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

[Ancient History]

As long as we're talking about 3e, contrast the psionic astral construct with the magic summon monster. Both are very flexible abilities and suit a summoner-type character concept, but there are some differences. Astral construct (when it worked) had a few generic statblocks that you then modified by picking from a list of special abilities/modifiers/etc. With summon monster you just flipped to the right entry in the MM (or whatever) and used the stats there (plus or minus a template).

The difference being, if the sorcerer encountered a bear he could summon another bear and let the grizzlies wrassle. The psion had to craft his construct and then send it off against Yogi. The point being that summon magic is both quicker (when done right) and more versatile (again, when done right) because you don't need to build a new critter each time you want to use a power - and also because you can use the same stats for the summoned monster as for a random/planned encounter monster. There's no easy rationale for running across an astral construct unless a psion is within crossbow bolt distance, while bears just tend to show up. So it makes sense and is quicker to have an entry for bears and be able to use the same stats for both a summoned bear and a non-summoned bear.

[K]

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

[virgil]

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

About half of the people I've seen use Summon Monster are like that, the other half say they're casting the spell and spend the time until it's their turn looking up the monster. A grand total of me and one other person kept a sheet of paper with condensed stats of all of their summons. Technically it was one sheet for me, three for the other person, since I developed a very condensed stat-block and prefer small print.

[Red Archon]

Where are the legions of people complaining about 3e's Spiritual Weapon? Guess what? There aren't any. It's a perfectly functioning mechanic that people are happy with and it's used with Bigby spells and dozens of other spells in 3e.

Do people complain that phantom steeds don't have a entry in the MM and can't make hoof attacks? Short answer: no.

This struck me as a very irrelevant comparison to Summon Monster. I think you're suggesting that the Spiritual Weapon mechanic could work for SM, meaning, hyper-condensed statblock based on the caster's abilities. But that doesn't work, does it. A monster is a lot more than just Defense+Attack+range. When you look at SW, you'll find that it's just a very wonky "damage over time" spell, whereas a monster is actually capable of all sots of actions.

Though I guess that's what you're arguing against and nobody else on God's green Earth is.

[PhoneLobster]

Though I guess that's what you're arguing against and nobody else on God's green Earth is.

Actually. His argument is perfectly sound.

Actual monsters are actually complex. That is a serious issue. The more complex they are the more serious that is.

Many monster summoning spells are largely intended to fill very narrow rolls like "attack something once a round for a while". And it's probably completely OK to do that instead and while it may have some draw backs it certainly has some clear advantages.

Personally I don't see a functional system that doesn't do at the very least some of what K is advocating, it's only a matter of where you draw the line on exactly how many effects are made of spiritual weapons and bigby fingers.

The idea that those things are inately bad and shouldn't be there, which is the argument being presented against him, is the argument that is fucking insane. The idea that we should simplify as much of these things as we can until we hit whatever arbitrary line we draw to determine where the profit in that ends is very sensible and anyone attacking it hasn't spent any damn time trying to think about it or do it in practice.

[Red Archon]

I think you misunderstand, PhoneLobster. I haven't seen anyone arguing against Bigby's or Spiritual Weapon; they are completely reasonable things to have, but they are different from Summon Monster and they should be. In fact, the whole argument that having complex monsters is somehow terribly harmful to the game is bizarre. The monsters' stats and abilities are listed right there in the book, you don't have to use any time to constructing their statblocks; you just pick an ability from the clearly printed blocks and make them use it, and when there's a reflex save to be made, just look it up. Even if the monsters are casting spells, it's just one set of actions more. Of course that boils down to personal preference, but for me at least, complicated and tactically multidimensional combats are the meat of the rules.

[Sashi]

No, Phonelobster is right. Druid + Animal Companion + Summon Nature's Ally = "And now, for my third turn of the round". It's pretty much unendurable if the Druid player isn't really good and pre-rolling his turns, and it's the intended function of the druid, not some accidental side effect.

The 4E summoning rules didn't appear out of nowhere. They were a straight-up reaction to the 3E druid snapping the action economy over her knee.

[wotmaniac]

Making mounts and trained animals into minor PCs (3e) vastly inflates combat time,

agreed.

leads to stupid combats (fighting dogs is always fucking lame),

If it's thematically appropriate, it's thematically appropriate.

and unbalances the hell out of the game any time someone decides to abuse it.

That's a different problem entirely -- that of incomplete/sloppy design.

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

Then they are doing it wrong, and should feel very bad about themselves.

Monsters don't need feats.

So, monsters follow different rules than PCs?

Right now you are in the whole 'how can you criticize what you don't understand because I won't describe it' mode that characterized your whole 'bows shouldn't fire over rivers' fiasco.

Link, please. (I gotta read that)

Druid + Animal Companion + Summon Nature's Ally = "And now, for my third turn of the round".

Well, if that player wants to be a self-aggrandizing dick, then that surely will be unbearable.

[Red Archon]

No, Phonelobster is right. Druid + Animal Companion + Summon Nature's Ally = "And now, for my third turn of the round". It's pretty much unendurable if the Druid player isn't really good and pre-rolling his turns, and it's the intended function of the druid, not some accidental side effect.

I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing the "unendurable" part. I have a feeling that we're talking preference here. That leads us to the question of to whom is the game catering and should some subsystem allow for different preferences to play with the same rules. And what this naturally leads to is this modularity shit again, so fuck that noise.

[Username17]

So, monsters follow different rules than PCs?

Well, yeah. Monsters have access to abilities and racial packages that PCs don't. A Manticore can simply not have hands, which isn't acceptable for a PC. A Wyvern can simply not have the power of speech, which is even worse. Heck, a Golem can lack the power of independent thought, at which point they literally cannot have a player at all.

So monsters have to follow a set of creation rules that allows them to get to places that player characters simply can't. It would be a monstrous failure of imagination if those monster creation rules didn't also have outputs that were simpler than PCs and more appropriate to being played five at a time by a DM with a near vertical learning curve than to being the main character of a player.

So yeah, wolves shouldn't have feats. They shouldn't have "backgrounds" or "perks" or whatever the fuck your system uses either. They should be composed of much less lego bits than a player character because they are made out of the system that makes a fucking one-shot wolf rather than the system that makes a full-scale adventurer.

Link, please. (I gotta read that)

The thread in question is Here. K starts off making some very defensible statements about getting rid of race/class determinism that most sane people would agree with, and then it quickly spirals out of control until he's suggesting that archers shouldn't be able to fire arrows across rivers.

-Username17

[K]

Link, please. (I gotta read that)

The thread in question is Here. K starts off making some very defensible statements about getting rid of race/class determinism that most sane people would agree with, and then it quickly spirals out of control until he's suggesting that archers shouldn't be able to fire arrows across rivers.

-Username17

Yes, coming up with suggestions for eliminating DnD archer dominance is crrrraaaazzzzy. Only a mad fool considers designing a base combat system where melee fighters don't instantly lose to ranged attackers.

[Foxwarrior]

A Manticore can simply not have hands, which isn't acceptable for a PC. A Wyvern can simply not have the power of speech, which is even worse.

There's more than one PC in the party you know.

K: Having a non-crazy goal doesn't inherently make your solution non-crazy.

[Username17]

A Manticore can simply not have hands, which isn't acceptable for a PC. A Wyvern can simply not have the power of speech, which is even worse.

There's more than one PC in the party you know.

True. And all of them have to interact with the other player characters and the environment. Players bringing in characters that can't communicate with the other PCs is some of the most destructive bullshit anyone has ever tried in an RPG. That shit is off limits.

Yes, coming up with suggestions for eliminating DnD archer dominance is crrrraaaazzzzy. Only a mad fool considers designing a base combat system where melee fighters don't instantly lose to ranged attackers.

Having a non-crazy goal doesn't inherently make your solution non-crazy.

Pretty much. Hell, in the original thread, I specifically called out to Champions, where mobility powers and melee attacks are cheap and good enough that the overpowered characters are the capes who fly up and punch people rather than characters who sit back and shoot fire. You don't have to make "ranged attacks" be "unable to be used at range" in order to balance archers and swordsmen, it's in fact trivially easy to push balance all the way in the other direction without shitting on verisimilitude.

And it is in fact totally crazy to suggest solutions like "let's remove the ability of arrows to hit people who are outside melee range". Because that's, well, obviously crazy.

-Username17

[Schleiermacher]

So yeah, wolves shouldn't have feats. They shouldn't have "backgrounds" or "perks" or whatever the fuck your system uses either. They should be composed of much less lego bits than a player character because they are made out of the system that makes a fucking one-shot wolf rather than the system that makes a full-scale adventurer.

While I would like to agree with this, monsters not having feats causes problems when those feats aren't just numbers-stuff like Weapon Focus (which shouldn't exist to begin with). Feats are often where you put fighting styles or new tactical options, like Two-Weapon Fighting and Flyby Attack. Sure, you can just arbitrarily give Ettins and Wyverns abilities that do those things, but even if those work just like the feat (or even are bonus feats, 3.0-style) it's clunky to have a system for such abilities and then not use it, and it interacts badly if you want to advance or customize monsters. (What if you want a sword-and-board Ettin, or a dual-wielding Hill Giant?)

[ishy]

Well the clunky part, is that you use feats to grant new tactical options.

Having to spend feat points so you can fight with two-weapons is stupid and you shouldn't do it.

[Schleiermacher]

So if feats shouldn't grant numeric bonuses (because that leads to feat taxes and increased divergence on the RNG between specialists and non-specialists, both of which are bad) and shouldn't grant new tactical options/fighting styles (because... GIANT FROG, I guess?) what should they be for?

[Ancient History]

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

I did say ideally. When you go into battle, would you rather pick the pokemon you want to use and get to duelin', or do you want to open up the build-a-pokemon miniscreen first while the rest of the table takes a bathroom break.

[OgreBattle]

So yeah, wolves shouldn't have feats.

But the level 1 Skirmisher monster class could use feats, like a 'pack tactics' add on that turns him into a Wolf (while the "Is a Spider" feat makes him a dog-sized spider). Of course the Wolf entry still goes in the MM, ready to play.

So if feats shouldn't grant numeric bonuses (because that leads to feat taxes and increased divergence on the RNG between specialists and non-specialists, both of which are bad) and shouldn't grant new tactical options/fighting styles (because... GIANT FROG, I guess?) what should they be for?

I'm thinking that they're a way to customize outside of the features class gives you, and in a monster-class system they're what make brute ogres different from brute spiders.

Basically taking the role of Templates and rolling it into feats too.
Levels= grants the maths
Feats= grants additional abilities

[K]

Yes, coming up with suggestions for eliminating DnD archer dominance is crrrraaaazzzzy. Only a mad fool considers designing a base combat system where melee fighters don't instantly lose to ranged attackers.

Having a non-crazy goal doesn't inherently make your solution non-crazy.

Pretty much. Hell, in the original thread, I specifically called out to Champions, where mobility powers and melee attacks are cheap and good enough that the overpowered characters are the capes who fly up and punch people rather than characters who sit back and shoot fire. You don't have to make "ranged attacks" be "unable to be used at range" in order to balance archers and swordsmen, it's in fact trivially easy to push balance all the way in the other direction without shitting on verisimilitude.

And it is in fact totally crazy to suggest solutions like "let's remove the ability of arrows to hit people who are outside melee range". Because that's, well, obviously crazy.

-Username17

Yes, it's obviooooouuuuuusly crrrraaaazzzzy to suggest that hitting erratically moving targets a hundred feet away should be impossible using basic archery.

Yes, completely rational people know that arrows travel instantly through space with perfect accuracy. I stand corrected.

[K]

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

I did say ideally. When you go into battle, would you rather pick the pokemon you want to use and get to duelin', or do you want to open up the build-a-pokemon miniscreen first while the rest of the table takes a bathroom break.

Ideally, you pick a build when you pick the spell and that's the monster you summon every time you cast the that particular spell.

Dumpster diving for power is really annoying regardless of it's of the "page through the MM for all of the choices each time I cast it" or "play a monster creation mini-game in the middle of combat.

AND both are very hard to balance. Not worth it.

[Omegonthesane]

Having a non-crazy goal doesn't inherently make your solution non-crazy.

Pretty much. Hell, in the original thread, I specifically called out to Champions, where mobility powers and melee attacks are cheap and good enough that the overpowered characters are the capes who fly up and punch people rather than characters who sit back and shoot fire. You don't have to make "ranged attacks" be "unable to be used at range" in order to balance archers and swordsmen, it's in fact trivially easy to push balance all the way in the other direction without shitting on verisimilitude.

And it is in fact totally crazy to suggest solutions like "let's remove the ability of arrows to hit people who are outside melee range". Because that's, well, obviously crazy.

-Username17

Yes, it's obviooooouuuuuusly crrrraaaazzzzy to suggest that hitting erratically moving targets a hundred feet away should be impossible using basic archery.

Yes, completely rational people know that arrows travel instantly through space with perfect accuracy. I stand corrected.

Your implicit argument from plausibility has merit, but the way I remember the earlier thread you insisted on taking it to comical extremes, and YES, it IS crazy to suggest that all forms of ranged attack cannot hit erratically moving targets a hundred feet away.

Fireballs are absolutely necessary in D&D and are an unerring, range $TEXAS attack. (Was going to say undodgeable but Rogues with Evasion exist and can dodge the blast wave from a nuclear strike 1 inch away)

[Omegonthesane]

Really? Every time I've seen someone use Summon Monster, they spent ten minutes looking through the MM to find the monster they wanted before casting the spell.

I did say ideally. When you go into battle, would you rather pick the pokemon you want to use and get to duelin', or do you want to open up the build-a-pokemon miniscreen first while the rest of the table takes a bathroom break.

Ideally, you pick a build when you pick the spell and that's the monster you summon every time you cast the that particular spell.

Dumpster diving for power is really annoying regardless of it's of the "page through the MM for all of the choices each time I cast it" or "play a monster creation mini-game in the middle of combat.

AND both are very hard to balance. Not worth it.

That's... actually a highly defensible position. So long as the Giant Hairy Cock that you summon with Summon Giant Hairy Cock has the exact same stats as the ones encountered in the wild.

[Ancient History]

...at which point, you've just got a Giant Hairy Cock entry in the MM and be done with it. Dumpster-diving is a recognized issue, which is why there were efforts to nerf summon monster with summoning lists and whatnot during the life of the edition. The point is, having a generic block of stats and then declaring it's in the shape of a Giant Hairy Cock but then needing another entire entry for a true Giant Hairy Cock is unbalanced because then one Giant Hairy Cock will be more powerful than another Giant Hairy Cock, when from a game standpoint all Giant Hairy Cocks should be created equal.

Again, it's just trying to find a sweet spot in the rules between "generic" and "specific" - you like a generic statblock for all summoned monsters because it seems quicker, but we're already at a level of abstraction where we have a generic statblock for all goblins, Giant Hairy Cocks, etc. So if you go up one level, you're left with a bunch of numbers and no fluff. You might as well have a chart saying "Okay, this is the generic stats for monsters of level X, add up to three abilities from column A and two attributes from column B. Feel free to add your own fluff."

And y'know that can work in a sufficiently generic, flavorless, build-your-own-setting RPG where they're just feeding you a system, like d20 or GURPS. But for a game with an actual setting, you don't want build-your-own monsters, you want monsters and an idea of how they exist and interact with the setting. That's part of the reason why the Monstrous Manual format was so successful: it hits the sweet spot of being specific enough for a D&D game and general enough for any D&D game.

[tussock]

So yeah, wolves shouldn't have feats. They shouldn't have "backgrounds" or "perks" or whatever the fuck your system uses either. They should be composed of much less lego bits than a player character because they are made out of the system that makes a fucking one-shot wolf rather than the system that makes a full-scale adventurer.

While I would like to agree with this, monsters not having feats causes problems when those feats aren't just numbers-stuff like Weapon Focus (which shouldn't exist to begin with). Feats are often where you put fighting styles or new tactical options, like Two-Weapon Fighting and Flyby Attack. Sure, you can just arbitrarily give Ettins and Wyverns abilities that do those things, but even if those work just like the feat (or even are bonus feats, 3.0-style) it's clunky to have a system for such abilities and then not use it, and it interacts badly if you want to advance or customize monsters. (What if you want a sword-and-board Ettin, or a dual-wielding Hill Giant?)

This is important stuff. Wolves don't need to be quick to build if the monster manual is already done building them for you, but they do need to be easy to comprehend when the game calls for one to appear and also quick to have their actions resolve on the grounds they could be a common ally or large pack monster. That's good.

4e has that exactly backwards, wolves that are a breeze to build and hard to fucking read and really quite slow to actually have do anything at all.

But fighting styles should not be feats in the first place. Improved Trip isn't a thing that wolves need, because it's not a thing that Fighters or anyone needs. Tripping is best as something that sometimes makes tactical sense and otherwise you don't. Same for two-weapons and flybys and mounted combat or whatever.

Feats mainly exist to exclude other critters from sharing your tricks, and to stop you trying new and interesting things as the opportunity arises (well, that and limit in-play option paralysis and bonus stacking). You're allowed to use that as a game mechanic, it has some good outcomes, but not for things that ordinary grunts will often want to try.


So your Sword&Board Ettin and Dual-clubbing Hill Giant just follow the rules for doing those things and use the standard bonuses (I mean, please don't make that massively complicated to trade around feats and still have the same end result, like 3e, FFS). Also, Ettins are two one-armed creatures stuck together, so the one being asked to hold a shield may not go for it.


@it's still the Druid's turn. Stop giving them free command actions, make them give orders with their standard action and have the critters work on a simple autopilot function otherwise (attack last target, target last attacker, or return safely to Druid and guard).

Similarly Henchmen and Hirelings can have morale to keep them in check, sucking up command actions to keep them in the fight or direct them to be smart, and using warhammer-like "shoot closest or biggest" defaults.

@table lookups: No fucking books at the table. Especially not the fucking monster manual. For reals people. Just say no. Your character doesn't know half that shit anyway, put it away.


@Giant Hairy Cock: or, indeed, a whole barrel of them. Noble beasts.

[hogarth]

The thread in question is Here. K starts off making some very defensible statements about getting rid of race/class determinism that most sane people would agree with, and then it quickly spirals out of control until he's suggesting that archers shouldn't be able to fire arrows across rivers.

-Username17

I forgot about that thread. I also forgot that I said this:

K, we get it. Your answer to any problem is "create a system from scratch where X isn't a problem which is so easy that I could do it on my lunch break except I won't".

Even if that's a true claim, it adds nothing to a discussion.