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

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:29 am

K wrote:Combat roles are dumb. It's tactically boring and makes table-top games feel like video games. You get a more tactical game if both players and monsters simply have abilities that lend themselves to unique tactical situations and they don't have glaring weaknesses or singular strengths (and yes, this means no glass cannons ever again). This means that having a dragon hiding in a marsh needs to just be an general hiding option rather than some special ability confined to your lurker monsters, and he also needs some full suite of powers that create interesting tactical options for non-hiding combat when he's not hiding instead of being weaker because he's not doing his role of attacking from hiding.

The most fun monsters in DnD have ALWAYS been the ones that don't fit easily into roles. Demons. Dragons. Any kind of spellcaster. Anything with undefined classes like vampires. Anyone with an artifact. Etc.

Like it or not, the average DM will find it easier to narratively justify a monster that makes a good mechanical fit to a tactical situation than to creatively finagle a narratively 'interesting' monster to emergently create a fresh and original tactical situation. Don't get me wrong, it's fuckawesome when DMs manage to do the latter, but expecting it as a matter of course is a bit too much.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:33 am

The problem with monster roles being their hit dice is this: a baby dragon lurks in small caves (because they're cat-sized), pokes its head out to breath weapon you, then hides. An adult dragon swoops in with a breath weapon and then keeps doing that or lands amidst you and flattens you with its BIG NUMBERS. An ancient wyrm probably uses magic to make its minions fight you.

Your creature has just pokevolved over its lifespan into different creatures that do different things. What do you do? That was a problem I found when considering redoing the Pokemon d20 thing with Lurkers and Sweepers and Guardians and so on: Magikarp is a level 1 Useless that evolves into a level 10+ Rampager, and there are two bug things that basically swap roles with each other when they evolve, one going from "Striker" to "Guardian" and the other going from "Guardian" to "Assassin".

Ask people how they feel about retroactively changing hit dice of creatures (such as when an existing minotaur becomes a lich). Actually don't, because I know you already know the answer: people hate it, it's a pain in the ass. But multiclassing them when they pokevolve is also dumb (not to mention the fact that it rarely works).

I mean it sounds like a good idea to go "Now I want to level the Cave Troll up a bit so that it's a Mountain Troll. That means we add a couple of levels of Brute, oh it gets a new Brute combat ability that is related to face-smashing." But that only really works when turning one thing into "itself, but a bit better".

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:48 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
K wrote:Combat roles are dumb. It's tactically boring and makes table-top games feel like video games. You get a more tactical game if both players and monsters simply have abilities that lend themselves to unique tactical situations and they don't have glaring weaknesses or singular strengths (and yes, this means no glass cannons ever again). This means that having a dragon hiding in a marsh needs to just be an general hiding option rather than some special ability confined to your lurker monsters, and he also needs some full suite of powers that create interesting tactical options for non-hiding combat when he's not hiding instead of being weaker because he's not doing his role of attacking from hiding.

The most fun monsters in DnD have ALWAYS been the ones that don't fit easily into roles. Demons. Dragons. Any kind of spellcaster. Anything with undefined classes like vampires. Anyone with an artifact. Etc.
Like it or not, the average DM will find it easier to narratively justify a monster that makes a good mechanical fit to a tactical situation than to creatively finagle a narratively 'interesting' monster to emergently create a fresh and original tactical situation. Don't get me wrong, it's fuckawesome when DMs manage to do the latter, but expecting it as a matter of course is a bit too much.

That's why you give monsters a bunch of different abilities. You want them be usable in as many kinds of situations and for the tactics to be emergent from power use so that even the laziest DM can fire off powers and have interesting things happen.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:15 am

Koumei wrote:The problem with monster roles being their hit dice is this: a baby dragon lurks in small caves (because they're cat-sized), pokes its head out to breath weapon you, then hides. An adult dragon swoops in with a breath weapon and then keeps doing that or lands amidst you and flattens you with its BIG NUMBERS. An ancient wyrm probably uses magic to make its minions fight you.

Wouldn't this be like the tiered leveling system, where a Fighter is lvl 1-5 then digivolves into a Stormlord or Death Knight that does something else? So your baby dragon is lvl 1-5 and his adult form for lvl's 6-10 can be a variety of things depending on if he liked reading books or lifted a lot of weights as a kid.

Here's a question I'd like to get answered, monsters with class levels. A minotaur is bigger and stronger than a human and equivalent to a Fighter level X. But what happens if you want to give the minotaur Fighter levels, wizard levels?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:23 am

K wrote:That's why you give monsters a bunch of different abilities. You want them be usable in as many kinds of situations and for the tactics to be emergent from power use so that even the laziest DM can fire off powers and have interesting things happen.

I'm not really a fan of this. Monsters than have more that 2 or 3 encounter-changing gimmicks should be really rare. Conservation of Detail, you know. Not to mention page space.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:40 am

OgreBattle wrote:Here's a question I'd like to get answered, monsters with class levels. A minotaur is bigger and stronger than a human and equivalent to a Fighter level X. But what happens if you want to give the minotaur Fighter levels, wizard levels?

in theory ECL or LA whatever it was that said a Githzerai can never be below level 3 as a PC race.. was a good concept.

really the mosnter such as the Minotaur would be front-loaded to be say a level 5 fighter. so in comparison to a level 5 fighter ALL minotaurs are about equal in strength. to give it class level, then it just gets them the same way NPCs do, give it a class and give it things a level gets. since the minotaur has nothing crazy to begin with like psionic ability, then being bumped up like a few fighter classes doesnt really add anything hard to overcome to it. it doesnt gain some fighter ability or "form PC party" just because you gave it the comparable strengths of a level 5 fighter. it just gets those stats. it wouldnt gain followers or henchmen or whatever. in the case of 3rd it doesnt get feats...just raw ability to stomp ass into the ground.

WHEN the minotaur takes levels in a class then you apply any ability that goes with the class. wizard it begins to cast spells and may be the tribal shaman. fighter it starts getting its feats or whatever. but any other minotaur will still be a level 5 fighter effectively even if it hasnt been given classes or class abilities.

better way to think is a giant is just a big human. so it gets all that strength like a fighter would get, boosted HP, increased size category, but it doesnt get some special class-based level 10 ability just because it has a STR:25. also a brown bear is about the same as a human so their stats should be equal to a classed human fighter at level 1. the bear doesnt get any sort of feat for being as strong as a level 1 classed character.

all those things that are close to humans should be as strong as a level 1 human fighter naturally, but without the fighter class perks, just adjust from there for any oddities the monster has be it magical, supernatural, divine, etc.

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:45 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
K wrote:That's why you give monsters a bunch of different abilities. You want them be usable in as many kinds of situations and for the tactics to be emergent from power use so that even the laziest DM can fire off powers and have interesting things happen.
I'm not really a fan of this. Monsters than have more that 2 or 3 encounter-changing gimmicks should be really rare. Conservation of Detail, you know. Not to mention page space.

Once you've gotten rid of the 400+ Steve monsters, there is plenty of room for some details.

As for uncomplicated monsters, there is no point. A predictable battle is a battle that doesn't need to be fought.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 1:10 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:"Is a spider" should at best be a template that is applied to a monster of a type and level to give it access to some spiderish powers, which might include things like webs, wall climbing, poison, and jumping (but might not, there are spiders that don't do any of those things). Because your giant brute spider and your deadly poison glass cannon spider are not on the same "progression".

I'd prefer to call it an, "arachnoid adult red dragon," or, "arachnoid hill giant," than, "spider brute," or something.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 1:39 pm

Monster roles that level up, applied templates... then it's like building a PC

RACE: Determines general feel of the monster
-Giant spider
-Dragon
-Humanoid
-Swarm of Bees
-etc.

ROLE/CLASS*: Determines power and style of the monster
-Brute/Fighter
-Skirmisher/Rogue
-Artillery/blasty guy
-Controller/illusions, shot web, and so on.

More Templates/Feats: Extra stuff
- Ethereal
- Made of Rocks
- Elemental affinities
- Extra limbs

Race and Feats are actually rather similar, Race is just the 'feat' you start with really. I feel really clever now, or I've made a roundabout version of Mutants & Masterminds. But yeah, getting down a solid monster creation system first means when you get around to making PC's, you know exactly what their opposition is capable of.

*and then throw in some multiclassing system that will work, I like XI's /subclasses.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:15 pm

K wrote:Once you've gotten rid of the 400+ Steve monsters, there is plenty of room for some details.

But you can't. You can reduce the amount of content, but you can't reliably reduce it to good content. You can't even reliably predict what monsters and races will be considered "important" after the next edition happens, because a writeup that caught fire in a previous edition (or utterly failed to do so) does not guaranty that the next edition's writeup will be equally well (or poorly) received.

It's the Senmurv problem all over again. Just because something has a rich history with millions of fans doesn't mean the next writeup won't go over like a lead balloon for whatever reason and be relegated to joke monster status or bizarre obscurica that few remember. Could you honestly have predicted in 1995 that by 2005 a majority of D&D players wouldn't be able to tell you what a Bullywug even was? Or conversely that anyone would talk about how awesome a Balor was?

You write up a bunch of monsters, and some of them are going to be duds. Certainly, writing up monsters that weren't duds in the past editions improves your odds, as does shying away from monsters no one gave a fuck about in their previous incarnations. But for fuck's sake, Planescape managed to make Modrons cool. Fucking Modrons were something that people actually cared about for several years in the 90s.

The only way to actually ensure that you have a lot of cool monsters is to write up a fuck tonne of monsters and simply accept that they won't all be good. D&D is a kitchen sink setting. And if you release an edition with hundreds less monsters than 3e, not only will you run into the "gnome problem" where it turns out a really quite perceptible number of people really like Digesters even though you don't know anyone who gives a second fuck about them - but you'll end up with a quite comparable proportion of monsters that seem stupid and shitty as all previous editions did. If you write up a hundred monsters, like 25 of them are going to catch fire. If that. The rest are going to go over like lead balloons. Even if they are classics like Basilisks and Beholders.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:44 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: If that. The rest are going to go over like lead balloons. Even if they are classics like Basilisks and Beholders.

-Username17

So?

There is no need for 100 popular monsters. Your setting only needs a bunch of predictable stand-bys to set the tone of your setting and then a way to generate one-shots. Period.

The old way to generate one-shots was to write up an extra 100 Steve monsters with every monster manual. Sometimes one or two of those would gain traction, but it didn't matter because monster popularity doesn't matter. It's a moving target where the hot new fad in DM monster use displaces an old favorite and nothing is gained in the process.

And doesn't the Modron prove that popularity is really just a matter of creating good adventures and art for those monsters? Given enough adventures and art, even duds like the Bullywug will become a fan favorites.

For example, I used to hate gnolls until I saw some great art in Dungeon Magazine and I realized that they'd had shit art in 2e that made them look like my balding stepfather and the art in 3e had done little to improve them. Now I think gnolls are kind of awesome.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:05 pm

K wrote:There is no need for 100 popular monsters.

I can't even understand where you are coming from here. To have a shared language for even the adventures taking you from 1st to 10th level would be considerably more than 100 popular monsters.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:11 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
K wrote:There is no need for 100 popular monsters.
I can't even understand where you are coming from here. To have a shared language for even the adventures taking you from 1st to 10th level would be considerably more than 100 popular monsters.

-Username17

No it doesn't.

All adventures are written with monsters, but few are popular. Most are "common to this edition" monsters and not very popular and the rest are Steves. For example, Red Hand of Doom is one of the more popular modules of 3e and it's filled with common and suck monsters like hobgoblins with Steves like the dragonspawn with only a few popular monsters like green dragons and manticores.

Boring standby monsters make appearances in adventures with Steves and popular monsters because every playing group has a different set of Steves, populars, and commons. Some groups think Zodar are total scary badasses because they get flashbacks from Spelljammer and other groups barely recognize them from their 3e stat block in Fiend Folio. Other groups think hobgoblins are iconic DnD monsters and I've always had trouble figuring out why I should care when there are like twenty "evil beastmen" races who are cooler and have real differences between them.

Even the idea that there ARE 100 popular monsters is preposterous. I know that I have maybe 5-10 favorites and consider the rest of the MMs to be filler or polymorph dumpster-diving material, and I'd say that most players are probably like that. We are all used to fighting Steves on a regular basis because the DM that week got a DM-boner for some Steve in MM XXI.

If we go by Dungeon Magazine or Pathfinder guidelines, there really only are like ten popular monsters. They are so popular that the editors won't even take submissions using them because everyone would just use them.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:23 pm

are animals considers are "monsters" in that 100? often people dont even think of wolves, bears and other things as monsters since they are not fantastical beasts, yet they are in fact "monster" in the terms of non-PC and non-NPC.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 9:08 pm

shadzar wrote:are animals considers are "monsters" in that 100? often people dont even think of wolves, bears and other things as monsters since they are not fantastical beasts, yet they are in fact "monster" in the terms of non-PC and non-NPC.

Definitely. In 3e brown bears and tigers are deadlier than owlbears or ogres.
Apes are also as strong as ogres, more dexterous than Elves, and tougher than dwarves. If you gave one a sword and armor, it would be far deadlier than an ogre.

Then you have elephants with over 100hp and stronger than Bulettes, and so on. I figure it's more interesting to just have some neat animals statted out first, so you can measure how strong your ogres, giants, and phase spiders are.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 12:08 am

OgreBattle wrote:
shadzar wrote:are animals considers are "monsters" in that 100? often people dont even think of wolves, bears and other things as monsters since they are not fantastical beasts, yet they are in fact "monster" in the terms of non-PC and non-NPC.
Definitely.

well then K gets slapped int he face with his own bullshit then. hope he has a shower nearby to wash with or he will walk around looking like a shit-eater with bad table manners.

K wrote:Even the idea that there ARE 100 popular monsters is preposterous.

PC races:

human
elf
halfling
half-elf
gnome
dwarf
goblin
orc
half-orc (IDGAF!)
dragonbewbs
minotaur

then add in common animals:
bear
lion
tiger
elephant
wolf
horse
snake
reptile
monotreme

add the classic spooks:
vampire
mummy
skeleton
werewolf
ghost
wraith
ZOMBIE!

then start adding in the other monsters:
dragon
gnoll
troll
ogre
giant
thiefling
warfucked
beholder
mind-flayer

this is jsut the start with Tolkien monsters that are most common to D&D, and doesn't even include any half-breeds like half-dragon, centaur, hobgoblin, wemic. also there is no sea life, no aerial creatures like griffin etc save for dragons... the lsit can fill up to 100 pretty damn quick!

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 12:15 am

shadzar wrote:[the lsit can fill up to 100 pretty damn quick!

If it's so easy, you should do it. Coming up with roughly 1/3 of the total does not show that 100 monsters is that easy. Coming up with 100 or 200 or 300 would.

And I don't know what you mean by 'monotreme' as a common animal. I've never seen a platypus or echidna in a game of D&D. So including animals that aren't popular pads your list and makes you look like an idiot.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:51 am

deaddmwalking wrote:
shadzar wrote:[the lsit can fill up to 100 pretty damn quick!
If it's so easy, you should do it. Coming up with roughly 1/3 of the total does not show that 100 monsters is that easy. Coming up with 100 or 200 or 300 would.

And I don't know what you mean by 'monotreme' as a common animal. I've never seen a platypus or echidna in a game of D&D. So including animals that aren't popular pads your list and makes you look like an idiot.

I would be willing to play a game or D&D that had nothing but the platypus.
Maybe even a platypus bear.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 4:07 am

AndreiChekov wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote:
shadzar wrote:[the lsit can fill up to 100 pretty damn quick!
If it's so easy, you should do it. Coming up with roughly 1/3 of the total does not show that 100 monsters is that easy. Coming up with 100 or 200 or 300 would.

And I don't know what you mean by 'monotreme' as a common animal. I've never seen a platypus or echidna in a game of D&D. So including animals that aren't popular pads your list and makes you look like an idiot.
I would be willing to play a game or D&D that had nothing but the platypus.
Maybe even a platypus bear.

Nope, jsut the kings plain old bear. that is all you get. sheesh next you will want a lionturtle or an otterpenguin to sled on...

DDMW kind of missed the point as i had plenty of other mammals, that i added a single space for ALL reptiles, one single place for all snakes, and one single place for an oddity. 3 places that could be filled with as many or more real world versions of those 3 categories without going into avatar mode or taking the standard mythological route of half one thing half another in the same vein.

also @DDMW i don't play much in the water, nor really get into real world marine life, so what do you want from it? sharks, orka, dolphins, rays? how many crustations? eels? squid?

like i said, the list almost writes itself out to 100. why dont you make a list and prove to me that there cant be 100, or are you jsut wanting me to make a lsit for you because you are a deadDMwalking, so obviously to dead lazy to do your own DM work?

oh i know what it is. i responded to K's post where he and Frank were going at it, and then you decided to come into the thread to troll and had nothing really to fucking say. i mean that response to me was the first post you made to this thread right? and a troll gotta troll eh?

K · Post by K » Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:19 am

Only nine on Shadzar's list make it into the 100.

Discuss.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:38 am

I don't see the point in trying to make a list of 100 popular monsters to counter the statement, because "popular" is such a subjective term. I consider monsters iconic & readily recognized in the genre to be important to include in some fashion; like the gelatinous cube.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:39 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote: I'd prefer to call it an, "arachnoid adult red dragon," or, "arachnoid hill giant," than, "spider brute," or something.

Peter Bonegnasher? Nephew of May Bonegnasher?

That needs to be done.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 6:27 am

virgil wrote:I don't see the point in trying to make a list of 100 popular monsters to counter the statement, because "popular" is such a subjective term. I consider monsters iconic & readily recognized in the genre to be important to include in some fashion; like the gelatinous cube.

that was my point initially. people don't need giant monster books because any DM could make any sort of monster they want. they only need the tools to give them an idea of how a monster works, and then place it where they designed to have it. the main thing is if it can be a PC, it can be a "monster" too, so you would need to be able to fight the same type of creatures you are, unless you are the only one of your kind in the world/universe.

i was personally never a fan of the Jell-O that eats you, but whatever, its cute, funny and often better than the weird things inside of it served in schools and hospitals. likewise the mindflayer with psionics, which i don't feel belong in D&D, shouldnt be iconic as its controversial nature and mechanics make it out of place.

it really is ones mans garbage is another mans treasure in the case of many monstes as some love aboleths, others wonder why the fuck it exists. that simple answer is, to fill a page in a book so idiot will buy just to have more monsters, and with my collection of MCs, i was one of those idiots, but i also liked reading half the monsters more than using them. but that is true for most of the accessory product for D&D.

i mean at 12k pages worth of monsters creatd for all the campaign settings and variants for those settings, there really need not be any new monster created, and in a lifetime you wouldnt be able to use all those monsters if you used them only once each unless you had a world war hellbent on genocide as the campaign concept, only the strongest race can survive. Welcome to Darwin World the newest D&D setting.

how many people really use dinosaurs that often outside of Hollow World? do you need every culture popular monsters such as the fu dog, etc? do you need the demons and devils really? how many people like fighting elementals? can you really fight fire with fire?

monsters are really just flavor added to a setting outside of whatever the main PC races are, or to a story depending on what type of game you want to play. undead game like Ravenloft setting or just undead anywhere means less dragons except the occasional dracolich maybe...

how many people really use a tarrasque? how often?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:00 am

deaddmwalking wrote: And I don't know what you mean by 'monotreme' as a common animal. I've never seen a platypus or echidna in a game of D&D. So including animals that aren't popular pads your list and makes you look like an idiot.

well, do Dragonborn lay eggs or have live births?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:21 am

Getting to a hundred isn't difficult at all. For starters, let's say you have just five hostile races: Kobolds, Orcs, Drow, Goblins, and Githyanki. That's really cutting it short as we aren't talking Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Gnolls, Lizardfolk, Draconians, Bullywugs, Kuo-Toa, Sahuagin, or Shades. But sure, let's go with five.

Now, let's give each of them an iconic "guard animal". Just like the Winter Wolf is the "guard dog" of a Frost Giant Jarldom, the Dire Weasel is the guard beast of choice in a Kobold Warren. We aren't limited to using beasts that have appeared in previous editions, or in using beasts that have any particular gravitas on their own. By association with iconic hostile humanoids, they will achieve a level of placedness of their own. The Goblins have their Worgs, the Orcs have their Gloso, and so on. We're already at ten.

But what about mounts? It wouldn't do to have Paladins riding to war on ponies that explode as soon as they enter a demon's fire aura. You'll need options for each supported level bracket. So at the very least, a low, medium, and high level set of options. And by set of options, I really do mean set of options, because just because a mid-level Elven Hero is good riding to battle on a Unicorn doesn't mean that an Orcish Berserker is going to not look silly on the same beast. In mid-level, you are going to need flying and non-flying options. So you can go to war on a Unicorn or Dire Wolf, but you can also go to war on a Pegasus or Gryphon. Not to mention that you have medium and small races. Even at just one Alliance and one Horde option for each level, mobility, and size option, you're talking 10 mounts. And honestly, even that is bullshit because it seems fairly clear that preferred Drow mounts should look different from preferred Githyanki mounts. Where one rides a nightmare and the other a Manticore. Heck, just to represent low level human cultures you're going to want a couple choices like Horse and Camel. Even 20 mounts might not be enough. We are now at 30. Minimum.

OK, let's talk about the Undead. We need Undead horde monsters at every level. And while we could generate them via templating and math, that is bullshit. At no time should you be required to do math in order to lay down some zombie hordes. Let's say we support out to level 10. That requires 10 undead mooks. But we also need several flavors of Undead NPC template. For those Undead badasses that actually get chatacter classes and writeups. Now, we wrote up several such templates from the Ghoul to the Revenant, but realistically you aren't getting out with less than four: Lich, Vampire, Ghost, Mummy. So we're at 44.

And Giants! You can make a brave face about how you don't really to put in Frost Giants (although look how right pissed people got at 4e for that shit). Still, there's got to be Giants at each level of play, both as boss monsters and groups of thugs. You can use the group giant from the next tier as the boss giant from this tier. Which means that no matter what you cut, you actually can't get by without 4 giants ranging from Ogre (low level group enemy) up to Titan (high level boss fight). So we're at 48.

It's a game called "Dungeons & Dragons". So there needs to be Dragons. We could cut out all the metallic dragons and I don't think anyone would really notice (save for the Gold and maybe the Silver), and lord knows we don't need the Dragonne. But the basic five are actually iconic and cover things reasonably well. You have your swamp dragon, your forest dragon, your desert dragon, your fire dragon, and your ice dragon. I don't really see you cutting it down any more than that. And again, you need dragons to be able to come in as regular monsters and boss monsters at low, medium, and high level. So while you don't need twelve age categories, you sure as fuck need four. And that's 20 plug-n-play dragons, bringing us up to 68.

Familiars of course are totally a thing. And you're going to want good and evil ones. I don't think you necessarily need Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic Evil ones, so the Imp and Quasit can totally be merged. But you can't merge the Imp and the Pseudodragon. Also you need stats for basic cat/rat/bat stuff. Realistically, you aren't getting out of this one with less than 5. We're at 73.

Elementals. I don't think anyone takes Elementals seriously as a boss monster, but they are your basic iconic summons and they have to exist. Further, they have to exist at every level of play, meaning you have a bare minimum of one at each tier, call it the small, medium, and large elementals that can be summoned by low, medium, and high level summoners respectively. And since you seriously have to have Air, Earth, Water, and Fire Elementals, that's 12 actual plug-n-play monsters. So without going into Wood Elementals or Storm Elementals or Titanic Elementals, we're pushing things up to 85 monsters.

OK, Demons and Devils. We don't necessarily have to have Demons and Devils be different things, and no one would really miss the Hezrou, right? Still, we need a mook, a thug, and a boss demon at all level tiers. We can use the thug from the next tier as the mook from this tier to further reductionize things, but we're still looking at a minimum of 5 ranging from the Dretch (low level horde monster) to the Marilith (high level boss monster). So we're at 90.

So let's talk Lycanthropes. Sure you say "It's a template!", but you still need to give a plug-n-play example of a minimum level version of each one that you can plop into an encounter without doing a bunch of math. And while we can certainly talk about getting rid of werehawks and even wereboars, there's no way we're moving forward without wererats, werewolves, weretigers, and werebears. That's 4, and we're at 94.

So there are fairies of course. I would be OK dropping the Grig Sprite. And you could make a pretty compelling case that Sylphs and Pixies are basically the same thing. Hell, throw Dryads and Nyphs and Oreads together under a single banner, see if I care. But basically you still need tiny tinkerbelle fairies, small winged faires (what D&D calls "Pixies"), and sexy ladies of the wilderness. Ideally, you'd have winged and non-winged fairies of each size class, but absolute minimum we're talking 3, bringing us to 97.

And now let's deal with the "conspiracy monsters". See, the most overused and well-loved plots are the ones where there's a mastermind boss monster. Like a Doppleganger. Clearly, we need one of those for each tier of play, so at the very minimum we have the Doppleganger, the Yuan Ti, and the Mindflayer. We could shuffle things around and use Beholders or Aboleth or something for one of the tiers, but there simply isn't any way to push forward with less than 3. And that brings us to 100. Sure, we'd like to give these guys some servitor monsters like the Yuan Ti Abominations or something, but there's no room, because despite all our extreme reductionism, we're still at the magic target of 100.

Now let's talk about just plain monster monsters. We need things like Owlbears at every level. Not just every tier, but seriously every level. And we'd really like more than one, so perhaps a 5th level party wouldn't know whether they were going to be attacked by a Phase Spider, a Hydra, a Shambling Mound, or a Basilisk the next time they fought a monster in the dark swamp. But you see, we're already past our 100 monster allotment, and we haven't even done Genies, Angels, Slaad, Trolls, Oozes, Golems, or happy Forest Friends for Druids to have.

I understand the desire to hit D&D with the reductionism mallet. There are a lot of really stupid monsters in there. But even if you do that, 350 monsters is still something you actually need. Even if you chop things down to 10 levels in three broad tiears, one hundred monsters isn't anywhere near enough to get the job done. Simple procedural generation gets you to about twice that, leaving the rest of the entries for experimentation, expansion, environmental support (such as aquatics), extra diversity at the lowest levels, or simply not shitting on peoples' Gnome Problem by trying to tell them that Dryads and Nymphs are the same thing and you aren't going to support separate Demon and Devil lineups anymore.

350 is literally the bear minimum that the D&D-public will accept. Further reduction beyond that will look exactly like you are purposefully witholding content in order to sell extra books.

-Username17