[5e] Thorough explanation of why it's terrible?

[...You Lost Me]

I think I lean towards pragma's perspective on this. It doesn't matter how beautiful & condensed your statblock is if the average party won't use it properly. I would add that statblocks in 3e can also be misleading. For instance, a full attack entry can look pretty impressive, but a lot of interesting 3e monsters are interesting because of their SLAs (which look totally innocuous in a stat block).

That said, I don't think you need to get rid of function calls. I think the sections of the MM that deal with tactics should be much more detailed, and they should explicitly note why certain function calls get used. The wyvern's block is just this:

Wyverns are rather stupid but always aggressive: They attack nearly anything that isn’t obviously more powerful than themselves. A wyvern dives from the air, snatching the opponent with its talons and stinging it to death. A wyvern can slash with its talons only when making a flyby attack.

The Wyvern has all sorts of interesting tricks, but I would forgive any DM who just played a Wyvern as a dive bombing grappler. And some MM entries are just totally useless:

Even if it had no special abilities, a devourer would be a terrible opponent, for its bony claws can flay enemies alive.

That's literally it. No mention of what those abilities are, or why the Devourer uses them. Contrast that to the Pit Fiend entry, which has an entire section on tactics:

A pit fiend typically opens combat by using its spell-like abilities, attempting to neutralize dangerous opponents before entering melee.

• Prior to combat: Unholy aura; activate fear aura, summon devil.
• Round 1: Quickened fireball and mass hold monster if facing three or more visible, active opponents; otherwise power word stun against unarmored opponent (preferably a spellcaster).
• Round 2: Meteor swarm against as many foes as possible, approach worst-injured enemy.
• Round 3: Full attack against injured enemy.
• Round 4: Continue melee against injured enemy, or power word stun against annoying spellcaster.
• Round 5: Repeat from round 1, or greater teleport to safety if endangered.

This gives DMs a framework for creating Pit Fiend encounters without reading up on the Pit Fiend's 14 different SLAs.

3e started doing this more often later in the game's life with products like MM3. For example, the eldritch giant gets a 4-round tactics breakdown that calls out its unique features (quickened dispel magic and empowered magic missile). MM3 also happens to be when WotC started padding out monster entries with fluff, so maybe it's just a lucky coincidence.

In any case, I would love to see tactics entries for monsters like the Wyvern that could hold a DM's hand through a combat. As cool as 3e is, it is a seriously inaccessible game.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

EDIT: However, after reading the 3.5 Wyvern entry I'm reminded of why people gravitate to 5e, me included. 3.5 feels really Baroque, and that entry is overflowing with fiddly bits, including a bunch of feats I don't remember.

In my case, 5e feels ridiculously shallow compared to 3.5. That's a bit lower on my list of why I don't play 5e, but it's worth bringing up all the same.

[Chamomile]

I've wrung 3e-style wyvern fights out of 5e with exactly two modifications:

#1: You know that ability some 5e monsters have where they automatically grapple creatures when they hit with a certain natural attack? Give that to the wyvern's claws.

#2: Loosely eyeball in the 3.5e maneuverability rules. You don't actually need to count turning arcs or anything, the wyvern just needs to fly around in circles rather than hovering 40 ft. above the party, diving straight down to grab someone, then flying straight back up to 40 ft.

I also like to have wyverns drop high-AC characters like a crow dropping nuts.I can't even remember if 5e has falling damage or if I pulled that in from 3e without thinking about it.

[WiserOdin032402]

5e has falling damage.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_SRD:Falling

1d6 bludgeoning damage per 10 feet fallen and you land prone. Funnily enough the damage is typed and it's nonmagical, meaning that the Wyvern in question is immune to falling damage.

[Stubbazubba]

I mean, this is pretty consistent with the basic philosophies of 3.5 vs. 5e: 3.5 has a lot of depth, but only if you and everyone else at the table have internalized a lot of the rules, whereas 5e is "Baby's First D&D" which only does 1 thing and attempts to walk you through that with its confusing language that really relies on you already knowing how they want things to work.

A new DM would have a lot of reading to get through to run the 3.5 Wyvern as intended (the maneuverability chart in general is an awful lot to memorize for the handful of times the minutiae matter, and putting together the dice and mechanics of flyby attack -> talons -> grapple -> sting -> poison requires piecing together 4 different parts of the monster entry, assuming you don't have to look up any general function calls). A 5e DM can figure out that stat block even if he's only ever played up to a Level 3 character because it only tries to do one thing, a fairly basic multiattack, and all the info for it is in chronological order as you read the Multiattack action. It's boring, but its presentation is newb-friendly.

You could re-write the 3.5 Wyvern's flyby attack in 5e format, like:

Combat

Wyverns are rather stupid but always aggressive: They attack nearly anything that isn’t obviously more powerful than themselves. A wyvern dives from the air, snatching the opponent with its talons and stinging it to death.

Flyby attack: While flying, the wyvern can take a move action and, at any point in its movement, take a standard action (preferably an attack with its talons).

Talons (as part of flyby attack only): +10 melee, 2d6+4 piercing/slashing. On a hit, the Wyvern can attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and stings.

Sting: +10 melee (+8 if part of Flyby attack), 1d6+4 piercing and target must succeed on a DC 17 Fortitude save or immediately take 2d6 Con damage. On either success or failure, after 1 minute the target must succeed on another DC 17 Fortitude save or take 2d6 Con damage. (The save DC is Constitution based).

That is absolutely less economical than the 3.5 entry by an order of magnitude, but a newbie 3.5 DM, who's only played up to a level 4 character, can read that and run it without first memorizing or figuring out how flyby attack, improved grab, and poison all work together. You'd have to have another block for the Full Attack, but you can refer back to the sting and talons* entry there and just add bite and wings that are just attack bonus and damage. The only complexity left would be writing out poor flight maneuverability. Blech.

*The 3.5 entry says the wyvern can only attack with talons when making a flyby attack, so talons shouldn't be in the full attack entry, but they nevertheless are.

[Emerald]

I mean, this is pretty consistent with the basic philosophies of 3.5 vs. 5e: 3.5 has a lot of depth, but only if you and everyone else at the table have internalized a lot of the rules, whereas 5e is "Baby's First D&D" which only does 1 thing and attempts to walk you through that with its confusing language that really relies on you already knowing how they want things to work.

A new DM would have a lot of reading to get through to run the 3.5 Wyvern as intended (the maneuverability chart in general is an awful lot to memorize for the handful of times the minutiae matter, and putting together the dice and mechanics of flyby attack -> talons -> grapple -> sting -> poison requires piecing together 4 different parts of the monster entry, assuming you don't have to look up any general function calls).

The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated. I've run multiple parties of total newbies through a few sessions of 3e and they go from "What the heck is a d20?" to "Yay druids, I'm a bear riding a bear summoning bears" quite quickly. A process or particular combat tactic having three or four steps to go through is often presented as intimidating in the context of people drawing overwrought comparisons to how 4e and 5e "just work," but really "The wyvern swoops down and tries to grab Joe Fighter, its sting hovering menacingly! All right, now let's resolve all that..." works out fine in practice.

The other thing to keep in mind is that no new DM is (or at least should be) approaching the wyvern in a vacuum. Yes, you need to know how Flyby Attack and Improved Grab work to use a wyvern to best effect, but it's CR 6. A DM running their first campaign is almost universally going to start things at level 1 and work their way up, so by the time they get to the wyvern they'd have started with a bunch of CR 1 monsters with no special abilities, then gone through the CR 2 through CR 5 monsters that gradually add on more abilities and more complexity, and the first flying creatures came online around CR 4 so it's really just adding Flyby Attack onto a small air elemental or giant eagle or whatever rather than presenting them with a complex flying monster right off the dire bat.

[Chamomile]

The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated. I've run multiple parties of total newbies through a few sessions of 3e and they go from "What the heck is a d20?" to "Yay druids, I'm a bear riding a bear summoning bears" quite quickly.

How many have you run through 5e? Because I run both regularly, including for new players, and this has been very much the opposite of my experience. Granted, some of the 3e games are actually PF1, which seemed to consider complexity to be a goal to be strived for, but even in 3.5 games it is far more common for people to forget their bonuses, not realize they have a class feature or how their class feature works for multiple sessions, and to not know how things like touch AC and flat-footed AC work (despite monsters making regular use of both). People new to 3e can muddle along after just one or two sessions, but the point where they have enough system mastery to know things like "how do I calculate touch AC" and "what is a reasonable Reflex save for level 4" is measured in months. In 5e, by the time 3e players have gotten to the "muddling along" stage, they've basically mastered the entire game.

[Kaelik]

In 5e, by the time 3e players have gotten to the "muddling along" stage, they've basically mastered the entire game.

That's an odd take when you self admittedly don't know when you are using 3e rules and when you are using 5e rules when DMing.

[OgreBattle]

5e is vaguely written so you feel like it's your own fault for not getting it, and it's criticism of your wonderful DM arbitration when it's criticized by internet strangers

3e has specific writing most of the time, so flaws stand out and criticism of 3e play is criticism of the writers rather than your wonderful gaming group.

---
Even wargames, skirmish games with terrible rules conflicts have easy to remember stuff about movement types. 40k's current flyer rules are like...


Base rules:
Flyers have a minimum speed to maintain or they die
Flyers pivot 90 degrees before movement, and fly in a straight line

Improved Maneuverability rule:
This flyer can pivot 90 degrees AFTER movement.

That's not hard to remember.



For D&D we can go...

Movement types
- Foot
- Flying by wings
--must maintain certain speed, etc.)
- Hovers
-- just off the ground
-- High in the sky
- Teleports
- Climbs
- Jumps really far
- Digs, Earthglide
- Swims

Movement distance:
How far they move in one segment, simple
Some dudes have better multipliers for running

Maneuverability+Attack grades
- Bad, cannot do standard action stuff if moving
- Normal
- Great, can attack in the middle of movement, do flyby and spring attacks

Terrain & Bad weather rules to interact with feet and flyers

D&D's problem with flying ranged kiting potential is because there default assumption of D&D is that a baseball hitting a ball deals HP damage and transfers no momentum

--

[Lord Charlemagne]

In my experience, players continued to do whatever they did in one system even when they transition over to another system, especially in the case of going from 3.5 to 5e & back.

Players who are good at the game will be good at the game. Players who are idiots & struggle to play the game in one system will still struggle in the other. Players who like to twist the rules in one will do so in the other.

People definitely do forget about 3rd edition rules more than 5e rules, because 3rd edition has a lot more edge cases, but then, when strange edge cases come up in 5e, where do most people then get their rulings from...

I've never felt like the jump from 5e to 3.5 was one that was super difficult to make assuming your starting at low levels & aren't doing high-op. The thing I noticed is that the people who muddled through 5e were the players struggled with 3rd.

[Chamomile]

That's an odd take when you self admittedly don't know when you are using 3e rules and when you are using 5e rules when DMing.

Yes, clearly players who are learning 5e as their first edition of D&D are going to have problems remembering which edition certain rules are sourced from. That is a problem that people who have only played one edition will definitely have. The difficulty of keeping two editions separate is also definitely indicative of how complex one of the two is, because clearly knowing two separate editions is exactly the same level of complexity as only knowing one of those editions. This is a sensible take with no obvious flaws at all. Have a cookie.

[Kaelik]

That's an odd take when you self admittedly don't know when you are using 3e rules and when you are using 5e rules when DMing.

Yes, clearly players who are learning 5e as their first edition of D&D are going to have problems remembering which edition certain rules are sourced from. That is a problem that people who have only played one edition will definitely have. The difficulty of keeping two editions separate is also definitely indicative of how complex one of the two is, because clearly knowing two separate editions is exactly the same level of complexity as only knowing one of those editions. This is a sensible take with no obvious flaws at all. Have a cookie.

If you are DMing and you use 3.5 rules to backfill where 5e doesnt have rules then yes I question the mastery of 5e displayed by players you DM for.

[Chamomile]

If you are DMing and you use 3.5 rules to backfill where 5e doesnt have rules then yes I question the mastery of 5e displayed by players you DM for.

You think that players getting more easily to grips with 5e and a few bits of 3.5e tossed in haphazardly than with 3.5e in its entirety is evidence that 3.5e isn't more complex than 5e?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Who said 3.5 isn't more complex than 5e??

[...You Lost Me]

It's low-value bickering. Don't egg them on please.

The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated. I've run multiple parties of total newbies through a few sessions of 3e and they go from "What the heck is a d20?" to "Yay druids, I'm a bear riding a bear summoning bears" quite quickly. A process or particular combat tactic having three or four steps to go through is often presented as intimidating in the context of people drawing overwrought comparisons to how 4e and 5e "just work," but really "The wyvern swoops down and tries to grab Joe Fighter, its sting hovering menacingly! All right, now let's resolve all that..." works out fine in practice.

I have had the literal opposite experience with this. On average, most IRL people I game with have trouble keeping track of spells and ability DCs. Asking them to track multiple statblocks simultaneously, or to juggle the short-hands for common grappling, flight, or poison tactics is a hell of a lot. And 3.5e doesn't just have up-front comprehension complexity, it also has little hidden complexities like readied actions.

To be fair, both of our play experiences are anecdotal, but the current D&D designers (boo! hiss! down with Mearls! I know I know) have talked about the feedback they receive from playtest content. That feedback overwhelmingly points towards the fact that the vast majority of players want as little comprehension complexity as possible.

Back to Ogre's original topic. 5e's simplicity is not an excuse for its godawful monster stat blocks. The 5e designers should have, at minimum, given each monster 1 interesting behavior for adventuring parties to play around. But there is a bright side. Because 5e monsters are so paper-thin, and 90% of interesting abilities are treated as special cases, you can pretty easily add 1 or 2 abilities off the top of your head to a 5e monster and make them useful. While I don't like the particular Wyvern fix Cham posted, it wasn't that hard for them to write and it's miles better than the Wyvern as-is.

On a related note, I feel like it would be an interesting project to codify fixes for the boring 5e monsters that are public domain.

[Chamomile]

The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated.

I mean, yeah, you could bitch about the exact semantics of "the complexity is vastly overstated" vs. "3.5 isn't more complex," but while I can imagine a discussion where that would be a relevant distinction, this isn't it.

3.5e's skill points, feats, prestige classes, monster abilities, etc. etc. are all individually simple, you could easily imagine a "how to play/GM 3.5e" series of YouTube lectures that would each individually be like five minutes long and, taken in the right order, would be both easy to grasp and comprehensive, and you could imagine an adventure path that was designed to teach those concepts through play, but that isn't how 3.5e is actually delivered. I don't think there's any words that you can put in a book that will convince GMs to do things like use the giant eagle at CR3 so you're ready for the wyvern at CR6, unless that book is an adventure path where telling you which monsters to use for what encounters is the whole point, although I would only be slightly surprised if the round-by-round tactics got paid more attention to as compared to the natural language overview you get from the wyvern. That would still leave GMs looking up a lot of stuff for monsters whose lower-CR predecessors they happened to skip, but at least it stands a decent chance of communicating that you should be looking this stuff up.

Using the books we actually got, though, most starting 3.5e GMs use each and every monster as a giant sack of hit points with a full attack attached, even when the book unambiguously states that the monster fights using other tactics.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated.

I largely agree with this statement. 5e isn't as simple as its fans would like you to believe. Especially if you've never played a TTRPG before.

I've run multiple parties of total newbies through a few sessions of 3e and they go from "What the heck is a d20?" to "Yay druids, I'm a bear riding a bear summoning bears" quite quickly.

This has basically been my experience 85% of time. I get the occasional player who can't remember their to hit mods and the like, but most get the hang of the system pretty quickly.

EDIT: DMing is a different beast entirely, no question being a 3.5 DM is more complicated than DMing 5e.

[OgreBattle]

On a related note, I feel like it would be an interesting project to codify fixes for the boring 5e monsters that are public domain.

I figure a dozen or possibly less key powers could be applied for themes like...

Cannon:
- Powers up then blasts PC's
- Blasts PC's then needs to recharge
Crusher:
- Shove PC's around, anything big really
- Pull PC's too, anything with looong temtacles
Controller: Creates encounter-long effects
- Zones you can move through, spooky gas
- Zones you can't move through, wall of dirt
Commander:
- Buff aura stuff, pheromones
- Warlord out of turn action stuff, princess
Commando:
- In and out, like Flyby attack for the wyvern
- ambusher with surprise ambush stuff, phase spider


----

As we're talking about monsters with interesting abilities and tactics, here's a list of "best designed monsters" from an old thread:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53456&view=next


-Manticore
-Displacer Beast
-Phase Spider
-Chimera
-Griffon
-Wyvern
-Rakshasa
"They have a good hit die which makes their HD/CR ratios pretty sane, they tend to be intelligent enough to use tactics even if bestial, and they generally have a clear schtick without having any glaring achilles heels. They have supernatural powers which are effective and, even more importantly, distinctive, without just having a slew of spell-like abilities for every occasion."
-Fire/Frost Giant, interesting subtypes
-Ogre, sweet spot of brutishness
"Tactically versatile due to intelligence"
-Myconids
-Hill Giant "beefy, strong in melee, threat at ranged
-Manticore, Chimera, Wyvern
-Willowhisp, chain devil, ettin
-Many CR 6-7 monsters are well designed
-Hullathoin (CR 15, FF) It has a lot of abilities and is actually pretty much a whole combat by itself. Between its minions and its AoEs, it can challenge a whole party, but it doesn't have the kinds of titanic numbers or instant death attacks that would make it roll over individual characters. Can work as a normal challenge at 15th level or as a major villain for a party of 11th level or higher.
-Battlebriar (CR 15, MM3) It's a big dumb brute. It has abilities that allow it to attack and threaten several characters at once. It has the numbers and immunities to stand up to a round or two of late game combat. Its real problem is that it lacks a weapon that can attack an enemy at any great distance, requiring it to show up inside some sort of greenhouse set piece or something.
-Eldritch Giant (CR 15, MM3) It's a Giant, of Huge Size. It does tolerable piles of damage, and has a fuck tonne of hit points. Nothing really interesting there. But unlike lower level Giants, it's not just bigger than the ones that come earlier, it has some tricks. At-will greater dispelling and magic missile allow it to bypass a surprising number of anti-Giant tactics, and having a big Will Save lets it bypass a bunch more. It's a Giant that is an actually different tactical puzzle, which makes it totally unlike any of the Giants from Stone to Cloud. Unfortunately, "Eldritch Giant" is a stupid name.
-Wyvern: does what you want a dragon to do without being overly complicated, templates well
-Small animated objects for annoyance
-Giant Crabs " :3"
-Hill Giant, Fire & Frost giants are those + Tome Spheres

Badly Designed Monsters:
-Phase Spiders "Always ambush you with fatal poison that often misses, feels like a coin flip, would prefer poison to immobilize to set in tension instead of instant death"
-Fire/Frost/Stone giants "not atrocious, but lacking tactical depth for their level"
-Shadows, Trolls "Fucktarded"
-Dragon, Outsider "Good at too many things"
-Undead, Fey, "crappy racial hitdice"
-Trolls, Hill Giants "pointless at their level"

[...You Lost Me]

Cannon:
- Powers up then blasts PC's
- Blasts PC's then needs to recharge
Crusher:
- Shove PC's around, anything big really
- Pull PC's too, anything with looong temtacles
Controller: Creates encounter-long effects
- Zones you can move through, spooky gas
- Zones you can't move through, wall of dirt
Commander:
- Buff aura stuff, pheromones
- Warlord out of turn action stuff, princess
Commando:
- In and out, like Flyby attack for the wyvern
- ambusher with surprise ambush stuff, phase spider

Sound like 4th edition heresy

The "cannon" mechanic is decently close to recharge dice (Ankheg, any dragon) so that seems fine. I don't think there are many, if any, crushers or commanders.

After a little more thought, it is important to have some oatmeal monsters, because some encounters should be defined by environmental effects or turn clocks, or something else external to the actual monsters. In those cases, monsters should probably just be bags of HP.

I'm trying to write a level 1-3 adventure for a few friends right now. This would give me an excuse to write a handful of statblocks for people to criticize. I'll try editing 5 monsters to make them interesting encounters. How would this sound?

- Awakened Tree
- Bandit Commander
- Giant Crab (it's CR 1/8 don't get too excited)
- Ghoul
- Scout

[Stubbazubba]

A process or particular combat tactic having three or four steps to go through is often presented as intimidating in the context of people drawing overwrought comparisons to how 4e and 5e "just work," but really "The wyvern swoops down and tries to grab Joe Fighter, its sting hovering menacingly! All right, now let's resolve all that..." works out fine in practice.

Except the Wyvern's flyby attack actually models "The wyvern swoops down and attacks Joe Fighter with its talons! The talon clenches around Joe's arm, stinger hovering menacingly as he desperately tries to squirm free! Oh no, Joe is held firm as the stinger whips toward him! Now the poison races through Joe's bloodstream, can he resist?? Just how debilitated will Joe be?!" That is a ton going on for one standard action. In prose, it sounds great, but modeling each of those steps turns it into a slog unless everyone is really on the ball.

There are four steps to that process, all of which require more than one roll to adjudicate, none of which involve any agency or tactics: 1. talon attack and damage rolls, 2. opposed grapple checks, 3. sting attack roll and damage rolls, 4. poison fort save and Con damage rolls. More if the wyvern triggers an AoO in its movement. Pray that there are no buffs, debuffs, or situational bonuses affecting those numbers. High-op/digital tables will roll damage with attacks and hopefully track all the extras as they roll, but most meatspace tables I've played at will drag out each of those 8 rolls and remember at least one bonus after the fact. You are rolling 6-8 different things to model what boils down to two attacks, one of which makes you then recalculate a number of your statistics at the table. Repeat every round.

Like, that meets the low bar of "you can in fact get through it all without running into divide-by-zero errors," but if that is working out fine, then I don't know what level of complexity you would ever say is crossing the line. That's a lot of squeeze for the little juice of just grabbing someone, dealing a bit of damage, and maybe poisoning them.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Except the Wyvern's flyby attack actually models "The wyvern swoops down and attacks Joe Fighter with its talons! The talon clenches around Joe's arm, stinger hovering menacingly as he desperately tries to squirm free! Oh no, Joe is held firm as the stinger whips toward him! Now the poison races through Joe's bloodstream, can he resist?? Just how debilitated will Joe be?!" That is a ton going on for one standard action. In prose, it sounds great, but modeling each of those steps turns it into a slog unless everyone is really on the ball.

There are four steps to that process, all of which require more than one roll to adjudicate, none of which involve any agency or tactics: 1. talon attack and damage rolls, 2. opposed grapple checks, 3. sting attack roll and damage rolls, 4. poison fort save and Con damage rolls. More if the wyvern triggers an AoO in its movement. Pray that there are no buffs, debuffs, or situational bonuses affecting those numbers. High-op/digital tables will roll damage with attacks and hopefully track all the extras as they roll, but most meatspace tables I've played at will drag out each of those 8 rolls and remember at least one bonus after the fact. You are rolling 6-8 different things to model what boils down to two attacks, one of which makes you then recalculate a number of your statistics at the table. Repeat every round.

Like, that meets the low bar of "you can in fact get through it all without running into divide-by-zero errors," but if that is working out fine, then I don't know what level of complexity you would ever say is crossing the line. That's a lot of squeeze for the little juice of just grabbing someone, dealing a bit of damage, and maybe poisoning them.

If you want to model complex things in satisfying ways it kind of does need to be complex. If you want Wyverns to always succeed in holding onto people they hit that's fine, it makes Wyverns stronger and kind of depowers players a bit unless they can get similar abilities. I find autograppling to be fucking lame, and in 5e I just had an encounter last week where grappling was modeled as a Strength save during an attack, so I don't even think it's less complicated than 3.X there.

[OgreBattle]

"Attacker makes attack roll, if it hits they do a maneuver and Defender also rolls a saving throw" is a straightforward way to do it.

3e's iterative attacks and full attacks and grappling and extra stuff after grappling is a lot of stuff that could be handled by "Attacker attacks->Defense saves"

4e's "Attacker attacks vs a passive defense" is straightforward but lacked a universal implementation of how grappling and shoving is done.

5e's grappling and shoving is "roll opposed STR/DEX (or athletiics and whatnot) checks" that sounds alright but I don't know what expected chances of success or how wonky it gets.

So I'd do a wyvern of My Own Edition as the Wyvern rolls an attack, if it its it can cause the defender to roll a save vs being grappled. Then the wyvern stinging it happens in the next turn so the grabbed dude's friends have a desperate round to free him.

[pragma]

One issue with 5e's opposed checks in combat is that the authors didn't consider that skills scale differently than other combat modifiers. A pretty standard bard (w/ expertise in athletics, cutting words, vicious mockery, enlarge/reduce) is almost the strongest grappler you can build, and already capable of reliably wrestling down adult dragons and cloud giants. A lot more monsters should probably be proficient in athletics if the designers didn't want them being tossed around by players. Granted, grapples don't do a ton in 5e, so maybe letting luchadors have their fun is OK.

Attack vs. static defense + save vs. static rider DC seems like a fine basis for a heartbreaker.

[Chamomile]

Monsters in general have far too few skills in 5e. I'm guessing it's because the designers never considered their use as anything other than a sack of hit points to wail on in the most straightforward possible way. They didn't even use elemental resistances or vulnerabilities very frequently, which, like, that's the level of tactical complexity we expect ten year olds playing Pokemon to grapple with.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Monsters in general have far too few skills in 5e. I'm guessing it's because the designers never considered their use as anything other than a sack of hit points to wail on in the most straightforward possible way. They didn't even use elemental resistances or vulnerabilities very frequently, which, like, that's the level of tactical complexity we expect ten year olds playing Pokemon to grapple with.

I'm convinced that the primary design goal for 5e was, "do as little work as humanly possible."