New Edition: Monsters

[virgil]

If something has equivalent bonuses and such, except for damage output and hit points, then how are they playing in the same field?

I assume we're going towards a new rubric rather than the single CR philosophy from 3E? One where an entity has 'level' and 'power'? Power indicates ability to last (health points in the damage game), while level indicates your ability to influence the battlefield (and resist being influenced)?

What would a level 7 party fighting a level 5 boss monster look like?

[Username17]

I don't understand why you want to decouple level from power in that way.

Glass Jaws. Giant Scorpions. Basilisks.

These are things that you fight when you're a hero. They don't have the tactical depth of a real character. They aren't a character of their level. They fight characters of their level because on one or more important axes they are able to play on that field. But they aren't heroes, there are tricks to fighting them, and the players will win.

The level system does not, and can not give an accurate holistic description of the power of a giant scorpion. Do we call it by the level of a horse archer required to kite it to death? Do we call it by the level of a berserker required to tank it don? No! It's not either of those things. It's a monster. The level on it should be evaluated as a monster not as a character because it is not a character. Fighting a group of these things isn't like fighting a party containing a Dark Warrior, a Gadgeteer, a Druid, and a Monk. It's not even close. It's just the same tactical problem four times.

I want the skeletons raised on the field to make a god damned bit of difference. That means that their basic attack numbers have to be relevent. But they should be cleared out like wheat with a scythe by the heroes. Meaning that they don't have the hit points (or damage output) of a real character of their level.

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The Level on a creature should tell you whether it is appropriate for you to fight it. It shouldn't pretend to tell you whether you are personally equal to it, because it can't for a lot of creature types.

Once you've defined the roles that monsters actually are supposed to have, you can put them at the appropriate level without making consessions to character equivalence.

---

And yes, some monsters are player equivalent. Those things get the [NPC] tag, and their level does indicate what kind of player level they are equivalent. Those are really scary, for obvious reasons. But the fact that a giant spider is something level appropriate for you to fight shouldn't confuse you into thinking that it's the equivalent of a player character. It's a [Monster], basically it just has webs, poison fangs, and a bunch of legs. It's not that tactically interesting and it probably won't win against people who can set themselves on fire and teleport short distances.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

So I've been thinking about the how puzzling should a puzzle monster be bit.

And I think I'm leaning toward disliking a situation where you MUST have fire, or wooden stakes or someone hopped up on crack cocaine to interact in combat at all.

But I don't at all mind if you are noticeably more effective if you have the right trick.

And I don't mind if you need fire or stakes or the spear of destiny to FINISH killing a monster.

So anyone at all can defeat Mr Vampire in a single encounter or drive him off or whatever but unless you have the key piece to the puzzle monster then you just have to fight him again later on until you do.

And then the puzzle monster becomes an adventure. And a puzzle.

If you walk into combat vs a puzzle monster who is just immune to everything but the puzzle solution and the puzzle starts now and ends when someone dies, that's not nearly as useful for game play as a puzzle you can encounter, discover, drive off and come back to with a solution when you are ready.

[CatharzGodfoot]

How will monster abilities be categorized and created, and how will those categories interact with the sets of player abilities?

Obviously you can make monsters with ability suites that are in no way balanced in comparison to the players', but it seems prudent to try for as much overlap as possible. Monsters don't need prerequisites, and they don't have boosts balanced to strikes, but a player could conceivably select almost any monster ability (and vice-versa).

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah I agree with frank. It is illogical to try to make monsters equivalent to PCs. They just cant have the same tactical diversity, otherwise every monster is going to be a real pain in the ass to run. In fact, I think even most NPCs shouldnt have that kind of tactical diversity. Only the main villains, who you expect to see a lot of, should have the vast array of stuff that a PC can do.

[Crissa]

No, think about it: Summonable is a template or tag placed on appropriate monsters; Boss is a template or tag on Special monsters or a load of extra hit points on a monster.

Why is this a problem? The players will come in totally optimized for their goal, they'll have generally more hit points for their level, better tools for their value, etc.

Balancing AC and attacks is difficult. And you never want to encounter an off-balance situation. That leads to player death, and ruining the storyline with party kills at the hands of even an experienced DM using the dice as they fall.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

1199331425[/unixtime]]No, think about it: Summonable is a template or tag placed on appropriate monsters; Boss is a template or tag on Special monsters or a load of extra hit points on a monster.

Why is this a problem? The players will come in totally optimized for their goal, they'll have generally more hit points for their level, better tools for their value, etc.

Balancing AC and attacks is difficult. And you never want to encounter an off-balance situation. That leads to player death, and ruining the storyline with party kills at the hands of even an experienced DM using the dice as they fall.

-Crissa

Seems fine by me.
I'd like to see his ideas in action, though.
Like what, a Boss template that (among other things) grants +10 HP a level and DR, with an improvement to HP gain according to the monster's level?

[Username17]

What it really comes down to at this point is:

[*] How many turns should combats last?
[*] How many Skeletons or Imps on the board is enough/too many?
[*] How many Hit Points is enough to be satisfying?
[*] How many Hit Points is a pain in the ass to calculate?

Once those numbers are in, mathematical regression is fairly simple.

Extreme Examples off the top of my head:
[*] A battle over in a single round is definitely too short. It doesn't give time for people who came with powder weapons to feel the fact that they've runout of ammo, it doesn't give people who build up to fire breathing a chance to do that.
[*] When a necromancer brings in his army of the dead and it's seriously two guys I personally feel cheated. But I've only thrown down the warhammer fantasy troops on the board a couple of times and only for epic conflicts.
[*] War Hammer Fantasy Roleplay doesn't have enough hit points.
[*] Final Fantasy has too many hit points.


-Username17

[Koumei]

Right, so we want more than 1 HP but less than 9,999 HP. Sounds fair.

I'd probably like slightly bigger amounts of HP than D&D currently has, and less damage scaling, or alternatively, keep a nice smooth damage scaling (1d6 per level, and a new, more powerful ability is not 2d6 per level, it's the same damage but more targets, or another cool effect attached) and a decent dollop of extra HP.

For instance, first level. So, people could seriously be dealing 0-16 damage (what, +8 is the maximum from an ability score or something? And let's say a nice strong attack is a d8 per level. Fuck the "2d6 plus Strength and a half. Awesome for a few levels, then shit because it starts too good but doesn't scale." things). In this case, HP should be 20-30 for first level, so that you suck up a few of those hits before going down.

Now, at fifth level, we're looking at 5dX+8, so that's what, 25.5 if we use d6es, and 30.5 if we use d8s. On average. Maximums are 38 and 48 respectively, although the more dice we throw in, the less likely you are to hit maximum (or minimum, for that matter). So let's call it a minimum of 50 HP, preferably somewhere as high as 75.

Tenth level sees an average of 43 or 53, or a maximum of 68/88. So we need to have 100 or more hit points. Probably more, really.

In fact, that's just enough to take 2-3 hits each, and that's not very good.

I like combat to last 3-4 rounds for basic battles, 1-2 for the really quick "Wipe the enemies out just as a reminder that you're awesome" ones, 4-5 for the large groups of minions that you're slaughtering, and 5-6 rounds for a boss. More for bosses if the system is so smooth that turns are over fairly quickly

I have no problem with gangs of skeletons and the like coming in groups of 20. You can either spread them out, and have the PCs tear through them like Dynasty Warriors, or actually field a Warhammer regiment on the table in a neat 4x5 unit, and give them rank and file bonuses or whatever.

If unique enemies, with tactics and the like, came in big groups, I'd want to stab my brain out with a d20. And that can't be done.

More than 30 minions and the game probably slows down, but if you seriously make "swarms of skeletons" and the like, you could have hundreds of them and it'd be epic.

[PhoneLobster]

# How many turns should combats last?
# How many Skeletons or Imps on the board is enough/too many?
# How many Hit Points is enough to be satisfying?
# How many Hit Points is a pain in the ass to calculate?

One sided well stacked surprise combat should last one or two rounds.

Real regular combat should last about 5 or 6 rounds.

No number of skeletons or imps is two many, the question is how many actions do those countless masses get? More than two to three times the number actual players themselves is probably starting to hit difficulty.

3 is a satisfying number of hit points.

50 is too many.

[Crissa]

�gMy name is Raquel,�h she said. �gI�fm�c well, I�fm actually fully human. I�fm majoring in martial combat. An interesting fact about me? You know how oil of stoneskin has a warning label that says it�fs not a contraceptive? My parents are the reason.�h

[JonSetanta]

edit: fine, whatever. fuckin hard to read, though.

And just a few minutes ago, I finished reading Star Wars: Saga edition.
Ah. Nerdgasm. Too much... Saga is just... guh
Awesome.

Relevant: The starting HP for basic classes at level 1 is 30 for the warriors, 18 for 'weaks', and 24 for balanced.
Will this setting have similar?

[Username17]

Relevant: The starting HP for basic classes at level 1 is 30 for the warriors, 18 for 'weaks', and 24 for balanced.
Will this setting have similar?

I'm thinking not. If anything, the system should have stances that you choose from, which make you optimized for Tenacity/Dodge (Mostly Melee), Willpower/Insight (Mostly Spells), or Fortitude/Perception (Mostly Explosions). That sort of thing.

If the defensive stances also chose what you'd be doing with your Attacks of Opportunity, it could speed up the game and encourage people to fit into the kind of role you're looking for.

But Hit Points won't actually be caste dependent, because castes are optional.

-Username17

[Falgund]

# How many turns should combats last?
1 if you surprise an outleveled opposition or without surprise against completly outleveled opposition
2 at least if there no surprise even against outleveled opposition (So there is a chance to flee)
3 at least if you surprise even-leveled opposition (Idem)
~6 if there no surprise against even-leveled opposition
10+ against Big Bad Guys

(outleveled meaning 5 levels, completly outleveled meaning 10 levels)

# How many Skeletons or Imps on the board is enough/too many?
2-4 at a time for a summoner
15-30 for an 'army', but only 2-4 of them should be able to attack each opponent at a time (spacing being enough to avoid losing more than 25% against even-leveled AoE spells), and they should be one/two-shotable by most basic attacks (GM only having to memorize healthy/wounded/dead state for most cases)

# How many Hit Points is enough to be satisfying?
At least enough to avoid going to 0 in one even-leveled hit, even at level 1. So i'll say twice the average expected damage (assuming damage accross the board have less variance than 3.0. No more 1d4+1 vs 2D6+11)

# How many Hit Points is a pain in the ass to calculate?
More than 100

[CatharzGodfoot]

I'd just as soon have 20 HP for everyone, always. Everything else can be done with shifting ACs and ABs.

[Surgo]

I have to concur with Catharz here. Koumei's example of increasing dice quickly becomes a pain in the ass when you're rolling physical dice.

[Crissa]

Sigma, if you want to 'help', you'll have to delete the prior two-byte characters.

-Crissa

“I saw a dryad once,� I told her. “When I was in the first grade, on a school trip to the Oak Tribe Preserve. It was for naturalism class… we were looking for leaves and nuts and things. We had a check list… it was alphabetical, and I was going from the top down instead of, you know, just picking up whatever I came across. So, I was looking for an acorn, and I couldn’t find any, until I accidentally kicked one and sent it rolling down the path. It stopped at the foot of a beautiful woman… naked, with green hair. She handed it to me, and I got this feeling… I thought I’d imagined it, but I’ll never forget it. It was like looking at cool, green-tinged sunlight and hearing the wind rustling the leaves. There wasn’t any wind, though.�

“She was telling you her name, she was introducing herself… saying hello.�

[Fwib]

[edit] Ahha, unicode makes the odd symbols become quote marks.
[edit more] but not for the Oil of Stoneskin quote... *shrug*

[Koumei]

But what else am I going to do with my >300d6?

On a more serious note, I have no qualms with basically fixing the damage and HP, and just making other things change, or by instead involving some scaling DR system just to spite what's his face, or whatever. Heck, if you simply want some sort of "Roll to Wound", Warhammer style, that could even work.

[JonSetanta]

Prior?
That second quote has me stumped. A simple "Replace" in Notepad won't do the trick, except where ¦ = ; and ™ = '. Those are obvious.
That's painful to read. It's like reading L337. Where the hell are those excerpts from?

[Crissa]

Now at least you guys know how I feel when you quote stuff from the new Wizards' website.

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

I've been thinking about appropriate level 1 adventures, and It's led me to wonder about a few things.

Is every banker, weaver, fisherman, security guard, miner, minor, undertaker, and librarian a member of a PC class? Are they members of colored classes? Do they have any class as all?

Is there value in having a 0th level, which is essentially colorless and gives basic and background traits only? I would say so, and I'd even consider what types of challenges a 0th level character can overcome. This would set a baseline distinction between what an above-average classless can do, and therefore what takes real power to accomplish.

0th level human characters need rope to get down a sheer cliff greater than 5' safely. A large rat will cause wounds. Single wolves or big angry dogs pose a threat. Black bears and armed 0th level characters are dangerous in the extreme. Darkness hampers them greatly, even when they have lamps or torches. A hidden pit trap is almost certainly effective.
Hopefully, two armed 0th-levelers are an appropriate challenge for a novice hobgoblin warrior.

[Captain_Bleach]

1199572552[/unixtime]]
0th level human characters need rope to get down a sheer cliff greater than 5' safely. A large rat will cause wounds. Single wolves or big angry dogs pose a threat. Black bears and armed 0th level characters are dangerous in the extreme. Darkness hampers them greatly, even when they have lamps or torches. A hidden pit trap is almost certainly effective.
Hopefully, two armed 0th-levelers are an appropriate challenge for a novice hobgoblin warrior.

This is called 'real life.'

[Koumei]

1199599067[/unixtime]]
This is called 'real life.'

That game sucks.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1199603364[/unixtime]]

1199599067[/unixtime]]
This is called 'real life.'

That game sucks.

I agree. It's too expensive and the rules seem deliberately unclear.