YOU are in charge of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 3e...

[rasmuswagner]

So, "a level 7 brute monster should have about X in attack bonus/damage, AC and HP." So far, that's the 4E paradigm.

"It has good skills at +Y and mediocre skills at +Z. It has ability scores of X1-X6, modified for size and type (large is +4 Str, animal is Int 2, [Finesse] brutes switch Str and Dex, etc)." That gets you the output the monster needs to interact with the world, and you can just change some numbers without recalculating everything.

[GnomeWorks]

But it also doesn't mean that they CAN be handled well. Any action sufficiently uncommon and sufficiently unimportant is, for those reasons alone, impossible to provide a good formal ruling for.

At this point I think we reach the point of anecdotes. You say lifting capacity isn't terribly important and never sees actual play, I say it's come up several times in one of the games I'm in over the past few months.

Who's right, who's wrong, irrelevant at this point. There are always going to be edge-cases or various things that the designer of game X did not think was worth the word count to go into on a mechanical level, which is what fall-back mechanics are for. They are specifically used for things that do not have formal rulings, a statement which we'll come back to in a minute.

No, you didn't outline a default mechanic you outlined advice that fairy tea party could maybe possible decide to reference existing possibly related numeric values in some way with the addition of utterly unspecified modifications. There is a solid difference.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were discussing about implementing a fallback mechanic in a specific system. I thought we were talking in generalities and as a general approach to game design, or perhaps a hypothetical system that is yet to be written.

So yeah, there's a solid difference, since you apparently expected me to spontaneously generate a mechanical example when I had no intention of doing so.

It is of no particularly greater value than, or any particular difference to, "make arguments from character description/background elements for some arbitrary modifiers, then try and use one of the game's commonly used dice with that somehow"

Eh, I disagree. If you can give mechanical grounding at all to an action in-world, my experience is that people on both sides of the screen are willing to be a lot more impartial about the resulting process than if it is wholesale "but I have this background bullshit" kind of thing. Yes, that will come into it later almost assuredly, but if you start with a mechanical process - no matter how basic - it makes the process a lot smoother.

Oh fuck off with your lame attempt to semantics argument your way out of that. The meaning is fucking obvious.

It's not. I'm sorry that you have a problem with that, but it isn't.

Don't waste your time and your players time with obsessive compulsive attempts at simulating details that are of highly limited importance to the actual focus of your GAME.

Have you missed the part where I've been trying to make the point that you have to be concerned with playability, as well? Quit straw-manning, it's annoying. The two goals are not at cross purposes if you keep both in mind from the ground floor.

You don't get to attempt to keep redefining simulation and game until that advice stops being valid.

Whatever bro.

"I dunno FTP something that maybe references your Strength score in some way" is not a functioning formal game mechanic.

It can't be a "formal game mechanic" because it by definition leads you out beyond where the mechanics end. Default mechanics can't do anything more for you than be incredibly basic and open-ended because they are specifically for things the system doesn't cover; if they covered a particular case, then that case is now a formal game mechanic.

[PhoneLobster]

No, you didn't outline a default mechanic you outlined advice that fairy tea party could maybe possible decide to reference existing possibly related numeric values in some way with the addition of utterly unspecified modifications. There is a solid difference.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were discussing about implementing a fallback mechanic in a specific system. I thought we were talking in generalities and as a general approach to game design, or perhaps a hypothetical system that is yet to be written.

So yeah, there's a solid difference, since you apparently expected me to spontaneously generate a mechanical example when I had no intention of doing so.

No, your general terms were in fact highly specific. They specified that they applied in the event of whatever "general" formal rules not applying and that there were in fact just guidelines and there were some unknown but multiple number of them to pick between entirely arbitrarily, and that even then you would be expected to modify them arbitrarily for "context" in further completely open ended ways.

That isn't a vague general description of formal mechanic. That is a very specific description of pulling FTP out of your ass at the table. At a stretch it is a vague description for some advice and guidelines on how to pull FTP out of your ass at the table, but it's still just last minute Fairy Tea Party solutions.

And really there is nothing wrong with that, but you have to recognize what you are doing and not delude yourself that you've got a solid formal rules system in place there or you will fuck it up sideways.

[Username17]

Wouldn't it be possible to provide a table of the "expected" range of attack, defence and HP ratings per CR and then you could build up to those ratings using BAB, Stat bonuses, and special abilities? So a Hill Giant might be on the high end of damage but the lower end of attack bonus, gaining attack and damage from high STR but having a lacklustre BAB for it's level. On the other hand a Corpulent Ghoul would come in around or below the average on the attack front but have high defences and HP from it's undead hit dice.

Absolutely it would. Indeed, I don't see how you'd be able to make intelligent decisions about advancement and balance without such a table. You need to be able to say what defenses and attacks the expected challenges are going to have before you can make rational claims about whether the player characters are up to the challenges presented.

You've got a bunch of demands on your design that pull in different directions. You got monsters with different tactical roles that call for some seriously different numbers. A Manticore is a flying archer, and a Large Earth Elemental is a slow brute monster. Obviously, if the Manticore has the same resiliency and damage output as an Earth Elemental, the Manticore is going to be a much scarier threat. You should definitely have lower numbers on a monster that kites you versus a monster that you get to kite. Similarly though, creatures in the same role should not all have the same stat lines. A Hydra is pretty much the same slow moving wall of meat as an Earth Elemental from a role standpoint, but obviously the fact that it gets five snake heads should give it a different attack profile than the Earth Elemental's giant punches.

Given these axioms, what I would do is the following:

• Monster Classes. I'm not completely committed to a specific number of Monster Classes. I can see the argument for Blasters to be different from Controllers and also see the argument from them to be the same. There is a clear tradeoff between the game being more complex when it has more monster classes and it having more available content. More Monsters is basically better for a D&D-like game, but you still want there to be more than one monster per monster class per level.
  
  Monster Stat Templates The range of attacks and defenses needs to be pretty tight, but the range of perception and strength and shit needs to not be. Each Monster Class should have three or four stat templates in it. Like Brute would have Mighty Brute, Cunning Brute, and Tenacious Brute, and at the same level you might have Hill Giant (Mighty Brute), Corpulent Ghoul (Cunning Brute), and Huge Water Elemental (Tenacious Brute). And they'd have different base stat lines, but they'd have very similar attack values. Indeed, they might have identical attack values before further customization options were taken.
  
  Monster Types Hill Giants are Giants which makes them vulnerable to all the shit that targets giant humanoids, and they are mountain creatures who have skills like climb and crap. Corpulent Ghouls are undead which means that they take extra damage from seering light and and they are urban monsters who have like lockpicking and shit. None of these things impact their headline attack bonus, but it's important.
  
  Monster Options Hill Giants are even stronger than the baseline Mighty Brute, and they have a strength boost with associated to-hit and damage bonuses. The Corpulent Ghouls have a debilitating stench they can give off that sickens people close by.

So if you're making monsters from scratch, that's a lot of selections to make. But the point is that if you want to hotswap shit around to turn Hill Giants into Bog Giants or Corpulent Ghouls into Troglodyte Saurian Mutants, that's relatively easy to do.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

Monster Classes. I'm not completely committed to a specific number of Monster Classes. I can see the argument for Blasters to be different from Controllers and also see the argument from them to be the same. There is a clear tradeoff between the game being more complex when it has more monster classes and it having more available content. More Monsters is basically better for a D&D-like game, but you still want there to be more than one monster per monster class per level.

Well, you can always produce more monsters over time, so having a few gaps to start with is probably not a big deal. And in terms of a hypothetical D&D discussion, you have all the 3.X monsters and anything that was actually new in 4e to reproduce before you're even thinking about new monsters (and you can plunder anything PF made that's actually interesting thanks to the OGL).

So I'd err on the side of having more classes rather than fewer with the assumption that even if the cupboard starts out a little bare, you can produce monster books as needed.

Also I think having a few extra monster classes leaves you some wiggle room to quietly de-emphasize whichever one turns out to not work or be ludicrously OP or something for whatever stupid reason (everyone makes mistakes) rather than being stuck with something that just doesn't fit like how 3.X is stuck with an Undead and Construct types that just don't function properly for types of monsters you want to cram into those types.

[Username17]

So here's some basic monster classes:

• Blaster A Blaster Monster does its best work at medium distance and is probably a bit on the fragile side. The basic tactical puzzle is to bring the pain to a blaster early in the fight because they will snipe you hard if you get bogged down with other enemies or tasks. Classic Blaster Monster is a Medusa.
• Brute A Brute Monster is dangerous up close and takes a long time to get rid of because it is tough. Tactical challenge is locking them down, kiting them, or just avoiding them until less avoidable enemies have been dealt with. Classic Brute Monster is an Ogre.
• Controller A Controller Monster is conceptually similar to a Blaster in the sense that they lay down pain from far away and are relatively fragile. However, their deal is that they drop effects that limit player character actions or movement. Classic Controller Monster is a Mind Flayer.
• Fighter Fighters are simple monsters that swing for damage when they get close enough to do so. Pawns if you will. D&D has traditionally had a lot of monsters like this, but your basic Lizardfolk Warrior is pretty much this.
• Harrier A Harrier monster is one that attacks and withdraws. And then attacks and withdraws again. Your classic example in D&D land is the Phase Spider.
• Leader The Leader is a monster whose primary shtick is that they provide boosts to other monsters. In 3e, that's mostly various spellcaster types or their close analogs like angels and demons.
• Lurker A Lurker is a monster that interdicts territory in a semi-secret way. The classic is Mimic of course, but any body guard up to and including Golems is basically conceptually the same.
• Ravager A Ravager is a monster whose offensive output is well out of proportion to their defensive capabilities. Shit like Giralons that are very high priority to take down because they will rip your damn face off if allowed to take multiple actions.
• Boss A D&D Boss Monster is defined not by being more powerful than the other monsters and players (though it usually is), but by being versatile enough to perform several roles. The Dragon flies overhead breathing electrical strikes and then switches it up to a bruiser role with tooth and claw. The Evil High Priest gives dark blessings to his skeleton minions and then mixes it up with his doom scythe when he gets into melee. And so on.

Are all those roles necessary? Not necessarily. I imagine most Harrier monsters as fast and most Lurker monsters as slow, but there isn't any particular reason that has to be the case. Lurkers and Harriers could simply be the same monster role class with the Phase Spider hitting hard and then phasing out, while the Mimic hits hard during its surprise attack and then has to fight fair unless and until someone disengages and gives it time to regroup its pseudopods. Similarly, you could reduce Controllers into Leaders (it's not generally important whether you are buffing allies or debuffing enemies) or into Blasters.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

@GnomeWorks

Having 'reasonable default rules' to fall back on is still magical tea party. If it is unclear whether you SHOULD use the 'default' or instead it is more appropriate to ass-pull an on-the-spot ruling, then different GMs will resolve the issue in different ways. It's like the Ars Magica system. If you have two people who both claim they know how it really works, and they both come to different solutions, the rules aren't producing consistent outcomes. Calling them 'guidelines' is obfuscation, but ultimately it comes down to what the GM feels is reasonable.

@FrankTrollman -
On the one hand, I'm intrigued by 'monster roles' which you've suggested a few times. For some creatures, it seems it would make sense to have a 'blaster' and 'fighters' in a group (lizard man shaman and warriors). Do they all start with the same 'base creature' (in this case Fighter) and then you add suitable 'blaster levels' on top of the shaman? Or does he just get blaster levels and a lizard man shaman has no 'monster levels' in common with other members of his team? Would you have to generate 'lizard man rogues' that are Harriers as well?

[Username17]

On the one hand, I'm intrigued by 'monster roles' which you've suggested a few times. For some creatures, it seems it would make sense to have a 'blaster' and 'fighters' in a group (lizard man shaman and warriors). Do they all start with the same 'base creature' (in this case Fighter) and then you add suitable 'blaster levels' on top of the shaman? Or does he just get blaster levels and a lizard man shaman has no 'monster levels' in common with other members of his team? Would you have to generate 'lizard man rogues' that are Harriers as well?

The 3e solution would be to have Lizardfolk all hand out some levels of Fighter and have the Lizardfolk Archers take some non-zero number of Blaster levels on top of that, while the Lizardfolk Priest takes some non-zero number of levels of Controller or Leader or something and so on and so forth. The way I see it, there are several of problems of varying severity.

• First of all, how many levels do you envision this shit going on for? In some game like Everquest where the levels go up to 50 or something, I suppose there's always room to slap some advancement levels on the Lizardfolk and Minotaurs and so on and so forth. But in any game with a finite number of levels, that simply isn't true. The Grimlock get up in the morning as 3rd level gentlemen so if you need to be like 5th level or something before you can see a Grimlock leader or a Grimlock with a net, things are kinda fucked up. The game's basically over before you can see a Stone Giant with a name tag, and that's sad.
• It's difficult for me to imagine a system in which open multiclassing works. We tried it for player characters in 3e for sixteen years, and we haven't actually solved the multicaster problem.I don't think we're going to, because I don't think we can. I just don't see how it's possible for a system to output the same threat level from a Lizardfolk Fighter 2/Leader 5 as it is for an Ogre Fighter 4 / Leader 3.
• A Fighter 10 / Blaster 1 is a Fighter, not a Blaster. When you get to higher levels and you're fighting shit like Cyclopses, if you live in a world of racial hit dice those racial hit dice are gonna be most of the character sheet for the higher tier races. I mean, you might see some Fire Giants who have jobs, but you won't care because 90% of their character sheet is still just going to be that they got up in the morning and they were still Fire Giants.
• That really honestly sounds like an accounting nightmare and I don't want to do it. When you're cobbling together shit where a Bugbear Bandit has abilities because they have 3 Fighter levels and abilities because they have 2 Harrier levels and abilities because they are fifth level overall and we know for a fact that you can't get anywhere in life at 5th level with only 3rd level abilities no matter how numerous - you have three fucking strands to track and braid together before the monster is done.

Meanwhile, the 4e system is to say that the Lizardfolk Raider has Ravager levels only and the Lizardfolk Priest has Leader levels only and the Lizardfolk Net Fighter has Controller levels only and you just fucking deal with it. Now the first observation we are obliged to make before proceeding is that 4th edition was fucking awful and the Monster Manual was like Mike Mearls pissing directly onto our face while he mumbled something about Dwarven rap.

And a big part of the reason it was bad was that it was very easy for two creatures to be the same race and share basically nothing in common. The go-to complaint is the Cyclops, but holy shit that was bad. The only thing the different Cyclopses have in common is that they all have an ability called "Evil Eye." But those abilities aren't remotely similar, they are just all called the same thing. So the Cyclops Rambler gets an Evil Eye that lets it shift twice when sifting out of melee, while the Cyclops Hewer gets an Evil Eye that gives him a retributive attack when the enemy he is attacking attacks and misses one of the Cyclops' allies, and the Cyclops Impaler gets an Evil Eye that gives him a bonus to ranged attacks against a single target (to go with his go-to ranged attack of throwing a javelin at two different targets to remind the players how he only has one eye you fucking assholes!), and the Cyclops Battleweaver can use his Evil Eye to curse a target with slow movement, and the Cyclops Storm Shaman has an Evil Eye that makes his own spells do more damage to a single target. Fuck!

So obviously you're going to have to do something to make a 5th level Lizardfolk Blaster and a 5th level Lizardfolk Brute both feel like Lizardfolk. Because the 5th level Blaster class can already give you a Destrachan or a Medusa, so there's nothing inherent about that which is going to make the resulting monster feel like a Lizardfolk with a bow or a staff. There has to be some selections in the typing and options that make all of the differently classed Lizardfolk feel like Lizardfolk. The alternative is to end up like 4e, and that is a bad place to be.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Do monster classes come with power schedules for each monster class?

You mention a Lizardman priest being a blaster or controller. Being a priest implies some similarity to the divine caster classes PC's can use like Druid or Cleric, but in this case blaster, controller, leader are monster classes and not a druid or cleric.

Then you have D&D dragons that "Cast as an X level sorcerer who also has cleric spells", how would that work in this Monster Class system?

---

AncientHistory's PbP game has lvl 3 gestalt PC's and one of the still living ones is some kind of metal flying minotaurman who's LA takes up part of one level track, but the other level track is level 3. Perhaps a monster can be advanced like a gestalt character, or the game is built from the ground up in a way where everyone has two level tracks to spend on class and species power, just an idea.

[deaddmwalking]

The two tracks sounds pretty interesting. If all lizard men get 'Fighter levels' in Track 1, the warriors could take 'Brute' in track 2 and be tougher fighters while the shaman could take 'shaman' in Track 2 and be a tougher shaman than someone that didn't have the fighter levels. I think that would address the two creatures having a similar 'feel' which 4e fails completely.

Regarding Open Multi-classing, clearly a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 doesn't work. But what if your effective level in each class were equivalent to a Fighter 8/Wizard 8 in terms of Class Abilities (but not HD)? Effectively, it would work just as 3.x until you have at least 4 levels - a Rogue 1/Wizard 3 would get the 1st, 2nd and 3rd level Wizard abilities and the 1st and 2nd level Rogue abilities. A Rogue 8/Wizard 8 would get all the rogue abilities up to 14th level and all the Wizard abilities up to 14th level (but still have 8 HD of each class). Would something along those lines address the most glaring issues of class abilities not scaling appropriately?

[souran]

While we are talking about monsters, and monster classes and all this stuff we need to remember that each monster needs to be able to perform its signature "attack" in 3-5 rounds.

Further, every monster pretty much needs a signature move or they might as well just be recolored sprites.

Also, the signature move shouldn't be buried in the spell list.

Monsters need to have an explanation of how they fight, what is unique about how they fight and what they do after they have pulled off their fancy trick. Explaining this is as important as getting their stats correct because how the monster works is vital to its difficulty being accurate. If the only person who can run the monster effectively is the author its wasted page space.

You also have to ecology sections for each monster, even though they are literally the most useless aspect of designing monsters in gaming. Many monsters are encountered outside of their "habitat" because they are summoned, or kept as pets, or because the DM is trying to create mystery like the polar bear from lost. There are literally millions of reasons why the ecology sections of monster manuals are arbitrary, pointless garbage....but its still mandatory or your product will get the same reaction as a sharper image catalog with all the pictures redacted.

[momothefiddler]

[EDIT: This is @deaddmwalking]
Can you explicate the calculations there? At first I assumed you were going off doubled numbers->CR+2 and giving everyone both classes at level-2 (Fighter/Wizard 10 is basically a 10HD Fighter 8//Wizard 8, Rogue/Wizard 16 is 16HD Rogue 14//Wizard 14, and what you lose in action economy over an actual pair of characters you gain in synergy or whatever), but then your Rogue 1/Wizard 3 being a 4HD Rogue 2//Wizard 3 really threw me off because even at a tradeoff you should still be losing a total of four levels (two for each side) and I can't come up with a new model that reconciles that.

[Kaelik]

Also, the signature move shouldn't be buried in the spell list.

This seems pretty much completely wrong. If you have an extended list of abilities somewhere that most PC abilities derive from, or even multiple such lists, having monsters draw from those lists when they do things like the things on those lists is just the sensible way to write monsters.

There are basically three ways I can see this going down:

1) Succubi use Dominate Monster as an SLA. This is the same ability PCs get, and is in some central list of abilities somewhere.

2) Succubi don't use Dominate Monster, instead they use "Enslave(Su):" which literally just recopies the Dominate Monster text word for word. This is pointless and stupid.

3) Succubi (and Aboleths and Formians, and ect.) all have a completely different ability write up that does things slightly different for added complexity and honestly, very very little gain. Also a bunch of the text is recopied over like in 2).

I really don't see the argument that we need to avoid 1).

[souran]

This seems pretty much completely wrong. If you have an extended list of abilities somewhere that most PC abilities derive from, or even multiple such lists, having monsters draw from those lists when they do things like the things on those lists is just the sensible way to write monsters.

Kaelik, I didn't mean "monsters shouldn't have abilities drawn from the common pool of PC powers and spells"

I LITERALLY meant that the signature move of a monster shouldn't be buried in the middle of its spell list like it is for most of the good 3E monsters.

A Succubus is going to not just have dominate person, but probably a whole host of charm related spell-like at will or dailies. Its going to have some magical abilities that are of a higher spell level than dominate person. However, those are probably going to be things various spells that allow it to escape detection or change into a more pleasing shape or survive in the outer planes.

If you FIGHT a succubus it starts with dominate person, so that should be made clear right away because if the succubus starts by casting anything else you have just wasted an encounter and your parities time.

[Username17]

Do monster classes come with power schedules for each monster class?

You mention a Lizardman priest being a blaster or controller. Being a priest implies some similarity to the divine caster classes PC's can use like Druid or Cleric, but in this case blaster, controller, leader are monster classes and not a druid or cleric.

I was imagining a system in which the monster classes were indeed blessed with their own resource management systems. If Harriers are supposed to strike, withdraw, and then strike again, it makes sense to give the Harriers abilities that refresh when they can "regroup" or whatever. If Controllers are supposed to lock down the players, it would be really frustrating if they didn't eventually run out of juice. And so on.

So your Harpies (Harriers) would be able to do their no-hit-backs dive-bys over and over again so long as they got to circle and be unmolested in between. Meanwhile, the Greenvice (Controller) is going to run out of acid fog, so you might potentially ever be able to fight the damn thing even if you don't have any ability to push through an acid fog.

Anyway, for Lizardfolk you could obviously write them up as a PC with levels of Assassin or Paladin or something. And that would be fine. But also probably more work than you want to do for Lizardman Archer #3. They could also take Monster classes, which are intended to make them as powerful as one of the level appropriate monsters in an encounter rather than fully the equal of a Player Character.

Then you have D&D dragons that "Cast as an X level sorcerer who also has cleric spells", how would that work in this Monster Class system?

Some monster would just be player character classes. Nymphs and Dryads should simply be Druids or Illusionists. If the Druid or Illusionist isn't giving the right abilities to represent basic fairies, you need to change those classes until they do. And some monsters are Boss Monsters who inherently have a wide variety of options, and if one of their lines wants to be "is also a Wizard" or "is also a Ranger," then who am I to argue?

AncientHistory's PbP game has lvl 3 gestalt PC's and one of the still living ones is some kind of metal flying minotaurman who's LA takes up part of one level track, but the other level track is level 3. Perhaps a monster can be advanced like a gestalt character, or the game is built from the ground up in a way where everyone has two level tracks to spend on class and species power, just an idea.

Gestalt isn't remotely balanced, so it's only really usable for characters that you don't really give a shit if they are remotely balanced. Which is mostly just boss monsters by my reckoning. I mean, if the vampire lord ends up being really powerful or just kinda powerful, how much does it really matter? Maybe he's some mix of class powers that synergize well, maybe he isn't. Either way, he'll be noticeably better than you. That's all you really care about.

Regarding Open Multi-classing, clearly a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 doesn't work. But what if your effective level in each class were equivalent to a Fighter 8/Wizard 8 in terms of Class Abilities (but not HD)?

Look, I understand that if you divide something but you're working in a log scale that it's converted to a simple subtraction. But asking people to convert things in and out of log scales is bullshit.

And even within the context of the admittedly elegant math being handled for you, the simple fact is that classes don't really add together in a way that makes sense. Having twice as many abilities that you could have had two levels ago is sometimes really good and sometimes totally worthless. The choice to use two different attacks that aren't level appropriate is a fake choice. The addition of two sets of bonuses that are both individually 4/5 of what you should be getting is overpowered. And it's pretty much always going to be like that. Elegant mathematical constructs doesn't save multiclassing, because it's conceptually flawed.

You also have to ecology sections for each monster, even though they are literally the most useless aspect of designing monsters in gaming.

Ecology descriptions are nothing like the most useless thing in a monster book. Descriptions of how Death Dogs fit into the world is literally the entire reason you care about Death Dogs rather than just rolling on the random damage table. You have Mind Flayers because they eat brains. If they were just a CR 8 pile of hit points with a stun lock like an Axiomite or some fucking thing, you wouldn't give a shit.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

This seems pretty much completely wrong. If you have an extended list of abilities somewhere that most PC abilities derive from, or even multiple such lists, having monsters draw from those lists when they do things like the things on those lists is just the sensible way to write monsters.

Kaelik, I didn't mean "monsters shouldn't have abilities drawn from the common pool of PC powers and spells"

I LITERALLY meant that the signature move of a monster shouldn't be buried in the middle of its spell list like it is for most of the good 3E monsters.

A Succubus is going to not just have dominate person, but probably a whole host of charm related spell-like at will or dailies. Its going to have some magical abilities that are of a higher spell level than dominate person. However, those are probably going to be things various spells that allow it to escape detection or change into a more pleasing shape or survive in the outer planes.

If you FIGHT a succubus it starts with dominate person, so that should be made clear right away because if the succubus starts by casting anything else you have just wasted an encounter and your parities time.

Ah, I see, you are arguing for a better sorting of ability lists, instead of just:

Special Attacks: Spell Like Abilities.

And then a list of SLAs sorted by level and alphabet and uses per day.

Yes, then I mostly agree with you. While monsters certainly should vary in complexity, I could see a Succubus with abilities:

Special Attacks: Dominate, Charm, Energy Drain, Run Away
Special Qualities: Shapechange, Tongues, Telepathy, other crap.

Where Dominate says that it's Dominate Monster (and dominate monster is rewritten to be less terrible) and charm is charm, and energy drain does whatever an appropriate succubi kill attack on pets is, and Run away is Ethereal Jaunt and/or Greater TP. and Shapechange is like 3.5 Change Shape or whatever the appropriate mostly cosmetic but can pretend to be a creature is, and so forth.

[souran]

Ecology descriptions are nothing like the most useless thing in a monster book. Descriptions of how Death Dogs fit into the world is literally the entire reason you care about Death Dogs rather than just rolling on the random damage table. You have Mind Flayers because they eat brains. If they were just a CR 8 pile of hit points with a stun lock like an Axiomite or some fucking thing, you wouldn't give a shit.

-Username17

Except that players really don't give a shit. You can literally change everything about death dogs except the name and the picture and players seriously wouldn't care.

Nobody is EVER going to say that you "ruined their immersion" because you had the party encounter death dogs in the northern sword coast, even though they are from the desert.

It is arbitrary nonsense and will more likely than not, be ignored because a fits the needed CR, has good art, or has good abilities for its CR and is summoned (thus making ecology irrelevant).

However, without the ecology readers and DMs won't remember your monster(s). Magic cards have flavor text, even when its bad, for a reason. D&D monsters need their flavor text even though most players will never read it and of those that do read it more than half will ignore it.

[Mechalich]

Except that players really don't give a shit. You can literally change everything about death dogs except the name and the picture and players seriously wouldn't care.

Nobody is EVER going to say that you "ruined their immersion" because you had the party encounter death dogs in the northern sword coast, even though they are from the desert.

It is arbitrary nonsense and will more likely than not, be ignored because a fits the needed CR, has good art, or has good abilities for its CR and is summoned (thus making ecology irrelevant).

However, without the ecology readers and DMs won't remember your monster(s). Magic cards have flavor text, even when its bad, for a reason. D&D monsters need their flavor text even though most players will never read it and of those that do read it more than half will ignore it.

What players want and what GMs want are, as you just noted, very different things. You need to design books to sell to both, and it is actually a careful balancing act as to which type of material you emphasize. The RPG buying market contains far more dedicated players than dedicated GMs, but the individual GMs buy considerably more stuff than they players (heck a not insignificant portion of TTRPG players don't buy books at all)

Appealing to the fluff fans is just as important as appealing to the crunch fans, and one of the good design choices of 3e was that most books had a fair amount of stuff for each so that even nominally GM focused books like Draconomicon at least theoretically have stuff in them that players would have reason to want.

[FatR]

Players, at least as far as I can tell for myself for my players' reactions, do give a shit about ecologies, at least insofar as they'll start wondering how the fuck villages even survive if everything is crawling with hyper dangerous predators, and what those predators eat when they have no adventurers around.

[souran]

Players, at least as far as I can tell for myself for my players' reactions, do give a shit about ecologies, at least insofar as they'll start wondering how the fuck villages even survive if everything is crawling with hyper dangerous predators, and what those predators eat when they have no adventurers around.

This is more of a question about the robustness of D&D worlds in general. Yes, if you have the party always facing crazy dangerous stuff, but it all surrounds a little isolated village that is 2 days ride from anywhere with a spellcaster who can cure blindness players are going to wonder how people survive.

However, no player is pitching a fit because you have owlbears in deciduous forests instead of coniferous forests. Hell they really wouldn't care if you added them to a rainforest.

Nobody really cares about the mind-flayers plans for world domination or their eternal war with Aboleths. While a discussion of Eye Tyrant mating habits can be a fun read (and would certainly be memorable) players really won't care about it.

Honestly, most ecology sections are already garbage because they assume you can keep adding high order predators to ecosystems that otherwise look earthlike without radically changing everything. The deserts of the middle east, American southwest, and western Australia have some very different creatures. The ecology for Death Dogs doesn't actually tell you which kind of desert they fit in. It also doesn't tell you if its the same deserts with Behirs. Hell, it says they make alliances with goblinoids who by default are not desert people.

Wondering why Poneyville is next to the Everfree forest is not the same thing as arguing that its dumb that the everfree forest has manticore, cockatrice, and Hydra monsters. People are really wondering how the non-pcs survive not arguing that monsters are non-sustainable.

[erik]

Ecology sections that make no sense are what players don't care about. If it makes no sense that owlbears are in deciduous forests but not in coniferous ones then yeah, players won't give a fuck about keeping track of arbitrarium.

Ecology sections that make some sort of sense are what make a setting awesome. "We have to be careful by the coast, that's where giant motherfucking crabs live!"

[Grek]

Monster Roles According to Grek:

• Basic Opponents are entirely straightforward in combat. They have normal numbers for their CR and have no 'trick' to fighting them. The key words here are in combat: If an opponent is straight-forward in a fight, it should do something outside of combat that makes it interesting. In combat, they should ideally be mixed with opponents of at least one other type, often a Runner or a Threat. Examples: Orcs, Goblins, Elves.
• Threats have a strong offense, but obvious weaknesses. They either lack certain key defenses (Fragile Threats), are slow enough to kite (Avoidable Threats), are unable to enter certain terrain (Contained Threats) or have an inflexible and exploitable psychology (Predictable Threats). These get two challenge ratings: one for if their weakness is used and one for if it isn't. DMs should make sure the total encounter CR is appropriate regardless of which is the case. Examples: Ogres, Golems, Giant Sharks.
• Menaces are difficult to engage and difficult to escape. Special tactics are required to fight Menaces, including readied actions (Evasive Menaces), area attacks (Hidden Menaces), ranged/reaching attacks (Kiting Menaces) or identifying preset attacks (Trapper Menaces). These tactics are often dangerous or suboptimal while faced with other enemies. Menaces are unlikely to defeat the party on their own, but often complicate other, already dangerous situations. Good for horror plots. Examples: Phase Spiders, Giant Spiders, Manticores, Invisible Stalkers.
• Controllers limit or prevent viable player choices while present. This includes monsters with powerful triggered attacks (Contingent Controllers), those that cover for the weaknesses of allies (Protector Controllers), or directly prevent the players from using abilities (Interference Controllers). Controllers should be used with caution, as they can make encounters unexpectedly spike in difficulty or render certain characters entirely ineffective if misused. Examples: Medusae, Hippogriffs, Krenshar.
• Chaff are non-threatening, but come in large numbers and have simplified mechanics. Moving through chaff is difficult but doable. Chaff exist to allow for battles against large numbers of foes in a way that doesn't result in tedium. CR for all Chaff present in an encounter is equal to the highest CR of all Chaff present - having more Chaff or varied kinds of Chaff doesn't make the encounter more difficult in a meaningful sense. Examples: Skeletons, swarms, minion armies.
• Runners flee from combat and cause problems if they successfully escape. They might take take something (or someone) valuable with them (Thief Runners), call for reinforcements (Alarm Runners) or be inherently valuable to capture (Important Runners). Runners are good for McGuffin based quests and as the last stage in Complex enemies intended to be recurring foes. Examples: Unicorns, Scouts, Boss Monsters.

[GnomeWorks]

Special Attacks: Dominate, Charm, Energy Drain, Run Away
Special Qualities: Shapechange, Tongues, Telepathy, other crap.

I think if you took a vaguely 4e approach to monster entries (in terms of listing attacks and what they do in combat), but also included non-combat stuff as a separate part of the "stat block," you would be in a good starting position to make monster entries not terrible.

[JonSetanta]

Roles are fine but it shouldn't be done with a class for each one per monster.

Do a template, with one "monster class" for all. That way if you are lazy you can simply NOT apply a template and have an AD&D monster style anyway.

[Username17]

Chaff are non-threatening, but come in large numbers and have simplified mechanics.

No.

4th edition D&D was so bad that "your idea is superficially similar to a design decision in 4th edition" is a pretty good counterargument against a proposal. Well, your idea is superficially similar to a design decision in 4th edition.

Minions in 4e were fucking awful, despite the fact that they are extremely similar to Mooks in Feng Shui (and written by the same person!), where the concept does alright. The key difference is that D&D is a leveling game, while Feng Shui's advancement system is so bad that no one uses it.

It is useful to have creatures that are chaff at whatever level you happen to be playing at. And in a game where you don't gain levels, that chaff might as well have its own designation. In a game where the players gain levels and face new, more powerful threats, the chaff needs to be drafted from the lower level ranks of ordinary opponents. It is fucking important that the chaff monsters of today be the same Ogres that gave you a hard time six levels ago. That's one of the only signals the game can give that the level treadmill isn't just you facing a series of identical pallet swap monsters.

Having 11th level chaff monsters is insulting and bad.

-Username17