How many monsters does a D&D edition need to start with?

[PhoneLobster]

I rather wonder if instead most traps might be better handled as monsters that simply have a 0 for most stats

There is certainly at least one area where traps could beneficially pick up some traits traditionally for monsters or NPCs.

I'd like to see more traps with whatever awareness/observation stat you might use to roll against. Sentry guns you can sneak past are certainly a thing that could be beneficial.

Buuut as we know a Sentry Gun is a apparently a monster with a charisma score and the ability to jump, an intelligent monster of at least animal intellect no less, though it's unclear if that requires the optional flame thrower attachment or not.

[violence in the media]

, and also we were talking about the large shark, which has a higher strength bonus (+3).

No you fucking weren't, you fuckers were insisting on a level one base line animals for level one base line adventures. And that guy is Medium sized. Stop shifting your goal posts.

This might have been my fault. When I mentioned sharks leaping out of the water, I was thinking of things like this:



Which I could totally see dragging some adventurer with a terrible grapple modifier into the briny depths. Now you've got one guy down there in PhoneLobster's "Sea of Teeth" and the sharks might not care about doing anything other than tearing that one guy apart. More plausible if you've got a sea druid telling the sharks to do that, but whatever.

[MGuy]

The trap mechanic also needs to be expanded to allow for reactive creature behavior. For example, the pack of dogs will probably run away instead of staying until death.

K, you are NOT GAINING ANYTHING!

At the point that your "traps" have morale, can be interacted with using social abilities, may be called upon to move into different sorts of terrains than the ones they were "created in", you have a creature. The wolf sneaks, spots, attacks weakness, fears death, likes food, and can swim if dumped into water, can climb if its prey goes up a hill, and can jump if its targets cross a crevasse. It already has to interact in all the ways a creature does, so it needs all the creature interactivity numbers!

When you say "it's a trap", you aren't actually accomplishing anything. What you really mean is that it has a simple script for being an animal. But from a physical and social standpoint it's still a living being with all the normal numbers, and nothing you have said actually changes that reality. Indeed, even the simple script that you and I both agree it should have is something that should probably be emergent from the fact that it has animal intelligence. Which is yes, just another stat that creatures have. If you hit an ogre with a stupidity or berserk spell, it should go on the same kind of simple animal script as the wolf or bear is.

But none of that actually provides any advantage or clarity by being labeled "trap". That nomenclature gets you literally less than nothing.

-Username17

Frank you are missing his point. As far as K is concerned sharks, wolves, a T-rex, and giant bald eagles are not interacted with in any meaningful way outside of being a terrain hazard. That is specifically what he wants because interacting with them in any other way, as far as he is concerned, is detrimental to the game. They can't be pets, they can't be moving blocks on the board with their own turn, they cannot attack you unless you fall into the trap (because god forbid a pack of wolves kills you right?), etc etc on down to the end. He has explicitly stated that things that don't have super powers do not matter because they, as he has stated, are incapable of producing 'meaningful' challenges.

Just think about it for a second. You're approaching this with the thought that animals and dudes with swords, sharks, or an orc with an axe should be statted up because people who are living in the past believe that these things totes exist outside of combat and even in combat and have the possibility of being meaningfully interacted with outside of combat. But K has taken up some kind of weird mentality where only casters exist to any meaningful degree because they are the only things that matter. Think of it as if everyone were characters in Harry Potter. According to K only the things with magic can affect the plot to any meaningful degree and the only way anything else could is if something with magic powers put the other stuff up to be hazards or obstacle courses.

[K]

Frank you are missing his point. As far as K is concerned sharks, wolves, a T-rex, and giant bald eagles are not interacted with in any meaningful way outside of being a terrain hazard. That is specifically what he wants because interacting with them in any other way, as far as he is concerned, is detrimental to the game. They can't be pets, they can't be moving blocks on the board with their own turn, they cannot attack you unless you fall into the trap (because god forbid a pack of wolves kills you right?), etc etc on down to the end. He has explicitly stated that things that don't have super powers do not matter because they, as he has stated, are incapable of producing 'meaningful' challenges.

Just think about it for a second. You're approaching this with the thought that animals and dudes with swords, sharks, or an orc with an axe should be statted up because people who are living in the past believe that these things totes exist outside of combat and even in combat and have the possibility of being meaningfully interacted with outside of combat. But K has taken up some kind of weird mentality where only casters exist to any meaningful degree because they are the only things that matter. Think of it as if everyone were characters in Harry Potter. According to K only the things with magic can affect the plot to any meaningful degree and the only way anything else could is if something with magic powers put the other stuff up to be hazards or obstacle courses.

This is a weird Strawman. My desire to limit the combat role of non-critical units like summons and pets and downgrade animals to traps has no bearing on their non-combat role. I don't even know where you got the bit about guys with swords and orcs because one of my specific examples was an orc who was statted as a monster with extra powers to make them interesting.

I've actually mentioned that so many times that it's annoying. Maybe you should read the thread?

[Cyberzombie]

Monsters with interesting and flavorful abilities get to stay monsters. You can also use monster versions of boring creatures we downgraded to traps (bear is a reactive trap and devil bear is a proactive monster).

Seems like a lot of extra work with no gain. The regular bear interacts with the world in the same manner as the devil bear. Why use two separate sets of rules to handle each?

[MGuy]

K you said yourself you have a problem with statting them up. You made very long winded arguments about why birds, dogs, etc don't deserve stats. Without stats, without even a write up how do we know how they interact with the world when they aren't combat traps? That's what YOU said. You don't even turn the idea around when you say that I'm Strawmanning. What part of it is a strawmanning when you say that all they are are combat traps? They have HPs and attacks and damage but according to you nothing else matters. If you DO give them stats then what are you fighting over? Because the instant you start giving them abilities and stats that don't make them into Angry Teeth trap then you're making them into monsters. Once they can, you know, DO STUFF then in what sense are they just a trap and not, you know, monsters?

Yes, I realize you want to give orcs with axes super powers. That's what I said you wanted. According to you, anything without superpowers is just a trap or a piece of terrain. I get that, I said that. You haven't refuted anything I pointed out except that your trap creatures can interact with the world without any meaningful stats that would show how.

[John Magnum]

Apparently, K is fine with giving traps out-of-combat writeups. He just wants their in-combat writeup to be super minimal, so that combats don't become twelve-on-twelve where each agent on each side has an entire stat sheet and suite of possible abilities. For some reason, he is very insistent that stuff with a minimally complex in-combat statblock but (potentially) a robust out-of-combat writeup should be called a "trap".

It's useful to consider swarms and mass combat rules as analogies but K is making his case impossibly terribly.

[K]

. For some reason, he is very insistent that stuff with a minimally complex in-combat statblock but (potentially) a robust out-of-combat writeup should be called a "trap".

It's useful to consider swarms and mass combat rules as analogies but K is making his case impossibly terribly.

Yeh, actually capitulating to people's desire for 3e terms has proven to be exactly as confusing and misleading as I thought it would be.

[Roog]

Yeh, actually capitulating to people's desire for 3e terms has proven to be exactly as confusing and misleading as I thought it would be.

Trap is also a 3e term...

[Kaelik]

Yeh, actually capitulating to people's desire for 3e terms has proven to be exactly as confusing and misleading as I thought it would be.

Trap is also a 3e term...

Well apparently according to the K standard of 3e terms, all conjugations of the verb "to be" in the simple past, present, and future are 3e terms, so I don't know how he was going to communicate the concept without them.

Maybe really clever use of the subjunctive?

[K]

Yeh, actually capitulating to people's desire for 3e terms has proven to be exactly as confusing and misleading as I thought it would be.

Trap is also a 3e term...

Yes, I used "Trap" because it most closely resembled what I was going for.

It also confuses the shit out of people because the 5,000 words I've written to explain how the idea I'm working with is an expansion of the 3e trap idea has had absolutely no effect.

So people complain when I use the closest 3e term and they complain when I don't. I should just admit to myself that people will never forgive me for considering ideas outside of existing designs.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Loudly feeling sorry for yourself isn't actually persuasive, FYI. Especially when you overplay it as hard as you have been.

[Sashi]

Yes, I used "Trap" because it most closely resembled what I was going for.

It also confuses the shit out of people because the 5,000 words I've written to explain how the idea I'm working with is an expansion of the 3e trap idea has had absolutely no effect.

I think it doesn't help that you've spent those 5000 words disagreeing with my "let simple creatures be simple, and mark them as such so they don't get misused" idea and want to replace it with a somewhat byzantine system where simple creatures get further simplified and marked as a "trap".

[Username17]

Yeh, actually capitulating to people's desire for 3e terms has proven to be exactly as confusing and misleading as I thought it would be.

First off, as rhetorical techniques go, whining that no one loves you is pretty bad. Feeling sorry for yourself may engender pity, but it is unlikely to get people actually on your side to any meaningful degree.

Secondly, you are the person who threw a shit fit because I was using a word in its natural English context and not using it in one of the specific connotations used in a specific portion of 3e. You were doing this in this very thread, on page 20. So to have you whine that people wanted to use 3e terminology now comes across as disingenuous. Here's a reminder:

So basically we're down to level charts for numbers, selections off ability lists for monster powers, and some very simple templates who primary purpose is to open up new ability lists.

The problem is that templates is a 3e term. It means that you have to check template stacking, you change a bunch of stats in a way that is unique to each template, you probably add some abilities willy-nilly and might need to use a chart and definitely have to think for a while about whether the new abilities break the monster completely because there is no ability metric or ability advancement system, and then you have to do all of the math for the stats over again because changed Ability Scores change the stats in another operation. You might also write up extra sets of stats for each ability that changes stats. Repeat each time you add a template.

Thirdly, your idea is still bad. The reason why it seems like you're shouting into the void is because people don't like your idea. They don't like your idea because it's bad. The only person who is really supportive of you is PhoneLobster, and you have to understand that the only reason he's doing that is because you're arguing with me and he has a gigantic hate boner for me.

You can justify having a simplified system where you roll dice just once or twice to pass a monster. That might even be what you're trying to get across with "trap". But that monster is still going to need creature stats. You might pass the guard dogs with one sneak vs perception test, or chase the fox away from the hen house with a single perception vs. sneakk test, but that still means that the guard dogs need a perception number and a sneak number just like every other creature. You might get away from a bear or a shark with a chase test, but that still means that the bear and the shark need whatever numbers you roll for chase tests just like every creature.

You simply do not gain anything by having these accordion monster stat lines that simplify down and expand back up. You could just give the monsters the normal stat lines and then use the parts that matter for whatever fast and dirty resolution system you want to use. Actually chopping numbers off in the book and then forcing the DM to recalculate them if they become important is a cruel prank.

Whatever system you use, when you make the monster manual, then whatever numbers a basilisk has are numbers that a bear should have. They may not be called upon to use all of those numbers in every fight, but the numbers define how your game interacts with those creatures when they do things. If they players decide that they want to sneak past, run from, or attempt to distract a wild boar, the game should not give them a divide by zero error. If the players decide that they want to fight it with a spear or a knife, the game should similarly not give them a divide by zero error.

-Username17

[Parthenon]

The trap mechanic also needs to be expanded to allow for reactive creature behavior. For example, the pack of dogs will probably run away instead of staying until death.

...

A lot of things in 3e like bat swarms could probably be abstracted down to that because no one wants to kill bats, and casting a gust or wind or a fireball should probably just clear them.

This seems like you are making the "trap" monsters more abstract and then adding complexity until they are just as complex as "interesting" monsters.

Heres the thing. I completely agree that having a pack of dogs on leashes guarding an area needs to be simplified. In many ways during combat it works like a trap- if you are in an area you get savaged, if the enemy releases the dogs they attack you in a way that can be simplified down to something like an entangling and damaging area, it can be bypassed by damage or by a skill check- Handle Animal can get them to calm down.

But, that doesn't mean you should have a special "pack of dogs" trap because then you need to add on senses, skills, movement abilites etc until it is as complex as a monster, and then you have to work out what happens if they split up etc.

For me it makes much more sense to have a dog monster and then guidelines for abstracting multiple monsters into a group. Expanding and improving the swarm rules rather than making lots of one-off traps for different things.

---

And using "trap" as a term is stupid because the normal use is for surprising people, which a rampaging bear of pack of dogs won't, or for limiting things like a fish trap, which again doesn't apply.

It's not the 3e thing that is confusing me, it's everything else about the use of the word trap.

[OgreBattle]

K, can you please explain what you mean by a trap and a monster, and in what ways they differ? Because at this point it seems like you define a trap as anything which falls outside your definition of monster. And you haven't given a positive definition of what you mean by monster, only a negative one by that some things don't count as monsters because you think they are boring.

Sure. I've explained it about six times, but I'll try again.

Imagine a standard DnD encounter with a PC, a pressure plate trap that fires arrows into part of the room, and a monster. The pressure plat trap is a trap like any other: it's an object in the room with AC and HPs and will not work any more you if damage it enough.

This trap also has a lever on the monster side that causes the arrows to fire if you spend an action to pull it, but it also stops working of you smash the trap.

You start combat and roll initiative. Monster and PC take actions on their turn, and the trap acts whenever someone steps on the pressure plate or pulls the level.

Now imagine a pack of dogs acting the same way as the pressure plate and level arrow trap. They have HPs and AC because they exist on the battlefield and they act when triggered, and otherwise stay in one place and attack when someone gets near them. You don't roll initiative for them, you don't give them independent tactics, and they don't get actions in combat unless it's part of someone's action or is a response to a specific trigger action (in this case, "getting near them"). The monster can tell the dogs to attack someone that round by spending his turn commanding the dogs in the same way that he could spend an action to pull the level in the previous example. They stop attacking and revert to their default action when they aren't being commanded in the same way that the trap doesn't do anything when there is no one on the pressure plate or pulling the level.

Now, the 3e system is to stat all five dogs, give them independent turns and actions in combat, decide their individual motivations and tactics, track their HPs and status separately, and turn a simple two-unit combat into a seven-unit combat that takes three times as much time.

That sounds like the 4e summon system, though 4e summon and animal companion rules vary greatly from class to class and power to power but I think it went something like...

ranger companion- moves around with ranger, ranger's standard action powers can activate pet if it's flanking with him or something.

wizard summons- passively does things like damage enemies next to it, or take hits for wizard if they're standing together.

Druid- I dunno

What do you guys generally think of 4e's pets/summon rules?

[Orion]

Why not call them Pawns or Tools rather than Traps?

[Midnight_v]

Why not call them Pawns or Tools rather than Traps?

or I dunno call them "summons" or alternately "cohorts" maybe even "companions"?

Looking over the last few pages of this I can't help but be all kinds of surprised that otherwise logical people get so far sidetracked down what ultimately is a matter of semantics.
I see where K was coming from but, I just don't think it would add to a game too much to leave things like that out. Somethings don't need to be stated but NOT providing stats lead to people arguing stupid shit, like... "chickens don't exist in D&D". I was invited to a game and this asshole went on about that shit for 40 min before the MC cut him off finally.

I'm much more interested for having a number of monsters and having a monster generator of somekind, for non humanoid guy. Humanoid guys take classes I'd think.
3.5 had all these pieces but the Cr was broken in places and inconsistent in others, but it'd be nice to have a consistent chart to use.

[MGuy]

Why not call them Pawns or Tools rather than Traps?

or I dunno call them "summons" or alternately "cohorts" maybe even "companions"?

Looking over the last few pages of this I can't help but be all kinds of surprised that otherwise logical people get so far sidetracked down what ultimately is a matter of semantics.
I see where K was coming from but, I just don't think it would add to a game too much to leave things like that out. Somethings don't need to be stated but NOT providing stats lead to people arguing stupid shit, like... "chickens don't exist in D&D". I was invited to a game and this asshole went on about that shit for 40 min before the MC cut him off finally.

I'm much more interested for having a number of monsters and having a monster generator of somekind, for non humanoid guy. Humanoid guys take classes I'd think.
3.5 had all these pieces but the Cr was broken in places and inconsistent in others, but it'd be nice to have a consistent chart to use.

Midnight I think you misread a good deal of the last few pages. K calling creatures "traps" is only a small part of the problem. He has actually stated the way he wants things and people have been upset with his actual idea. The fact that he's trying to blame it on the terminology is odd as people have called him out on specific things about what he wants and have given them the thumbs down. Summoning creatures that only pseudo exist? Thumbs down. Animals not having stats? Thumbs down. Having stats that exist in a state of flux depending on whether or not the players are attacking something vs not? Thumbs down. His actual ideas are turning people off. Not just the use of the word trap.

[K]

But, that doesn't mean you should have a special "pack of dogs" trap because then you need to add on senses, skills, movement abilites etc until it is as complex as a monster, and then you have to work out what happens if they split up etc.

The thing is that you don't have to do those things. You don't need a sensory mini-game, skills, movement, etc for a pack of dogs. You state in the flavor text that they are dumb pack of animals with limited personal decision-making abilities and not actual characters and do animal things like run when faced with real opposition away.

You really can MTP a dog being a dog and not run into any problems with your game. You don't need a ability score, stat line, and skill list for a Spot skill if you already decided that dumb animals don't do interesting character things like Spot supernaturally-stealthed characters.

The basic storytelling and game engine works fine if the DM just MTPs up what happens when some dogs run away and they downgrade to MTP units. They've stopped being important as game units and it's only pure RP for PCs or NPCs to hunt them down or something.

I mean, the guy who rants for 40 minutes that there are no chickens in DnD doesn't have a point. Most of DnD is made of MTP because the game parts work better that way, and making subsystems and stats for every possible thing in your RPG slows it down below enjoyable levels, makes it harder to master, and only pleases the small proportion of RPH players who find the RP parts of an RPG too unmanageable.

The alternative to not using various levels of abstraction is to stat everything under the sun under a much better game engine than currently has ever existed and resolve yourself to incredibly long and often pointless combats where PCs are rarely the stars. I don't know about you, but three-hour combats always made me want to leave the game.

[RadiantPhoenix]

You really can MTP a dog being a dog and not run into any problems with your game. You don't need a ability score, stat line, and skill list for a Spot skill if you already decided that dumb animals don't do interesting character things like Spot supernaturally-stealthed characters.

Um, yes you fucking do.

What happens when a not-so-supernaturally stealthed (but still stealthed) low-level character tries to sneak past?

You need a number, such as, "dogs detect at +4."

[Username17]

Seriously. "The Baron's tower has guard dogs you'd like to sneak past" is like one of the most basic fucking challenges for a low level team. It is totally unacceptable for the game to not have a way to model that shit.

You absolutely need a number for that. You can call it perception or spot or notice or whatever the fuck. But there needs to be a number of some kind to determine whether you sneak past the dogs or not.

-Username17

[Leress]

Seriously. "The Baron's tower has guard dogs you'd like to sneak past" is like one of the most basic fucking challenges for a low level team. It is totally unacceptable for the game to not have a way to model that shit.

You absolutely need a number for that. You can call it perception or spot or notice or whatever the fuck. But there needs to be a number of some kind to determine whether you sneak past the dogs or not.

-Username17

From what I am understanding about what K wants to do that particular scenario wouldn't be for low level adventures, and more like a non-level scenario. I think he wants level 1 to start at a point where mundane animals(like tiger and bears) are just speed bumps.

[Username17]

From what I am understanding about what K wants to do that particular scenario wouldn't be for low level adventures, and more like a non-level scenario. I think he wants level 1 to start at a point where mundane animals(like tiger and bears) are just speed bumps.

It doesn't even fucking matter. The Baron could be Baron Fucking Samedi and have a skull head that shoots lasers or some shit. There are still some fucking dogs in the Baron's fucking tower and you would rather sneak past and go directly to the fight in the Baron's hall than to give the Baron warning and have him start taking measures against you before you get there.

Even if the dogs are trivial speed bumps, they still need the fucking numbers to see whether they spot you and bark or not. That is not negotiable. It doesn't make the slightest difference what power level you have or even whether the dogs are meaningful threats. The Baron is still a meaningful threat or you wouldn't be having this adventure in the first place, so having him not get forewarning is better than him getting forewarning from his dogs.

K is simply totally and laughably wrong on this issue. His crusade to get rid of animals is completely misguided and demonstrably bullshit. Even trained parrots need perception numbers.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

From what I am understanding about what K wants to do that particular scenario wouldn't be for low level adventures, and more like a non-level scenario. I think he wants level 1 to start at a point where mundane animals(like tiger and bears) are just speed bumps.

It doesn't even fucking matter. The Baron could be Baron Fucking Samedi and have a skull head that shoots lasers or some shit. There are still some fucking dogs in the Baron's fucking tower and you would rather sneak past and go directly to the fight in the Baron's hall than to give the Baron warning and have him start taking measures against you before you get there.

Even if the dogs are trivial speed bumps, they still need the fucking numbers to see whether they spot you and bark or not. That is not negotiable. It doesn't make the slightest difference what power level you have or even whether the dogs are meaningful threats. The Baron is still a meaningful threat or you wouldn't be having this adventure in the first place, so having him not get forewarning is better than him getting forewarning from his dogs.

K is simply totally and laughably wrong on this issue. His crusade to get rid of animals is completely misguided and demonstrably bullshit. Even trained parrots need perception numbers.

-Username17

Furthermore, even if you insist that dogs are wimps and only purebred Stygian hell-puppy sorcerers are fit to be the dogs of Baron Samedi, the trap hasn't changed, so no effort whatsoever has been saved.

Besides, what is needed is a system for swarms - that is the natural solution to "Individually these things are too fiddly to track but not quite weak enough to ignore".