you can spend, guidelines for how much of that budget to spend on a given fight, and a limit of how much XP you can spend on a single monster. As with everything that focuses on the DM, this is all advice to use as you see fit."

Yep and sometimes you will have to spend that entire budget in a single encounter...

"Here’s a way to frame it as a question: In a generic dungeon, on what level does the monster most commonly show up?"

There's your second mistake. "Generic Dungeon" only those found in dungeon magazine, never at my table...

"A mook is the equivalent of one character, an elite the equivalent of two, and a solo the equivalent of four."

So then you have level, level +1, level +3. Why do you have categories?

"The ability scores form the basis of the minotaur’s attacks. Its 18 Strength gives it a +4 attack bonus, which is on target for its level. I settled on the greataxe as the default minotaur weapon. Since minotaurs are size Large, their weapons deal one more die of damage than normal size weapons. Thus, the minotaur attacks at +4 with its greataxe, inflicting 2d12 + 4 damage on a hit. Those are in line with its level and power rating."

Greataxe with +4 to attack and damage. Well there goes the wizard and the rogue in a few hits. Sure hope they don't mind rolling up new characters...

"Another alternative in this case would be to increase the minotaur’s damage. It swings wildly, but hits hard. In some cases, a creature’s lack of training might translate into an attack roll penalty. A dim hill giant with a 20 Strength might swing only with a +3 to hit, since it is too clumsy and dense to make the most of its strength when it comes to accuracy."

Yeah, increase the damage that way it will still do zero damage when it misses 19 rounds in a row against the full defense plate mail and sheild weilding defender cleric...

"For hit points, a level 5 elite monster should sit somewhere in the 50s. Note that this is lower than what you’ve seen in the playtest so far. As mentioned in our latest podcast, we’ve deflated hit points and damage across the system. Character and monster hit points are lower, while damage has also come down a notch. It’s worth noting that we did not change magical or Hit Die healing for now. We’re interested in seeing if dropping overall hit points makes healing feel more useful."

But damage hasn't gone down, so guess what. The wizard and rogue are both going to die easily now...

"The minotaur uses the default d10 Hit Die for size Large creatures. Having 10d10 Hit Dice plus its Constitution bonus puts it at 57 hit points (hit points per d10 Hit Die averages to 5.5). As you can see, the Constitution score has a much smaller effect on a monster’s overall hit points. Instead, a tough monster has more Hit Dice and therefore more hit points."

Well at least they are beginning to realize how the math works behind the game, too bad they haven't put it together yet and seen how horrible a jumbled mess it is when it is all together...

"It’s worth noting that in this system, armor does not stack with other types of armor. Armor gives you a base AC. If you have multiple armors, you take the one that gives you the highest base AC."

This is about the only good news I've seen...

"Rage +5/5: This creature can choose to take disadvantage on a melee attack to gain +5 damage. If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage. The attack still counts as a miss for determining other special effects or abilities.Goring Charge:On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack. This melee attack is a gore attack (+4 attack, 3d10 + 4 damage). If it hits, the target must also make a Strength save (DC 12) or be knocked prone and, on its next turn, the target cannot use its movement to do anything other than stand up or crawl.

Keen Senses: This creature has a +5 bonus to all checks to detect hidden creatures, and the minimum of its d20 die roll on such checks is a 10."

Again there goes the Wizard and the Rogue... dead....

All in all another let down article... why do they not understand the basics of math?

The rogue and wizard can be smarter than a rock and not get into freakin melee with the giant mad axe swinging monster.  The minataur isn't even smart enough to realize he should be killing the guys in cloth first.  He will in fact just keep trying to hit the fighter that he can hardly hit.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:13AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:04AM, lokiare wrote:

"When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures."

You know what assuming does to u and me right?

"The adventure design guidelines give an XP budget for an entire day, a range of XP values for easy, average, and tough fights, and a suggested maximum XP value for a single monster. In other words, you have a daily budget you can spend, guidelines for how much of that budget to spend on a given fight, and a limit of how much XP you can spend on a single monster. As with everything that focuses on the DM, this is all advice to use as you see fit."

Yep and sometimes you will have to spend that entire budget in a single encounter...

"Here’s a way to frame it as a question: In a generic dungeon, on what level does the monster most commonly show up?"

There's your second mistake. "Generic Dungeon" only those found in dungeon magazine, never at my table...

"A mook is the equivalent of one character, an elite the equivalent of two, and a solo the equivalent of four."

So then you have level, level +1, level +3. Why do you have categories?

"The ability scores form the basis of the minotaur’s attacks. Its 18 Strength gives it a +4 attack bonus, which is on target for its level. I settled on the greataxe as the default minotaur weapon. Since minotaurs are size Large, their weapons deal one more die of damage than normal size weapons. Thus, the minotaur attacks at +4 with its greataxe, inflicting 2d12 + 4 damage on a hit. Those are in line with its level and power rating."

Greataxe with +4 to attack and damage. Well there goes the wizard and the rogue in a few hits. Sure hope they don't mind rolling up new characters...

"Another alternative in this case would be to increase the minotaur’s damage. It swings wildly, but hits hard. In some cases, a creature’s lack of training might translate into an attack roll penalty. A dim hill giant with a 20 Strength might swing only with a +3 to hit, since it is too clumsy and dense to make the most of its strength when it comes to accuracy."

Yeah, increase the damage that way it will still do zero damage when it misses 19 rounds in a row against the full defense plate mail and sheild weilding defender cleric...

"For hit points, a level 5 elite monster should sit somewhere in the 50s. Note that this is lower than what you’ve seen in the playtest so far. As mentioned in our latest podcast, we’ve deflated hit points and damage across the system. Character and monster hit points are lower, while damage has also come down a notch. It’s worth noting that we did not change magical or Hit Die healing for now. We’re interested in seeing if dropping overall hit points makes healing feel more useful."

But damage hasn't gone down, so guess what. The wizard and rogue are both going to die easily now...

"The minotaur uses the default d10 Hit Die for size Large creatures. Having 10d10 Hit Dice plus its Constitution bonus puts it at 57 hit points (hit points per d10 Hit Die averages to 5.5). As you can see, the Constitution score has a much smaller effect on a monster’s overall hit points. Instead, a tough monster has more Hit Dice and therefore more hit points."

Well at least they are beginning to realize how the math works behind the game, too bad they haven't put it together yet and seen how horrible a jumbled mess it is when it is all together...

"It’s worth noting that in this system, armor does not stack with other types of armor. Armor gives you a base AC. If you have multiple armors, you take the one that gives you the highest base AC."

This is about the only good news I've seen...

"Rage +5/5: This creature can choose to take disadvantage on a melee attack to gain +5 damage. If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage. The attack still counts as a miss for determining other special effects or abilities.Goring Charge:On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack. This melee attack is a gore attack (+4 attack, 3d10 + 4 damage). If it hits, the target must also make a Strength save (DC 12) or be knocked prone and, on its next turn, the target cannot use its movement to do anything other than stand up or crawl.

Keen Senses: This creature has a +5 bonus to all checks to detect hidden creatures, and the minimum of its d20 die roll on such checks is a 10."

Again there goes the Wizard and the Rogue... dead....

All in all another let down article... why do they not understand the basics of math?

The rogue and wizard can be smarter than a rock and not get into freakin melee with the giant mad axe swinging monster.  The minataur isn't even smart enough to realize he should be killing the guys in cloth first.  He will in fact just keep trying to hit the fighter that he can hardly hit.

The example Minotaur has a 16 Wisdom. He's going to notice attacking something he can't hit is pointless after a few swings.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:13AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

The rogue and wizard can be smarter than a rock and not get into freakin melee with the giant mad axe swinging monster.  The minataur isn't even smart enough to realize he should be killing the guys in cloth first.  He will in fact just keep trying to hit the fighter that he can hardly hit.  

I feel you are underestimating the competence of high Wisdom, being exceptionally perceptive, and explicitly intuitive. (Ninjaed.)

Actually, ALL mental abilities - Int, Wis, Cha - convey mental genius. By memory and advanced technology. By perceptiveness, intuition, quickthinking, and acumen. And by social insightfulness. Respectively.

I hope, I will never see an other ordinary animal with stupid-high exalted-Buddha Wisdom score. The animals Wisdom and Charisma are always going to be about the same as its Intelligence - lower than 6. Having good hearing or good sense of smell, is strictly a skill bonus, not an ability boost. Some animals are exceptional, of course, like dolphin, ape, and so on. Some animals have good social skills, maybe even dogs, and in their own way cats, and this boosts their Charisma slightly higher than other animals.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:04AM, Saelorn wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 1:58AM, thespaceinvader wrote:

I don't like the implication that ability scores, which have probably the biggest mechanical impact in the game (i.e. whether or not you hit the monster) are determined purely on a fluff basis, and in this case, leave the monster with 3 very low defences, the lowest of which is SIX POINTS lower than the highest. So, the PC which attacks STR in this instance, is stuffed, where the PC who attacks INT is fine. TO snark a little, I wonder which PCs are most likely to attack which defence...

To contrast, I think this is the greatest thing since to happen to D&D since... about 2006 or so.  It encourages players to treat living creatures as actual living creatures and parts of the world, with various natural strengths and weaknesses, rather than mere numbers whose abilities are always comparable to those of the party.

I mean, you'd have to be pretty dumb to try and grapple something that's obviously bigger and stronger than you are, right?  The rules here just support common sense.  As for game balance, I'm not sure that the player characters will have enough attacks against Int that they could afford to really exploit that weakness (unless they introduce psionics or something).

The spread is too great. That's the issue. When the spread is say 3-5 points like it generally is in 4e that's great. You have a defense that is DEFINITELY weaker than other defenses. The monster still has a chance to be threatening. When a defense is 6 or more points out it starts to get VERY marginal. It will be a trivial threat to the party that HAS a way to attack that defense, but otherwise...

And with 6 defenses (7 counting AC) there's virtually no situation where you won't have a serious vulnerability to exploit. Basically to make things work out reasonably you'll have to jack up ALL the defenses by 5 points and make the strong ones pretty much futile to mess with, so every monster then turns into the "find its weakness and pwn it". This is not really a good plan.

The other problem is just that there are too many defenses. You don't NEED 7 defenses to narratively explain the strengths and weakness of the monster. FORT/WILL/REF and AC is a good number. It gives you toughness, mental defense, quickness, and general resistance to blows. More than that is just overkill and creates problems.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:13AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

The rogue and wizard can be smarter than a rock and not get into freakin melee with the giant mad axe swinging monster.  The Minotaur isn't even smart enough to realize he should be killing the guys in cloth first.  He will in fact just keep trying to hit the fighter that he can hardly hit.

Yep with that high wisdom the Minotaur is just going to brush past the fighter and cleric and tear into the Wizard and Rogue and kill them with 1-2 hits. Since we have yet to see anything that will stop the Minotaur from brushing off the defender cleric or the fighter. Since the wizard's armor is a 10 round shield spell and high dex (which they don't have in the play test). They have a 15 AC at best, which means the Minotaur only needs a 10 to hit. That would be easy to get with disadvantage. In other words, rage + charge = dead Wizard...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:11AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels.. I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

I am intrigued.  That's a very elegant idea.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

They have talked about damage thresholds for certain conditions, and I think that should stay.  It would certainly help preserve a solo's ability to act until the end of battle.

Ah, yeah, I missed that little nugget from Garthanos. Something like that has sort of crossed my mind once or twice over the years too, but I'd long since forgotten that thought. It could be an elaboration of the "you get extra attacks at higher level" like in AD&D where it only applied to sub-1-hd creatures. I always thought that mechanic was kind of a lost opportunity since it was really not worth much. You had this tiny window of levels 2-4 or so where it might actually help you. Beyond that kobolds and goblins and such were pretty much too trivial to really worry about, so it was kinda irrelevant. Basing it on level difference makes it work well over a wide range of levels.

Damage thresholds could be pretty good, yeah. Again though I think using a level difference concept might be the best way to do that.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:58AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

The spread is too great. That's the issue. When the spread is say 3-5 points like it generally is in 4e that's great. You have a defense that is DEFINITELY weaker than other defenses. The monster still has a chance to be threatening. When a defense is 6 or more points out it starts to get VERY marginal. It will be a trivial threat to the party that HAS a way to attack that defense, but otherwise...

I guess the question all comes down to, "How easy will it be to target a defense of your choice?"

I was operating under the impression that maybe the wizard is going to have a spell that can target Int, but that's not a given and it's unlikely that it will be either spammable or turn the tide of battle single-handedly.  The fighter (and rogue) would mostly have AC or Strength/Dex/Con attacks, but even the Dex-resisted abilities wouldn't be usable every round as soon as it's identified that the target has lower Dex than AC.

If it turns out that, say, the bard gets an awesome at-will attack against Charisma, then I could see it being a potential issue when the bard turns into the superstar against every lumbering hulk encounter.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:04AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:11AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels.. I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

I am intrigued.  That's a very elegant idea.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

They have talked about damage thresholds for certain conditions, and I think that should stay.  It would certainly help preserve a solo's ability to act until the end of battle.

Ah, yeah, I missed that little nugget from Garthanos. Something like that has sort of crossed my mind once or twice over the years too, but I'd long since forgotten that thought. It could be an elaboration of the "you get extra attacks at higher level" like in AD&D where it only applied to sub-1-hd creatures. I always thought that mechanic was kind of a lost opportunity since it was really not worth much. You had this tiny window of levels 2-4 or so where it might actually help you. Beyond that kobolds and goblins and such were pretty much too trivial to really worry about, so it was kinda irrelevant. Basing it on level difference makes it work well over a wide range of levels.

Damage thresholds could be pretty good, yeah. Again though I think using a level difference concept might be the best way to do that.

An extra attack based on level difference has some problems. First, how many attacks do I get if there is a mixed group of monsters where some would qualify me for extra attacks and some would not? Second, how will I know that I get extra attacks unless the DM says "these kobolds are weak enough that you can attack two per turn"?

Here is an alternate approach that achieves similar effects: if I kill an enemy outright in one hit (i.e., I drop it from max HP to 0 in one blow), then I get an extra attack (a variant on cleave). This could be limited to one extra attack per round, and that limit could rise as I level. This way at higher levels, I really can just mow through a bunch of goblins.

The "rank role" (mook, standard, elite, solo) should be modular, can be changed.

For example a goblin riding a wyrn is a solo monster, the "stage boss" of videogame... but later PCs are traveling by a skyship or a spelljammer, with giant crossbows or "high-tech" weapons. Now that enemy is too easy to be defeated. The DM should change it and be now only a "mook", with lower XP reward.

My intention is if monster rank roles can be modified easily we could try look for a better balance of power for possible new d20 modern, with different levels (soldier o civilian, past of future, superheroes or without FXs)...because if your PC is a swashbuckler from Age of Adventure (d20 Past), or a mecha pilot of d20 Future killing that dinosaur will be easier or harder. 

 

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:31AM, Luis_Carlos wrote:

The "rank role" (mook, standard, elite, solo) should be modular, can be changed.

For example a goblin riding a wyrn is a solo monster, the "stage boss" of videogame... but later PCs are traveling by a skyship or a spelljammer, with giant crossbows or "high-tech" weapons. Now that enemy is too easy to be defeated. The DM should change it and be now only a "mook", with lower XP reward.

My intention is if monster rank roles can be modified easily we could try look for a better balance of power for possible new d20 modern, with different levels (soldier o civilian, past of future, superheroes or without FXs)...because if your PC is a swashbuckler from Age of Adventure (d20 Past), or a mecha pilot of d20 Future killing that dinosaur will be easier or harder. 

 

And that's why, in the system the devs are proposing, those labels are unnecessary.  When the party is at a level where a goblin riding a wyrn would take up most of their xp budget for the day, they are effectively a solo monster.  When the party advances to the point where that same goblin riding a wyrn only comprises a small portion of their daily encounter xp budget, they are effectively a mook.  This happens with no changes whatsoever to the monsters' description or stats.  That's the whole point of the xp budget system.  The xp represents the monsters challenge regardless of the players fighting it.  Either that reward will be a large portion of their xp budget, and represent a milestone towards leveling up, or that same monster will be trivial and represent only a tiny incremental portion of their next level, or any point in between.  The monster doesn't change.  The PC's do.

For your example of cross setting characters, obviously their advanced tech gives them an unfair advantage over the dinosaur.  I would represent this by increasing the xp budget for that party and requiring more xp for them to level (so they don't level too quickly), or just decrease the xp reward for mundane monsters who no longer pose a threat due to advance tech win buttons.  Of course, these are house rules, but when you're playing cross setting characters, house-ruling is pretty much inevitable, although guidelines can be provided to DM's who wish to do so.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:18AM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:13AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:04AM, lokiare wrote:

"When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures."

You know what assuming does to u and me right?

"The adventure design guidelines give an XP budget for an entire day, a range of XP values for easy, average, and tough fights, and a suggested maximum XP value for a single monster. In other words, you have a daily budget you can spend, guidelines for how much of that budget to spend on a given fight, and a limit of how much XP you can spend on a single monster. As with everything that focuses on the DM, this is all advice to use as you see fit."

Yep and sometimes you will have to spend that entire budget in a single encounter...

"Here’s a way to frame it as a question: In a generic dungeon, on what level does the monster most commonly show up?"

There's your second mistake. "Generic Dungeon" only those found in dungeon magazine, never at my table...

"A mook is the equivalent of one character, an elite the equivalent of two, and a solo the equivalent of four."

So then you have level, level +1, level +3. Why do you have categories?

"The ability scores form the basis of the minotaur’s attacks. Its 18 Strength gives it a +4 attack bonus, which is on target for its level. I settled on the greataxe as the default minotaur weapon. Since minotaurs are size Large, their weapons deal one more die of damage than normal size weapons. Thus, the minotaur attacks at +4 with its greataxe, inflicting 2d12 + 4 damage on a hit. Those are in line with its level and power rating."

Greataxe with +4 to attack and damage. Well there goes the wizard and the rogue in a few hits. Sure hope they don't mind rolling up new characters...

"Another alternative in this case would be to increase the minotaur’s damage. It swings wildly, but hits hard. In some cases, a creature’s lack of training might translate into an attack roll penalty. A dim hill giant with a 20 Strength might swing only with a +3 to hit, since it is too clumsy and dense to make the most of its strength when it comes to accuracy."

Yeah, increase the damage that way it will still do zero damage when it misses 19 rounds in a row against the full defense plate mail and sheild weilding defender cleric...

"For hit points, a level 5 elite monster should sit somewhere in the 50s. Note that this is lower than what you’ve seen in the playtest so far. As mentioned in our latest podcast, we’ve deflated hit points and damage across the system. Character and monster hit points are lower, while damage has also come down a notch. It’s worth noting that we did not change magical or Hit Die healing for now. We’re interested in seeing if dropping overall hit points makes healing feel more useful."

But damage hasn't gone down, so guess what. The wizard and rogue are both going to die easily now...

"The minotaur uses the default d10 Hit Die for size Large creatures. Having 10d10 Hit Dice plus its Constitution bonus puts it at 57 hit points (hit points per d10 Hit Die averages to 5.5). As you can see, the Constitution score has a much smaller effect on a monster’s overall hit points. Instead, a tough monster has more Hit Dice and therefore more hit points."

Well at least they are beginning to realize how the math works behind the game, too bad they haven't put it together yet and seen how horrible a jumbled mess it is when it is all together...

"It’s worth noting that in this system, armor does not stack with other types of armor. Armor gives you a base AC. If you have multiple armors, you take the one that gives you the highest base AC."

This is about the only good news I've seen...

"Rage +5/5: This creature can choose to take disadvantage on a melee attack to gain +5 damage. If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage. The attack still counts as a miss for determining other special effects or abilities.Goring Charge:On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack. This melee attack is a gore attack (+4 attack, 3d10 + 4 damage). If it hits, the target must also make a Strength save (DC 12) or be knocked prone and, on its next turn, the target cannot use its movement to do anything other than stand up or crawl.

Keen Senses: This creature has a +5 bonus to all checks to detect hidden creatures, and the minimum of its d20 die roll on such checks is a 10."

Again there goes the Wizard and the Rogue... dead....

All in all another let down article... why do they not understand the basics of math?

The rogue and wizard can be smarter than a rock and not get into freakin melee with the giant mad axe swinging monster.  The minataur isn't even smart enough to realize he should be killing the guys in cloth first.  He will in fact just keep trying to hit the fighter that he can hardly hit.

The example Minotaur has a 16 Wisdom. He's going to notice attacking something he can't hit is pointless after a few swings.

hence the reason why you keep yourself mobile.  stay out of the minataur's distance so he has the choice of running or attempting to actually hit someone.  As much as a 16 wisdom lets him be intuitive it doesn't give him the ability to make an intelligent decision.  He in fact has a negative to making intelligent decisions.  Yes a higher than normal wisdom can help with decision making for someone with an normal (10) itelligence.  A 6 intelligence however in fact provides negatives to making an intelligent decision upon the facts you have intuitively determined about your surroundings.  He may know that he really needs to kill that little guy that keeps shooting him, but his plan is to kill the guy in front of him first and then deal with the little guy, or to hit the little guy should he get within reach.  sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:14AM, Saelorn wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:58AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

The spread is too great. That's the issue. When the spread is say 3-5 points like it generally is in 4e that's great. You have a defense that is DEFINITELY weaker than other defenses. The monster still has a chance to be threatening. When a defense is 6 or more points out it starts to get VERY marginal. It will be a trivial threat to the party that HAS a way to attack that defense, but otherwise...

I guess the question all comes down to, "How easy will it be to target a defense of your choice?"

I was operating under the impression that maybe the wizard is going to have a spell that can target Int, but that's not a given and it's unlikely that it will be either spammable or turn the tide of battle single-handedly.  The fighter (and rogue) would mostly have AC or Strength/Dex/Con attacks, but even the Dex-resisted abilities wouldn't be usable every round as soon as it's identified that the target has lower Dex than AC.

If it turns out that, say, the bard gets an awesome at-will attack against Charisma, then I could see it being a potential issue when the bard turns into the superstar against every lumbering hulk encounter.

A possible answer to the question of severely vulnerable stats is that maybe they aren't so bad in combat. If we assume the game continues with the model of spells and other effects targeting any of the six abilities, and that these are rolled as saves by the target creature, you could say that negative ability modifies do not apply to saves. This way ability scores below 10 can still have value for interaction and exploration and be representative of the general "feel" of a monster, but not seriously gimp them in combat.

But the DM guide should help, advice, show you how changing power of monsters, adding level of PC classes, or monster rank classes (brute, soldier, lurker, controller) or monster type classes (beast, giant, fay, dragon...). Why? Because I want that drow priestess always was a hard nut to crack or the dragons was enoughly feared by PCs.



 

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:14AM, Saelorn wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:58AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

The spread is too great. That's the issue. When the spread is say 3-5 points like it generally is in 4e that's great. You have a defense that is DEFINITELY weaker than other defenses. The monster still has a chance to be threatening. When a defense is 6 or more points out it starts to get VERY marginal. It will be a trivial threat to the party that HAS a way to attack that defense, but otherwise...

I guess the question all comes down to, "How easy will it be to target a defense of your choice?"

I was operating under the impression that maybe the wizard is going to have a spell that can target Int, but that's not a given and it's unlikely that it will be either spammable or turn the tide of battle single-handedly.  The fighter (and rogue) would mostly have AC or Strength/Dex/Con attacks, but even the Dex-resisted abilities wouldn't be usable every round as soon as it's identified that the target has lower Dex than AC.

If it turns out that, say, the bard gets an awesome at-will attack against Charisma, then I could see it being a potential issue when the bard turns into the superstar against every lumbering hulk encounter.

Well, if there's actually no effective way for PCs to attack these various defenses then why do they exist? If there's some minor attack you can make that is slightly more effective against certain monsters, that doesn't do a lot for me TBH. Most players will barely notice the difference in practice.

In 4e the general idea was that non-AC attacking characters (wizards being the prime example) would generally have 3 defenses they would want to have options to attack. That meant that if you had say 5 or 6 powers (nowadays a level 1 PC) you'd have 2 NADs you could hit with at-wills, and then you'd have 1-2 encounter powers (maybe even be able to do a swap) to hit possibly the 3rd one at least now and then, plus your daily which would probably target one. So you WOULD be lopsided, and you might for other reasons not even spread it out THAT much, but you could get some coverage. You'd be best on some NADs, but all of them would be relevant.

With 6 scores to attack, you  cannot possibly ever cover them all. It is sheerest luck if you happen to be able to hit 3 of them effectively, and chances are it will be 2 at lower levels. And again, just what do all this superabundance of defenses exactly represent? Why would a particular attack feel like it should be resisted by one specific defense over another? I mean one guy can dodge the acid, another can just not be harmed by it, and a third might just have so much mental discipline he doesn't give a crud about it.

And then yes there is the "lumbering hulk" problem. If every dumb animal has a low INT, which is pretty much tautological and guaranteed to represent a large fraction of monsters, then INT attacks suddenly become hugely valuable. Likewise if MANY things logically make sense as DEX attacks, then DEX becomes overvalued at a stat. Honestly it is the mirror image of the issue with attack stats in 4e. It isn't a very smart design.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:18AM, Lawolf wrote:

Phil: they have stated that they have reduced HP and damage across the board. If monsters and PCs use the same rules for HP a PC fighter will have only around 35 HP. A 16 strength fighter will have d12 + 3 + 4 = 13.5 average damage (from what we have seen so far). Also chain mail seems an appropriate armor for a level 5 character so 16 AC seems good as well. The Minotaur can take out the fighter in just two hits. The Minotaur should never attempt to rage. And due to daily adventure exp budgets, the swingy ness in damage from the Minotaur will cause 5 minute work day problems. Remember with adventure day exp budgets each combat should be a breeze until the last one of the day. The Minotaur looks appropriate for an encounter based design however. If HP had a significant encounter based component and if fighter's surge required a short rest to recover so it could be reliable used every fight then I would say 2 fighters vs 1 Minotaur was a level appropriate challenge.

If you read the playtest characters and the How to Play book, you will see that the fighter's weapon is 2d6 +8 damage at lvl 3 (I suspect this will be higher in the next 2 lvls and I actually suspect it will go up a bit since the designers told us with bonded accuracy that damage will up as you lvl).  The designers said that damage will go up as characters lvl.  I don't think a lvl 5 character will still be wearing chainmail, do they just not get gold each adventure??  Buying plate on a dwarf fighter seems like a no brainer to me, I really don't know who you are playing with as players if they don't want to upgrade their gear.  Sure if your players are still running around the gear that they started in,then the minotaur will be more trouble.  But we are talking about lvl 5, what were they doing the first 4 lvls setting at the inn and lvling through catty dialog.  This minotaur will do very very low average damage against anyone wearing armor.  One cantrip (ray of frost) will put this minotaur out of action for a turn (or force improvised attack).  I also suggested that the slayer fighter would probably have a magic weapon by the time of level 5 which will improve his damage (I know magic is supposed to be optional, but I don't know of any dnd edition that I have ever played where a lvl 5 fighter didn't have a magic weapon and probably bracers of something nice by this lvl).  But even without any magic whatsoever, on averages alone the playtest fighter would go toe to toe with this minotaur (assuming they invested in the bare minimal of gear).

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:09AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 1:16AM, Saelorn wrote:

These are specifically big, heavy hitters.  As a necessary drawback, anything that hits really hard is going to have fairly lousy accuracy.  Otherwise, it just goes around beating people into paste, and that's not a ton of fun.

Remember, +1 magical armor is not the assumption.  Magic armor is supposed to feel like a big advantage against anyone not weilding a magical weapon.  I suspect that they're going to back away from the stacking benefits of a magical armor and shield, simply because that lets the math get out of control way too quickly, but they may have not realized that part yet.

Solid comment.

But at the same time, if hp represent luck and skill and they drop as you get tired from all the dodging and defending, those heavy hits need not be so heavy if accuracy is better.  A monster with loads of hp that never hits isn't much fun for DMs or players.  Maybe the giants should have a more accurate lower damage hit for use against fresh opponents as the little folk dodge their clumsy blows and then the slower, heavier hit that knocks oppoents prone as an alternative attack against bloodied opponents?

4e baked the monsters' tactics into their powers and it will still be possible to do that in 5e to some extent.  The minotaur's low intelligence combined with decent wisdom means that it will probably attack the most recent person that hurt it the most but every monster can be played in a way to screw over the players by a mean DM.  We've all seen DM's allow monsters to make decisions based on information they shouldn't have.  The rules won't stop that.

I think people worrying about rogiues getting battered are forgetting that this has been a problem for them in every edition.  It's the main reason for multiclassing into fighter.  It will be interesting to see how wizard players will fare if their AC stays too low for too long.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:28AM, GilbertMDH wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:04AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:11AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels.. I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

I am intrigued.  That's a very elegant idea.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

They have talked about damage thresholds for certain conditions, and I think that should stay.  It would certainly help preserve a solo's ability to act until the end of battle.

Ah, yeah, I missed that little nugget from Garthanos. Something like that has sort of crossed my mind once or twice over the years too, but I'd long since forgotten that thought. It could be an elaboration of the "you get extra attacks at higher level" like in AD&D where it only applied to sub-1-hd creatures. I always thought that mechanic was kind of a lost opportunity since it was really not worth much. You had this tiny window of levels 2-4 or so where it might actually help you. Beyond that kobolds and goblins and such were pretty much too trivial to really worry about, so it was kinda irrelevant. Basing it on level difference makes it work well over a wide range of levels.

Damage thresholds could be pretty good, yeah. Again though I think using a level difference concept might be the best way to do that.

An extra attack based on level difference has some problems. First, how many attacks do I get if there is a mixed group of monsters where some would qualify me for extra attacks and some would not? Second, how will I know that I get extra attacks unless the DM says "these kobolds are weak enough that you can attack two per turn"?

Here is an alternate approach that achieves similar effects: if I kill an enemy outright in one hit (i.e., I drop it from max HP to 0 in one blow), then I get an extra attack (a variant on cleave). This could be limited to one extra attack per round, and that limit could rise as I level. This way at higher levels, I really can just mow through a bunch of goblins.

Yeah, IIRC that's sort of how the fighter's cleave works. I could see doing multi-attacks on a level difference basis though. You'd attack the first target and if it was low enough level you'd get a free extra attack, either against the same target or if you killed it, then against something else. Granted that something else might be higher level, but I don't think that would be game breaking. It could certainly be worked into the fighter's overall combat effectiveness.

Anyway, there are various ways things can be done. I'm not really sure I have a strong preference.

2 quick thoughts. One is that the variance between a high ability score and a low one has too much of an impact in regards to monster defenses. I suggest speeding out ability score bonuses more (and finding an actual meaning for the ability score somehow). Maybe a spread like this:

3-5: -2
6-8: -1
9-11: +0
12-14: +1
15-17: +2
18-20: +3
21-24: +4
Etc

This will make bounded accuracy work better with high attribute monsters and narrow te gap between a 6 and a 20.

The other thought is that perhaps monsters (and players) should have "quick" attacks and "heavy" attacks. The quick ones can be accurate low damage attacks while the heavy ones are less accurate but more powerful. This will help prevent monsters with low accuracy being trivialized by defense optimized players.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:05AM, Philip wrote:

(rage is very bad on low attack bonus creatures vs decent armor hitting only 1/16 of the time, and only doing the min 5 damage 1/4th of the time).

Rage works 3/4ths of the time. (actually slightly more than that as 10 or higher is 55% chance on a single d20, so it's [100% - 45% x 45%])

If that attack misses but either die roll was 10 or higher, the attack is instead a glancing blow that deals 5 damage.

So it's pretty reliable (if unimpressive) source of damage against a character with jacked up AC. And he still can get lucky and actually hit for increased damage.

Is there that much of a difference between saying that you have an AC, grapple check, Fort, Ref, Will; and saying that you have an AC, Strength defense, Con defense, Dex defense, Wisdom defense, and even though they'll hardly ever come up you could also theoretically have something that attacks Int or Cha and in that rare circumstance it would follow the same rules?

This might be one of those psychology "feels different" things, where it bugs people to have it presented as such even though it doesn't affect actual gameplay much.  I ran into a similar situation when I ran something much like this a couple years back - people just don't like having a stat of any sort that is hardly ever going to come up.

I mean, not having attacks against Int or Cha has significant merit, from a game-design standpoint, since there is no huge category of creatures that all have a glaring weakness to any other one defense.

Well at least rage is an actually bonus now as opposed to a dm trap ability.  It still doesn't really increase it damage vs highly armored targets, it more or less washes out.

Look at how castles and crusades does saving throws. Charisma covers charm and fear effects which are very common and SoD effects.  Int covers illusions primarily I think.  Wisdom had less uses against spells but covered spot and listen which was huge. It could use some clean up, but it gives a pretty good list of what ability score should be used in which situation.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 12:47PM, Lawolf wrote:

2 quick thoughts. One is that the variance between a high ability score and a low one has too much of an impact in regards to monster defenses. I suggest speeding out ability score bonuses more (and finding an actual meaning for the ability score somehow). Maybe a spread like this:

3-5: -2
6-8: -1
9-11: +0
12-14: +1
15-17: +2
18-20: +3
21-24: +4
Etc

This will make bounded accuracy work better with high attribute monsters and narrow te gap between a 6 and a 20.

The other thought is that perhaps monsters (and players) should have "quick" attacks and "heavy" attacks. The quick ones can be accurate low damage attacks while the heavy ones are less accurate but more powerful. This will help prevent monsters with low accuracy being trivialized by defense optimized players.

I think basically Mike's comment that scores "will be in a narrower range" is effectively acknowledging that you can't afford to allow a huge variation.

As it stands now you probably have a low of say 4 for INT on some monsters, and high end stats probably are not going to above 22 or something (I think its likely a PC can get to around 22 at high levels, but not beyond that, though we don't know for CERTAIN. They have implied this a couple times). So defenses (technically saves) being in the range of -3 to +6 is a 9 point range right now. This IS pretty large, and I'd be willing to bet a fairly significant slice of monsters will have a stat in the lower end of that range (4-6 INT/WIS/CHA, maybe DEX or CON now and then, rarely STR but it is possible). Of course a lot of your humanoid type monsters are probably going to be mostly in the middle range with maybe a variance of 5 or 6 at most and possibly as little as 3 for some of them.

I think overall the issue is going to be certain monsters, and specifically wizards favoring INT as a weak point. Remember too though that this is a Vancian system. You can switch up. In 4e not only were there only 3 defenses to worry about for spells but you didn't get to pick from large lists of powers. A 4e stock Arcanist wizard could only switch daily attack powers (and utilities). A Mage can switch encounter powers too, and Tome of Readiness/Improved Spellbook, and some themes can add some extra switching, but it at least takes a LOT of investment to be able to tune your character to exploit even a known weakness of most enemies more than a little bit. It does get easier at high levels, but overall a monster with a single defense that is 3-4 points below the others is still quite viable. In a game where you can "load for bear" knowing you're going to need to fight minotaurs, for example, you can pick a bunch of mind effecting spells for that day and with it being 8 points easier to get an effect with those it is VERY worth it. Of course the other issue is that again the melee types are rather boned. They don't have switchable powers and in fact probably are stuck hitting AC. This is a whole aspect of the game that they're going to miss out on pretty much entirely. At best fighter maneuvers are unlikely to grant more flexibility than maybe exploiting the minotaur's lowish dex. I could see some possibilities for other things, but again if abilities are cast in the role of saves the game is kind of discouraging something like a "combat trick" where you exploit your opponent's stupidity for instance. I'm sure we'd hear many screams the second fighters had a 'power' that forced an INT save...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 12:52PM, Philip wrote:

Well at least rage is an actually bonus now as opposed to a dm trap ability.  It still doesn't really increase it damage vs highly armored targets, it more or less washes out.

Unless said targets have plate and heavy shield + get some bonus from somewhere (feats, abilities, magic - people will find a way) and if on top of that they will also (semi) reliably apply disadvantage to a minotaur, then Rage will be pretty much the only ability that will help him not get completly trivialized. What I'm trying to say is that I see Rage as a munchkin-proofing monster mechanic. Doesn't help you much against normal player party of appropriate level but keeps minotaur somewhat of a threat when faced with optimized or higher level characters.
Rage is a manoeuver of monster desperation.

I could totally see giving characters combat tricks similar to Savage Worlds. Maye something like this.

Taunt: int vs int: success target is dazed until end of turn (grants advantage). 

Intimidate: cha vs cha: success target is shaken until end of turn (has disadvantage, cannot take reactions).

Acrobatic Trick: Dex vs Dex: insert awesome effect here...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:04AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:11AM, wrecan wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:46AM, Garthanos wrote:

I think you ought to get bonus opportunities to attack based on the difference in levels.. I am 5 levels higher I can find more oppenings.. and get to make additional attack level then becomes a defense in its own right.... you expose fewer openings for you renemies.

I am intrigued.  That's a very elegant idea.

Damage resistance could be made part of level as well so that .. to stun you have to do X damage with the attack.

They have talked about damage thresholds for certain conditions, and I think that should stay.  It would certainly help preserve a solo's ability to act until the end of battle.

Ah, yeah, I missed that little nugget from Garthanos. Something like that has sort of crossed my mind once or twice over the years too, but I'd long since forgotten that thought. It could be an elaboration of the "you get extra attacks at higher level" like in AD&D where it only applied to sub-1-hd creatures. I always thought that mechanic was kind of a lost opportunity since it was really not worth much. You had this tiny window of levels 2-4 or so where it might actually help you. Beyond that kobolds and goblins and such were pretty much too trivial to really worry about, so it was kinda irrelevant. Basing it on level difference makes it work well over a wide range of levels.

Damage thresholds could be pretty good, yeah. Again though I think using a level difference concept might be the best way to do that.

It was an old idea for me too (I did a lot of hacking on D&D back in the day) and yes very possibly inspired by the AD&D mechanic bonus attacks vs low hd enemies. 

Did I miss something where it says you can't voluntarily subject yourself to disadvantage if you're already suffering it from another source?  If so, then disadvantage is even more powerful than it was before because it can completely disable entire powers for as long as it's applied.  If not, then there's absolutely no reason for the minotaur to use that ability whenever it's prone or blinded or whatever else anyone can do to cause disadvantage.

Have I mentioned how disadvantage not stacking is a huge problem? 

Jul 23, 2012 -- 4:12AM, pilgaard wrote:

  The 'Hill Giant-always-miss'-issue requires some further design considerations, I think. I like the concept of the big brute being poor at hitting but when it hits it really hurts... 

This right here is why I am perfectly happy with the low to-hit bonus of Hill Giants, etc.

For me, though, the real gem in this article had nothing to do with monster design:

I peg its AC at 16...the equivalent of chainmail in our revised armor tables.

This hints at the possibility that they've made good on the promise to give heavy armour a boost, since, IIRC, chainmail had only 15 AC in the original playtest material.

I am pleased.  My enthusiasm for D&D Next grows...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:54AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

He's wise enough to notice attacking the Fighter is a waste of time and he'd be better off attackign something else, even spending a turn hustling if he really needs to.

He's not booksmart, but he is cunning and wise and all that, which is still plenty for him to notice attacking something he's not hurting much is not helping.

Goign yb 4e skills, Insight(the kind of skill you'd probably use to notice this kind of thing) is completely Wisdom based.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:19PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:54AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

He's wise enough to notice attacking the Fighter is a waste of time and he'd be better off attackign something else, even spending a turn hustling if he really needs to.

He's not booksmart, but he is cunning and wise and all that, which is still plenty for him to notice attacking something he's not hurting much is not helping.

Goign yb 4e skills, Insight(the kind of skill you'd probably use to notice this kind of thing) is completely Wisdom based.

Hustling? All they have to do is move then gore that's 1.5 times their move speed...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:25PM, lokiare wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:19PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:54AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

He's wise enough to notice attacking the Fighter is a waste of time and he'd be better off attackign something else, even spending a turn hustling if he really needs to.

He's not booksmart, but he is cunning and wise and all that, which is still plenty for him to notice attacking something he's not hurting much is not helping.

Goign yb 4e skills, Insight(the kind of skill you'd probably use to notice this kind of thing) is completely Wisdom based.

Hustling? All they have to do is move then gore that's 1.5 times their move speed...

 Huh, one sec...

On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack

I don't know, looks like it has to use it's move to move half it's speed, THEN make the attack.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 8:32PM, WhiteHarness wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 4:12AM, pilgaard wrote:

  The 'Hill Giant-always-miss'-issue requires some further design considerations, I think. I like the concept of the big brute being poor at hitting but when it hits it really hurts... 

This right here is why I am perfectly happy with the low to-hit bonus of Hill Giants, etc.

For me, though, the real gem in this article had nothing to do with monster design:

I peg its AC at 16...the equivalent of chainmail in our revised armor tables.

This hints at the possibility that they've made good on the promise to give heavy armour a boost, since, IIRC, chainmail had only 15 AC in the original playtest material.

I am pleased.  My enthusiasm for D&D Next grows...

The issue is swinginess. If you create a hill giant that can virtually disable a PC in a single blow but has a low hit probability that monster is quite hard to use in an adventure. Either the dice run their normal course and the monster simple goes down without the party expending any resources, or it gets in a hit and pretty well ruins the fighter's entire day (because it will suck up a large amount of healing resources), or even worse the dice run a bit hot and half the party is smeared all over the side of the hill. None of those are ideal outcomes.

I mean its fine to have some 'puzzle monsters' where they're just not worth facing in a normal sort of fight, as long as they're used correctly (IE the 5e Medusa is swingy IF you were to drop it right into an adventure unannounced, but as a set piece that is foreshadowed it works fine). I'd be hard pressed to see why a hill giant of the type you describe would be a monster I'd really want to use though, except in a similar way. IMHO that wasn't the intended story role for that monster. It was more designed as a sort of very high level mook really.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:27PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:25PM, lokiare wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:19PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:54AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

He's wise enough to notice attacking the Fighter is a waste of time and he'd be better off attackign something else, even spending a turn hustling if he really needs to.

He's not booksmart, but he is cunning and wise and all that, which is still plenty for him to notice attacking something he's not hurting much is not helping.

Goign yb 4e skills, Insight(the kind of skill you'd probably use to notice this kind of thing) is completely Wisdom based.

Hustling? All they have to do is move then gore that's 1.5 times their move speed...

 Huh, one sec...

On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack

I don't know, looks like it has to use it's move to move half it's speed, THEN make the attack.

Your right, I read that originally as they can move up to half their speed then gore...

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:56PM, lokiare wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:27PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:25PM, lokiare wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:19PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 11:54AM, SleepsInTraffic wrote:

sure that plan is stupid, but so is the guy that made the plan.

He's wise enough to notice attacking the Fighter is a waste of time and he'd be better off attackign something else, even spending a turn hustling if he really needs to.

He's not booksmart, but he is cunning and wise and all that, which is still plenty for him to notice attacking something he's not hurting much is not helping.

Goign yb 4e skills, Insight(the kind of skill you'd probably use to notice this kind of thing) is completely Wisdom based.

Hustling? All they have to do is move then gore that's 1.5 times their move speed...

 Huh, one sec...

On its turn, this creature can use its movement to move at least half its speed in a straight line and then use its action to make a special melee attack

I don't know, looks like it has to use it's move to move half it's speed, THEN make the attack.

Your right, I read that originally as they can move up to half their speed then gore...

Yeah, I didn't actually catch that until a second read.

What I find strange about this article is that it looks to me as if Mearls is talking about 4e's monster design philosophy, but does everything he can not to use 4e terminology. It's kind of weird.

Anyway, I like where this is going. Think up your monster, assign Ability Scores, figure out the basic stats derived from them (adjust according to size category), equip/adjust as needed. Seems simple enough, but I wouldn't mind the return of a few labels to help in the process. From his example, it was clear that the minotaur was a Brute (why else would it have d10s as Hit Dice?), so I don't see why it shouldn't be mentionned during monster creation. I do think, however, that qualifiers like "Brute" or "Lurker" should not reflect combat roles, but rather monsters species; all minotaurs are Brutes, all Spiders are Lurkers. I'd also like to see a table for expected/average To-Hit/Damage/AC per level/HD. All in all, okay article, but some numbers, math and crunch would have been greatly appreciated on my part.

What I didn't like is correlating monster power (mook, elite and solo) to size category. When I read those "ranks", I think of 4e monsters and how they used them. Sure, the higher the rank (minion, standard, elite, solo), the more HP a monster had, but I think what made those ranks really distinct from one another was the number of options they had available to them. Elites and solos had more abilities they could use in combat, which made them much more intersting foes.

I think they should drop "mook/elite/solo" (if only because "mook" sounds silly and "solo" never really meant "solo"). Instead I suggest "standard/elite/champion". Whichever rank they have is more directly tied to the number of traits/abilities they have. Standards would have 0-1 traits, elites would have 2-3, and champions would have 4+. I'll use kobolds as an example:

• Standard Kobold: Strength in Numbers
• Elite Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield (maybe Shifty)
• Champion Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield, Shifty, Breath Attack (maybe more...)

The first two are lifted from the playtest packet. As for the third, I made it up. IMO, it's way more interesting (both for the DM playing it and players fighting it) than the Kobold Chieftain we currently have, which only gets to attack twice per round and has 22 times as many HP than a standard kobold (!) for some reason.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

The issue is swinginess. If you create a hill giant that can virtually disable a PC in a single blow but has a low hit probability that monster is quite hard to use in an adventure. Either the dice run their normal course and the monster simple goes down without the party expending any resources, or it gets in a hit and pretty well ruins the fighter's entire day (because it will suck up a large amount of healing resources), or even worse the dice run a bit hot and half the party is smeared all over the side of the hill. None of those are ideal outcomes.

I mean its fine to have some 'puzzle monsters' where they're just not worth facing in a normal sort of fight, as long as they're used correctly (IE the 5e Medusa is swingy IF you were to drop it right into an adventure unannounced, but as a set piece that is foreshadowed it works fine). I'd be hard pressed to see why a hill giant of the type you describe would be a monster I'd really want to use though, except in a similar way. IMHO that wasn't the intended story role for that monster. It was more designed as a sort of very high level mook really.

Good points.  Overall, it seems to be a matter of how much 'control'/predictability the DM prefers (ie. is the intention to provide x encounters meant to expend y party resources, before the final battle) as opposed to a more 'open' approach (the DM is well aware of the mentioned swinginess, and the outcome of the battle may have a significant impact on which direction the game takes afterwards (at least regarding the amount of resources the PCs have left)).
Also, an important part as well is how a hill giant is perceived as a monster concept - ie. is it merely an 'enlarged ogre' type of monster (the very high level mook view), or is a giant a powerful monster in itself (ie more like the position a titan holds in 4th ed).
Personally I don't have an issue with the swinginess of such powerful brutes - the players know this beforehand when they encounter the giants, and they can play accordingly (ie take their chances on a charge, play more cauteously, etc), and I like the concept of the huge brute being potentially very dangerous. But I see the problem for those who prefers a more predictable outcome of battles/adventure design.

4e suffers at least to some extend from being too predictable, especially if you play the game with people who have designed, developed and playtested a lot of adventures or are one of those type of players yourself. I often know after observing monsters for 1 round the level of the encounter and hence their defenses, damage output and whether it is smart to spend resources. It also means, that an easy fight lacks any risk, making it mostly boring (especially since even an easy fight in 4e takes a lot of time), and that a true "o ****" moment are rare. In my opinion, a bit of unpredictability is good since it gives players a bit of pause before they attack even if the opponents don't look overly strong. It rewards planning.

Having said that, if you make the things too unpredictable, you make adventure design very hard for inexperienced DMs both in regards to estimating the challenge for a fight and in dealing with how dice rolls change the pacing of the story immensely. I fear that what I have seen from DD Next at this point it is too unpredictable and I certainly hope that damage output, defenses, and hit points both on PC's and monster's side get a serious review... (having just witnessed how weird it is that a single first level spell insta-killed the "5th level" monster in a recent playtest that was supposed to be a lethal end fight of a one shot horror adventure.)

Jul 24, 2012 -- 2:32AM, Madfox11 wrote:

 
Having said that, if you make the things too unpredictable, you make adventure design very hard for inexperienced DMs both in regards to estimating the challenge for a fight and in dealing with how dice rolls change the pacing of the story immensely. I fear that what I have seen from DD Next at this point it is too unpredictable and I certainly hope that damage output, defenses, and hit points both on PC's and monster's side get a serious review... (having just witnessed how weird it is that a single first level spell insta-killed the "5th level" monster in a recent playtest that was supposed to be a lethal end fight of a one shot horror adventure.)

 Interesting you mention horror. Hight swing is a form of horror. That is what 1e felt like, teen slasher horror to me... with walk on characters who you dont dare get attached to cause a fluke will kill them. Horror controlled by die roll can be pretty anticlimactic at times.

Jul 24, 2012 -- 2:44AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jul 24, 2012 -- 2:32AM, Madfox11 wrote:

 
Having said that, if you make the things too unpredictable, you make adventure design very hard for inexperienced DMs both in regards to estimating the challenge for a fight and in dealing with how dice rolls change the pacing of the story immensely. I fear that what I have seen from DD Next at this point it is too unpredictable and I certainly hope that damage output, defenses, and hit points both on PC's and monster's side get a serious review... (having just witnessed how weird it is that a single first level spell insta-killed the "5th level" monster in a recent playtest that was supposed to be a lethal end fight of a one shot horror adventure.)

  Interesting you mention horror. Hight swing is a form of horror. That is what 1e felt like, teen slasher horror to me... with walk on characters who you dont dare get attached to cause a fluke will kill them. Horror controlled by die roll can be pretty anticlimactic at times.

Actually, for me there should be little swing in horror games. Fights, especially with the main villains, are incredibly dangerous, and virtually impossible to win. Take Call of Cthulhu for example, it is not a question if you die, but how (either that or your character ends up in an asylum). Horror is about hopelessness. If a lucky dice roll instantly kills the slasher killer in the first scene, then it is hardly horror

Jul 24, 2012 -- 3:07AM, Madfox11 wrote:

 If a lucky dice roll instantly kills the slasher killer in the first scene, then it is hardly horror

Unlucky dice turning an apparent protagonist in to road kill is however perfect slasher fiction.
 

Jul 24, 2012 -- 3:07AM, Madfox11 wrote:

 Horror is about hopelessness.

No that is just one form. Uncertainty and suspense are different than hopelessness.

Jul 24, 2012 -- 3:07AM, Madfox11 wrote:

either that or your character ends up in an asylum

Like this.

I didn't play it much (I'm more Dark/Urban Fantasy than Horror, probably one of my biggest problems with WW) but in CoC I found high caliber weapons and a sociopathic willingness to kill anything supernatural a wonderful balm to SAN loss. Of course PKing the idiot who thought PKing other players after summoning the Black Goat and calling that a 'sacrifice' extended my lifespan and the rest of the party's a great deal.

Myself, I like the stats for the Minotaur in the current playtest. I haven't tried it yet, but the stats actually look pretty balanced.
What's that, you say? One-hit kills are not balanced? Well, at first glance, yes, Gore seems overpowered. But think about this: he has to move AT LEAST 15 feet in a straight line, and no more than 30 feet. That means that for him to even use it, a target must be between 15 and 30 feet away in a straight line with no obstructions. If he has a chance to, then he will certainly use Gore on a viable target. If the players are metagaming, or even if the wizard bothered to make a Lore check, they probably know something like "the Minotaur can charge a victim, goring it with his massive horns. However, the Minotaur needs a running start to accomplish this." Even if they don't know this, basic tactics dictate that the melee heroes should stay in melee, and the casters should stay more than 30 feet back (because anything less would mean a baddie can reach you before you get away.) If this is the case, the Minotaur still has his Rage attack, which is a nice trait. It gives him a very low-accuracy, high-damage attack, but he still deals damage over time, so he doesn't seem stupid. Besides, I want my players to be totally freaking out when the Minotaur whirls around and charges the rogue. Should have stood back, buddy!

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:22PM, Shirebrok wrote:

What I find strange about this article is that it looks to me as if Mearls is talking about 4e's monster design philosophy, but does everything he can not to use 4e terminology. It's kind of weird.

Anyway, I like where this is going. Think up your monster, assign Ability Scores, figure out the basic stats derived from them (adjust according to size category), equip/adjust as needed. Seems simple enough, but I wouldn't mind the return of a few labels to help in the process. From his example, it was clear that the minotaur was a Brute (why else would it have d10s as Hit Dice?), so I don't see why it shouldn't be mentionned during monster creation. I do think, however, that qualifiers like "Brute" or "Lurker" should not reflect combat roles, but rather monsters species; all minotaurs are Brutes, all Spiders are Lurkers. I'd also like to see a table for expected/average To-Hit/Damage/AC per level/HD. All in all, okay article, but some numbers, math and crunch would have been greatly appreciated on my part.

What I didn't like is correlating monster power (mook, elite and solo) to size category. When I read those "ranks", I think of 4e monsters and how they used them. Sure, the higher the rank (minion, standard, elite, solo), the more HP a monster had, but I think what made those ranks really distinct from one another was the number of options they had available to them. Elites and solos had more abilities they could use in combat, which made them much more intersting foes.

I think they should drop "mook/elite/solo" (if only because "mook" sounds silly and "solo" never really meant "solo"). Instead I suggest "standard/elite/champion". Whichever rank they have is more directly tied to the number of traits/abilities they have. Standards would have 0-1 traits, elites would have 2-3, and champions would have 4+. I'll use kobolds as an example:

• Standard Kobold: Strength in Numbers
• Elite Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield (maybe Shifty)
• Champion Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield, Shifty, Breath Attack (maybe more...)

The first two are lifted from the playtest packet. As for the third, I made it up. IMO, it's way more interesting (both for the DM playing it and players fighting it) than the Kobold Chieftain we currently have, which only gets to attack twice per round and has 22 times as many HP than a standard kobold (!) for some reason.

Don't be suprised I noticed this a while back with other things like hit dice, some minor changes from 4th but making sure to disguise things behind different words.

Jul 23, 2012 -- 10:22PM, Shirebrok wrote:

What I find strange about this article is that it looks to me as if Mearls is talking about 4e's monster design philosophy, but does everything he can not to use 4e terminology. It's kind of weird.

Anyway, I like where this is going. Think up your monster, assign Ability Scores, figure out the basic stats derived from them (adjust according to size category), equip/adjust as needed. Seems simple enough, but I wouldn't mind the return of a few labels to help in the process. From his example, it was clear that the minotaur was a Brute (why else would it have d10s as Hit Dice?), so I don't see why it shouldn't be mentionned during monster creation. I do think, however, that qualifiers like "Brute" or "Lurker" should not reflect combat roles, but rather monsters species; all minotaurs are Brutes, all Spiders are Lurkers. I'd also like to see a table for expected/average To-Hit/Damage/AC per level/HD. All in all, okay article, but some numbers, math and crunch would have been greatly appreciated on my part.

What I didn't like is correlating monster power (mook, elite and solo) to size category. When I read those "ranks", I think of 4e monsters and how they used them. Sure, the higher the rank (minion, standard, elite, solo), the more HP a monster had, but I think what made those ranks really distinct from one another was the number of options they had available to them. Elites and solos had more abilities they could use in combat, which made them much more intersting foes.

I think they should drop "mook/elite/solo" (if only because "mook" sounds silly and "solo" never really meant "solo"). Instead I suggest "standard/elite/champion". Whichever rank they have is more directly tied to the number of traits/abilities they have. Standards would have 0-1 traits, elites would have 2-3, and champions would have 4+. I'll use kobolds as an example:

• Standard Kobold: Strength in Numbers
• Elite Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield (maybe Shifty)
• Champion Kobold: Strength in Numbers, Dragonshield, Shifty, Breath Attack (maybe more...)

The first two are lifted from the playtest packet. As for the third, I made it up. IMO, it's way more interesting (both for the DM playing it and players fighting it) than the Kobold Chieftain we currently have, which only gets to attack twice per round and has 22 times as many HP than a standard kobold (!) for some reason.

Yes, Mike has a phobia about 4e terminology. It irritates the heck out of me too, and feels like he's pandering to part of his audience, but whatever, they're far from done with all that and whatever at this point. No doubt someone that likes 4e will drag him into a closet somewhere at GenCon and explain it... lol.

I get what you're saying about the mook/elite/solo. I agree, those names may not be the way to go anymore, but I guess they'll sort that out when the time comes. I doubt they've thought much about that yet. Agreed, the 4e type minion, elite, and solo concepts aren't as germane to DDN. So yeah, 'solo' would probably more refer to a design concept vs a specific power level of monster. A 'Champion Kobold' would probably be higher level than a 'Standard Kobold' but mainly it would have the abilities needed to serve as a leader and greater challenge.

I think OTOH that Brute and Lurker and such really are descriptions of individual monsters. It may be that they want to design to a philosophy where "all spiders are Lurkers" or something, but I doubt that would be totally universal, and certainly for humanoid races you'd want to be able to fill many, maybe all, the different roles. I could see more or less stereotyping of monsters depending on how you want the game to feel though. In any case I wouldn't attach the combat roles to entire monster races, except informally. It should always be POSSIBLE to make a 'Lurker Orc' or a 'Soldier Kobold' even if in practice it isn't done.

Jul 24, 2012 -- 2:09AM, pilgaard wrote:

Jul 23, 2012 -- 9:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

The issue is swinginess. If you create a hill giant that can virtually disable a PC in a single blow but has a low hit probability that monster is quite hard to use in an adventure. Either the dice run their normal course and the monster simple goes down without the party expending any resources, or it gets in a hit and pretty well ruins the fighter's entire day (because it will suck up a large amount of healing resources), or even worse the dice run a bit hot and half the party is smeared all over the side of the hill. None of those are ideal outcomes.

I mean its fine to have some 'puzzle monsters' where they're just not worth facing in a normal sort of fight, as long as they're used correctly (IE the 5e Medusa is swingy IF you were to drop it right into an adventure unannounced, but as a set piece that is foreshadowed it works fine). I'd be hard pressed to see why a hill giant of the type you describe would be a monster I'd really want to use though, except in a similar way. IMHO that wasn't the intended story role for that monster. It was more designed as a sort of very high level mook really.

Good points.  Overall, it seems to be a matter of how much 'control'/predictability the DM prefers (ie. is the intention to provide x encounters meant to expend y party resources, before the final battle) as opposed to a more 'open' approach (the DM is well aware of the mentioned swinginess, and the outcome of the battle may have a significant impact on which direction the game takes afterwards (at least regarding the amount of resources the PCs have left)).
Also, an important part as well is how a hill giant is perceived as a monster concept - ie. is it merely an 'enlarged ogre' type of monster (the very high level mook view), or is a giant a powerful monster in itself (ie more like the position a titan holds in 4th ed).
Personally I don't have an issue with the swinginess of such powerful brutes - the players know this beforehand when they encounter the giants, and they can play accordingly (ie take their chances on a charge, play more cauteously, etc), and I like the concept of the huge brute being potentially very dangerous. But I see the problem for those who prefers a more predictable outcome of battles/adventure design.

Well, it isn't even so much wanting predictability for reasons of taste. You're just not going to be able to use several hill giants that are super swingy together in a fight. Yes, the PCs can of course use tactics, but that does restrict you to situations where they have a viable tactical option, and even then using a bunch of them is probably pretty dicy, SOMEONE will get squished. I mean I've definitely used an AD&D hill giant as a puzzle monster (famous one where the giant had 11 HP and the PCs had lots of clues about what they'd be facing, as 1st level characters! It worked but I'd note that no party escaped without a fatality. Still level 1 fresh PCs and all, it was sort of an initiation). In any case, I'd think if the hill giants were a bit more accurate and did slightly less damage you'd still get the same reaction of "don't go near THAT if you can help it!".

And yes, you'd design a hill giant that is just a 'super ogre' differently from one that is a deeper sort of monster. I'd have a couple varieties of hill giant, the basic one and a shaman or chief or something to start with. In general though if I want a titan I think I'd use a titan. Giants are a sort of oddball 'race' where you have already a whole defined set of sub-races that each seem to fill a role. Hill giants are dumb brutes, stone are artillery, fire and frost are close melee guys, and your storm giant is more the 'giant of folk tales' (but weirdly with a good alignment half the time, never saw THAT in a folk tale). The stormies also get to be the sort of spell caster variant. If hill giants were the ONLY type of giant around, then I think I'd go more for the folk tale aspects, since 'super ogre' is not a hard concept to fill (an Ettin can do it for instance).

Jul 24, 2012 -- 2:32AM, Madfox11 wrote:

4e suffers at least to some extend from being too predictable, especially if you play the game with people who have designed, developed and playtested a lot of adventures or are one of those type of players yourself. I often know after observing monsters for 1 round the level of the encounter and hence their defenses, damage output and whether it is smart to spend resources. It also means, that an easy fight lacks any risk, making it mostly boring (especially since even an easy fight in 4e takes a lot of time), and that a true "o ****" moment are rare. In my opinion, a bit of unpredictability is good since it gives players a bit of pause before they attack even if the opponents don't look overly strong. It rewards planning.

Having said that, if you make the things too unpredictable, you make adventure design very hard for inexperienced DMs both in regards to estimating the challenge for a fight and in dealing with how dice rolls change the pacing of the story immensely. I fear that what I have seen from DD Next at this point it is too unpredictable and I certainly hope that damage output, defenses, and hit points both on PC's and monster's side get a serious review... (having just witnessed how weird it is that a single first level spell insta-killed the "5th level" monster in a recent playtest that was supposed to be a lethal end fight of a one shot horror adventure.)

Right, you don't want things to be FORCED to be too unpredictable. If your monsters are super swingy, or combat mechanics in general, then you have a problem.

Predictability I have found is something you largely build into or out of the story, at least in 4e. While I admire Gygax's intuitive feel for the general form of an RPG and a lot of fairly clever and even subtle design, he was addicted to building uncertainty into the system and clearly played a lot of 'gotcha!' sort of style games. I think from talking to a couple of people that played with hiim back in early 70's that for them the game was NOTHING more than a dungeon crawl puzzle-solving type exercise, they never envisaged real plots and whatnot except as just part of what they were doing (IE a plot might involve a couple PCs having a rivalry or something, but the DM wouldn't create a set story to follow). So the game he designed was rife with 'toss a die to see if you live' sort of stuff.

4e seems to have FINALLY outgrown that. I can place as much unpredictability back in as I want. I can have deadly traps, unkillable monsters, gotcha puzzles etc if I want. Or I can have other types of unpredictability, sudden plot twists, etc. If I'm going for the more story based sorts of twists and turns and surprises I probably don't want the hill giant that just randomly kills you dead in one shot if it hits type stuff.

I think people are missing some facts.   There are two things here in play and one is very good if you like 4e monster encounter design (and I do mostly) and the other is the adventuring day versus the encounter.

Let's discuss the build first.   The build system is exactly the same as 4e except they've added x.p. values for tons of combat effects.   That way when you build a monster you not only can choose AC, HP, etc... in a systematic way (just like 4e) but you can also add the extra maneuvers and know the xp cost.   This is awesome and an answered promise from Mike Mearls.  He promised me we would know all the underlying math for constructing monsters (and PCs for that matter).

The other issue is the adventuring day issue which is not new news.  I believe though with the slightest bit of effort a DM will be able to design encounters instead of days if thats what you want.  Dailies do complicate matters a little but was designing normal encounters really that hard in 1e,2e,3e?  I know adding class levels etc... was hard but was just normal monster usage all that?  I don't think so but YMMV.

 

Jul 24, 2012 -- 8:22AM, Emerikol wrote:

I think people are missing some facts.   There are two things here in play and one is very good if you like 4e monster encounter design (and I do mostly) and the other is the adventuring day versus the encounter.

Let's discuss the build first.   The build system is exactly the same as 4e except they've added x.p. values for tons of combat effects.   That way when you build a monster you not only can choose AC, HP, etc... in a systematic way (just like 4e) but you can also add the extra maneuvers and know the xp cost.   This is awesome and an answered promise from Mike Mearls.  He promised me we would know all the underlying math for constructing monsters (and PCs for that matter).

The other issue is the adventuring day issue which is not new news.  I believe though with the slightest bit of effort a DM will be able to design encounters instead of days if thats what you want.  Dailies do complicate matters a little but was designing normal encounters really that hard in 1e,2e,3e?  I know adding class levels etc... was hard but was just normal monster usage all that?  I don't think so but YMMV.

 

I think for experienced DMs it was not super hard to make AD&D encounters, at least at low-mid levels. High level ones were a LOT more problematic, but that wasn't really the fault of the monster system. Casters were just so incredibly flexible and diverse that you couldn't really anticipate all the ways they could invalidate whole swaths of adventure at times.

4e did make things a lot more systematic. I think the 'adventure focus' vs 'encounter focus' is actually all about presentation, as you say it isn't like you can't work out the details either way. WotC 4e adventures in the 'delve format' are just cripplingly generic and the format kills plot hard. The 4e encounter building guidelines were fine as far as they went. The problem is you need to provide more direction in terms of building up interesting adventures from those elements and how to break the 'rules' to achieve what you want. For a person like me that has done it most of their life that isn't TOO big a challenge really. Nor am I wedded in my game to something like the 'delve' concept. DMG2 (and somewhat in DMG1) they did try to articulate broader concepts of adventure/campaign/story arc design, but it lacked concreteness, the discussion was rather high level (see the various story arc sections of both DMGs). A lot of really good stuff was there, but I think they just need to aim more for nuts-and-bolts.

Jul 24, 2012 -- 7:33AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Well, it isn't even so much wanting predictability for reasons of taste. You're just not going to be able to use several hill giants that are super swingy together in a fight. Yes, the PCs can of course use tactics, but that does restrict you to situations where they have a viable tactical option, and even then using a bunch of them is probably pretty dicy, SOMEONE will get squished.

Yes, more giants together will mean a potential huge amount of damage - but on average more giants will mean that the inflicted damage will statistically be closer to the mean, compared to one giant. And if the PCs are the 'matching' level of a hill giant, then more hill giants together will certainly be a very risky endavour. But (at least if the PCs hp progress at a steady rate) as the PCs grow in level the damage of a (lucky) hit by a giant will be less crippling, so when the PCs have reached higher levels multiple giants should be feasible (and thus in effect playing the role as mooks).

Jul 24, 2012 -- 7:33AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

I mean I've definitely used an AD&D hill giant as a puzzle monster (famous one where the giant had 11 HP and the PCs had lots of clues about what they'd be facing, as 1st level characters! It worked but I'd note that no party escaped without a fatality. Still level 1 fresh PCs and all, it was sort of an initiation).

 :D
I'll remember that one and use it as well, if the opportunity arises  

Jul 24, 2012 -- 7:33AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

  
In any case, I'd think if the hill giants were a bit more accurate and did slightly less damage you'd still get the same reaction of "don't go near THAT if you can help it!".

 
Yes, that is the reaction I would like to see (at least until the PCs reach higher levels) - what the exact numbers are going to be probably depends on a lot of other factors/upconing rules changes (I do like the 'clean' way of assigning damage as a multiplier of basic weapon damage based on size (medium 1xW, large 2xW and huge 3x og perhaps 4x W, though).

Jul 24, 2012 -- 7:33AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

       
And yes, you'd design a hill giant that is just a 'super ogre' differently from one that is a deeper sort of monster. I'd have a couple varieties of hill giant, the basic one and a shaman or chief or something to start with. In general though if I want a titan I think I'd use a titan. Giants are a sort of oddball 'race' where you have already a whole defined set of sub-races that each seem to fill a role. Hill giants are dumb brutes, stone are artillery, fire and frost are close melee guys, and your storm giant is more the 'giant of folk tales' (but weirdly with a good alignment half the time, never saw THAT in a folk tale). The stormies also get to be the sort of spell caster variant. If hill giants were the ONLY type of giant around, then I think I'd go more for the folk tale aspects, since 'super ogre' is not a hard concept to fill (an Ettin can do it for instance).

I agree. I would just like giants in general to be a bit more powerful and fearsome than they are in 4th ed (where a lvl 14 hill giant is pretty much no different from any lvl 14 medium (or even small) size monster). In general, size should be an indicator of power/threat, I think (ie most of the time (but of course not always) a huge monster should have (significantly) more hp than a medium sized monster - that abyssal ghoul (or whatever) may be an abyssal ghoul and not just an ordinary ghoul, but compared to the 20' tall giant (at least they used to have that size iirc) ) it is still quite small, and I find that equal amount of hp (assuming they are both level 14) somehow feels wrong here, I think.

Jul 24, 2012 -- 7:33AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

       
4e seems to have FINALLY outgrown that. I can place as much unpredictability back in as I want. I can have deadly traps, unkillable monsters, gotcha puzzles etc if I want. Or I can have other types of unpredictability, sudden plot twists, etc. If I'm going for the more story based sorts of twists and turns and surprises I probably don't want the hill giant that just randomly kills you dead in one shot if it hits type stuff.

You are right, in campaigns focusing heavily on plots and (character-dependent) story an unexpected, random kill can be quite unwelcome for everyone. And one-shot kill damage would be over the top (unless the PCs take the risk of engaging while at low hp). And you are right that one has the option to put the things you mention back in as a DM in 4th ed. But the 'tone' of that edition is different, so I don't think most DMs will do so. It requires an active choice of stepping up the danger level, and is not in tune with the 4th ed. tone in general (as you mention the focus has changed here compared to previous editions). So the tone of the Next-edition is important as it sets the default conditions that most DMs will use, I think. And personally I would like to see a bit more of the danger-feel of previous editions. One way of achieving that is to add a little more randomness and threat.
But of course this is a matter of taste and play-style

Jul 24, 2012 -- 8:34AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

..good stuff...

I think knowing your group is key.  No matter how cleverly designed, the xp system won't be perfect for every group.  Some groups are better players and others are not as good.  So all DMs have to learn where their groups fall on the skill level and keep that in their mind when using the xp system.  Of course a good system that averages out for many groups is the best place to start.  Consistency is another one.  Again though some groups will handle certain types of encounters far better than other types.  So you still have to be smart as a DM.

I've played nearly every style of adventure.  

I think the dungeon is unfairly maligned.  It is often easy to turn it into a sandbox, to add interesting factions within that have their own agendas, traps, etc...  The story then evolves.  The story is the sandbox.  It doesn't mean there is nothing going on.  It does mean the players themselves can latch on to any element of it they want.  It is far less railroady and yet still able to be handled.   

I like other styles too though. It's not like any campaign is limited to one single approach.  Mixing it up is probably good advice within your groups preferences.  I've played very linear adventure arcs (giants, drow, lolth GDQ series) before and they've been fun.  Personally I like sandbox the best and I strive to give players plenty of freedom as much as possible.  If they put themselves on a linear path I want it to be by choice and not be driving them that direction.  This feeling I have is not how I've felt from the beginning.  It's evolved and it may evolve to something else eventually.

 

@pilgaard & Emerikol. Yeah, I think we can all be pretty well satisfied with a system that stands somewhere between 4e and 1e in all these respects. It can certainly allow for a crazy dangerous unpredictable monster and some that are less swingy where you want that sort of predictability for whatever plot reasons, etc. I think those 2 editions are kind of the extreme ends of the spectrum. Somewhere in the middle can shade either way with a few tweaks or just judicious choice of elements.

Sandboxes are good, and yeah Gygaxian style ones are basically sandboxes in general. I'm fine with sandbox too. I think my style is sort of semi-sandbox. There are definitely plots and story arcs going on, but they aren't the only possible directions for things. The players run off in whatever directions for instance and I just try to keep a step ahead of them. Often they'll get sucked into a particular plot for a while, but I also try not to make a whole one plot campaign (athough some groups have kind of made that choice too). Definitely the tools should exist for a range of styles.

I think overall the monster design for DDN is going in a decent direction. It could kind of go a few different ways, but my feeling is DDN is at least roughly aiming for middle-of-the-road. Overall I think this is one aspect of the game where they can mostly please everyone.