The source of "things should work the same" is usually 3.5, where many monsters were built with the same spells and feats and rules as PCs. They did have some unique abilities, but largely the edition billed things as working the same
@lostsanityreturned as opposed to the current balanced system of just make it up? Vampires are incredibly weak for their CR and wizards now launch barrage attacks that arnt even spells. I much preferred a logical system were monsters had the same rules as players. Your right on the second point tho, it was slower.
@@nathanhedlund836 I mean I feel like its a bit simpler than that to make a monster. In my understanding it falls into 2 main things. How hard can this thing hit. and How hard can it BE hit. If it hits hard and can be hit hard, its a deadly creature. Hit hard but die in a round, hard encounter etc. What defines deadly vs easy. A deadly monster should be able to quite reliably take a D10hp charecter down to zero in a round assuming it hits with everything. Medium monster same but with a D6hp charecter Easy monster takes a D8hp char to like half. ofcourse this would be avg damage and assuming hits. adding utility spells/abilites. invisibility, misty step, counter spell, dispel magic, things of that nature, add them as you see fit but look to other creatures when it comes to number of uses per 'level' of the spell. eg, if they have fireball, dispel magic and counterspell, don't give them 3 uses of each. Allow use of any combo upto 3 times total, magic heavy group, split the counterspell, give that its own use pool. A creature doesnt have to hit like a truck to be deadly. It also really depends on the group and make up, there is no one size fits all, there can't be, you as a DM will ALWAYS have to tweek things, will always have to adjust encounters and you will NEVER find a monster that is PERFECT for an encounter, you will always have to change/homebrew or optional rule something about the creature. Thats just DnD.
Monsters don't have to follow the same rules as players, but it's important for them to follow system rules so that DMs can homebrew and improvise. A 2014 Bugbear doesn't "cheat" because system rules allow for special abilities to enhance damage and the Brute trait has clearly defined rules that show how much damage is added. This allows me to add the "Brute" trait to my own homebrew monsters and more importantly, if a Bugbear picks up a Greataxe, I can easily tell that it should do 2d12 damage plus the Bugbear's strength modifier. The problem with Drelnza and the 2024 Knight that you mention is that I have no idea how much damage they should do if they pick up another weapon. If players are able to disarm Drelnza, how much damage does she do? I can kinda extrapolate that as a vampire, her unarmed strikes do 1d8 damage by looking up the vampire stat block, but what if she picks up another longsword? Is it only with Heretic that she can do 6d10 damage? It's not as bad because Drelnza is a named NPC in a very specific adventure, but I use humanoid stat blocks like the Knight all the time as NPCs, town guards, and many other places where using a weapon other than a Heavy Crossbow could come up frequently. To a lesser extent, using specific Monster traits that follow specific rules also helps me as the DM communicate to the players how strong a monster is. If my players are familiar with the "Brute" trait, I can use it to describe an "Ogre bouncer with the Brute trait" and my players will have a better idea of what they're dealing with.
Exactly. Some monsters are special characters who get special abilities, and the explanation for why is largely in their lore, and because they are unique. But a bunch of them are generic examples of some kind of creature, and we want to know what actually differentiates them from anything else. If they have special traits it's helpful to call them out, because largely they use the same mechanics (especially examples like a Knight or an Ogre, who are largely just bags of hit points and attacks). Knowing what makes a bug bear different mechanically from a bandit is helpful, both in the running of them, but also in the design of my own stuff. This is especially true when we're talking about generic npc statblocks meant to represent people in the world. When people ask "Why does the knight work that way?" It's less about it being unfair, and more about it being inexplicable beyond trying to fit a challenge rating. This guy isn't presented as being special, he's generic, so why does he _do something special?_ Slap paladin on his block instead and people go "Oh, I get it, he's got some kind of smite like thing happening." But if you don't it begs the question "Should every knight be doing radiant damage, and be weirdly hard hitting but inaccurate with cross bows?" (I also love that the secondary big weapon of a knight is a *heavy* crossbow and not a lance or even a light cross bow or something, I mean I get it's to aid with range, but it's still funny to me.) Generic blocks are meant to be just that, so when they start doing strange things with no mechanical explanation it's confusing, and if you wanted to change it you would be doing a little bit of guess work that leaves you less certain. You tie those mechanics to a trait or feature, you take out the guesswork and allow DM's to make informed edits.
The big problem here is word count. Brute takes a line to list and thus inherently means you've got less room for actually interesting abilities or lore or additional monsters. In an ideal world, it'd be nice to see all their passives listed, but having passive bonuses just be inferred from their effects has some large advantages.
Monsters could also just have useful descriptions, particularly the kind you can hand out to players who identify them, such as "unusually high damage with weapons", instead of always needing a trait to explain any given statistic in its stat block.
Players have plenty of ways to do extra damage with specific attacks, as well as to "break the rules" of combat. Sneak Attack, Divine Smite, Dueling, Battle Master Maneuvers, Great Weapon Master, etc., as well as things like Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Skulker, Medium Armor Master, and so on. Knowing this, a Monster doesn't need to have a specific trait printed in its stat block for PCs to be able to extrapolate that the extra damage it's dealing with a crossbow, or its ability to bypass the Heavy property, is a trait inherent to the monster rather than it just "breaking the rules". So much space is wasted writing out traits in stat blocks that are completely self-explanatory even without the blurb. It's easier, more elegant, and just as explainable to forgo putting the Brute trait in a stat block and just write "2d8" for the damage of the attack.
NPC creatures need to “break the rules” in order to be of any use to the GM in providing meaningful combat encounters for their players. They are literally built different so they can keep up with the ever increasing amount of power that PCs gain as they level up.
@@RicardoSR I think that is the best part: you never know what an npc can do because they don't have to follow the same rules... Talking about the knight: they have 1d8 radiant damage extra and this make me assume that they can be used both as fighter npc or as paladin npc, and if radiant damage doesn't fit with the idea of the npc you can swap it with every other damage type you like, even another extra weapon dice The npc need to be different and easier to use for a DM
I’ve never understood this sentiment. Why do we need to design monsters different from player characters to make them challenging? I understand monsters cannot currently keep up but if you designed an evil crew to oppose your players using a twilight cleric as the centerpiece and a random assortment of basic player character classes they would be hard pressed very easily. I understand why people say they have a hard time for normal monsters but they’re normal monsters? If you are designing a big bad why wouldn’t you pluck characteristics from the classes of what you know dominates?
@@NotYourCitizenAnymore but you can add everything you want on your monsters to make them more challenging, there's no reason to not change whatever you want, but npc need to be powerful enough to challenging the players without having a long stat block full of abilities that dm must learn before every fight, that's why npc need different rules
I just have one argument about removing passive traits such as "Brute". For DMs, like myself, that don't just use the weapons detailed for each monster it is there to let us know that if I gave that Bugbear a longsword or club that I should add another die. Newer DMs might not get that.
@@Kaelshazar Yah, I was about to put it less charitably. Specifically, I was going to say "That sounds less like a rules problem and more like a rules lawyer DM problem."
That concern also wouldn't be a concern if there were tables for monster statistics by level that would let you know that the bugbear's build suggests its weapons need to do additional damage.
People don't care if monsters do more damage. They just want it to make sense. Maybe the knight is divinely empowered, or the weapon is like a Critical Role vestige that changes based on the experience and actions of the wielder.
@@WesleyMcLain-kj5if The default assumption should be that if a monster is "breaking the rules" with a weapon, it's a feature of the monster rather than a feature of the weapon, unless otherwise specified. After all, a Rogue can deal 6d6 damage with a shortbow, but that doesn't mean every shortbow the Rogue picks up instantly becomes a magical 6d6 shortbow. Still, as the DM you have the freedom to decide otherwise if you think it's more fun for your players - if you want it to be a feature of the item, just make an item with that feature. Being able to make these decisions for your own table in order to maximize fun for everyone is a huge part of the fun of DMing.
Same. PvE and PvP in video games are two wildly different beasts which tend to have drastically different rules in many games, and yet for some reason people don't seem to connect those same dots as easily when it comes to asymmetry in TTRPGs specifically.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way you can play a TTRPG "Wrong" is to not have fun. If the rules being "Broken" results in more fun then it's fine. Also, if it's in the rulebook, it's not breaking the rules is it?
Exactly! The lack of a Brute trait doesn't mean a monster is "cheating", it just means the numbers should speak for themselves rather than always needing a special line of text to justify every single tweak to the math.
I don't care if they give a monster extra weapon damage mechanics. That may even need to be a necessity. My only problem with a 2d10+1d8 radiant crossbow is if you don't have something to specify why then it becomes a custom weapon and if I find a 2d10 heavy crossbow in a monster's hands and I kill him I'm taking his weapon and expect it to work the same for me as it did for him. If the stat block has an explanation for the difference I will still take the crossbow but then I won't expect the difference in damage to transfer.
If it was because of the item, there would be a special item linked to it with its own description card. That its equipment would just list "heavy crossbow" means that it's because of its stat block. This isn't hard to figure out, and also SHOULDN'T be obvious to players either as to which is the case regardless (because you're not supposed to be giving info out to them like "And now I roll 1d8, plus an additional 1d8 thanks to its Brute trait").
@AnaseSkyrider OK, I understand what you are saying and here is the issue with that mentality. As a player, I know what equipment is meant to do and when a weapon does something different than what I see in the PHB I default to "new toy" forcing the " why does this work differently for me," question. So DM explains it is creature feature and I am disappointed but life goes on. If the DM says "None of ya'," then I go looking for another table it does create the appearance of cheating and while we expect it at some times from the DM catching it isn't acceptable.
@@nickm9102 Let me break down why you are wrong with a very simple example. DM: "The man in embroidered armor waves his hand over his mace, as he mutters a chant, and it begins to glow with a bright burning light. He strikes you! You take 6 bludgeoning damage and 3 radiant damage." Did this NPC cast a spell, use a magic ability, use a command to activate a magic item, or some other 4th thing? Who knows. It's reasonable and common for DMs to obscure what an NPC does, not everyone runs D&D like it's BG3. Sometimes an NPC does something, you guess what it is, and you were wrong. LIFE GOES ON. That's not a fault of the system, that's just players being entitled crybabies, and your excuses don't dismiss how this is a genuine improvement to the game's design. It's literally just a skill issue.
It's a huge waste of time and space to write out "here's why the monster deals extra damage with its crossbow" for every single monster every time that happens. If a Rogue does 6d6 damage to an enemy with a shortbow using Sneak Attack, should the enemy assume the Rogue just has a special weapon that does 6d6 damage every time? The enemy doesn't know that the Rogue has the Sneak Attack feature, and they don't need to know that to understand that it's the Rogue who is boosting the weapon's effectiveness and not the other way around. The same applies to players - you don't need to know what feature a monster has to understand that the monster is improving the weapon it's using and not the other way around.
@@NonRegnumDei1934 Not only that, but it doesn't affect the game from the players' perspective if the monster has Brute or if it just says 2d8 damage. EXCEPT! If you're the kind of DM who handles situations like this: DM: "The bugbear attacks! 17 hits, so you take 15 bludgeoning damage." Player: "Wait but that's a morningstar. That's a d8, and he didn't crit, does he have +7 Strength?" By explaining how the monster works on the sheet: DM: "He has Brute, so he does 2d8. I rolled a 6 and a 7." If you're playing the kind of game where players don't get to look at the sheet a little bit, where players either never get to know, or you make them spend an action and roll for it to find out, then your answer NO MATTER WHAT is going to be something along the lines of: DM: "Your character doesn't know." or "Weapon dice don't exist in the world" or anything like that. (Some tables shy away from "spell slots" as being a term in actual universe, for example)
This was an incredible video. Your presentation of the game mechanics vs. game theory vs. functionality to generate fun is nothing shy of brilliant. Keep them coming!!!
I think the top-down approach better serves having a decently balanced game, and is one that 5e should adopt. I like these sections of text from the rules in PF2e for building monsters, especially as it relates to determining damage: > Creatures aren't built the same way PCs are. The rules for building them are more flexible, and their statistics are based on benchmark final numbers rather than combining each individual modifier together. This is called top-down design, in which you consider the design process as a whole and select the details that reflect your intended result, rather than building statistics from the bottom up and hoping the finished creature matches your vision. > Keep in mind that a creature using a weapon should have a damage value that feels right for that weapon. Extreme damage works well for two-handed weapons that use d10s or d12s for damage. On the other hand, a dagger uses only d4s, so a dagger wielder would need something like sneak attack to deal extreme damage, or you might compensate for the dagger's lower damage per Strike by giving the creature the ability to attack more efficiently or use other tricks. In PF2e, you simply use the tables which have columns to give you ranges from Low to Extreme, and adhere to roughly those numbers for that creature's level, with the understanding that creatures have the innate features which justify those statistics, even as they directly depart from the rules for a PC. In the section about creatures which use manufactured weapons, it even states that if you desire to build their damage from the ground up, to give them damage-boosting features like Weapon Specialization way before a PC does (or extra features like Sneak Attack). It's notable, however, that creatures don't ignore weapon traits, unless you specifically allow them to with a special ability. They play intimately with the core rules. As an example put in 5e terms, a creature couldn't simply have a multi-attack that features a crossbow, and would REQUIRE a special ability to bypass the loading property (because in PF2e, crossbows require a bespoke action to reload, taking 1 or more of your 3 actions to do so, unlike a bow which does not). Essentially, creatures adhere strongly to the core rules of the game, but their sheets do not adhere to the player-building rules and expectations. 5e could easily accomplish this with a monster table that's worth a damn.
I wrote this comment before reading much of the comment section, and I'm shocked at how many people are incapable of thinking from a different angle, or coming up with obvious explanations to the problems they raise. Lateral thinking really is a skill that has to be taught.
D&D's 2014 monster creation tools from the DMG gives advice in a similar top-down design manner. For anything further than just customizing an existing stat block, they recommend estimating an intended Challenge Rating and using a correlated stats chart to sort out the rough numbers. Once you have all the big stats worked out like HP and damage per round, you can work backwards and build out the monster's traits to accommodate your vision, with all sorts of advice on what gameplay impact certain traits may have on the creature's challenge. That whole section is like the holy grail of monster homebrewing for 5e; it was removed from the 2024 DMG and I'll be very disappointed if there isn't something similar and improved in the 2025 Monster Manual.
@@NonRegnumDei1934 Yeah, it was in there, but the thing is that it was still reverse engineered. Stats derived from traits, level, and score. The MM Bear, for example, had a discrepancy between its derived stats and its final stats. This was treated as an error, and corrected so that the finality met its derivation. This means that in general, 5e monsters are still built out as derived from core metrics, rather than as totals. The default mindset is to derive the stats. It's also just, not a very good system. Even just figuring out HP and AC is such a fucking asinine system that takes way too many steps, than to have something much more reasonable like "low, medium, high" values for HP and AC, and to pick a target level and say that if you start at medium, then high HP means low AC, and vice versa. Or something like that. You can add damage metrics in there so that you can also trade damage to create glass cannon archetypes, or sturdy brute archetypes, and so on. It's extremely convoluted how you pick a "feels good" for HP and AC, then count sets of increases (not rows on a table) of the HP and AC from the intended CR, and then add that as defensive CR, and then you need to go back and revise if it's too far off the target.
One thing I dislike about 5e that 4e got right was spells in the monster stat block. In 4e, monsters did not use player spells or powers. Whatever powers they had were succinctly in the statblock. In 5e, there might be a spell you have to look up and the details are in a separate book.
I think it might be specifically when a monster who seems like a player character (aka a knight) uses an ability that a player character of the same level couldn't. It is different for a lich or a dragon to have asymmetrical stat blocks because the player character clearly isn't them so they don't expect them to be similar. But when a regular old human in plate armor with a crossbow doesn't behave like we would expect (because we happen to be a regular old human with plate armor and a crossbow and we can't do that) and there isn't an in game explanation for it, it can be immersion breaking. Anyway, I agree with nearly everything you are saying about why asymmetry is important here and think you are great. I just thought this might help explain why it bugs me a little bit at times.
I get what you're saying, but the thing is that PCs CAN do stuff very similar to what the knight does. With Crossbow Expert and some Battle Master dice you too can get extra crossbow damage twice in one action, and you'd probably be way better at it than the knight with its piddly +2 attack bonus. Sure you have limited times you can do that per rest, but the Knight is also limited in that he has limited "screen-time" - if the knight stat block only appears once in your campaign and the battle starts you out in melee range, he may never get to use his crossbow, period!
Yeah, the monsters are not designed around an attempt to make them follow a logical, consistent world build view but as match ups for the assumed power of the PCs at the level they are expected to be used against.
9:52 If the Knight's doubled dice were able to be explained by the brute trait then the greatsword would do 4d6, so the increased damage isn't due to that anyway. Besides, the 2014 version of it only applied to melee weapons, so wouldn't do anything to a heavy crossbow.
The knight's doubled dice are self-explanatory - he's using a heavy crossbow, and when he uses it, he deals an extra d10 damage plus 1d8 radiant. If a PC deals 6d6 damage with a mundane shortbow it's quite safe to assume they are boosting the damage somehow. The name of the trait is irrelevant to the statistics themselves.
I'm fine with different character creation rules for pcs and npcs. Things like hit dice, attributes, traits, etc. But imo items should behave the same ehichever character is weiling them. That includes magic itmes and mundane items, and epecially the properties of those items should be the same regardless of who weilds it.
The item does behave the same. The monster is adding extra damage and ignoring the item's traits. PCs can do the exact same kind of rule-bending with stuff like Archery, Sneak Attack, and Crossbow Expert. If a Monster stole your crossbow, they wouldn't suddenly get the benefits of your features, so why would it work that way in the opposite direction?
I found the "the monster stat blocks are cheating" comments absolutely hysterical because it's clear those people have never DM'd or at least never really thought about monster creation . Stat blocks have never played by the same rules as character creation. They don't even HAVE fixed rules. How can you cheat when you make your own rules? You can literally slap whatever you want on monsters when you make your own, tweak, or reskin. The rule is their statblock can do what it says it can so if it says it can use multiattack with a heavy crossbow, it can use multiattack with a heavy crossbow.
The problem is that now dm's have to improvise the damage if a knight gets disarmed and picks up a hand crossbow. Is it 2d6? +1d8 radiant damage? Or is that solely to the weapons he 'attuned' to (like a sort of pact weapon). Yes, a dm can improvise this fast, but not necessarily consistent. Id rather have monster feats like 'holy warrior: all your weapon attacks deal +1d8 radiant damage', etc. Just makes it easier for the dm, especially if he wants to make homebrew statblocks.
@@QuiqueFuenteSIT but it sucks for the dm. Does the crossbow deal 2d10 damage if a player picks it up? Does a longbow deal 2d8 piercing damage if a knight uses one? Does the heavy penalty of a longbow apply to a knight? Its just work for the dm instead of giving him a statblock, that gives him the relevant stats
@gorgit it doesn't have to be complicated. It's a crossbow as loot doing normal crossbow stuff for pcs. For the monster just let it attack per the stat block. There are numerous other more important parts of the game to focus on and just simplifying monsters to they do what's in their stay block full stop draw a boundary between players and follow on balance issues is healthy. Take the time for other parts of your game is my opinion. To add in. It's way more work than it's worth to be chasing down monster cr blocks to align stats damage, special features etc to make it all able to be reverse engineered and matching than its typically worth for the monsters run time 20 minutes to 1 hour of game time. I as a dm do not think it's worth chasing that white whale unless that's how you divine happiness during prep, then you do you
@QuiqueFuenteSIT Of course, this is what I would do, but you wont make it easier for newer dms by intriducing not only arbitrary, but also invisible rules for statblocks. I wont just let my players have a 2d10+1d8 crossbow. But how is a new dm supposed to know that? How is he supposed to know that the knight doesnt attack with disadvantage using the crossbow? Raw he should have it!
Meh. I agree for the most part but the knight takes it too far for my table. My group was heavily invested in 3.0/3.5 so the general expectation is that humanoids play by similar rules to the pcs. This expectation will vary dramatically per table and per system though. Also it seems weird that the heavily armored knight has almost equal dpr at range as they do in melee. Seems like their best strategy is to kite and murder at range while avoiding any melee strikers.
lol. Also I can see my Paladin raging that a cr3 knight gets to add radiant damage to attacks while he has to wait until level 11 for the same ability.
If he's got a ranged capacity that the party lacks, long-range kiting *is* the best strat. PCs do it to monsters too. And how many parties have been lost to a handful of goblins riding wargs and carrying bows...
It should be noted that the 2024 Knight has a significantly lower to hit bonus with its Crossbow, which means that attacking at range is not always the best option for the Knight and it makes giving the Knight disadvantage on ranged attacks, by being within 5 feet of it, even more impactful.
This isn't dissimilar to what PCs can do with a crossbow, though. A Battle Master fighter with the Crossbow Expert feat can add extra damage to its crossbow attacks, ignore the Loading property to fire twice in one turn, and fire in melee without Disadvantage. The knight receives similar benefits when using a crossbow, they just don't need to be rigidly codified into a bunch of special traits like with PCs because you're not going to need to keep track of the hows and whys of all the knight's stats and features over 20 levels of progression. The knight's DPR is actually lower at range than in melee due to it having a comparative -3 to hit with its crossbow vs. its greatsword. Dealing one extra point of damage with a crossbow isn't particularly impressive if you can't hit the broadside of a barn with it.
1:58 I… I would assume he’s using his Strength. Yeah it’s a ranged weapon, but honestly ranged weapons are a little stupid in D&D that way. There’s an argument to be made that almost all weapons should switch Dex and Strength. It takes a lot of arm and back strength to pull back a bow and a lot of dexterity to swing a sword. So I just assume the Knight is using Strength to overcome the Heavy property
In 3e through 5e, monsters have been especially asymmetrical compared to PCs. It was especially dramatic in 3e, despite that being the first edition where monsters used ability score modifiers for everything like PCs did. Because the original game wasn't designed with that approach in mind, and switching over to it without adjusting the rest of the game's assumptions to match meant that you suddenly got massively inflated hit points and useless combat maneuvers and other things. 5e monsters don't even remotely use PC ranges for most of their traits, and the game was designed around that. If people could handle that NPC fighters in 2014 had d8s for hit dice if they were human and d6s if they were halflings, rather than d10s like PCs, then they should be able to handle that NPC fighters in 2024 have damage ratings based around being functional threats. I understand wanting monsters to feel a bit like simulations of some objective reality, but it's a _tiny_ aesthetic benefit compared to the incredible amount of damage it did to game balance and flexibility in every edition that's tried it.
It'd be kinda hypocritical to use immersion/world breaking as an argument for why a monster must do the same damage with a crossbow, when the general consensus of the DnD community is "the DM can't cast hold person on PCs, but players have free reign." As if nobody outside the PCs know that spell.
Some monsters _could_ achieve the same or similar damage by making multiple attacks, but it's faster to run if we have fewer attacks to resolve. I'll take faster combat over monster-player symmetry any day of the week. Nevermind the fact that players aren't entitled to know monster stat blocks anyway.
Exactly on players not being entitled to know! So many comments here saying "what if the player wants to pick up the 2d10 crossbow?" If your players are out here metagaming like that, roll behind the screen or even digitally to yourself only.
There is a cost to breaking the rules. It's important to look at the effects it has. All the example you mentioned had proper rules that explained them apart from that one named NPC. This one just feels random. Rule break: This generic heavy armored Strength based knight does more damage at range than in melee despite the weapons he's visibly wearing suggesting otherwise. This has no benefit that I can think of. This will not create a strong moment. It'll create a moment where a player will keep his distance from the heavily armored strong looking guard only to then ... take more damage? This breaks immersion and teaches the players that they can't trust what they see, even when it's obviously telegraphed on a generic npc. You are punishing players for making the correct tactical decision and it wasn't even meant to be a trap. If any of your players enjoy the tactical aspect of D&D, this will make them feel like they can't do that anymore. After all, how can you come up with strategies if you can't gain any info on a monster when you look at them? This obviously doesn't apply to more complex or unique monsters that have special abilities (Although you'll find even those tend to have some hint) but it does very much apply to any monster that's meant to be generic.
Here's the thing. A good GM will telegraph that said knight actually has a ranged focus. "The armored figure in the distance holds a massive crossbow that reminds you more of a ballista than anything else". And if you're all about playing tactically, you'd look for methods to take cover while to advantage towards him. Like, the only way this "punishes" players if their idea of tactics is "use flying to avoid encounters".
@@Archy_The-Wizard "You can use it, but you'd roll a disadvantage unless you later decide to spend a feat on proficiency for it, on the account that it's a unique weapon."
@@thecthuloser876now you are home brewing a reason in to account for bad design when you could have just homebrew fixed the bad design in the first place and had the Crossbow behave normally.
@Archy_The-Wizard It isn't a 2d10 crossbow anymore than a Rogue's shortbow is a 6d6 shortbow. The damage is a feature of the monster, just like how Sneak Attack is a feature of the Rogue - the ability of the knight to deal extra crossbow damage just doesn't need a specific name because the players don't need to reference the knight stat block 10 times per session as they might need to with their own features.
There is an obvious reason for this - the players have classes. Obviously the monsters have something like classes and abilities too. However, DMs can't make and track character sheets for 14 different monsters. So they have to choose something else instead. Something that matches the damage and versatility of the players while surprising them with new and interesting challenges. Hence: monsters can do things players can't
Some of my most impactful encounters for my players came when i misread a statblock making the creature unintentionally more deadly, yet my players still rose to the occasion. This is good
Hahaha absolutely. A friend of mine ran a mini campaign for us once and misread a trap that dealt "5(1d10) damage" as dealing "5d10" damage. We were like level 3. We still laugh about it to this day. Made for one hell of a trap lol.
@ try running will-o-wisps and thinking the dc 10 save or flat out die happens with each successful attack rather than when you go unconscious… whoooops
Its not "because". Essentially monsters have feats. In older versions of D&D they would list all the feats a monster had along with the stats, etc. These monster feats would circumvent what the players had. They would also create a lot of lore and ffeat trees to allow players to get these, but no one ever did. They basically just saved space and time by applying an upgrade to the monster. If you play a lot of other games, such as Dragonbane most recently, monsters are essentially "special" creatures that have their own game mechanics.
Agreed, in addition, previous versions had a million traits baked in into their monster type. All undead were immune to this or that, every construct had a bunch of other traits, and sometimes you had to dig even deeper, because monster type X was a subset of monster type Y with extra traits, which itself was a subset of monster type Z. You needed to figure out the monster's entire type family tree to figure out if they could be Charmed. 5e (thankfully) got rid of that, something is classified as Undead only because sometimes you need to know that, but any immunity or special thing they had was just in the monster stat. It ALSO meant not EVERY undead was immune to bleeding or poison or whatever. Traits like "Brute" feel like they're trying to justify something that doesn't need to be justified. "This monster is Brute therefore it deals extra damage" explains nothing, is completely unnecessary, just put the additional damage in the attack.
Honestly I wish (or I guess an still hoping) it would be nuttier. That asymmetry really makes cool design space and feel. More stuff to interact with, more ways to "solve" enemies or know their protocols or habits, more ways to use items or social influence checks, or more ways GMs can hack and twist them
I've always seen this as a problem, and ive always complained about it at my tables. You cant just say the players have their rules and the dm has theirs, because all of this is conerning the same world, to me in insanely immersion breaking if the party has to follow one way the world works while the rest of the entire world gets to ignore just because. Im not saying its all bad and it should never be done, the higher you go in CR the more sense it makes, if an npc/enemy has high CR that just means they a freak of nature or a magical creature or special in some way so its ok that they get to bend the rules, but having even low level enemis ignore, what are presented to the players as basically the foundations of how the world FUNTIONS is a problem imo
Low level players can ignore the rules too. Feats like Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Skulker, and the like are all valuable because they allow you to bypass rules restrictions everyone else has to follow. It stands to reason that some low level enemies would be capable of similarly bypassing the rules in certain situations.
I welcome the new stat blocks, and am glad they did something to counter the players power that wasn't addressed in the 2014 edition. Hopefully this is the end of encounters going from trivial to death, with no inbetween.
I just want to point out that if you use cheaty humanoid NPCs that have abilities out of nowhere that the NPCs should also not have a damn clue what any of the PCs can do unless they directly observe it. The NPC bad guys and villains should not be able to make any assumptions about your powers due to class because no other humanoid in universe works by template - they are all special. So if you're going to do this clown show nonsense - please don't metagame back at the players since you robbed them of their ability to make predictions about what the other humanoid NPCs in the world are capable of.
In a weird way you are kind of correct, but not in the way that you think. Yes, monsters shouldn't have explicit knowledge of a PC's features, and PCs shouldn't have explicit knowledge of an NPC's features either. In-world explanations should be intuitive and not necessarily mechanical - if an NPC saw a rogue doing 6d6 damage with a shortsword using Sneak Attack, the NPC wouldn't say, "hey that's cheating, a shortsword is only supposed to do 1d6 damage!" or "whoa, that must be some kind of crazy magical shortsword to do so much damage". They would probably just think, "holy shit that guy really knows his way around a shortsword". The same should apply for PCs encountering NPCs with features like this - the knight dealing extra weapon damage is just the knight being good at fighting, which is why it's frustrating that players overanalyze enemy stat blocks and try to make nitpicks like this and say "I want the 2d10 crossbow" or "this NPC is cheating!!" when it's literally just a feature of the stat block.
There is one big issue with abmormal abilities: You as a player cannot tell if you can handle a fight or not until it starts. Lets imagine you're raiding a theives hideout. You expect daggers (1d4) sneak attack (2d6) and 1 attack. You expect each L3 foe can only do around 12 damage a turn since if you were a rogue thats what you can do. Instead if they hit you twice, each attack doing 2d6 poison extra without them spending bonus actions to coat the blade with a poison, and a base damage of 2d6. You end up tanking 34 damage per foe, almost 3 times as much. Thats equivalent to trippling the foe count based on what you realisticly could have expected, not even factoring in AC vs miss chance issues of multiple attacks. With random monsters not a problem, but humanoid NPCs? Shouldn't be done. Just my opinion. To make an encounter more threatening, use intelligent tactics and environment, or numbers. Dont make superhuman abominations. Thats my honest opinion.
Why do you expect thieves to be level 1 PC Rogues though? I think that's your mistake, because bandits aren't level 1 Fighters and orcs aren't level 1 Barbarians either.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 He said he expected PC rogues of his level (level 3). +2d6 sneak attacks and they do 1d4 damage with the weapon itself they noticed the enemy has. The issue is that these generic humanoid bandits have a better class than rogue. A rogue with extra attack, daggers that do as much as a greatsword, and poison that does not need to be preapplied without the restrictions on PC sneak attacks. It breaks expectations when random humanoid non-named NPCs are walking around with classes better than any in the PHB.
This is not a game where the monsters use PC Classes...basically ever? I don't know why you'd assume that when almost none of the NPCs actually do so, to say nothing of the monsters. And they're not inherently superhuman, they're different from PCs, the two are very different things. The Knight is no match at all for a Paladin or Fighter of equal level to his HD in various ways, he's just also not built at all like a PC is.
@@mogalixir Yes, this, thanks. Besides the PC's are supposed to be 'heroic' potential people, better than the average person. Commoner attributes are +0 total modifier or 60 attribute points. Nobles are +7, 74. PCs are 75 point buy, usually higher with 4 keep 3. I have zero issue with monsters hitting with claws with the same power as a great axe... the people in town? Less so. Humanoids should NOT be modified in such a way. Improvements should come from class-like abilities, or equipment.
@@mogalixir Yes, and I said that his mistake was expecting PC rogues of his level. Because that expectation doesn't make any sense. Consider this: The composition of a criminal organization does not and should not depend on the capabilities of some random PC (instead it depends on their resources, connections, socioeconomic factors and whatnot). The game world cannot warp itself around the PCs to ensure that they only meet level appropriate challenges wherever they go and stay believable. Some areas have to be more dangerous and other areas less dangerous for the setting to maintain that believability. Yes, that means that sometimes characters come across humanoid enemies that are more capable than a equivalent level PC. Other people get to have cool powers too (due to their training or Boon or freak accident or whatever). That's what keeps the players guessing and the game exciting.
Good video. I am currently running a campaign, a prewritten one, which was written for the 2014 rules. My players all switched over to 2024 rules for their characters a few weeks ago and I have been having to upscale the encounters ever since. Last week they had an encounter that should have been "Deadly" to six level ten characters, the four level eight characters in my game barely broke sweat, the monsters need to be upscaled too. Because players have all the details and skills and traits to play with and make their characters awesome, and generally, they only have to worry about one character at a time, to keep up DM's need monster stats to be simple and easy to use, as well as powerful enough for the players to have to be out of breath now and again. I don't mind making a big stat block for a special NPC, but I don't want to have to rely on that in off the cuff situations, so tough monsters need to be available with small stat blocks too. That, and the DM never cheats, so any monsters they use are all fair game, that is the primary rule of DM'ing, isn't it?
I think the acolyte is a bad example as it's interpretable as second level caster casting first level spells so 3 slots fits. 2 hit dice suggest level 2
But other spellcasters in the game make it clear that that is NOT the way to read that description. Archmages are described as 18th-level spellcasters, but they aren’t out there casting 18th-level spells
@patrickmcathey7081 No, that's not how that works. It says 1st level caster, and it means 1st level caster. The number if slots is either a typo, the level is a typo, or this is an example of monsters not following the same rules as PCs.
It's not a bad example as the stat block explicitly says it's a level 1 caster, just like how a Mage is a level 9 caster and an archmage is a level 18 caster. 2 hit dice doesn't suggest level 2, it *approximates* level 1 - a PC cleric at level 1 gets max die roll (8) + Con mod hit points, which would be anywhere from 7 to 11 for a PC depending on what your Con is. Monsters don't get max hit dice at first level so an extra hit die is required in order to approximate how many average hit points a 1st level cleric would have.
Another thing to remember: it’s your campaign, and questions like this can add interest if it becomes distracting. If a PC (not necessarily just the player, a PC) notices that the legendary weapon doesn’t do the same massive damage when they use it as when it was used on them - and this is something a PC might well find disturbing and confusing and wonder about - they *can* acknowledge that it happened and pursue that question in-game. Look for lore, consult sages, study the nature of the power behind the weapon, and as they discover things, decide it it’s worth whatever cost they would have to pay, of whatever kind, to be able to tap into more of the weapon’s power. This could become a part of the character’s journey and even, if the GM goes with it, a meaningful plot element, all because the character was affected by something mechanical in the game system. I had a character in one game who fruitlessly studied the characteristics of vampire blood for years, and while he never found the kind of answer he was looking for, he did accomplish a lot of other stuff and built important relationships in the attempt. Maybe a fighter is really curious about why that bugbear did extra damage with its greatclub, and makes it his personal mission to learn bugbear fighting techniques. Then you figure out what that means mechanically, and lore-wise, in-game. Maybe he befriends a bugbear tribe and has the chance to learn a new (not free, but not normally available) Feat, or gets a new subclass feature option he can choose instead of his next subclass feature. Or maybe he just has bugbear friends now.
I would be okay with them not following the rules if they had features that were specifying that they don't follow the rules and in what ways that they do so If I'm fighting a guy and they have an ability that gives them an extra damage dice on all of their attacks then it's whatever, but if I see them using a weapon that I know the damage Dice for, and they don't have anything that should be giving them more damaged ice it feels bad when they have more damage dice Effectively nothing changes, but they feel different Also, the knight is attacking at disadvantage, it just doesn't specify on its stat sheet
The idea that monsters should be built using the same rules as PCs comes from 3.X (so 2000-2008) in which all monsters did follow the same design rules as PCs (albeit with a few monster-exclusive features/traits and "monster classes" but even these tools were given to us in "Savage Species"). 4e and 5e returned to the design asymmetry that was present in all previous editions (under TSR), but given how widely popular 3.X (and by extension Pathfinder 1e) was - this concept has permeated the mental zeitgeist of D&D players.
Couldn't agree more! Asymmetrical design is a powerful but important tool for DMs to have at their disposal. I think there are certain aspects that people have a hard time abstracting. The 6d10 mace is a good example of how EFFECTIVE a creature is with a weapon, but not a LITERAL translation of JUST the mace's power. It's all contextual.
Precisely! They're just THAT good with that weapon. It's innate to them, they have that implicit understand and connection with it, magical or otherwise.
I am that player that points out when an enemy humanoid uses a crossbow twice in a turn. It is a known restriction on how crossbows function, circumvented by either magic crossbows or the crossbow expert feat. As a player i feel like I should be paying attention to these things
That's fine if the DM is just reading the stat block incorrectly, but if a monster's stat block specifically says it can attack twice in a turn with a crossbow, you can safely extrapolate that the monster has training that is roughly equivalent to having taken the crossbow expert feat unless magic item is specified.
The balance thing is from 3.x and pathfinder 1. They give rules for many more things. NPC where players but normaly had NPC (commoner, expert and I got the 3rd.) They could have PC classes but they where stronger. Monster where also built this way and had (race Levels or Hit die) and then could have more classes added.
Someone would only demand NPCs playing by the rules if they haven't seen the horror that is 3.x NPC design upfront. Those rules meant you spent hours building NPCs that player characters annihilated in seconds. And your only way of making them competitive was to overload them on magical bling. Which, when looted, unbalanced the game even further... Monsters absolutely cannot and should not play by the same rules as PCs. That doesn't mean a 4E style design is good where this is blatantly obvious. Breaking the rules yes, but in a measured and semi-fair manner.
@@user-wm3hu7lo1g I Do agree it was alot of work. in many way 5x is like simple mode and 3x was advance. Mind you I still like it but it did need alot more work.
The knight also makes 2 crossbow attacks without crossbow expert. Which is fine. Monsters need simple stats that are competitive with players without making the dm confused
I saw something in a WotC book someplace that said the monsters were meant to "break the rules". That's what legendary actions and resistances were all about after all. If the monsters worked exactly like the player characters, it wouldn't be as much of a challenge.
PCs are also designed to be complex and interesting (and generally do Tons of damage), while monsters are designed to be streamlined. The thing I don't get about the Knight in particular, is that the Ranged attack is less accurate, but hits harder... Is the knight supposed to be Ranged, or melee combatant? One would think melee based on Str vs Dex, but then why don't they get the bonus die on the Greatsword attack..??
The knight is more consistent in melee and therefore more comfortable. That's where its Parry reaction functions, and its to hit and damage bonuses are higher for the greatsword than the crossbow, resulting in much more consistent damage output. The crossbow is boosted specifically to give the Knight a passable option to maintain threat at range while still being far less reliable than its trusty greatsword due to the comparative -3 to hit and more inconsistent damage expression.
DM -- My creature gets bonus damage for no reason with a weapon that magically loses it as soon as a player picks it up. This is bad design. DM -- Here is a specific in world reason why this creature has a special and unique benefit that players don't have access to. This is good game design. It isn't that creature have unique or special benefits that make them feel unfair, its when they have then only for the purposes of making encounters harder with no justifiable in world reason for it that it begins to feel like GM screwery instead of balanced and fair encounter design. The other great element to doing it this way is maybe those players want that ability from the NPC, perhaps the NPC got it from some sort of training or something and now you have another fun thing to do as your player needs to infiltrate those that taught the knight how to use said crossbow to learn from them.
What's the justifiable in-world reason for Extra Attack to exist? As a Fighter I can only make one sword strike every 6 seconds because... why? And then I magically get to make two attacks at level 5... why? As a wizard all my cantrips suddenly deal extra damage at level 5... why? Any reason you can come up with on the fly to justify PCs' arbitrary damage scaling can be just as easily used to justify monster damage scaling as well. I agree that it's fun as the DM to be able to decide what abilities are transferable from NPCs to PCs and vice versa. But let's not pretend that players don't get special powers "for no reason" just as readily as most monsters do - the onus is on the players AND the DM to come up with in-world explanations for the abilities of their PCs and monsters if verisimilitude is desired, and that's a big if since not every table cares about these sorts of things anyways.
@NonRegnumDei1934 I mean when someone is training in some form.of historical martial arts, such as HEMA, you start with slower deliberate strikes and the build up to chaining strikes together, which fits pretty well with how fighters go from just 1 attack to like 6 within 6 seconds. As for the wizard, they are constantly studying and learning. It would make sense that as they master the basics, such as cantrips, they learn how to be more effective and more potent with them. The things you mentioned are all things that make sense to learn just from basic experience, hence why they are a part of the leveling experience. If I, however have a character who has proficiency with both leather working and poison kits then it would make sense that my character could make a unique quiver that allows him to keep arrows constantly poisoned and others might not have. You could easily do the same for an NPC, and then when the PCs kill them, they discover the quiver, but it's damaged, and now they have to reverse engineer it to get a similar effect. Things like this are not hard they just require a little extra thought about who your NPCs are aside from just being generic obstacles for the players.
@Kingofredeyes the point is you had to think about and come up with those explanations just now - the game doesn't tell you why. The same principle applies to NPC scaling methods, like how you just came up with that quiver idea. The game didn't have to say exactly why the poison damage happens, it just implied that there was a reason and you expanded on that implication. Seems you and I agree mostly on this, I was mainly aiming my comment on people who want every little detail of a stat block to be rigidly codified and explained even though half the fun sometimes is coming up with explanations for yourself.
@NonRegnumDei1934 I never thought the stat block needed it, and actually, I feel like it would be bad for them to. The lack of explanation as to why NPCs have certain abilities leaves open players and DMs to be creative. My only issue was with DMs who just take them at face value and make no effort to explain or make use of the storytelling opportunities such things provide.
The issue is that damage done by martial creatures using melee weapons doesn't scale up like spellcasters do (who can use spell slots to increase the damage dice). It's hard to justify a CR 12 melee NPC who only does 1d8 + Str per hit (out of possibly three attacks) when a CR 12 spellcaster can do much more (see the MotM wizard NPCs' arcane blast base attacks that do 4d10 force damage).
🙋🏻 I'd be pissed if I got a weapon that did 6d10 dmg TO me and now it does only 1d8 dmg for me I'd be 🤬🤬🤬 and demanding what the hell form thr DM and they better give a fantastic explanationas to WHY‼️
If your Rogue hit a goblin for 6d6 damage with its shortbow using Sneak Attack, should the goblin be able to do 6d6 damage back to you if it steals the shortbow? The monster is the one doing the damage, not the weapon. Same thing applies to player characters.
Ok, I'm on the same page as this entire video. Let's talk about the Knight's Heavy Crossbow some more. Fire elementals are immune to fire because they're fire elementals, Bugbears and Giants deal more damage with weapons because they're big. Why does a Knight do more damage with a Heavy Crossbow? There is nothing in the fiction or fantasy of a knight that supports this, which is probably why it got focused on so much. Not to mention that because the Knight is a humanoid creature, much like the PCs, there's a higher expectation that they should work similarly to a character. The extra radiant damage is easily accepted because the knight is heroic, maybe a Paladin. But throwing 2d10 on the crossbow just seems to ensure that they deal about the same damage at range as they do in melee. Why? This feels like a mistake, or a misguided attempt to balance the ranged damage to melee. I would swap out the heavy crossbow with a light crossbow, and remove the multiattack capability with the ranged attack. I would add a Mounted Combat Trait that would let a mounted Knight deal more damage after moving, and have advantage against unmounted opponents to give it a little extra oomph. The statblock as-is just doesn't work right, even if the criticism levied at it is coming from the wrong angle. Enemy statblocks break the rules all the time, but they have to follow the fiction of what the statblock is meant to represent or it makes people question it.
Agreed. If you want a knight to do ranged damage, give him javelins. Or a light cross bow like in history, and up his dex so it's actually adding something to attacks and damage. It won't equal its melee capabilities, but that's what makes a knight different than an archer. (Also, really like the movement based combat trait, I would just call it Charge though, and it still applies if the knight is unmounted, and then give him a lance instead of the ranged option at all).
Yeah it just feels off, as a DM I know full well that the creatures cheat but it has to make some sense, like sure give them extra radiant damage on melee, fuck give them resistance to radiant because their god says so but them just doing more damage with a well known weapon because reasons...
@@renanrossi5434 The first thing I would ask if I was a PC fighting this person would instead be to instantly side with them and ask to train under them. Obviously the way adventurers are trained to do extra attacks is miles behind the education they give special knights. What makes it clown world is that the NPCs are better trained - with stronger features that break the system math they are confined to - without any extra explanation of what makes them so much better.
Monsters can (and always have been able to) do whatever the DM decides they can do, there is no further explanation needed for any of it than that. The knights crossbow attack is already miles weaker than it's melee attack so it's something it will only use if it can't get to melee, most likely because of some effect reducing it's speed to 0 or because of flying pcs, which is why it is good it has this somewhat threatening ranged attack to make sure it isn't completely useless in those situations.
I think this problem slowly began through some misconceptions with out monsters work slowly throughout 5e's lifespan, but then it was amplified by Baldur's Gate 3's release. In BG3, many of the enemies (especially the non-magical humanoid ones) have an equivalent to a player class and level. I'm sure you've probably noticed that some of the characters in that band of adventurers at the beginning of the game can use Action Surge once per short rest, and vice versa.
I agree with the video and most of the comments I read. I would add that I'm constantly adding things to monsters. If a group of monsters are used to working together, I might add Pack Tactics. I'll add extra damage types or other abilities as well to add more thematic elements to the encounter and the campaign as a whole. The monsters are still never powerful enough to TPK parties, despite the fact that some of the encounters are many times deadly according to CR trackers, but they do make the encounters fun and engaging. About the only time I'm really careful is when the PCs are in the 1st Tier of play, especially levels 1 and 2.
Right, but the things you are adding are likely set mechanics you can swap in and swap out. Not just stat block changes that seem to randomly alter the block so the creature does more damage, or some other thing. You _can_ do it that way, and on an individual DM level that's fine, cause it's you designing the monster, there doesn't need to be any shared language, you know why they work the way they do. But, if you were designing a monster for others to use, and with the idea that they will modify that monster in the future, than it makes more sense to use traits and such to explain their mechanics. And thus make rules that they abide by (far from the same rules that PC's get, but still a set of rules they adhere to). It's the difference between labelling your group of monsters who work in a forge as using "hot weapons" and doing additional fire damage, and getting pack tactics, vs just giving some monster called a Smith doing extra fire damage and gaining advantage on an attack when an ally is near. Same result, but one suggests all smiths can just light their weapons on fire, and work really well as a team, and the other offers up a mechanical explanation that as a DM you could swap in and out without having to really think about it. Making the creature more useful to a broad audience.
Monsters and players playing by the same rules was understood to be the case in 3/3.5 edition D&D/Pathfinder. Not sure if it changed in 4e because I didn't play that edition. Just saying that for old timers like myself it was understood as part of the game mechanics that pc's and monsters played by the same rules. I could be misremembering but I think 2nd edition was the same.
It did change in 4e and was one of the reasons I didn't like it. Was always asking - what random bullshit does this guy do? At a certain point you'd have to wonder why you are a chump running around with a PC class.
The same Players who complain about Monsters "cheating" will be dead silent should the DM say, "So you also want them to have Death Saving Throws? What about Weapon Masteries? Oh and let us not forget a plethora of Magic Items. It is only fair, right?".
yhe but also we will rally the nearby town nbole to assemble a hunting party to destory the goblin encampment not go in with 4 peeps there is no end to this
Death saving throws make the game more boring, tbh. And weapon masteries didn't even exist and come nowhere near the power of extra damage dice on every hit. And DMs do give monsters magic items and magic items are DM fiat to begin with so it's not a good example. You could DM fiat a monster ability onto a PC in exchange for a class feature and then it would be fair. The main issue is - why am I adventuring to get stronger when I could just find the person training these humanoid knights and get stronger class features than continuing my class?
@@mogalixir To each their own in their opinions. But without Death Saving throws, or something similar. The player characters would die to easily. And it might only be fun dying many, many times, if you were great at roleplaying.
@@mogalixir Sorry what? Do nothing? Most enemies outnumber players. Having monsters get the ability to cast pseudo spells without being magical. Yeah, have fun when every goblin has pact tactics and attacks twice a turn with their dual wielding rusty scimitars. Don't forget the slow they do with their crossbow or the push they do when you are trying to reach the ranged ones. They shoot, run away, and shoot again.
I've had a discussion with my players about this very thing when I said that a specific creature deals x amount of dice for a hit and they were like how? Monsters and players get abilities and effects that "break" the core rules of the game. You only get one action per turn, unless you are a fighter. You can only cast one spell on your turn, unless your a sorcerer. You take full damage when struck by an attack, unless you are a raging barbarian. These core rules get broken all the time by the pc's and players don't bat an eye. The same thing goes for monsters. The only thing that matters is if the rule breakage doesn't happen at a disproportionate level than the pcs. If the lich can cast hold person and then Disintegrate on the same turn and pcs can't do anything to stop it, that's a problem. The rules are guidelines, and being able to really understand what they mean is more important than cookie cutter following everything.
Yes, enemies do deserve to have different mechanics if those mechanics help them Be a balanced encounter, Or help the DM run the game smoothly. Enemies definitely shouldn't be player characters. But there are times when design asymmetry is bad. For one, some of the asymmetry is so asymmetrical that players Have access to abilities that are designed to work against players. But just don't work against monsters. For example counterspell, a player is probably right to assume that if counterspell is a player option, that does what it says, it should work in an intuitive way to how it's read against an enemy that is a monster version of a playable race with a playable caster class, same with dispel magic and mage slayer. And no matter how much design asymmetry a game has, these options should at least be designed in a way where that's true. Unfortunately, they do not, because enemies widely do not use the mechanics they counter or the mechanics are different for monsters, so that they rarely cast spells, even rarer to concentrate on them in combat and even if they do use spells, they don't use spell slot so counterspell just has a full sentence devoted to something that is of no consequence against enemies. if the game were designed to be asymmetrical, monsters would have counterspells that are designed to be used against players that use player mechanics, and players would have counterspells designed to be used against monsters with monster mechanics, but the game was not designed as though it should be asymmetrical, players are given mechanics that are designed to be used against enemies with player mechanics, not monster mechanics. Monsters and players are different, yes. And those differences do help the dm run the game. But to a player, the differences always seem to be arbitrary. So it's bad when they are different in a way where a player needs to be acutely aware of what arbitrary differences players have from enemies In order to inform their game decisions And build Simply due to how extreme and how arbitrary the differences between an evoker (wizard) and an evocation wizard are. Though, monsters like demons are far less beholden to this, because they are not a monster version of a player option even within the fiction. I like to think that at least humanoids should have these principles hold at least to the point that it matters to players Martial enemies having a few extra hit dice or damage dice here or there is not a big concern. Though happening in such a way where a monster that is meant to represent a playable character with a playable class looks like they have magic items but they can't be looted, or looks like they use spells but you can't interact with it, is often just disappointing.
Also, the design purposes that the asymmetry serves is often odd, and are either easily done by mechanisms that don't have these problems, or shouldn't be design goals at all. Like, instead of adding extra damage to all attacks in a way that looks like they're using a magic item you can't actually loot, or a spell you cant actually dispel, you could just give an enemy a third attack. Or a 3/d spirit shroud. These things allow for player monster interaction on an intended level, instead of simply stifling it for the sake of a monster that preforms at CR consistently. There's also a push for monsters like the knight to be equally effective at range and melee even when they probably should be specializing in one of those things. Also, i don't know if you ever faced an 'anti party' before, but monsters that mirror player abilities in a way that they feel like a fair fight is a unique and riveting experience, and that fighting a mirror feeling is kind of the specialty of the humanoid creature type. There's a reason that when people give an example of these concerns they almost always talk about either humanoids specifically or creatures that are meant to thematically be members of specific player option classes specifically: the feeling of fairness was one of the things that made humanoids in particular fun to fight so when asymmetry gives them advantages that are really obvious, it doesn't make for encounters that are fun in the same way as monsters that are designed to be as asymmetrical as possible
I always explained away differences between player and monster power as magic items or innate abilities. I've never seen a problem with monsters being stronger or different from player characters. The reason the player can't use the magic item is because when the creature dies the item self destructs or the god the creature followed revoked it's power, whatever feels right in the moment. If done right, it can work as a hook too.
This is probably favorite of the videos I’ve seen from you so far! I 100% agree that it’s okay for monsters to break the rules. The people complaining about that, are probably the same people who would complain about it being broken when you use the rules in the DMG for giving class levels to monsters. As someone who has created humanoid stat blocks before, it’s totally possible some monsters like that Drow Elite Warrior don’t even technically break the rules. If I were going to make a stat block for one, I wouldn’t write out an entire bonus action for applying the poison because the stat blocks are designed to make things easier for the DM, not the players. I would just bake it into the attack like they did! Then the DM running the monster could totally flavor it as them applying poison as a BA each round. (Edit: it sounds like you allude to this later in the video when you talk about Brute being gone) There’s absolutely a time and place for making monsters that follow the rules. If I’m trying to make a particularly challenging encounter, I’ll often follow the rules and only use official spells because it feels so much more fair to the players if the lose to monsters that had the exact same means as they do. On the other hand, it can be a lot of fun to have monsters break the rules. Sahuagin Priestesses and Blademasters both get 2d8 weapons, but when the party kills them, they get to use that 2d8 weapon themselves (at my table). Then there’s also the Blastseekers from Ravnica, the Dragon followers from Fizban’s, the Hoplites from Theros, the Inquisitors from Ravenloft, and the Inspired from Eberron. These are all humanoids that essentially have classes exclusive to that world. If a player thought it was really cool, I would absolutely make them a class or subclass based on those mechanics, but either way it’s cool that some worlds have more than just the original 12 classes. If there’s anything to take away from these new stat blocks, it’s that WotC is moving away from monsters following the rules in favor of DM ease of use, and that’s a good thing. This seems to especially be the case with monsters losing spell slots.
Index Card RPGs monster stat blocks were a revelation the first time I read the book. Boil a monster down to the basics, give it some memorable actions, and roll it out. It's the only way I play now. I don't even bother with reading or paying attention to every detail of a 5e or PF 2e stat block. d20 games are overly complicated if you want them to be. They are also very fast to play and fun if you want them to be.
Where does the idea of monsters using the same rules come from? Other iterations of the game (Pathfinder/3.5), and other games that function that way. And also, the expectation based on the shared simulation of a secondary world that the players and the DM are existing in the same world, and so outside of their unique or special abilities adhere to the same rules. Now, that expectation might be flawed, but it's how things are presented to a degree. Beyond that, sure I can buy monsters have some of their own rules. Where I take issue is when those rules are opaque and I as the guy running them don't have an explanation beyond, "Well it's what's written here". When someone takes that hammer (a bug bear is just using a hammer now? lol) there's no explanation for why it doesn't do 3d4. Sure, some ancient vampire using an legendary weapon can do extra stuff, but when a bugbear who apparently just knocked over a carpenter for his tools is doing extra damage, it's nice to actually have a reason for why his weapons work differently. Brute provided that, and also told me as DM why the monster worked like it did, and meant if I wanted to put a sword in its hand instead of a hammer, I would know how to stat it without having to just make stuff up myself (which is, of course, always an option). Furthermore, when a random knight is doing radiant damage with his attacks, it _says_ something to the pc's, that just doing more damage doesn't. That is a magical power, and a damage type with associations in the fiction. Knowing where that feature comes from _does_ impact things like loot, and also expectation of the setting for both players and DMs. I don't mind the monsters having their own rules, but I'd like to know what they are rather than have to guess every stat block. Traits facilitated that, and better informed me as a DM.
Yea but you can just make stuff up. You can retroactively add that Brute trait to the hobgoblin, or Holy trait that you just invented to the knight. But what it doesn't need is to take up space on the monster stat block, because, you know, it doesn't *really* matter. It's just some ad hoc explanation.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 Some people don't have the time to go around fixing the game like players fix Skyrim. By your logic there is no market for buying the monster manual because they are just arbitrary. No reason to buy adventure books by the same reason, and no reason to play DnD because everything is arbitrary so might as well do whatever. If you buy a product you expect to at least make things easier. This change makes things harder. Confuses new DMs, obscures balance decisions, and overall just makes it harder to make your own stuff on top of stuffing creativity. If you wanted to give that bugbear a spear, now you need it and have it deal less damage. What do you do when you give it a waraxe? Is it even possible? Your comment comes from a place of experience and knowledge of previous stat blocks. New Dams will have to look into those before they even start understanding the balance decisions.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 This, whatever special things monsters do can always just be explained as special abilities that particular monster has, not unlike whatever abilities the pcs get from their class. Like, why is this monster doing 4d8 damage with it's rapier? Simply because it's so good at using it and that's all the explanation you ever need.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 You can _always_ just make stuff up. You don't _need_ rules for any of this. But damn if they don't make it easier. They provide a structure for you to make things up, and a language to do that more efficiently. If you are just tossing on ad-hoc solutions all the time, or you don't know _why_ something is the way it is, it limits its utility. And I don't buy that a single ability takes up that much space. They have never been that efficient with space, and from the new look they didn't seriously improve things. If they absolutely had to minimize space, have a list of traits in the back or front of the book, and just put the name of the trait in the block. And if it's a rule, it's not ad hoc, it's established as part of the balance of abilities given to monsters. it goes from a solution used to make one monster meet some CR threshold, to a tool in a DM's toolbox.
@@Klaital1 That's all the explanation you ever need when giving information to players/PC's, but as a DM mechanical information matters if you ever want to utilize these monsters in a balanced way, or build your own and know wtf you're doing. Having a list of terms and traits that act as a short hand for that, is way more useful than having someone make a stat block and just deciding for whatever reason they had at the time that it would do an arbitrary amount of damage. If you have things like traits, they can each go into your design, and you can even ration them based on how much they improve the capabilities of a monster. If you just say "A monster of this level should do this amount of damage, figure out how many dice that is based on what they have." It's more opaque and less useful. It lacks clarity, and so a DM can't really use it to inform their future design without working backwards or just guessing why it's designed the way it is.
Personally I think the misunderstanding comes from adhering to the same core rules or mechanics. If the players can flank a creature or use a potion as a bonus action, the monsters can too. So players expect the weapon dies, traits etc. to be equivalent as well but of course a monster having Pack Tactics does not allow the players to use or mimic that same mechanic. The base rules or rule outcomes are the same, but players and monsters are built differently...by design. Would be quite boring and predictable if monsters would only have class abilities...
It all boils down to the Simulator vs. Emulator argument. If players are seeking a simulation of combat, I usually point them twords the 40k style games.
I would assume the heavy cross bow disadvantage thing is more so dm fiat. As in the dm should notice the discrepancy and act accordingly. In short. Yes the knoght does have disadvantage with the heavy crossbow.
Our group always complains about "DM Shenanigans" anytime the DM does stuff where it clearly breaks the rules, and sometimes even when they are working within the confines of the rules its still "DM Shenanigans" haha.
I dont think generic humanoid enemies should be able to "break" the rules. Player classes are meant to be better than generic npc equivalents. I do think there should be special versions of them that can do more. A regular knight shouldn't deal an extra die plus radiant damage, but the knight captain might.
Unironically i like when dms run with player rules, as it makes the fights feel more fair. If my character dies, it will be to an enemy with the same potential i had.
I know JC mentioned that they did some heavy editing to "thin" out the new books. Otherwise they were going to be twice as many pages. Yet, passive information is crucial in MM's because maybe the NPC uses a club that is not already calculated in their stat block. Things like this actively happen. Maybe not every session but frequently enough that it needs to be included somewhere. Also I have never been a fan of breaking continuity. Some of the most poorly designed NPC's are ones that break this continuity. We don't need a 5 page backstory but the players have to buy into the lore why something is happening. I'm currently playing PF2 so different system but many of the NPC's have no continuity but exhibit everything you said is "ok." I find it to be just extremely poor design. If I am fighting a humanoid there are things I expect. When you start breaking those expectations and no plausible reason it breaks down the lore. For example, A level 1 caster casting a leveled spell 3 rounds in a row I may ignore or not notice. That same NPC dropping leveled spells every round for 7 to 10 rounds and I will notice (and begin questioning). Or casting higher level spells and they are just "fodder" will begin to make me wonder. For example we had a caster drop spells not from his school (example: Primal, Divine, Arcane for D&D) and it bugged me. We moved on but this topic brought up that feeling I had nearly 2 years ago.
I will have to disagree in some regard you are correct, but in my opinion, it comes down the rule behind certain concepts, in the case of the knight outright ignoring the heavy crossbow heavy trait take away from a possible weakness the knight could have. not only that but the free radiant damage has no logical source and as such feels cheap. a creature should be allowed to bend the rules through its features and traits, but it should have comparable feature to certain extent (feel that they are appropriate for the creature's level of power and theme the creature has) and should still subscribe to the rule of the game unless a feature or trait say otherwise a monster should be allowed to get free damage for no reason (their need to be a tangible source for it to make sense). in the case of the acolyte, I heavily believe it to be an overlooked typo that no one really cares about because of 2 reason players don't know the acolyte spellcaster level so they have no reason to complain and the fact that it can cast spell appropriate to the level it is implied to be at. I feel it is import for a reason behind a certain feature on the character state to have an explanation. so that if I player asked after a session is over, I could answer. but at the same time if I want to do something similar, I have a frame of reference or a skeleton to structure something similar. I homebrew a lot of monsters and I have always felt that if I can do something along the same line that a player can do it should follow similar rule to the player unless it has a feature that says otherwise. so that in the case of which a monster uses a feature like action surge (cough cough Langdedrosa Cyanwrath) it shouldn't outperform what a player can do (E.g. the monster can use action surge twice in one round), it should feel fair and believable. but this should only apply in the case of which a creature is using a feature tool or weapon that is the same or similar to the player. this way it does not undermine what the player can and can't do. monster should be powerful, but they shouldn't be flat better at something then a player simply because they are a monster, there has to be a reason for it, and it has to make sense. that doesn't mean you can't have knight that do additional radiant damage their just need to be a reason as to why they can do it. but the core fact that it is using a heavy crossbow and ignoring the heavy property, on top of getting an additional damage dice and bonus radiant damage I can see why a player thinks it would be unfair by looking at the sheet because the knight really does feel like it is cheating. after all any player can shoot a heavy crossbow but they only do a single d10 and still have to abide by its heavy property. it not that it's cheating it more that it is undermining the play in this case. but if the player saw something like this; Blessed knight: the knight through harsh training and dedication to honouring their vows have been granted the following benefits. you may add 1d8 radiant damage to all weapon attacks made. and when you make a ranged weapon attack you may ignore the heavy property and add 1d10 additional weapon damage to the attack. (all bonus damage already calculated in the stat block). this make it feel like the knight isn't just pulling this out of nowhere and gives it a tangible source all on one trait but also establishes this isn't the norm but the exception. this makes it so a DM could infer this rule onto all the possible situations where such a trait would come up like if the knight had to pick up a new weapon because they have been disarmed. (Mind you I would still have it subscribe the heavy property and do normal heavy crossbow damage as to give it a tangible weakness that can be exploited by players)
5th edition's biggest problems were Monsters being trivilaized and boring bags of HP the higher PC's got. Pathfinder 2e marketed itself to DMs (The primary people who buy products) by saying they made the DM's job easier, and they actually could function at high level with Monsters who were a challenge. It'll be interesting to see if 5.5 is bringing back Monsters with "Bite". Monsters should not work like PCs, have their own rules, and have things that make PC's lives difficult. Strategy should be necessary for PCs to win.
Great video. This coming from a Player prespective, but enemies have always had abilities that were superior to individual Player characters, and that will always the case. And for me, that doesn't matter, as long as the Player characters can get strong abilities as well. And I think d&d 2024 does give the players strong options, even if some of the classes changes were disappointing. My concern is, will the monsters, of d&d 2024 be so strong that the PC's new power levels won't cut it. And almost every battle will still feel like a boss fight. And the reason I say that, is because the Dm's I've played with nearly all the fight were very tough. To the point, I remember some of the easy fights more fondly, than the difficult ones.
Trying to make monsters like players always leads to problems, they need to exist for 1 encounter and follow monster design parameters, they don't have iron clad stat spreads, HP, 12 features, 25 spells etc.
Monsters in 2014 didn't play by the same rules either. Which was a huge contention for me. I have a Goose and Gander rule. Basically it says that anything they players can do the monsters can do all things being equal. Example: a watchman that is a fighter/warrior can do most of the things a PC Fighter can do at a given level. This does NOT mean that the same warrior can do what the wizard does etc. imho, the combat section of the PHB applies to ALL combat PC and NPC alike so all the same options are there for both. If they have deviations they should indicate why they have such deviation, like Extra Spectacular Expertise or something in their stat block. We will give 2024 a shot but there is a LOT of stuff I dislike thus far (there are more things that I do like than I thought I would though), but I am leaning toward Shadowdark which means I will likely lose 2 players, but oh well. The DM needs to have fun too and if the system is atrociously overpowered then I need to level that playing field.
1e Monsters are monsters. 3e Monsters have the same rules as PCs. Mostly. Me. Monsters CHEAT. Always. I do hope the 2024MM gives GREAT monster creation rules. Much more than the DMG 2024.
The knight is not stupid as the rules... to handle an heavy weapon you do not need dexterity, you need strenght. He is smarter than the rule creators :)
Some of these extra boosts could also be unlisted abilities that were left off of the stat block to simplify it. Like the acrylic could have an ability similar to a feat that gave an extra spell use but was simplified. (In the case of the brute feature, it was probably included to stop the player from thinking that the weapon was better)
I feel like traits like Brute make monsters easier to hack and modify. They also give easy solutions or just inspiration to DMs when it comes to loot and similar. Conversely they create bloat you need to go through when using the monster in an encounter. So to me it's a balance between preparation clarity and use clarity. I'd rather still have those features just placed later though in some 'extended' section that explains more what's going on behind the screen.
I genuinely much preferred how 3.5e creatures were built. They functioned within the exact same frameworks as player characters, down to having innate spellcasting level equivalents.
Agreed. Monsters and NPCs are built differently than PCs. Monsters and NPCs generally don't get death saves like PCs, and I don't think you'll find many players complaining that monsters aren't following the same rules in that situation.
I'm going to be a jerk about this, but whenever I hear people complain about monsters "breaking the rules", that just tells me they have never GMed extensively. Having monsters follow all of the same rules as players has a certain cool immersion factor, but I have found that cool factor melts away very quickly when you need to make balanced encounters with a nice variety of enemies for combat that moves at a good pace and doesn't result in monsters dropping piles of amazing equipment the PCs can just scoop up. A big part of it is brevity of stat blocks. As a GM, I want to be able to quickly glance down at a monster to know what its rolling. It is important for classes to have a bunch of abilities to show where their damage and bonuses are coming from because it gates power between levels and abilities. For a monster when I am running combat, I really don't give a shit why their bonuses and damage are the way they are, I just want to move through their turn to act against the PCs before giving the game back to them. If there is a flavor element, just include that outside of the stat block please. From my experience GMing, players do not really interact with monster stats in any way they can really see or appreciate, with the exception of AC. When a player rolls a low 6 on the d20, and they add all of their bonuses to see that they JUUUUST barely hit the DC / AC, that is a cool moment where you know you just barely made it. Seeing all of the game mechanics click together to reward their decision making feels good for players, and rewards them for understanding the system. For monsters, players almost never see those parts. They don't know how close a monsters roll came to maiming them, all they really see is that it hit or missed. As a result, having every monster mechanic spelled out is does not add to the experience. If it is a mechanic that players are meant to potentially exploit, then those are worth noting, such as the knight's parry encouraging disarming, or the troll's healing encouraging the use of fire, but these are exceptions. Meanwhile, a creature with the "brute" trait will always have that trait. At that point, it is more important for me as a GM to quickly know how much it swings for than it is for the players and I to know why it swings for that much. Then there is balancing monsters. Using the knight crossbow as an example, its true that there is no explanation to why it deals 2d10 damage. Ok, lets make it 2 knights wielding crossbows at the normal 1d10 damage... oh wait, now we have doubled the amount of HP on the board. Ok, give them half HP, except now they don't feel like a potent warrior anymore, so lets make up for it by boosting their AC, except AC scaling doesn't work that way and now fighting them with attack rolls is a massive pain in the ass. Also, you now have double the number of knights clogging up the initiative. Ok, back up a bit, let's make the crossbows enchanted to deal 2d10 each, now have fun with every knight dropping a magic weapon for your players to pick up as well as explaining in game why they have so many of these things. Also, it's true that the knight shouldn't be able to use a crossbow because they lack the dexterity. Ok, let's boost their DEX to 13 and boost that saving throw while we're at it. At the end of the day, all I care about conveying to the players is that this is an armored warrior who is extremely dangerous with a weapon, but has a weakness to anything that requires swift movement. That flavor coming across is far more important than making sure every stat and mechanic lines up to what players use. I know this is a bit of a rant. IC is completely right when he says monsters and players are filling completely different roles within the game, and because of that, they can't be balanced the same way. Monsters should not have the same level of survivability as the PCs, but they still need to pose a threat. Players need a varied toolbox to draw from for level progression purposes, and their turns will naturally take longer as a result. My monsters are static entities designed for one stretch of the game, and its not interesting for their turns to drag on because I need to dig through their stat block. Letting monsters "break rules" like this just makes the game easier for GMs to run combat and build fights that work for their story, both for challenge and theme. In my opinion, these factors are far more important to immersion and fun than ensuring total mechanical symmetry on both sides of the table.
I’d say there are different degrees of cheating. Some will pass without problem , while others sting really badly. An example of the latter would be a "special" poison that outright ignores poison resistance and advantage on saves against poison.
This is why monsters with class levels were a thing, differentiate between the Orc that has five Fighter levels for Extra Attack and the Orc Warlord that has thirteen to warrant a definitely-not-Legendary-Resistance Indomitable, possibly with a +1/2 weapon. Subclass features very optional, PCs still need to be special and the monsters are intended to be killed off after one combat, so putting lots of effort into the OCs has diminishing returns; at most give cultists some Warlock invocations that match the BBEG theme or something.
"Monster" in D&D isn't always being literal, and is basically shorthand for "Enemy NPC". Human Bandits are monsters, wolves are monsters, just like an orc, goblin, or enemy wizard is a monster. Because they have stat blocks laid out in the "Monster Manual" so that the players can fight them.
I know monsters don't have to follow the rules players have to, but I will say that a fun thing I like to do is make a PC and then make them into a stat block to see how they would fair.
A monster is a terrifying creature in the minds of people in the real world. Power creep has turned most monsters into nerf hurdles over the years. I'm VERY MUCH in favor of making all monsters more powerful. A monstrosity by definition should defy the rules. And, since creatures of all types are presented in any Monster Manual, the word monster is a blanket term for all enemies.
While it is true that NPCs and Monsters have never worked under the same rules as PCs in the current edition I believe to some degree it is at a detriment to the game. There is a lot of benefit to internal consistency for where the rules and world meet. You can create challenging encounters without creating abilities that only monsters/npcs can have without breaking game balance. Pack tactics is too powerful to let a PC have over the course of a campaign, I get that - but it doesn't make sense in a world where that advantage exists that a PC character couldn't learn a similar level of coordination with their allies. This is not the same as saying a human PC should be able to get a dragon's breath weapon. I agree that monsters/npcs don't "have" to follow the same rules as players - but there are benefits we're losing to this kind of thing being ignored. The world feels less cohesive. Your example of the banshee isn't the same thing, because there's no reasonable structure in the game world for a PC to learn the wail. On the other hand, if the knight can learn to weild the crossbow more effectively, there's no in game logical reason a PC couldn't learn to in the same way. To some degree mechanics and world need to mesh.
Any DM will tell you. There's a whole library of videos out there about how to "break" the game. Players read lots of rules in bad faith. The challenge of the game should be raised. Many of the stat block changes make sense. Drow WOULD have poison already applied, knights WOULD bless their weapons
I don't only love the way the npc "break the rule" but they need to for a simple reason: they're weaker than the players Bugbears deal an additional weapon dice since 2014, it makes sense for a knight to deal more damage though Plus, the non explicit rules that npc use in their stat block make them more unpredictable for players and THAT makes the combats really interesting, nothing better than not knowing what to expect from an enemy and learn how to deal with it
Which damage would you calculate if a PC gets his hands on the weapon during the fight and uses it to fire back? E.g. the heavy crossbow. What would prevent him from keeping it? It's far superior to the standard, after all. That is where design like this falls short.
This exact question is addressed in this video. The player would not get the benefit since it’s not the weapon that is dealing the extra damage, the creature has the benefit of dealing bonus damage.
@@InsightCheck Yeah, I heard it later, and found it inconvincing. In most games I played, there was not only the monster/hero-duality you cited, but also something like an NPC layer. Those contained mostly people of playable races (who might or might not be fully fleshed out) which built foundations for areas and behaved like "normal". The vast majority of those people are people, not monsters (if e.g. a silver dragon in human form shows up, that´s a plot hook). And they use items that perform normally. For me as a player it would be utterly confusing if a guard or knight suddenly falls into an "unexplained monster status" with standard items behaving differently all of a sudden, "because" ...? For that, there needs to be either a feat or skill, or something different, so that there is a chance to spot something is different, like the guy gleaming with celestial or demonic energy, or the crossbow being double-sized or triple-stringed (the latter cases having the salvage problem again, though). That PC/monster-only also (like a lot of the new abilities btw.) kills a lot of options for roleplay because if you never know how another person behaves and how you restrict it, you will be a murder-hobo out of necessity, as it is simply not possible to secure prisoners anymore. The other way around? A monster not hacking a downed PC into small pieces is a stupid monster. For me, that´s too limited.
As a ttrpg designer myself I find the breaking the rules concept to be lazy and uninspiring. It dumbs down the DM process to make it more streamlined but in doing so it takes away from the need to be creative and original. This process ensures that the undesirable floats to the top along with the cream. If you're familiar with Tucker's Kobolds you'll get a sense of how to create challenge without breaking any rules or altering stat blocks on any creatures. I have designed my own challenges while allowing my players to gain monster abilities and it not break the game. Get creative, ffs even ai can design decent challenges for level 20 characters.
I don't see it as "cheating". Simply put the CR calculus relies on certain numbers. The knight clearly has those numbers. So how you arrive at those numbers is irrelevant. Change the numbers and you change the CR. Forcing the DM to connect things like the Dex to the H.X-bow means they have to raise the dex. Oh. Oops. You messed with its dex save by doing that, as well as its AC, and dex based skills. Now the knight is actually more powerful and a different CR than it was.
As a player and DM 2014 was on easy mode to me. I agree and don;t thing it would be "breaking the rules or cheating" to make challenging adjustments. I had to all the time as DM with 2014 rules.
They never actually have. Not even in 3.0 and 3.5 where they pretended to and did sometimes. They often had NPC Classes that made them fundamentally different even then. Assume that humanoid NPCs are using an NPC Class that has the abilities listed. It's pretty straightforward, really.
The source of "things should work the same" is usually 3.5, where many monsters were built with the same spells and feats and rules as PCs. They did have some unique abilities, but largely the edition billed things as working the same
3ed/3.5 we're pretty unique in that aspect. No other edition went as hard on rule symmetry as that edition
And it was great for it
@@JackalMJ by great you mean... incredibly imbalanced and slow to build any creatures in.
@lostsanityreturned as opposed to the current balanced system of just make it up? Vampires are incredibly weak for their CR and wizards now launch barrage attacks that arnt even spells.
I much preferred a logical system were monsters had the same rules as players. Your right on the second point tho, it was slower.
It would make sense to have the 'Create a monster' part in the monster manual.
A manual for making monsters, if you will
Dude, yes like show us how to make one, give us a list of all monster features, make a fillable monster stat block we can use
@@nathanhedlund836 I mean I feel like its a bit simpler than that to make a monster.
In my understanding it falls into 2 main things.
How hard can this thing hit.
and
How hard can it BE hit.
If it hits hard and can be hit hard, its a deadly creature.
Hit hard but die in a round, hard encounter
etc.
What defines deadly vs easy.
A deadly monster should be able to quite reliably take a D10hp charecter down to zero in a round assuming it hits with everything.
Medium monster same but with a D6hp charecter
Easy monster takes a D8hp char to like half.
ofcourse this would be avg damage and assuming hits.
adding utility spells/abilites.
invisibility, misty step, counter spell, dispel magic, things of that nature, add them as you see fit but look to other creatures when it comes to number of uses per 'level' of the spell.
eg, if they have fireball, dispel magic and counterspell, don't give them 3 uses of each. Allow use of any combo upto 3 times total, magic heavy group, split the counterspell, give that its own use pool.
A creature doesnt have to hit like a truck to be deadly.
It also really depends on the group and make up, there is no one size fits all, there can't be, you as a DM will ALWAYS have to tweek things, will always have to adjust encounters and you will NEVER find a monster that is PERFECT for an encounter, you will always have to change/homebrew or optional rule something about the creature.
Thats just DnD.
Monsters don't have to follow the same rules as players, but it's important for them to follow system rules so that DMs can homebrew and improvise. A 2014 Bugbear doesn't "cheat" because system rules allow for special abilities to enhance damage and the Brute trait has clearly defined rules that show how much damage is added. This allows me to add the "Brute" trait to my own homebrew monsters and more importantly, if a Bugbear picks up a Greataxe, I can easily tell that it should do 2d12 damage plus the Bugbear's strength modifier.
The problem with Drelnza and the 2024 Knight that you mention is that I have no idea how much damage they should do if they pick up another weapon. If players are able to disarm Drelnza, how much damage does she do? I can kinda extrapolate that as a vampire, her unarmed strikes do 1d8 damage by looking up the vampire stat block, but what if she picks up another longsword? Is it only with Heretic that she can do 6d10 damage? It's not as bad because Drelnza is a named NPC in a very specific adventure, but I use humanoid stat blocks like the Knight all the time as NPCs, town guards, and many other places where using a weapon other than a Heavy Crossbow could come up frequently.
To a lesser extent, using specific Monster traits that follow specific rules also helps me as the DM communicate to the players how strong a monster is. If my players are familiar with the "Brute" trait, I can use it to describe an "Ogre bouncer with the Brute trait" and my players will have a better idea of what they're dealing with.
Exactly. Some monsters are special characters who get special abilities, and the explanation for why is largely in their lore, and because they are unique. But a bunch of them are generic examples of some kind of creature, and we want to know what actually differentiates them from anything else. If they have special traits it's helpful to call them out, because largely they use the same mechanics (especially examples like a Knight or an Ogre, who are largely just bags of hit points and attacks). Knowing what makes a bug bear different mechanically from a bandit is helpful, both in the running of them, but also in the design of my own stuff. This is especially true when we're talking about generic npc statblocks meant to represent people in the world.
When people ask "Why does the knight work that way?" It's less about it being unfair, and more about it being inexplicable beyond trying to fit a challenge rating. This guy isn't presented as being special, he's generic, so why does he _do something special?_ Slap paladin on his block instead and people go "Oh, I get it, he's got some kind of smite like thing happening." But if you don't it begs the question "Should every knight be doing radiant damage, and be weirdly hard hitting but inaccurate with cross bows?"
(I also love that the secondary big weapon of a knight is a *heavy* crossbow and not a lance or even a light cross bow or something, I mean I get it's to aid with range, but it's still funny to me.)
Generic blocks are meant to be just that, so when they start doing strange things with no mechanical explanation it's confusing, and if you wanted to change it you would be doing a little bit of guess work that leaves you less certain. You tie those mechanics to a trait or feature, you take out the guesswork and allow DM's to make informed edits.
The big problem here is word count. Brute takes a line to list and thus inherently means you've got less room for actually interesting abilities or lore or additional monsters. In an ideal world, it'd be nice to see all their passives listed, but having passive bonuses just be inferred from their effects has some large advantages.
I completely agree
Monsters could also just have useful descriptions, particularly the kind you can hand out to players who identify them, such as "unusually high damage with weapons", instead of always needing a trait to explain any given statistic in its stat block.
Players have plenty of ways to do extra damage with specific attacks, as well as to "break the rules" of combat. Sneak Attack, Divine Smite, Dueling, Battle Master Maneuvers, Great Weapon Master, etc., as well as things like Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Skulker, Medium Armor Master, and so on. Knowing this, a Monster doesn't need to have a specific trait printed in its stat block for PCs to be able to extrapolate that the extra damage it's dealing with a crossbow, or its ability to bypass the Heavy property, is a trait inherent to the monster rather than it just "breaking the rules". So much space is wasted writing out traits in stat blocks that are completely self-explanatory even without the blurb. It's easier, more elegant, and just as explainable to forgo putting the Brute trait in a stat block and just write "2d8" for the damage of the attack.
NPC creatures need to “break the rules” in order to be of any use to the GM in providing meaningful combat encounters for their players. They are literally built different so they can keep up with the ever increasing amount of power that PCs gain as they level up.
Exactly! They are created differently, serve different purposes and should not be held to the same standard as a PC!
This statement "they are build different" is the worse part of 5e...
Other editions you could follow the same rules for npcs and have good encounters
@@RicardoSR I think that is the best part: you never know what an npc can do because they don't have to follow the same rules...
Talking about the knight: they have 1d8 radiant damage extra and this make me assume that they can be used both as fighter npc or as paladin npc, and if radiant damage doesn't fit with the idea of the npc you can swap it with every other damage type you like, even another extra weapon dice
The npc need to be different and easier to use for a DM
I’ve never understood this sentiment.
Why do we need to design monsters different from player characters to make them challenging? I understand monsters cannot currently keep up but if you designed an evil crew to oppose your players using a twilight cleric as the centerpiece and a random assortment of basic player character classes they would be hard pressed very easily.
I understand why people say they have a hard time for normal monsters but they’re normal monsters?
If you are designing a big bad why wouldn’t you pluck characteristics from the classes of what you know dominates?
@@NotYourCitizenAnymore but you can add everything you want on your monsters to make them more challenging, there's no reason to not change whatever you want, but npc need to be powerful enough to challenging the players without having a long stat block full of abilities that dm must learn before every fight, that's why npc need different rules
I just have one argument about removing passive traits such as "Brute". For DMs, like myself, that don't just use the weapons detailed for each monster it is there to let us know that if I gave that Bugbear a longsword or club that I should add another die. Newer DMs might not get that.
Not to mention how a bugbear might lose its weapon in an encounter and need to snatch up another.
This is where DM innovation comes in!
If you want a bugbear mace to deal 3d10, go ahead! Just remember to adjust difficulty accordingly!
@@Kaelshazar Yah, I was about to put it less charitably. Specifically, I was going to say "That sounds less like a rules problem and more like a rules lawyer DM problem."
That concern also wouldn't be a concern if there were tables for monster statistics by level that would let you know that the bugbear's build suggests its weapons need to do additional damage.
@@AnaseSkyrider That sounds like something that can easily be compiled at least.
People don't care if monsters do more damage. They just want it to make sense. Maybe the knight is divinely empowered, or the weapon is like a Critical Role vestige that changes based on the experience and actions of the wielder.
This. When damage is added, I need to know if its the creature or the weapon in case the player picks up the weapon.
@@WesleyMcLain-kj5if The default assumption should be that if a monster is "breaking the rules" with a weapon, it's a feature of the monster rather than a feature of the weapon, unless otherwise specified. After all, a Rogue can deal 6d6 damage with a shortbow, but that doesn't mean every shortbow the Rogue picks up instantly becomes a magical 6d6 shortbow. Still, as the DM you have the freedom to decide otherwise if you think it's more fun for your players - if you want it to be a feature of the item, just make an item with that feature. Being able to make these decisions for your own table in order to maximize fun for everyone is a huge part of the fun of DMing.
I’ve always been a big proponent of player-monster asymmetry. I never understood why people thought monsters should work the exact same way as players
Same. PvE and PvP in video games are two wildly different beasts which tend to have drastically different rules in many games, and yet for some reason people don't seem to connect those same dots as easily when it comes to asymmetry in TTRPGs specifically.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way you can play a TTRPG "Wrong" is to not have fun. If the rules being "Broken" results in more fun then it's fine.
Also, if it's in the rulebook, it's not breaking the rules is it?
Exactly! The lack of a Brute trait doesn't mean a monster is "cheating", it just means the numbers should speak for themselves rather than always needing a special line of text to justify every single tweak to the math.
I don't care if they give a monster extra weapon damage mechanics. That may even need to be a necessity. My only problem with a 2d10+1d8 radiant crossbow is if you don't have something to specify why then it becomes a custom weapon and if I find a 2d10 heavy crossbow in a monster's hands and I kill him I'm taking his weapon and expect it to work the same for me as it did for him. If the stat block has an explanation for the difference I will still take the crossbow but then I won't expect the difference in damage to transfer.
If it was because of the item, there would be a special item linked to it with its own description card. That its equipment would just list "heavy crossbow" means that it's because of its stat block. This isn't hard to figure out, and also SHOULDN'T be obvious to players either as to which is the case regardless (because you're not supposed to be giving info out to them like "And now I roll 1d8, plus an additional 1d8 thanks to its Brute trait").
@AnaseSkyrider OK, I understand what you are saying and here is the issue with that mentality. As a player, I know what equipment is meant to do and when a weapon does something different than what I see in the PHB I default to "new toy" forcing the " why does this work differently for me," question. So DM explains it is creature feature and I am disappointed but life goes on. If the DM says "None of ya'," then I go looking for another table it does create the appearance of cheating and while we expect it at some times from the DM catching it isn't acceptable.
@@nickm9102 Let me break down why you are wrong with a very simple example.
DM: "The man in embroidered armor waves his hand over his mace, as he mutters a chant, and it begins to glow with a bright burning light. He strikes you! You take 6 bludgeoning damage and 3 radiant damage."
Did this NPC cast a spell, use a magic ability, use a command to activate a magic item, or some other 4th thing? Who knows. It's reasonable and common for DMs to obscure what an NPC does, not everyone runs D&D like it's BG3. Sometimes an NPC does something, you guess what it is, and you were wrong. LIFE GOES ON. That's not a fault of the system, that's just players being entitled crybabies, and your excuses don't dismiss how this is a genuine improvement to the game's design. It's literally just a skill issue.
It's a huge waste of time and space to write out "here's why the monster deals extra damage with its crossbow" for every single monster every time that happens. If a Rogue does 6d6 damage to an enemy with a shortbow using Sneak Attack, should the enemy assume the Rogue just has a special weapon that does 6d6 damage every time? The enemy doesn't know that the Rogue has the Sneak Attack feature, and they don't need to know that to understand that it's the Rogue who is boosting the weapon's effectiveness and not the other way around. The same applies to players - you don't need to know what feature a monster has to understand that the monster is improving the weapon it's using and not the other way around.
@@NonRegnumDei1934 Not only that, but it doesn't affect the game from the players' perspective if the monster has Brute or if it just says 2d8 damage. EXCEPT! If you're the kind of DM who handles situations like this:
DM: "The bugbear attacks! 17 hits, so you take 15 bludgeoning damage."
Player: "Wait but that's a morningstar. That's a d8, and he didn't crit, does he have +7 Strength?"
By explaining how the monster works on the sheet:
DM: "He has Brute, so he does 2d8. I rolled a 6 and a 7."
If you're playing the kind of game where players don't get to look at the sheet a little bit, where players either never get to know, or you make them spend an action and roll for it to find out, then your answer NO MATTER WHAT is going to be something along the lines of:
DM: "Your character doesn't know." or "Weapon dice don't exist in the world" or anything like that. (Some tables shy away from "spell slots" as being a term in actual universe, for example)
This was an incredible video. Your presentation of the game mechanics vs. game theory vs. functionality to generate fun is nothing shy of brilliant. Keep them coming!!!
Thank you so much, comments like this are so refreshing to read you have no idea. Sincerely, thank you, you made my day :)
I think the top-down approach better serves having a decently balanced game, and is one that 5e should adopt. I like these sections of text from the rules in PF2e for building monsters, especially as it relates to determining damage:
> Creatures aren't built the same way PCs are. The rules for building them are more flexible, and their statistics are based on benchmark final numbers rather than combining each individual modifier together. This is called top-down design, in which you consider the design process as a whole and select the details that reflect your intended result, rather than building statistics from the bottom up and hoping the finished creature matches your vision.
> Keep in mind that a creature using a weapon should have a damage value that feels right for that weapon. Extreme damage works well for two-handed weapons that use d10s or d12s for damage. On the other hand, a dagger uses only d4s, so a dagger wielder would need something like sneak attack to deal extreme damage, or you might compensate for the dagger's lower damage per Strike by giving the creature the ability to attack more efficiently or use other tricks.
In PF2e, you simply use the tables which have columns to give you ranges from Low to Extreme, and adhere to roughly those numbers for that creature's level, with the understanding that creatures have the innate features which justify those statistics, even as they directly depart from the rules for a PC. In the section about creatures which use manufactured weapons, it even states that if you desire to build their damage from the ground up, to give them damage-boosting features like Weapon Specialization way before a PC does (or extra features like Sneak Attack).
It's notable, however, that creatures don't ignore weapon traits, unless you specifically allow them to with a special ability. They play intimately with the core rules. As an example put in 5e terms, a creature couldn't simply have a multi-attack that features a crossbow, and would REQUIRE a special ability to bypass the loading property (because in PF2e, crossbows require a bespoke action to reload, taking 1 or more of your 3 actions to do so, unlike a bow which does not).
Essentially, creatures adhere strongly to the core rules of the game, but their sheets do not adhere to the player-building rules and expectations. 5e could easily accomplish this with a monster table that's worth a damn.
I wrote this comment before reading much of the comment section, and I'm shocked at how many people are incapable of thinking from a different angle, or coming up with obvious explanations to the problems they raise. Lateral thinking really is a skill that has to be taught.
D&D's 2014 monster creation tools from the DMG gives advice in a similar top-down design manner. For anything further than just customizing an existing stat block, they recommend estimating an intended Challenge Rating and using a correlated stats chart to sort out the rough numbers. Once you have all the big stats worked out like HP and damage per round, you can work backwards and build out the monster's traits to accommodate your vision, with all sorts of advice on what gameplay impact certain traits may have on the creature's challenge. That whole section is like the holy grail of monster homebrewing for 5e; it was removed from the 2024 DMG and I'll be very disappointed if there isn't something similar and improved in the 2025 Monster Manual.
@@NonRegnumDei1934 Yeah, it was in there, but the thing is that it was still reverse engineered. Stats derived from traits, level, and score. The MM Bear, for example, had a discrepancy between its derived stats and its final stats. This was treated as an error, and corrected so that the finality met its derivation.
This means that in general, 5e monsters are still built out as derived from core metrics, rather than as totals. The default mindset is to derive the stats.
It's also just, not a very good system. Even just figuring out HP and AC is such a fucking asinine system that takes way too many steps, than to have something much more reasonable like "low, medium, high" values for HP and AC, and to pick a target level and say that if you start at medium, then high HP means low AC, and vice versa. Or something like that. You can add damage metrics in there so that you can also trade damage to create glass cannon archetypes, or sturdy brute archetypes, and so on.
It's extremely convoluted how you pick a "feels good" for HP and AC, then count sets of increases (not rows on a table) of the HP and AC from the intended CR, and then add that as defensive CR, and then you need to go back and revise if it's too far off the target.
One thing I dislike about 5e that 4e got right was spells in the monster stat block. In 4e, monsters did not use player spells or powers. Whatever powers they had were succinctly in the statblock. In 5e, there might be a spell you have to look up and the details are in a separate book.
I think it might be specifically when a monster who seems like a player character (aka a knight) uses an ability that a player character of the same level couldn't. It is different for a lich or a dragon to have asymmetrical stat blocks because the player character clearly isn't them so they don't expect them to be similar. But when a regular old human in plate armor with a crossbow doesn't behave like we would expect (because we happen to be a regular old human with plate armor and a crossbow and we can't do that) and there isn't an in game explanation for it, it can be immersion breaking.
Anyway, I agree with nearly everything you are saying about why asymmetry is important here and think you are great. I just thought this might help explain why it bugs me a little bit at times.
I get what you're saying, but the thing is that PCs CAN do stuff very similar to what the knight does. With Crossbow Expert and some Battle Master dice you too can get extra crossbow damage twice in one action, and you'd probably be way better at it than the knight with its piddly +2 attack bonus. Sure you have limited times you can do that per rest, but the Knight is also limited in that he has limited "screen-time" - if the knight stat block only appears once in your campaign and the battle starts you out in melee range, he may never get to use his crossbow, period!
Yeah, the monsters are not designed around an attempt to make them follow a logical, consistent world build view but as match ups for the assumed power of the PCs at the level they are expected to be used against.
9:52 If the Knight's doubled dice were able to be explained by the brute trait then the greatsword would do 4d6, so the increased damage isn't due to that anyway. Besides, the 2014 version of it only applied to melee weapons, so wouldn't do anything to a heavy crossbow.
Not raw, brute says '... one extra die of its damage...', so raw it would be 3d6 on a greatsword
The knight's doubled dice are self-explanatory - he's using a heavy crossbow, and when he uses it, he deals an extra d10 damage plus 1d8 radiant. If a PC deals 6d6 damage with a mundane shortbow it's quite safe to assume they are boosting the damage somehow. The name of the trait is irrelevant to the statistics themselves.
I'm fine with different character creation rules for pcs and npcs. Things like hit dice, attributes, traits, etc.
But imo items should behave the same ehichever character is weiling them. That includes magic itmes and mundane items, and epecially the properties of those items should be the same regardless of who weilds it.
The item does behave the same. The monster is adding extra damage and ignoring the item's traits. PCs can do the exact same kind of rule-bending with stuff like Archery, Sneak Attack, and Crossbow Expert. If a Monster stole your crossbow, they wouldn't suddenly get the benefits of your features, so why would it work that way in the opposite direction?
I found the "the monster stat blocks are cheating" comments absolutely hysterical because it's clear those people have never DM'd or at least never really thought about monster creation . Stat blocks have never played by the same rules as character creation. They don't even HAVE fixed rules. How can you cheat when you make your own rules? You can literally slap whatever you want on monsters when you make your own, tweak, or reskin. The rule is their statblock can do what it says it can so if it says it can use multiattack with a heavy crossbow, it can use multiattack with a heavy crossbow.
The problem is that now dm's have to improvise the damage if a knight gets disarmed and picks up a hand crossbow. Is it 2d6? +1d8 radiant damage? Or is that solely to the weapons he 'attuned' to (like a sort of pact weapon). Yes, a dm can improvise this fast, but not necessarily consistent. Id rather have monster feats like 'holy warrior: all your weapon attacks deal +1d8 radiant damage', etc. Just makes it easier for the dm, especially if he wants to make homebrew statblocks.
@gorgit it's a monster same damage. it won't break the game. The rest is narrative.
@@QuiqueFuenteSIT but it sucks for the dm. Does the crossbow deal 2d10 damage if a player picks it up? Does a longbow deal 2d8 piercing damage if a knight uses one? Does the heavy penalty of a longbow apply to a knight? Its just work for the dm instead of giving him a statblock, that gives him the relevant stats
@gorgit it doesn't have to be complicated. It's a crossbow as loot doing normal crossbow stuff for pcs. For the monster just let it attack per the stat block. There are numerous other more important parts of the game to focus on and just simplifying monsters to they do what's in their stay block full stop draw a boundary between players and follow on balance issues is healthy. Take the time for other parts of your game is my opinion.
To add in. It's way more work than it's worth to be chasing down monster cr blocks to align stats damage, special features etc to make it all able to be reverse engineered and matching than its typically worth for the monsters run time 20 minutes to 1 hour of game time. I as a dm do not think it's worth chasing that white whale unless that's how you divine happiness during prep, then you do you
@QuiqueFuenteSIT Of course, this is what I would do, but you wont make it easier for newer dms by intriducing not only arbitrary, but also invisible rules for statblocks. I wont just let my players have a 2d10+1d8 crossbow. But how is a new dm supposed to know that? How is he supposed to know that the knight doesnt attack with disadvantage using the crossbow? Raw he should have it!
Meh. I agree for the most part but the knight takes it too far for my table. My group was heavily invested in 3.0/3.5 so the general expectation is that humanoids play by similar rules to the pcs. This expectation will vary dramatically per table and per system though.
Also it seems weird that the heavily armored knight has almost equal dpr at range as they do in melee. Seems like their best strategy is to kite and murder at range while avoiding any melee strikers.
lol. Also I can see my Paladin raging that a cr3 knight gets to add radiant damage to attacks while he has to wait until level 11 for the same ability.
If he's got a ranged capacity that the party lacks, long-range kiting *is* the best strat. PCs do it to monsters too. And how many parties have been lost to a handful of goblins riding wargs and carrying bows...
It should be noted that the 2024 Knight has a significantly lower to hit bonus with its Crossbow, which means that attacking at range is not always the best option for the Knight and it makes giving the Knight disadvantage on ranged attacks, by being within 5 feet of it, even more impactful.
This isn't dissimilar to what PCs can do with a crossbow, though. A Battle Master fighter with the Crossbow Expert feat can add extra damage to its crossbow attacks, ignore the Loading property to fire twice in one turn, and fire in melee without Disadvantage. The knight receives similar benefits when using a crossbow, they just don't need to be rigidly codified into a bunch of special traits like with PCs because you're not going to need to keep track of the hows and whys of all the knight's stats and features over 20 levels of progression.
The knight's DPR is actually lower at range than in melee due to it having a comparative -3 to hit with its crossbow vs. its greatsword. Dealing one extra point of damage with a crossbow isn't particularly impressive if you can't hit the broadside of a barn with it.
1:58 I… I would assume he’s using his Strength. Yeah it’s a ranged weapon, but honestly ranged weapons are a little stupid in D&D that way. There’s an argument to be made that almost all weapons should switch Dex and Strength. It takes a lot of arm and back strength to pull back a bow and a lot of dexterity to swing a sword.
So I just assume the Knight is using Strength to overcome the Heavy property
The rules don't allow that, and his attack roll is still using Dex. The logic is reasonable, but not actually what's going on mechanically.
@ No I noticed that, there would be a 3 to hit. Dex to attack but his Strength makes carrying and using it easier
@@EpicRandomness555Personally, I think STR should be used to overcome all Heavy weapons, even dex based ones.
In 3e through 5e, monsters have been especially asymmetrical compared to PCs. It was especially dramatic in 3e, despite that being the first edition where monsters used ability score modifiers for everything like PCs did. Because the original game wasn't designed with that approach in mind, and switching over to it without adjusting the rest of the game's assumptions to match meant that you suddenly got massively inflated hit points and useless combat maneuvers and other things.
5e monsters don't even remotely use PC ranges for most of their traits, and the game was designed around that. If people could handle that NPC fighters in 2014 had d8s for hit dice if they were human and d6s if they were halflings, rather than d10s like PCs, then they should be able to handle that NPC fighters in 2024 have damage ratings based around being functional threats. I understand wanting monsters to feel a bit like simulations of some objective reality, but it's a _tiny_ aesthetic benefit compared to the incredible amount of damage it did to game balance and flexibility in every edition that's tried it.
It'd be kinda hypocritical to use immersion/world breaking as an argument for why a monster must do the same damage with a crossbow, when the general consensus of the DnD community is "the DM can't cast hold person on PCs, but players have free reign." As if nobody outside the PCs know that spell.
Some monsters _could_ achieve the same or similar damage by making multiple attacks, but it's faster to run if we have fewer attacks to resolve. I'll take faster combat over monster-player symmetry any day of the week. Nevermind the fact that players aren't entitled to know monster stat blocks anyway.
Exactly on players not being entitled to know! So many comments here saying "what if the player wants to pick up the 2d10 crossbow?" If your players are out here metagaming like that, roll behind the screen or even digitally to yourself only.
There is a cost to breaking the rules. It's important to look at the effects it has.
All the example you mentioned had proper rules that explained them apart from that one named NPC. This one just feels random.
Rule break: This generic heavy armored Strength based knight does more damage at range than in melee despite the weapons he's visibly wearing suggesting otherwise.
This has no benefit that I can think of. This will not create a strong moment. It'll create a moment where a player will keep his distance from the heavily armored strong looking guard only to then ... take more damage? This breaks immersion and teaches the players that they can't trust what they see, even when it's obviously telegraphed on a generic npc.
You are punishing players for making the correct tactical decision and it wasn't even meant to be a trap.
If any of your players enjoy the tactical aspect of D&D, this will make them feel like they can't do that anymore. After all, how can you come up with strategies if you can't gain any info on a monster when you look at them?
This obviously doesn't apply to more complex or unique monsters that have special abilities (Although you'll find even those tend to have some hint) but it does very much apply to any monster that's meant to be generic.
Here's the thing. A good GM will telegraph that said knight actually has a ranged focus. "The armored figure in the distance holds a massive crossbow that reminds you more of a ballista than anything else". And if you're all about playing tactically, you'd look for methods to take cover while to advantage towards him. Like, the only way this "punishes" players if their idea of tactics is "use flying to avoid encounters".
@@thecthuloser876 except saying that invites the "why can't I use the 2d10 crossbow?"
@@Archy_The-Wizard "You can use it, but you'd roll a disadvantage unless you later decide to spend a feat on proficiency for it, on the account that it's a unique weapon."
@@thecthuloser876now you are home brewing a reason in to account for bad design when you could have just homebrew fixed the bad design in the first place and had the Crossbow behave normally.
@Archy_The-Wizard It isn't a 2d10 crossbow anymore than a Rogue's shortbow is a 6d6 shortbow. The damage is a feature of the monster, just like how Sneak Attack is a feature of the Rogue - the ability of the knight to deal extra crossbow damage just doesn't need a specific name because the players don't need to reference the knight stat block 10 times per session as they might need to with their own features.
There is an obvious reason for this - the players have classes. Obviously the monsters have something like classes and abilities too. However, DMs can't make and track character sheets for 14 different monsters. So they have to choose something else instead. Something that matches the damage and versatility of the players while surprising them with new and interesting challenges.
Hence: monsters can do things players can't
Some of my most impactful encounters for my players came when i misread a statblock making the creature unintentionally more deadly, yet my players still rose to the occasion. This is good
Hahaha absolutely. A friend of mine ran a mini campaign for us once and misread a trap that dealt "5(1d10) damage" as dealing "5d10" damage. We were like level 3. We still laugh about it to this day. Made for one hell of a trap lol.
@ try running will-o-wisps and thinking the dc 10 save or flat out die happens with each successful attack rather than when you go unconscious… whoooops
LOOOOL
That’s amazing
Its not "because". Essentially monsters have feats. In older versions of D&D they would list all the feats a monster had along with the stats, etc. These monster feats would circumvent what the players had. They would also create a lot of lore and ffeat trees to allow players to get these, but no one ever did. They basically just saved space and time by applying an upgrade to the monster.
If you play a lot of other games, such as Dragonbane most recently, monsters are essentially "special" creatures that have their own game mechanics.
Agreed, in addition, previous versions had a million traits baked in into their monster type. All undead were immune to this or that, every construct had a bunch of other traits, and sometimes you had to dig even deeper, because monster type X was a subset of monster type Y with extra traits, which itself was a subset of monster type Z. You needed to figure out the monster's entire type family tree to figure out if they could be Charmed.
5e (thankfully) got rid of that, something is classified as Undead only because sometimes you need to know that, but any immunity or special thing they had was just in the monster stat. It ALSO meant not EVERY undead was immune to bleeding or poison or whatever.
Traits like "Brute" feel like they're trying to justify something that doesn't need to be justified. "This monster is Brute therefore it deals extra damage" explains nothing, is completely unnecessary, just put the additional damage in the attack.
Honestly I wish (or I guess an still hoping) it would be nuttier. That asymmetry really makes cool design space and feel. More stuff to interact with, more ways to "solve" enemies or know their protocols or habits, more ways to use items or social influence checks, or more ways GMs can hack and twist them
I've always seen this as a problem, and ive always complained about it at my tables. You cant just say the players have their rules and the dm has theirs, because all of this is conerning the same world, to me in insanely immersion breaking if the party has to follow one way the world works while the rest of the entire world gets to ignore just because.
Im not saying its all bad and it should never be done, the higher you go in CR the more sense it makes, if an npc/enemy has high CR that just means they a freak of nature or a magical creature or special in some way so its ok that they get to bend the rules, but having even low level enemis ignore, what are presented to the players as basically the foundations of how the world FUNTIONS is a problem imo
Low level players can ignore the rules too. Feats like Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Skulker, and the like are all valuable because they allow you to bypass rules restrictions everyone else has to follow. It stands to reason that some low level enemies would be capable of similarly bypassing the rules in certain situations.
10:59 Is me! 😊
It is! :)
I welcome the new stat blocks, and am glad they did something to counter the players power that wasn't addressed in the 2014 edition. Hopefully this is the end of encounters going from trivial to death, with no inbetween.
I just want to point out that if you use cheaty humanoid NPCs that have abilities out of nowhere that the NPCs should also not have a damn clue what any of the PCs can do unless they directly observe it. The NPC bad guys and villains should not be able to make any assumptions about your powers due to class because no other humanoid in universe works by template - they are all special. So if you're going to do this clown show nonsense - please don't metagame back at the players since you robbed them of their ability to make predictions about what the other humanoid NPCs in the world are capable of.
This is a wild set of assumptions to make based on absolutely nothing.
In a weird way you are kind of correct, but not in the way that you think. Yes, monsters shouldn't have explicit knowledge of a PC's features, and PCs shouldn't have explicit knowledge of an NPC's features either. In-world explanations should be intuitive and not necessarily mechanical - if an NPC saw a rogue doing 6d6 damage with a shortsword using Sneak Attack, the NPC wouldn't say, "hey that's cheating, a shortsword is only supposed to do 1d6 damage!" or "whoa, that must be some kind of crazy magical shortsword to do so much damage". They would probably just think, "holy shit that guy really knows his way around a shortsword". The same should apply for PCs encountering NPCs with features like this - the knight dealing extra weapon damage is just the knight being good at fighting, which is why it's frustrating that players overanalyze enemy stat blocks and try to make nitpicks like this and say "I want the 2d10 crossbow" or "this NPC is cheating!!" when it's literally just a feature of the stat block.
There is one big issue with abmormal abilities: You as a player cannot tell if you can handle a fight or not until it starts. Lets imagine you're raiding a theives hideout. You expect daggers (1d4) sneak attack (2d6) and 1 attack. You expect each L3 foe can only do around 12 damage a turn since if you were a rogue thats what you can do. Instead if they hit you twice, each attack doing 2d6 poison extra without them spending bonus actions to coat the blade with a poison, and a base damage of 2d6. You end up tanking 34 damage per foe, almost 3 times as much. Thats equivalent to trippling the foe count based on what you realisticly could have expected, not even factoring in AC vs miss chance issues of multiple attacks. With random monsters not a problem, but humanoid NPCs? Shouldn't be done. Just my opinion. To make an encounter more threatening, use intelligent tactics and environment, or numbers. Dont make superhuman abominations. Thats my honest opinion.
Why do you expect thieves to be level 1 PC Rogues though? I think that's your mistake, because bandits aren't level 1 Fighters and orcs aren't level 1 Barbarians either.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 He said he expected PC rogues of his level (level 3). +2d6 sneak attacks and they do 1d4 damage with the weapon itself they noticed the enemy has. The issue is that these generic humanoid bandits have a better class than rogue. A rogue with extra attack, daggers that do as much as a greatsword, and poison that does not need to be preapplied without the restrictions on PC sneak attacks. It breaks expectations when random humanoid non-named NPCs are walking around with classes better than any in the PHB.
This is not a game where the monsters use PC Classes...basically ever? I don't know why you'd assume that when almost none of the NPCs actually do so, to say nothing of the monsters.
And they're not inherently superhuman, they're different from PCs, the two are very different things. The Knight is no match at all for a Paladin or Fighter of equal level to his HD in various ways, he's just also not built at all like a PC is.
@@mogalixir Yes, this, thanks. Besides the PC's are supposed to be 'heroic' potential people, better than the average person. Commoner attributes are +0 total modifier or 60 attribute points. Nobles are +7, 74. PCs are 75 point buy, usually higher with 4 keep 3. I have zero issue with monsters hitting with claws with the same power as a great axe... the people in town? Less so. Humanoids should NOT be modified in such a way. Improvements should come from class-like abilities, or equipment.
@@mogalixir Yes, and I said that his mistake was expecting PC rogues of his level. Because that expectation doesn't make any sense.
Consider this: The composition of a criminal organization does not and should not depend on the capabilities of some random PC (instead it depends on their resources, connections, socioeconomic factors and whatnot). The game world cannot warp itself around the PCs to ensure that they only meet level appropriate challenges wherever they go and stay believable. Some areas have to be more dangerous and other areas less dangerous for the setting to maintain that believability.
Yes, that means that sometimes characters come across humanoid enemies that are more capable than a equivalent level PC. Other people get to have cool powers too (due to their training or Boon or freak accident or whatever). That's what keeps the players guessing and the game exciting.
Good video. I am currently running a campaign, a prewritten one, which was written for the 2014 rules. My players all switched over to 2024 rules for their characters a few weeks ago and I have been having to upscale the encounters ever since. Last week they had an encounter that should have been "Deadly" to six level ten characters, the four level eight characters in my game barely broke sweat, the monsters need to be upscaled too. Because players have all the details and skills and traits to play with and make their characters awesome, and generally, they only have to worry about one character at a time, to keep up DM's need monster stats to be simple and easy to use, as well as powerful enough for the players to have to be out of breath now and again. I don't mind making a big stat block for a special NPC, but I don't want to have to rely on that in off the cuff situations, so tough monsters need to be available with small stat blocks too. That, and the DM never cheats, so any monsters they use are all fair game, that is the primary rule of DM'ing, isn't it?
I think the acolyte is a bad example as it's interpretable as second level caster casting first level spells so 3 slots fits. 2 hit dice suggest level 2
Yeah. It's a bad faith example.
But other spellcasters in the game make it clear that that is NOT the way to read that description. Archmages are described as 18th-level spellcasters, but they aren’t out there casting 18th-level spells
@patrickmcathey7081 No, that's not how that works. It says 1st level caster, and it means 1st level caster. The number if slots is either a typo, the level is a typo, or this is an example of monsters not following the same rules as PCs.
It's not a bad example as the stat block explicitly says it's a level 1 caster, just like how a Mage is a level 9 caster and an archmage is a level 18 caster. 2 hit dice doesn't suggest level 2, it *approximates* level 1 - a PC cleric at level 1 gets max die roll (8) + Con mod hit points, which would be anywhere from 7 to 11 for a PC depending on what your Con is. Monsters don't get max hit dice at first level so an extra hit die is required in order to approximate how many average hit points a 1st level cleric would have.
Another thing to remember: it’s your campaign, and questions like this can add interest if it becomes distracting. If a PC (not necessarily just the player, a PC) notices that the legendary weapon doesn’t do the same massive damage when they use it as when it was used on them - and this is something a PC might well find disturbing and confusing and wonder about - they *can* acknowledge that it happened and pursue that question in-game. Look for lore, consult sages, study the nature of the power behind the weapon, and as they discover things, decide it it’s worth whatever cost they would have to pay, of whatever kind, to be able to tap into more of the weapon’s power. This could become a part of the character’s journey and even, if the GM goes with it, a meaningful plot element, all because the character was affected by something mechanical in the game system. I had a character in one game who fruitlessly studied the characteristics of vampire blood for years, and while he never found the kind of answer he was looking for, he did accomplish a lot of other stuff and built important relationships in the attempt.
Maybe a fighter is really curious about why that bugbear did extra damage with its greatclub, and makes it his personal mission to learn bugbear fighting techniques. Then you figure out what that means mechanically, and lore-wise, in-game. Maybe he befriends a bugbear tribe and has the chance to learn a new (not free, but not normally available) Feat, or gets a new subclass feature option he can choose instead of his next subclass feature. Or maybe he just has bugbear friends now.
I would be okay with them not following the rules if they had features that were specifying that they don't follow the rules and in what ways that they do so
If I'm fighting a guy and they have an ability that gives them an extra damage dice on all of their attacks then it's whatever, but if I see them using a weapon that I know the damage Dice for, and they don't have anything that should be giving them more damaged ice it feels bad when they have more damage dice
Effectively nothing changes, but they feel different
Also, the knight is attacking at disadvantage, it just doesn't specify on its stat sheet
The idea that monsters should be built using the same rules as PCs comes from 3.X (so 2000-2008) in which all monsters did follow the same design rules as PCs (albeit with a few monster-exclusive features/traits and "monster classes" but even these tools were given to us in "Savage Species"). 4e and 5e returned to the design asymmetry that was present in all previous editions (under TSR), but given how widely popular 3.X (and by extension Pathfinder 1e) was - this concept has permeated the mental zeitgeist of D&D players.
Couldn't agree more! Asymmetrical design is a powerful but important tool for DMs to have at their disposal.
I think there are certain aspects that people have a hard time abstracting. The 6d10 mace is a good example of how EFFECTIVE a creature is with a weapon, but not a LITERAL translation of JUST the mace's power. It's all contextual.
Precisely! They're just THAT good with that weapon. It's innate to them, they have that implicit understand and connection with it, magical or otherwise.
I am that player that points out when an enemy humanoid uses a crossbow twice in a turn. It is a known restriction on how crossbows function, circumvented by either magic crossbows or the crossbow expert feat. As a player i feel like I should be paying attention to these things
That's fine if the DM is just reading the stat block incorrectly, but if a monster's stat block specifically says it can attack twice in a turn with a crossbow, you can safely extrapolate that the monster has training that is roughly equivalent to having taken the crossbow expert feat unless magic item is specified.
The balance thing is from 3.x and pathfinder 1. They give rules for many more things. NPC where players but normaly had NPC (commoner, expert and I got the 3rd.) They could have PC classes but they where stronger. Monster where also built this way and had (race Levels or Hit die) and then could have more classes added.
Someone would only demand NPCs playing by the rules if they haven't seen the horror that is 3.x NPC design upfront.
Those rules meant you spent hours building NPCs that player characters annihilated in seconds. And your only way of making them competitive was to overload them on magical bling. Which, when looted, unbalanced the game even further...
Monsters absolutely cannot and should not play by the same rules as PCs. That doesn't mean a 4E style design is good where this is blatantly obvious. Breaking the rules yes, but in a measured and semi-fair manner.
@@user-wm3hu7lo1g I Do agree it was alot of work. in many way 5x is like simple mode and 3x was advance. Mind you I still like it but it did need alot more work.
The knight also makes 2 crossbow attacks without crossbow expert. Which is fine. Monsters need simple stats that are competitive with players without making the dm confused
Exactly. It just "does" and that's fine!
I saw something in a WotC book someplace that said the monsters were meant to "break the rules". That's what legendary actions and resistances were all about after all. If the monsters worked exactly like the player characters, it wouldn't be as much of a challenge.
PCs are also designed to be complex and interesting (and generally do Tons of damage), while monsters are designed to be streamlined.
The thing I don't get about the Knight in particular, is that the Ranged attack is less accurate, but hits harder... Is the knight supposed to be Ranged, or melee combatant? One would think melee based on Str vs Dex, but then why don't they get the bonus die on the Greatsword attack..??
The knight is more consistent in melee and therefore more comfortable. That's where its Parry reaction functions, and its to hit and damage bonuses are higher for the greatsword than the crossbow, resulting in much more consistent damage output. The crossbow is boosted specifically to give the Knight a passable option to maintain threat at range while still being far less reliable than its trusty greatsword due to the comparative -3 to hit and more inconsistent damage expression.
DM -- My creature gets bonus damage for no reason with a weapon that magically loses it as soon as a player picks it up. This is bad design.
DM -- Here is a specific in world reason why this creature has a special and unique benefit that players don't have access to. This is good game design.
It isn't that creature have unique or special benefits that make them feel unfair, its when they have then only for the purposes of making encounters harder with no justifiable in world reason for it that it begins to feel like GM screwery instead of balanced and fair encounter design.
The other great element to doing it this way is maybe those players want that ability from the NPC, perhaps the NPC got it from some sort of training or something and now you have another fun thing to do as your player needs to infiltrate those that taught the knight how to use said crossbow to learn from them.
What's the justifiable in-world reason for Extra Attack to exist? As a Fighter I can only make one sword strike every 6 seconds because... why? And then I magically get to make two attacks at level 5... why? As a wizard all my cantrips suddenly deal extra damage at level 5... why? Any reason you can come up with on the fly to justify PCs' arbitrary damage scaling can be just as easily used to justify monster damage scaling as well.
I agree that it's fun as the DM to be able to decide what abilities are transferable from NPCs to PCs and vice versa. But let's not pretend that players don't get special powers "for no reason" just as readily as most monsters do - the onus is on the players AND the DM to come up with in-world explanations for the abilities of their PCs and monsters if verisimilitude is desired, and that's a big if since not every table cares about these sorts of things anyways.
@NonRegnumDei1934 I mean when someone is training in some form.of historical martial arts, such as HEMA, you start with slower deliberate strikes and the build up to chaining strikes together, which fits pretty well with how fighters go from just 1 attack to like 6 within 6 seconds.
As for the wizard, they are constantly studying and learning. It would make sense that as they master the basics, such as cantrips, they learn how to be more effective and more potent with them.
The things you mentioned are all things that make sense to learn just from basic experience, hence why they are a part of the leveling experience. If I, however have a character who has proficiency with both leather working and poison kits then it would make sense that my character could make a unique quiver that allows him to keep arrows constantly poisoned and others might not have. You could easily do the same for an NPC, and then when the PCs kill them, they discover the quiver, but it's damaged, and now they have to reverse engineer it to get a similar effect.
Things like this are not hard they just require a little extra thought about who your NPCs are aside from just being generic obstacles for the players.
@Kingofredeyes the point is you had to think about and come up with those explanations just now - the game doesn't tell you why. The same principle applies to NPC scaling methods, like how you just came up with that quiver idea. The game didn't have to say exactly why the poison damage happens, it just implied that there was a reason and you expanded on that implication. Seems you and I agree mostly on this, I was mainly aiming my comment on people who want every little detail of a stat block to be rigidly codified and explained even though half the fun sometimes is coming up with explanations for yourself.
@NonRegnumDei1934 I never thought the stat block needed it, and actually, I feel like it would be bad for them to. The lack of explanation as to why NPCs have certain abilities leaves open players and DMs to be creative. My only issue was with DMs who just take them at face value and make no effort to explain or make use of the storytelling opportunities such things provide.
The issue is that damage done by martial creatures using melee weapons doesn't scale up like spellcasters do (who can use spell slots to increase the damage dice). It's hard to justify a CR 12 melee NPC who only does 1d8 + Str per hit (out of possibly three attacks) when a CR 12 spellcaster can do much more (see the MotM wizard NPCs' arcane blast base attacks that do 4d10 force damage).
🙋🏻 I'd be pissed if I got a weapon that did 6d10 dmg TO me and now it does only 1d8 dmg for me I'd be 🤬🤬🤬 and demanding what the hell form thr DM and they better give a fantastic explanationas to WHY‼️
If your Rogue hit a goblin for 6d6 damage with its shortbow using Sneak Attack, should the goblin be able to do 6d6 damage back to you if it steals the shortbow? The monster is the one doing the damage, not the weapon. Same thing applies to player characters.
Ok, I'm on the same page as this entire video. Let's talk about the Knight's Heavy Crossbow some more. Fire elementals are immune to fire because they're fire elementals, Bugbears and Giants deal more damage with weapons because they're big. Why does a Knight do more damage with a Heavy Crossbow? There is nothing in the fiction or fantasy of a knight that supports this, which is probably why it got focused on so much. Not to mention that because the Knight is a humanoid creature, much like the PCs, there's a higher expectation that they should work similarly to a character. The extra radiant damage is easily accepted because the knight is heroic, maybe a Paladin. But throwing 2d10 on the crossbow just seems to ensure that they deal about the same damage at range as they do in melee. Why?
This feels like a mistake, or a misguided attempt to balance the ranged damage to melee. I would swap out the heavy crossbow with a light crossbow, and remove the multiattack capability with the ranged attack. I would add a Mounted Combat Trait that would let a mounted Knight deal more damage after moving, and have advantage against unmounted opponents to give it a little extra oomph. The statblock as-is just doesn't work right, even if the criticism levied at it is coming from the wrong angle. Enemy statblocks break the rules all the time, but they have to follow the fiction of what the statblock is meant to represent or it makes people question it.
No... next question
Agreed. If you want a knight to do ranged damage, give him javelins. Or a light cross bow like in history, and up his dex so it's actually adding something to attacks and damage. It won't equal its melee capabilities, but that's what makes a knight different than an archer. (Also, really like the movement based combat trait, I would just call it Charge though, and it still applies if the knight is unmounted, and then give him a lance instead of the ranged option at all).
Yeah it just feels off, as a DM I know full well that the creatures cheat but it has to make some sense, like sure give them extra radiant damage on melee, fuck give them resistance to radiant because their god says so but them just doing more damage with a well known weapon because reasons...
@@renanrossi5434 The first thing I would ask if I was a PC fighting this person would instead be to instantly side with them and ask to train under them. Obviously the way adventurers are trained to do extra attacks is miles behind the education they give special knights. What makes it clown world is that the NPCs are better trained - with stronger features that break the system math they are confined to - without any extra explanation of what makes them so much better.
Monsters can (and always have been able to) do whatever the DM decides they can do, there is no further explanation needed for any of it than that. The knights crossbow attack is already miles weaker than it's melee attack so it's something it will only use if it can't get to melee, most likely because of some effect reducing it's speed to 0 or because of flying pcs, which is why it is good it has this somewhat threatening ranged attack to make sure it isn't completely useless in those situations.
I think this problem slowly began through some misconceptions with out monsters work slowly throughout 5e's lifespan, but then it was amplified by Baldur's Gate 3's release. In BG3, many of the enemies (especially the non-magical humanoid ones) have an equivalent to a player class and level. I'm sure you've probably noticed that some of the characters in that band of adventurers at the beginning of the game can use Action Surge once per short rest, and vice versa.
I agree with the video and most of the comments I read. I would add that I'm constantly adding things to monsters. If a group of monsters are used to working together, I might add Pack Tactics. I'll add extra damage types or other abilities as well to add more thematic elements to the encounter and the campaign as a whole. The monsters are still never powerful enough to TPK parties, despite the fact that some of the encounters are many times deadly according to CR trackers, but they do make the encounters fun and engaging. About the only time I'm really careful is when the PCs are in the 1st Tier of play, especially levels 1 and 2.
Right, but the things you are adding are likely set mechanics you can swap in and swap out. Not just stat block changes that seem to randomly alter the block so the creature does more damage, or some other thing. You _can_ do it that way, and on an individual DM level that's fine, cause it's you designing the monster, there doesn't need to be any shared language, you know why they work the way they do. But, if you were designing a monster for others to use, and with the idea that they will modify that monster in the future, than it makes more sense to use traits and such to explain their mechanics. And thus make rules that they abide by (far from the same rules that PC's get, but still a set of rules they adhere to).
It's the difference between labelling your group of monsters who work in a forge as using "hot weapons" and doing additional fire damage, and getting pack tactics, vs just giving some monster called a Smith doing extra fire damage and gaining advantage on an attack when an ally is near.
Same result, but one suggests all smiths can just light their weapons on fire, and work really well as a team, and the other offers up a mechanical explanation that as a DM you could swap in and out without having to really think about it. Making the creature more useful to a broad audience.
Monsters and players playing by the same rules was understood to be the case in 3/3.5 edition D&D/Pathfinder. Not sure if it changed in 4e because I didn't play that edition. Just saying that for old timers like myself it was understood as part of the game mechanics that pc's and monsters played by the same rules. I could be misremembering but I think 2nd edition was the same.
It did change in 4e and was one of the reasons I didn't like it. Was always asking - what random bullshit does this guy do? At a certain point you'd have to wonder why you are a chump running around with a PC class.
The same Players who complain about Monsters "cheating" will be dead silent should the DM say, "So you also want them to have Death Saving Throws? What about Weapon Masteries? Oh and let us not forget a plethora of Magic Items. It is only fair, right?".
yhe but also we will rally the nearby town nbole to assemble a hunting party to destory the goblin encampment not go in with 4 peeps there is no end to this
Death saving throws make the game more boring, tbh. And weapon masteries didn't even exist and come nowhere near the power of extra damage dice on every hit. And DMs do give monsters magic items and magic items are DM fiat to begin with so it's not a good example. You could DM fiat a monster ability onto a PC in exchange for a class feature and then it would be fair. The main issue is - why am I adventuring to get stronger when I could just find the person training these humanoid knights and get stronger class features than continuing my class?
You don't give your monsters death saving throws?
@@mogalixir To each their own in their opinions. But without Death Saving throws, or something similar. The player characters would die to easily. And it might only be fun dying many, many times, if you were great at roleplaying.
@@mogalixir
Sorry what? Do nothing? Most enemies outnumber players. Having monsters get the ability to cast pseudo spells without being magical. Yeah, have fun when every goblin has pact tactics and attacks twice a turn with their dual wielding rusty scimitars. Don't forget the slow they do with their crossbow or the push they do when you are trying to reach the ranged ones. They shoot, run away, and shoot again.
I've had a discussion with my players about this very thing when I said that a specific creature deals x amount of dice for a hit and they were like how? Monsters and players get abilities and effects that "break" the core rules of the game. You only get one action per turn, unless you are a fighter. You can only cast one spell on your turn, unless your a sorcerer. You take full damage when struck by an attack, unless you are a raging barbarian. These core rules get broken all the time by the pc's and players don't bat an eye. The same thing goes for monsters. The only thing that matters is if the rule breakage doesn't happen at a disproportionate level than the pcs. If the lich can cast hold person and then Disintegrate on the same turn and pcs can't do anything to stop it, that's a problem. The rules are guidelines, and being able to really understand what they mean is more important than cookie cutter following everything.
Yes, enemies do deserve to have different mechanics if those mechanics help them Be a balanced encounter, Or help the DM run the game smoothly. Enemies definitely shouldn't be player characters. But there are times when design asymmetry is bad.
For one, some of the asymmetry is so asymmetrical that players Have access to abilities that are designed to work against players. But just don't work against monsters. For example counterspell, a player is probably right to assume that if counterspell is a player option, that does what it says, it should work in an intuitive way to how it's read against an enemy that is a monster version of a playable race with a playable caster class, same with dispel magic and mage slayer. And no matter how much design asymmetry a game has, these options should at least be designed in a way where that's true.
Unfortunately, they do not, because enemies widely do not use the mechanics they counter or the mechanics are different for monsters, so that they rarely cast spells, even rarer to concentrate on them in combat and even if they do use spells, they don't use spell slot so counterspell just has a full sentence devoted to something that is of no consequence against enemies.
if the game were designed to be asymmetrical, monsters would have counterspells that are designed to be used against players that use player mechanics, and players would have counterspells designed to be used against monsters with monster mechanics, but the game was not designed as though it should be asymmetrical, players are given mechanics that are designed to be used against enemies with player mechanics, not monster mechanics.
Monsters and players are different, yes. And those differences do help the dm run the game. But to a player, the differences always seem to be arbitrary. So it's bad when they are different in a way where a player needs to be acutely aware of what arbitrary differences players have from enemies In order to inform their game decisions And build Simply due to how extreme and how arbitrary the differences between an evoker (wizard) and an evocation wizard are.
Though, monsters like demons are far less beholden to this, because they are not a monster version of a player option even within the fiction. I like to think that at least humanoids should have these principles hold at least to the point that it matters to players
Martial enemies having a few extra hit dice or damage dice here or there is not a big concern. Though happening in such a way where a monster that is meant to represent a playable character with a playable class looks like they have magic items but they can't be looted, or looks like they use spells but you can't interact with it, is often just disappointing.
Also, the design purposes that the asymmetry serves is often odd, and are either easily done by mechanisms that don't have these problems, or shouldn't be design goals at all. Like, instead of adding extra damage to all attacks in a way that looks like they're using a magic item you can't actually loot, or a spell you cant actually dispel, you could just give an enemy a third attack. Or a 3/d spirit shroud. These things allow for player monster interaction on an intended level, instead of simply stifling it for the sake of a monster that preforms at CR consistently. There's also a push for monsters like the knight to be equally effective at range and melee even when they probably should be specializing in one of those things.
Also, i don't know if you ever faced an 'anti party' before, but monsters that mirror player abilities in a way that they feel like a fair fight is a unique and riveting experience, and that fighting a mirror feeling is kind of the specialty of the humanoid creature type. There's a reason that when people give an example of these concerns they almost always talk about either humanoids specifically or creatures that are meant to thematically be members of specific player option classes specifically: the feeling of fairness was one of the things that made humanoids in particular fun to fight so when asymmetry gives them advantages that are really obvious, it doesn't make for encounters that are fun in the same way as monsters that are designed to be as asymmetrical as possible
I always explained away differences between player and monster power as magic items or innate abilities. I've never seen a problem with monsters being stronger or different from player characters. The reason the player can't use the magic item is because when the creature dies the item self destructs or the god the creature followed revoked it's power, whatever feels right in the moment. If done right, it can work as a hook too.
Absolutely, and I've done that kind of thing too where the item sort of vanishes haha. I think we all have :P
This is probably favorite of the videos I’ve seen from you so far!
I 100% agree that it’s okay for monsters to break the rules. The people complaining about that, are probably the same people who would complain about it being broken when you use the rules in the DMG for giving class levels to monsters.
As someone who has created humanoid stat blocks before, it’s totally possible some monsters like that Drow Elite Warrior don’t even technically break the rules. If I were going to make a stat block for one, I wouldn’t write out an entire bonus action for applying the poison because the stat blocks are designed to make things easier for the DM, not the players. I would just bake it into the attack like they did! Then the DM running the monster could totally flavor it as them applying poison as a BA each round. (Edit: it sounds like you allude to this later in the video when you talk about Brute being gone)
There’s absolutely a time and place for making monsters that follow the rules. If I’m trying to make a particularly challenging encounter, I’ll often follow the rules and only use official spells because it feels so much more fair to the players if the lose to monsters that had the exact same means as they do.
On the other hand, it can be a lot of fun to have monsters break the rules. Sahuagin Priestesses and Blademasters both get 2d8 weapons, but when the party kills them, they get to use that 2d8 weapon themselves
(at my table). Then there’s also the Blastseekers from Ravnica, the Dragon followers from Fizban’s, the Hoplites from Theros, the Inquisitors from Ravenloft, and the Inspired from Eberron. These are all humanoids that essentially have classes exclusive to that world. If a player thought it was really cool, I would absolutely make them a class or subclass based on those mechanics, but either way it’s cool that some worlds have more than just the original 12 classes.
If there’s anything to take away from these new stat blocks, it’s that WotC is moving away from monsters following the rules in favor of DM ease of use, and that’s a good thing. This seems to especially be the case with monsters losing spell slots.
Index Card RPGs monster stat blocks were a revelation the first time I read the book. Boil a monster down to the basics, give it some memorable actions, and roll it out. It's the only way I play now. I don't even bother with reading or paying attention to every detail of a 5e or PF 2e stat block. d20 games are overly complicated if you want them to be. They are also very fast to play and fun if you want them to be.
Where does the idea of monsters using the same rules come from? Other iterations of the game (Pathfinder/3.5), and other games that function that way. And also, the expectation based on the shared simulation of a secondary world that the players and the DM are existing in the same world, and so outside of their unique or special abilities adhere to the same rules. Now, that expectation might be flawed, but it's how things are presented to a degree. Beyond that, sure I can buy monsters have some of their own rules. Where I take issue is when those rules are opaque and I as the guy running them don't have an explanation beyond, "Well it's what's written here". When someone takes that hammer (a bug bear is just using a hammer now? lol) there's no explanation for why it doesn't do 3d4.
Sure, some ancient vampire using an legendary weapon can do extra stuff, but when a bugbear who apparently just knocked over a carpenter for his tools is doing extra damage, it's nice to actually have a reason for why his weapons work differently. Brute provided that, and also told me as DM why the monster worked like it did, and meant if I wanted to put a sword in its hand instead of a hammer, I would know how to stat it without having to just make stuff up myself (which is, of course, always an option).
Furthermore, when a random knight is doing radiant damage with his attacks, it _says_ something to the pc's, that just doing more damage doesn't. That is a magical power, and a damage type with associations in the fiction. Knowing where that feature comes from _does_ impact things like loot, and also expectation of the setting for both players and DMs. I don't mind the monsters having their own rules, but I'd like to know what they are rather than have to guess every stat block. Traits facilitated that, and better informed me as a DM.
Yea but you can just make stuff up. You can retroactively add that Brute trait to the hobgoblin, or Holy trait that you just invented to the knight. But what it doesn't need is to take up space on the monster stat block, because, you know, it doesn't *really* matter. It's just some ad hoc explanation.
@@tuomasronnberg5244
Some people don't have the time to go around fixing the game like players fix Skyrim.
By your logic there is no market for buying the monster manual because they are just arbitrary. No reason to buy adventure books by the same reason, and no reason to play DnD because everything is arbitrary so might as well do whatever.
If you buy a product you expect to at least make things easier. This change makes things harder. Confuses new DMs, obscures balance decisions, and overall just makes it harder to make your own stuff on top of stuffing creativity. If you wanted to give that bugbear a spear, now you need it and have it deal less damage. What do you do when you give it a waraxe? Is it even possible?
Your comment comes from a place of experience and knowledge of previous stat blocks. New Dams will have to look into those before they even start understanding the balance decisions.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 This, whatever special things monsters do can always just be explained as special abilities that particular monster has, not unlike whatever abilities the pcs get from their class. Like, why is this monster doing 4d8 damage with it's rapier? Simply because it's so good at using it and that's all the explanation you ever need.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 You can _always_ just make stuff up. You don't _need_ rules for any of this. But damn if they don't make it easier. They provide a structure for you to make things up, and a language to do that more efficiently. If you are just tossing on ad-hoc solutions all the time, or you don't know _why_ something is the way it is, it limits its utility. And I don't buy that a single ability takes up that much space. They have never been that efficient with space, and from the new look they didn't seriously improve things. If they absolutely had to minimize space, have a list of traits in the back or front of the book, and just put the name of the trait in the block. And if it's a rule, it's not ad hoc, it's established as part of the balance of abilities given to monsters. it goes from a solution used to make one monster meet some CR threshold, to a tool in a DM's toolbox.
@@Klaital1 That's all the explanation you ever need when giving information to players/PC's, but as a DM mechanical information matters if you ever want to utilize these monsters in a balanced way, or build your own and know wtf you're doing. Having a list of terms and traits that act as a short hand for that, is way more useful than having someone make a stat block and just deciding for whatever reason they had at the time that it would do an arbitrary amount of damage.
If you have things like traits, they can each go into your design, and you can even ration them based on how much they improve the capabilities of a monster. If you just say "A monster of this level should do this amount of damage, figure out how many dice that is based on what they have." It's more opaque and less useful. It lacks clarity, and so a DM can't really use it to inform their future design without working backwards or just guessing why it's designed the way it is.
Personally I think the misunderstanding comes from adhering to the same core rules or mechanics. If the players can flank a creature or use a potion as a bonus action, the monsters can too. So players expect the weapon dies, traits etc. to be equivalent as well but of course a monster having Pack Tactics does not allow the players to use or mimic that same mechanic. The base rules or rule outcomes are the same, but players and monsters are built differently...by design. Would be quite boring and predictable if monsters would only have class abilities...
It all boils down to the Simulator vs. Emulator argument. If players are seeking a simulation of combat, I usually point them twords the 40k style games.
I would assume the heavy cross bow disadvantage thing is more so dm fiat. As in the dm should notice the discrepancy and act accordingly. In short. Yes the knoght does have disadvantage with the heavy crossbow.
Our group always complains about "DM Shenanigans" anytime the DM does stuff where it clearly breaks the rules, and sometimes even when they are working within the confines of the rules its still "DM Shenanigans" haha.
I dont think generic humanoid enemies should be able to "break" the rules. Player classes are meant to be better than generic npc equivalents. I do think there should be special versions of them that can do more. A regular knight shouldn't deal an extra die plus radiant damage, but the knight captain might.
Unironically i like when dms run with player rules, as it makes the fights feel more fair. If my character dies, it will be to an enemy with the same potential i had.
I know JC mentioned that they did some heavy editing to "thin" out the new books. Otherwise they were going to be twice as many pages. Yet, passive information is crucial in MM's because maybe the NPC uses a club that is not already calculated in their stat block. Things like this actively happen. Maybe not every session but frequently enough that it needs to be included somewhere.
Also I have never been a fan of breaking continuity. Some of the most poorly designed NPC's are ones that break this continuity. We don't need a 5 page backstory but the players have to buy into the lore why something is happening. I'm currently playing PF2 so different system but many of the NPC's have no continuity but exhibit everything you said is "ok." I find it to be just extremely poor design.
If I am fighting a humanoid there are things I expect. When you start breaking those expectations and no plausible reason it breaks down the lore. For example, A level 1 caster casting a leveled spell 3 rounds in a row I may ignore or not notice. That same NPC dropping leveled spells every round for 7 to 10 rounds and I will notice (and begin questioning). Or casting higher level spells and they are just "fodder" will begin to make me wonder. For example we had a caster drop spells not from his school (example: Primal, Divine, Arcane for D&D) and it bugged me. We moved on but this topic brought up that feeling I had nearly 2 years ago.
I will have to disagree in some regard you are correct, but in my opinion, it comes down the rule behind certain concepts, in the case of the knight outright ignoring the heavy crossbow heavy trait take away from a possible weakness the knight could have. not only that but the free radiant damage has no logical source and as such feels cheap. a creature should be allowed to bend the rules through its features and traits, but it should have comparable feature to certain extent (feel that they are appropriate for the creature's level of power and theme the creature has) and should still subscribe to the rule of the game unless a feature or trait say otherwise a monster should be allowed to get free damage for no reason (their need to be a tangible source for it to make sense). in the case of the acolyte, I heavily believe it to be an overlooked typo that no one really cares about because of 2 reason players don't know the acolyte spellcaster level so they have no reason to complain and the fact that it can cast spell appropriate to the level it is implied to be at.
I feel it is import for a reason behind a certain feature on the character state to have an explanation. so that if I player asked after a session is over, I could answer. but at the same time if I want to do something similar, I have a frame of reference or a skeleton to structure something similar. I homebrew a lot of monsters and I have always felt that if I can do something along the same line that a player can do it should follow similar rule to the player unless it has a feature that says otherwise. so that in the case of which a monster uses a feature like action surge (cough cough Langdedrosa Cyanwrath) it shouldn't outperform what a player can do (E.g. the monster can use action surge twice in one round), it should feel fair and believable. but this should only apply in the case of which a creature is using a feature tool or weapon that is the same or similar to the player. this way it does not undermine what the player can and can't do. monster should be powerful, but they shouldn't be flat better at something then a player simply because they are a monster, there has to be a reason for it, and it has to make sense. that doesn't mean you can't have knight that do additional radiant damage their just need to be a reason as to why they can do it. but the core fact that it is using a heavy crossbow and ignoring the heavy property, on top of getting an additional damage dice and bonus radiant damage I can see why a player thinks it would be unfair by looking at the sheet because the knight really does feel like it is cheating. after all any player can shoot a heavy crossbow but they only do a single d10 and still have to abide by its heavy property. it not that it's cheating it more that it is undermining the play in this case. but if the player saw something like this; Blessed knight: the knight through harsh training and dedication to honouring their vows have been granted the following benefits. you may add 1d8 radiant damage to all weapon attacks made. and when you make a ranged weapon attack you may ignore the heavy property and add 1d10 additional weapon damage to the attack. (all bonus damage already calculated in the stat block). this make it feel like the knight isn't just pulling this out of nowhere and gives it a tangible source all on one trait but also establishes this isn't the norm but the exception. this makes it so a DM could infer this rule onto all the possible situations where such a trait would come up like if the knight had to pick up a new weapon because they have been disarmed. (Mind you I would still have it subscribe the heavy property and do normal heavy crossbow damage as to give it a tangible weakness that can be exploited by players)
Out of intrest where is that piece of shiela art at 5.06 from?
It’s from the 2024 DMG!
Great video. Clearly and succinctly explained. 👍
5th edition's biggest problems were Monsters being trivilaized and boring bags of HP the higher PC's got. Pathfinder 2e marketed itself to DMs (The primary people who buy products) by saying they made the DM's job easier, and they actually could function at high level with Monsters who were a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see if 5.5 is bringing back Monsters with "Bite". Monsters should not work like PCs, have their own rules, and have things that make PC's lives difficult. Strategy should be necessary for PCs to win.
Great video. This coming from a Player prespective, but enemies have always had abilities that were superior to individual Player characters, and that will always the case. And for me, that doesn't matter, as long as the Player characters can get strong abilities as well. And I think d&d 2024 does give the players strong options, even if some of the classes changes were disappointing.
My concern is, will the monsters, of d&d 2024 be so strong that the PC's new power levels won't cut it. And almost every battle will still feel like a boss fight. And the reason I say that, is because the Dm's I've played with nearly all the fight were very tough. To the point, I remember some of the easy fights more fondly, than the difficult ones.
Trying to make monsters like players always leads to problems, they need to exist for 1 encounter and follow monster design parameters, they don't have iron clad stat spreads, HP, 12 features, 25 spells etc.
great vid, love the more powerful monsters
Monsters in 2014 didn't play by the same rules either. Which was a huge contention for me. I have a Goose and Gander rule. Basically it says that anything they players can do the monsters can do all things being equal. Example: a watchman that is a fighter/warrior can do most of the things a PC Fighter can do at a given level. This does NOT mean that the same warrior can do what the wizard does etc.
imho, the combat section of the PHB applies to ALL combat PC and NPC alike so all the same options are there for both.
If they have deviations they should indicate why they have such deviation, like Extra Spectacular Expertise or something in their stat block.
We will give 2024 a shot but there is a LOT of stuff I dislike thus far (there are more things that I do like than I thought I would though), but I am leaning toward Shadowdark which means I will likely lose 2 players, but oh well. The DM needs to have fun too and if the system is atrociously overpowered then I need to level that playing field.
1e Monsters are monsters.
3e Monsters have the same rules as PCs. Mostly.
Me. Monsters CHEAT. Always.
I do hope the 2024MM gives GREAT monster creation rules. Much more than the DMG 2024.
I'm reallllyyyy hoping for more detailed monster creation rule in the new MM that align with their updated design philosophy.
The knight is not stupid as the rules... to handle an heavy weapon you do not need dexterity, you need strenght. He is smarter than the rule creators :)
And are we ignoring loading property of range weapons too for monsters
Some of these extra boosts could also be unlisted abilities that were left off of the stat block to simplify it. Like the acrylic could have an ability similar to a feat that gave an extra spell use but was simplified. (In the case of the brute feature, it was probably included to stop the player from thinking that the weapon was better)
I feel like traits like Brute make monsters easier to hack and modify. They also give easy solutions or just inspiration to DMs when it comes to loot and similar. Conversely they create bloat you need to go through when using the monster in an encounter. So to me it's a balance between preparation clarity and use clarity. I'd rather still have those features just placed later though in some 'extended' section that explains more what's going on behind the screen.
@@antonioromano6362 I wish Monster Roles were still a thing. You could make extra weapon damage an innate trait of Brute types
The fact that the numbers dont make sense is why I dropped 5e originally.
I like to homebrew my own monsters and I minored in mathematics.
My ranger cant wait to pick up a couple of those drow shortswords that dont require a bonus action to coat to do 3d6 poison
I genuinely much preferred how 3.5e creatures were built. They functioned within the exact same frameworks as player characters, down to having innate spellcasting level equivalents.
Eh. Even in 3.0 and 3.5, NPC Classes make this not usually true, IME.
Adventurers do not cry to the heavens when facing a great peril. They just run.
Agreed. Monsters and NPCs are built differently than PCs. Monsters and NPCs generally don't get death saves like PCs, and I don't think you'll find many players complaining that monsters aren't following the same rules in that situation.
Monsters being the same as Characters com from 3.0/3.5
And 3E has legendarily bad stat blocs because of it.
@@andyenglish4303 Did not disagree with that concept, lol
Can we just aknowledge for a moment that a knight can parry an attack with a crossbow?
I'm going to be a jerk about this, but whenever I hear people complain about monsters "breaking the rules", that just tells me they have never GMed extensively. Having monsters follow all of the same rules as players has a certain cool immersion factor, but I have found that cool factor melts away very quickly when you need to make balanced encounters with a nice variety of enemies for combat that moves at a good pace and doesn't result in monsters dropping piles of amazing equipment the PCs can just scoop up.
A big part of it is brevity of stat blocks. As a GM, I want to be able to quickly glance down at a monster to know what its rolling. It is important for classes to have a bunch of abilities to show where their damage and bonuses are coming from because it gates power between levels and abilities. For a monster when I am running combat, I really don't give a shit why their bonuses and damage are the way they are, I just want to move through their turn to act against the PCs before giving the game back to them. If there is a flavor element, just include that outside of the stat block please.
From my experience GMing, players do not really interact with monster stats in any way they can really see or appreciate, with the exception of AC. When a player rolls a low 6 on the d20, and they add all of their bonuses to see that they JUUUUST barely hit the DC / AC, that is a cool moment where you know you just barely made it. Seeing all of the game mechanics click together to reward their decision making feels good for players, and rewards them for understanding the system. For monsters, players almost never see those parts. They don't know how close a monsters roll came to maiming them, all they really see is that it hit or missed. As a result, having every monster mechanic spelled out is does not add to the experience. If it is a mechanic that players are meant to potentially exploit, then those are worth noting, such as the knight's parry encouraging disarming, or the troll's healing encouraging the use of fire, but these are exceptions. Meanwhile, a creature with the "brute" trait will always have that trait. At that point, it is more important for me as a GM to quickly know how much it swings for than it is for the players and I to know why it swings for that much.
Then there is balancing monsters. Using the knight crossbow as an example, its true that there is no explanation to why it deals 2d10 damage. Ok, lets make it 2 knights wielding crossbows at the normal 1d10 damage... oh wait, now we have doubled the amount of HP on the board. Ok, give them half HP, except now they don't feel like a potent warrior anymore, so lets make up for it by boosting their AC, except AC scaling doesn't work that way and now fighting them with attack rolls is a massive pain in the ass. Also, you now have double the number of knights clogging up the initiative. Ok, back up a bit, let's make the crossbows enchanted to deal 2d10 each, now have fun with every knight dropping a magic weapon for your players to pick up as well as explaining in game why they have so many of these things. Also, it's true that the knight shouldn't be able to use a crossbow because they lack the dexterity. Ok, let's boost their DEX to 13 and boost that saving throw while we're at it. At the end of the day, all I care about conveying to the players is that this is an armored warrior who is extremely dangerous with a weapon, but has a weakness to anything that requires swift movement. That flavor coming across is far more important than making sure every stat and mechanic lines up to what players use.
I know this is a bit of a rant. IC is completely right when he says monsters and players are filling completely different roles within the game, and because of that, they can't be balanced the same way. Monsters should not have the same level of survivability as the PCs, but they still need to pose a threat. Players need a varied toolbox to draw from for level progression purposes, and their turns will naturally take longer as a result. My monsters are static entities designed for one stretch of the game, and its not interesting for their turns to drag on because I need to dig through their stat block. Letting monsters "break rules" like this just makes the game easier for GMs to run combat and build fights that work for their story, both for challenge and theme. In my opinion, these factors are far more important to immersion and fun than ensuring total mechanical symmetry on both sides of the table.
I’d say there are different degrees of cheating. Some will pass without problem , while others sting really badly. An example of the latter would be a "special" poison that outright ignores poison resistance and advantage on saves against poison.
Why in the world would a Knight be more deadly at range than in melee? That feels so weird to me.
No reason monsters abide by the same rules as a humanoid, but a knight is not really monster…
This is why monsters with class levels were a thing, differentiate between the Orc that has five Fighter levels for Extra Attack and the Orc Warlord that has thirteen to warrant a definitely-not-Legendary-Resistance Indomitable, possibly with a +1/2 weapon. Subclass features very optional, PCs still need to be special and the monsters are intended to be killed off after one combat, so putting lots of effort into the OCs has diminishing returns; at most give cultists some Warlock invocations that match the BBEG theme or something.
"Monster" in D&D isn't always being literal, and is basically shorthand for "Enemy NPC". Human Bandits are monsters, wolves are monsters, just like an orc, goblin, or enemy wizard is a monster. Because they have stat blocks laid out in the "Monster Manual" so that the players can fight them.
I know monsters don't have to follow the rules players have to, but I will say that a fun thing I like to do is make a PC and then make them into a stat block to see how they would fair.
A monster is a terrifying creature in the minds of people in the real world. Power creep has turned most monsters into nerf hurdles over the years. I'm VERY MUCH in favor of making all monsters more powerful. A monstrosity by definition should defy the rules. And, since creatures of all types are presented in any Monster Manual, the word monster is a blanket term for all enemies.
While it is true that NPCs and Monsters have never worked under the same rules as PCs in the current edition I believe to some degree it is at a detriment to the game. There is a lot of benefit to internal consistency for where the rules and world meet. You can create challenging encounters without creating abilities that only monsters/npcs can have without breaking game balance. Pack tactics is too powerful to let a PC have over the course of a campaign, I get that - but it doesn't make sense in a world where that advantage exists that a PC character couldn't learn a similar level of coordination with their allies. This is not the same as saying a human PC should be able to get a dragon's breath weapon. I agree that monsters/npcs don't "have" to follow the same rules as players - but there are benefits we're losing to this kind of thing being ignored. The world feels less cohesive. Your example of the banshee isn't the same thing, because there's no reasonable structure in the game world for a PC to learn the wail. On the other hand, if the knight can learn to weild the crossbow more effectively, there's no in game logical reason a PC couldn't learn to in the same way. To some degree mechanics and world need to mesh.
Any DM will tell you. There's a whole library of videos out there about how to "break" the game. Players read lots of rules in bad faith. The challenge of the game should be raised. Many of the stat block changes make sense. Drow WOULD have poison already applied, knights WOULD bless their weapons
Imagine be surprised by asymmetrical design in 2024
A lot of the “cheating” is a way to represent character abilities in foes without all the bookkeeping for the DM.
I don't only love the way the npc "break the rule" but they need to for a simple reason: they're weaker than the players
Bugbears deal an additional weapon dice since 2014, it makes sense for a knight to deal more damage though
Plus, the non explicit rules that npc use in their stat block make them more unpredictable for players and THAT makes the combats really interesting, nothing better than not knowing what to expect from an enemy and learn how to deal with it
Which damage would you calculate if a PC gets his hands on the weapon during the fight and uses it to fire back? E.g. the heavy crossbow. What would prevent him from keeping it? It's far superior to the standard, after all.
That is where design like this falls short.
This exact question is addressed in this video. The player would not get the benefit since it’s not the weapon that is dealing the extra damage, the creature has the benefit of dealing bonus damage.
@@InsightCheck Yeah, I heard it later, and found it inconvincing.
In most games I played, there was not only the monster/hero-duality you cited, but also something like an NPC layer. Those contained mostly people of playable races (who might or might not be fully fleshed out) which built foundations for areas and behaved like "normal".
The vast majority of those people are people, not monsters (if e.g. a silver dragon in human form shows up, that´s a plot hook). And they use items that perform normally.
For me as a player it would be utterly confusing if a guard or knight suddenly falls into an "unexplained monster status" with standard items behaving differently all of a sudden, "because" ...?
For that, there needs to be either a feat or skill, or something different, so that there is a chance to spot something is different, like the guy gleaming with celestial or demonic energy, or the crossbow being double-sized or triple-stringed (the latter cases having the salvage problem again, though).
That PC/monster-only also (like a lot of the new abilities btw.) kills a lot of options for roleplay because if you never know how another person behaves and how you restrict it, you will be a murder-hobo out of necessity, as it is simply not possible to secure prisoners anymore.
The other way around? A monster not hacking a downed PC into small pieces is a stupid monster.
For me, that´s too limited.
As a ttrpg designer myself I find the breaking the rules concept to be lazy and uninspiring. It dumbs down the DM process to make it more streamlined but in doing so it takes away from the need to be creative and original. This process ensures that the undesirable floats to the top along with the cream. If you're familiar with Tucker's Kobolds you'll get a sense of how to create challenge without breaking any rules or altering stat blocks on any creatures. I have designed my own challenges while allowing my players to gain monster abilities and it not break the game. Get creative, ffs even ai can design decent challenges for level 20 characters.
I don't see it as "cheating". Simply put the CR calculus relies on certain numbers. The knight clearly has those numbers. So how you arrive at those numbers is irrelevant. Change the numbers and you change the CR. Forcing the DM to connect things like the Dex to the H.X-bow means they have to raise the dex. Oh. Oops. You messed with its dex save by doing that, as well as its AC, and dex based skills. Now the knight is actually more powerful and a different CR than it was.
As a player and DM 2014 was on easy mode to me. I agree and don;t thing it would be "breaking the rules or cheating" to make challenging adjustments. I had to all the time as DM with 2014 rules.
monsters dont automatically need to follow all rules for characters.. butt *humanoid* npc's with classes absolutely should.
They never actually have. Not even in 3.0 and 3.5 where they pretended to and did sometimes. They often had NPC Classes that made them fundamentally different even then. Assume that humanoid NPCs are using an NPC Class that has the abilities listed. It's pretty straightforward, really.
@@DellikkilleD I should point out that there is no "knight" class, nor does the knight have any class levels in any other class.
I don't mind if the enemies can do stuff the players can't but why the heck is a crossbow fired by a knight doing radiant damage?