How D&D Monsters Are Now Tougher in 'Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse'
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- Опубликовано: 10 окт 2024
- Todd Kenreck sits down with Jeremy Crawford to talk about how monsters became tougher in 'Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse
A bestiary of wondrous friends and foes for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
Sparkling with the musings of the wizard Mordenkainen, this tome features a host of creatures for use in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Hailing from every corner of the multiverse, these creatures represent some of the most benevolent and malevolent forces that D&D heroes might face.
The book also gathers together fantastical peoples from many different worlds. Each of these peoples represents a race option when you create your D&D character, expanding on the choices in the Player’s Handbook.
Compiling and updating monsters that originally appeared in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, this book presents friends and foes for any D&D campaign, many of them accompanied by the comments of Mordenkainen. The wizard has faced many of these monsters and peoples on numerous wondrous adventures. Now it’s time for you to venture forth and face these creatures yourself!
Includes over 250 monsters. Updates to the monsters include making spellcasters easier for Dungeon Masters to run; giving many monsters more damage and resilience; and improving the organization of the stat blocks themselves.
Includes over 30 playable races. Brings all the game’s setting-agnostic races into one book, complementing the races in the Player’s Handbook.
A multiverse of lore. Includes updates to monster lore that refocuses the stories on the D&D multiverse, rather than on any particular world.
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons 
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And you could just pay Keith Ammann and incorporate "The monsters know what they're doing" into each stat block.
Why don't you just do what 3.5e did and add a "tactics" section to the monster entry. So new DMs can see how to use a creature effectively?
Was not expecting this link to be this long lmao
This needs to get pinned
Some DMs have less of a tactical mind than others, and the deadliness of a creature varies largely in part due to the DM. Having some instructions there would have solved so many problems.
There is such section in the MM and several others, as i see it, and often goes pretty much in detail about it too.
Get "The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters Book" by Keith Ammann
The MM should have a one line tactics recommendation for each monster.
older editions had that, the monster lore is interesting and all, but strategy, preperations and morale would be more useful
Yes, there are a few third party products that do this and its great. Especially when its something you didn't prep before the game.
many monsters have sections discussing their tactics employed, and in general you can parse that reading the stat block.
@@TheRayny It is not to the same level as previous editions. Monst monsters don't even have that bit. Go look at 3.5 or 4e and see how they tell you how to play the monster correctly. At least then if you choose not to you knew why the monster got beat on.
The powercreep of the classes were really steep on the newer books, like Xanathar and Tasha's Caudron, so it makes sense that the monster would receive powercreep too
Yeah, they should put a "powercreep" encounter adjustment for people that use newer book classes or Hexblade dips.
And you have a point. But it makes every other choice feels more behind/bad than it should.. its bad game design.. I think its called bad game designs, or at least bad updates
would be nice if what was being stated was really accurate to what the book had... any time we see a monster's stat block changed at all in the book, its either a general nerf of the capabilities, or its a slight increase at the cost of something else
korreds for example, lose hp and abilities for nothing in return. the leviathan loses its damage over time with the tidal wave in exchange for +4 damage on its slam and tail attack combo.
maruts lose at will planeshift for 3 planeshifts a day, with more difficulty to forcibly send someone to sigil.
gloom weavers are a bit of a buff for 5 damage a turn with the only real downside being loss of hypnotic pattern. they did however get to become more reliable at a range however so that's a mixed bag...
Player power creep has gotten out of control, I've been running my monsters with max HP, tweeks to AC and Damage for over a year, none of my players have seemed to notice.
It’s crazy that they calculated the cr based on a certain sequence of attacks but then did not tell the dm what that order of attacks is..
And then they’re surprised DMs don’t figure out this one specific combination that they calculated.
To be fair, 5e systems are super simple, and if you have enough game knowledge to DM you should be able to figure out the optimal order pretty easy.
It's even more crazy to me that their solution isn't to just include info about what a monster's optimal tactics should be, but instead to make it so that the CR calculation just assumes the DM doesn't figure it out - and if the DM does figure it out, the monster will be harder than expected.
The system is literally "three rounds of the highest damage"
I have always used CR as a quick glimpse into an approximate power level of a monster, but never rely on it or put much trust into the accuracy of the CR
Yeah it's never been a hard and fast for me, either. It's been more of a this should be in the ball park, and occasionally will add an extra damage die if it hits too soft or lower HP and AC if I think it will be too much of a slog.
Yes, and especially early on in player levels, monster strength is not correlated with CR level. Any monster with big damage stats can wreak havoc on low level players.
Agreed. I look at it like a Warning label, rather than a Recipe.
CR is more of a rating of how challenging a monster is if it is actually played optimally.
@@Railery It isn't, it's more a random number generated somewhere within 3 steps of how challenging it is.
so.. is the message: "the DM played the creature wrong, if their monster didnt live up to their CR"?
Pretty much. And I think that's right in many/most cases. Unless you want monsters to have only one set of actions.
The entire CR system and the way that 5e is balanced around the "Adventuring day" of 6-8 medium or hard encounters is the culprit here. You can't easily scale encounters up or down due to the way the number of enemies raises the effective CR and thus encounter difficulty, while *also* remembering how a change impacts the other encounters of the "day". So while I applaud attempts at improving monster stat blocks, I'll stick to Pathfinder 2e for actually balanced combat.
I think he says that with an underlying "we've learned since 2011 that that was a stupid way to write the monsters, and we're adjusting how we write them."
Good information. This feels like the "The Monsters Know What They Are Doing " type lore and tactics should return to the monsters. These NPC stat block changes seem both good, and bad. It feels like the meta is more focused upon and presented first, which avoids the need to read, research and to think critically. The tables are a good idea, but seem to be minimal compared to the the meta information.
The monsters know what they are doing is a great book.
One thing i missed about 4th edition (which i never played but read avidly) when dming 5e was how every creatures had tactics baked in and paired with them so it was clearer how it could be dangerous
@@Tbrekke I agree. A little bit of familiarity with the creatures, the setting, and knowing that these tactics are their make encounters, planned or not, smoother.
I was expecting to hear the "6-8 encounter adventuring day" rubric mentioned here. That's what leads most new DMs and players I talk to into misinterpreting what CR means. It's odd that they'd focus on monster stat blocks because "oh, if I paralyze first, my monster's attack auto crits" seems like it would be waaaaaay more obvious then "every combat is assumed to take place in between in between two long rests and 7 other combats with unrelated monsters".
In my experience that 6-8 encounter day just dosen't exist outside of meticulously planned dungeon crawls. Especially with people watching shows like critical role where the encounters are designed to be big and flashy because it is a performance as much as it is a game. DM's go into a session expecting the big, single fight of the day that they've built all this tension around with RP to be fittingly epic, because they've picked a large monster with a CR at or slightly above their party's level. But that CR is not calculated with this being the only monster the players fight, and the player's steam roll it.
That's where I see the issue anyway. If player's don't have to worry about resource conservation because of the way their DM structures the game, they will go nova and wreck whatever's in front of them. This is a macro problem whereas "Some DM's don't know the optimal attack patterns" is a micro one.
I think a scale for epic encounters as opposed to adventuring day encounters would be helpful. Don't get rid of the current system, but somthing to give new players an idea of how a creature stacks up against the PC's if it's the only fight of the day would clear up a lot of confusion.
I’m looking forward to the book, but will definitely be waiting until it is sold separately rather than buying the bundle with books I already own
But what if I know I want a demon lord, but don’t know their name?!
I was REALLY hoping they were rebalancing it for a actually reasonable amount of encounters per day ( ie: 3-5) instead of the stupidly unlikely 7-9 . Guess not
Friend, check the DMG again. There is a table in page 84 that basically sets the exp/day difficulties. Just go there and do some math. You'll find that 3-4 deadly encounters replace 7-9 medium/hard encounters. I've been doing this for 3 years now. Always kept my players on their toes with this method
@@tukman16 yeah but they balanced the classes off of 7-9 encounters as well, which is why in almost every table, martials feel very weak compared to spell casters
@@tukman16 This doesn't balance between short rest, long rest and no rest characters.
@@mycatistypingthis5450 it's hard to reply if you don't present any arguments, friend. Perhaps don't shower your players with magic items?
@@tukman16 have you seen what magic items are in adventures like Lost Mine of Phandelver or Storm King's Thunder? That is more than recommended in the DMG. If I need to rewrite their own published work to run it, what did I buy?
Power ratings for each possible monster action? Or just some kind of "killer move" / optimal strategy marker next to the action(s) that totally juice a monster's performance? That way DMs knowm at a glance: a) how to make a monster as punchy as intended, and b) how to declaw a monster for lower level parties.
Or, as everyone is else is saying, do the one line tactics text from 3.5 again, but with hard mode / easy mode variants?
I think the moral here is that *sequencing* of actions speak louder than raw stats and action potential. Maybe we should try to view a monster as a crafted set of escalating problems for the party, taking place *over time*, rather than a static lump of probabilities.
Our BBEG was an archwizard and my dm was telling me how it was a great monster cuz he could make it as strong as he wanted or as week as he wanted based on his choices
0:30 I was thinking about this exact monster when I looked over at the screen and saw it, since I recently saw it in Mordenkainen(?) and thought “I need to use this monster”
Thank you so much, for sharing!
Everything about these changes are amazing. Hoping to get my hands on them asap!
I am the opposite with regards to alphabetically listing monsters. I would much rather have all of the demons, devils, hags, etc grouped together.
Alphabetically by type is best
Yes! Thank you! I agree with this so much
He did say that some groups will stay together and I figure stuff like hags would be but we'll see.
Me too.
@@WittyDroog right, but he used a "Z" example, thats a demon lord.
Not expecting anything, but there's a part of me that hopes they gave the Oinoloth a significant buff - mostly because I still like the old Oinoloth that was an arch-fiend tier individual, rather than merely Yugoloth subtype.
The master of the Siege Malicious and the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin deserves recognition!
The common Oinoloths are the minions of Anthraxus, who's the Oinoloth that controls the Wasting Tower
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ A fine idea, in theory. The Planescape lore-nerd in me just gets hung-up on the fact that Oinoloth is Anthraxus' title... It's like if Demogorgon had a bunch of lesser "Prince of Demons" running around doing his bidding.
@@Veltharis IIRC, this is what 5e is doing, it's the same with Merrenoloth being Charon's minions in Pathfinder
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ Can't speak to Monsters of the Multiverse, but I don't think Tome of Foes mentioned anything about Anthraxus. Might have missed it though
I think the Merrenoloths were always servants of Charon, though (at least in part), though that may be way too much old fanon that's worked its way into my head.
@@Veltharis I might be remembering things wrong... It's what I got from the Forgotten Realms wiki, Maybe this was from older editions
I appreciate pulling back the curtain. Now, I understand why it's CR. Though, I don't think it was ever fun to run the monsters at MAX capacity. (Edit: For my group that is)
Fair but nothings worse for me when I kill a monster too easily, I wanna be on 1 hit point throwing out a desperate firebolt and getting the kill.
Agreed
@@FoxHound-ut1hu I agree with that on the important fights! Playing in a game where it feels like that's happening on EVERY fight gets old very fast.
@@tollbomb different strokes.
The problem our DM is having is that the line between a tough fight and a TPK is extremely thin. It is hard to make close fights and not risk having the whole party reroll characters if everybody goes down. It's why DnD will never quite get to the toughness that rogue-like games have, where it is not just ok, but expected that you lose. It is hard when you don't have the liberty to make the party "just lose"
It should have been like it was described in the DMG. Monsters' Challenge Rating is meant to be based on their overall offense and defense challenge ratings. Those CRs are determined by average and high optimal outputs. It never is should be the most optimal sequence and not a 'your fault not mine' scenario.
I don’t understand the confusion. The high damage output WAS the optimal sequence, was it not?
The overall offense the DMG guides uses to calculate is an optimal sequence, since it tell us to consider the highest damage output the monster could have for it first three turns. The issue is that if we run it choosing different actions (sometimes out of need, aka ranged attacks for flying/distant pcs), it will perform differently.
Edit: Typos
The problem is, that Challenge Ratings were calculated based on PCs that weren't overloaded by magic items and other stuff DMs give out like candy.
Ehh. Players want magic items. I understand 5e was originally designed around limited magic items, but at this point that is not how the game is most often played.
Prewritten adventures already overload the PC's with magic items.
If the most dangerous options were what determined cr... why is a spectre a cr 1?
lol yeah, draining max hp is just *way* too op. I've seen times where players just have to leave the dungeon and take a long rest because they can't possibly finish this dungeon with only 2 hp.
Because with an average to hit of 15, there's a good chance it won't hit with its one attack, with +2 Dex it is unlikely to go first, and even with resistances it is unlikely to last more than one round with just 22 hp, even versus level 1 players. At low levels just about any Nat 20 could kill you, so in the grand scheme, it's not that strong. Rot grubs, though...
Bronze scout?
One reason why the spectre and many other monsters are over-CR'd is the prevalence of magic items that bypass the damage resistances.
This was instructive and I think lets DM's feels safe to use monsters without pulling punches.
This man did everything he could to not say “People are stupid so we made things easier.”
CR is a mess, even if it's "the deadliest attack", considering that an Intellect Devourer can annihilate a higher CR monster with low INT in two turns.
A Ghoul's paralysis is a "remove from play" very early on. Sahaughin/Shark mechanics make these creatures death.
On the other hand, a RAW Chain Devil is a joke.
But a ghoul also becomes useless as soon as there's a cleric around. Especially lvl 5 and above where they can wipe a dozen ghouls with just one turn.
All demons/devils in the same place is sensible. I'm pretty new, and don't know all the names off by heart, so grouping that way helps. Now I might miss a cool option.
I thought the same
Oh thank god, we have needed this forever.
The real problem is the player powercreep.
The cr system isn't the real problem.
EXACTLY. Its been a problem since 3.5, and continues in 5e. Its bad general game design. And they cant admit it.
Not sure about that, straight off the 5e bat without any new books and options, monsters still sucked. Hard+ encounters were just trivial, especially at higher levels. Power creep just made it significantly worse.
@@Miggy19779 Have you ever played a game with only the phb as player option? You'll see that that monster are a lot stronger than you think.
Just check at the spell list from Xanatar and Tasha. If you don't ban mtg check their spell list.
Now look at the original subclass of the phb.
Check the optional feature from Tasha. Now the rogue can have sneak attack 100% of the time because of steady shot. They made the ranger an combat specialist when he was a exploration specialist. Most people don't like to play the exploration mechanics which is why the ranger was considered ''weak''.
Check the custom lineage of Tasha. with point buy you can have a stat at 18 with a feat at level 1. Which is bunkers because at level 4 you have the max stat for your main stat. Some race have less because their racial feature are too situational.
The dragonborn was buffed like crazy when they were already good. People didn't play them because they were not variant human.
When the changeling came out. No one wanted to use Disguise Self or kit. They had it build in their race. So they could focus on other stuff.
When the Aasimar came in people often choose them for the additional damage when they were charisma class.
If CR and Proficiency is tied together won't this have a bit of a knock on effect. For example if it drops or rises a CR and its PB goes up, won't that also effect the CR?
Todd. I'm so glad you are now under the D&D banner for real, if i may say it that way.
Your interviews and videos are a fundamental part of D&D and you deserve to receive all the love and appreciation from WoC as well as from the community. Thanks man, really.
Thanks.
I absolutely dislike that they are changing the order so some monsters aren’t grouped together (e.g. Demons, devils), and I will certainly miss the npc and beast appendix. Those types of grouping were always great for me when prepping sessions.
E.g. need some devils, flip through a dozen pages to see the options available. Now we probably need to flip though a hundred plus.
Would be cool if groupings were still shown as quick lists somewhere at least.
Always love seeing as much as possible being converted to a bonus action. I'm all about getting to the meat & potatos of the cool things PCs & Monsters can do. LUL and yes D&D is all about shenanigans, I love it
Obviously we'll have to see how the changes are but if this is basically the Essentials books for 4e it'll be a welcome change. I know Mike wanted this edition to be less "unforgiving" than other editions but compared to most editions 5e certainly has the dullest teeth. Yeah yeah a DM can figure out around that but it's not about just killing players but providing threats that give combat meaning so sharpening those teeth a bit is welcomed by me and helpful to newer DMs. I'm also okay with leaving lower level monsters alone so new players can get their feet wet.
If you find it has dull teeth, then you’re just playing 5e wrong. Just increase the number of minions until you start killing players and stop around there until it’s no longer challenging.
this is great! I wish it were a good idea to buy the book before may.
Still waiting for competent d&d game design.
The problem with CRs extends _far beyond_ just monsters hitting far below their CR. Imagine two identical level parties, but one party has slow and the other doesn't. A marilith is _not_ a CR 16 for the party with slow. Because of the marilith's magical resistance and +8 Wis mod, it still is unlikely for it to fail a save against slow. So now imagine the party with slow also has a divination wizard. Now the marilith auto-rolls low on the slow save and it isn't just not a CR 16, it is like a CR 5. This is _far_ from the only example of this issue with the CRs. Acting like this is a feature and not a bug is a problem.
Will creatures be interesting now or will most still be hp bags with multiattack?
so now if i wanna see what demon i can trow at my party i have to roam across all the manual instead of having them all togheder? its a mess ç_ç
So there is even more variation in CR?
Is it also calculating where on the power creep curve of splatbooks the party is?
Want to make kobolds frustrating for melee classes? Give them the phase spider's ethereal jaunt ability. I call them "Phasebolds".
I have a current DM who threw a CR18 “minion” at our party of lvl 3s because “he did the math and we could handle it.” Sighhhhhhhhhhh
He seems incredibly bad at math... 😧
He's horrible at math lmao
Was it a combat encounter?
I like the sound of every thing being said but I'm very wary of this making statblocks less interesting. It was especially noticeable with Strixhaven. Sure all the spellcasters are more optimized but the change to monster Spellcasting in stat blocks has also, imo, made them way less interesting to use. Won't make any judgements till I actually check out the book though
As an owner of the original books I would like access to some sort of errata. To this point all reworks are locked behind an 145€ box set, that include only books I already own and paid for....
So all the ancient, adult, young and wyrmling dragons are order by the first letter? If I'm understanding this right?
Instead of CR you should just organize monsters in the books by tiers of play then under each tier arrange by creature type alphabetical by name. This way a DM with tier 1 players could more easily find suitable undead, humanoids, giants, etc. to put tier 1 characters up against.
I'm not good at minmaxing so that explains a bit where i think what a monster would do the monster dies quick unless i go full on kill mode.
Much as I like all the stuff I'm hearing, I can't help but wish core races & monsters were included in all this.
Predict that we'll get a full revamp of the core books in a couple years to bring them up to this standard. Part of the D&D 50th anniversary.
@@erickarnell Oh yeah, they've been very up front about it, that's no secret.
I still don't understand why have the option to make a particular creature with a fixed CR less lethal, DMs just needs creatures from different environments with a fixed CR.
Just make the lethality of the creature what is expected for the level of the party, if you'd like a less lethal creature you would just make a lower CR encounter. 🤷🏽♂️
I just hope we are not going back to 4E with that. Maybe it would be easier to add a "tactics" session the monster descriptions.
You mean Drow aren’t filed under E ?
They made and effort to make CR accurate. It will never be because challenges are so party dependant, but I like the effort.
Todd Kenreck being where he was always meant to be. Great seeing you here on the D&D Official channel.
Yes, YES.
So will this book replace the monster manual for Adventure League?
Did they rehire Todd to do more interviews?
"...some DM's .. will bulldoze the player characters" - What the..? What DMs?!
In my experience the monsters are too easy because they die too quickly. Using actions "less than optimally" isn't that relevant.
Yup I never had a DM bulldoze characters unless he was building a CR 10+ levels higher than the party level. They must be dealing with retarded players or unfair GMs.
I hear there is no errata though? Having two versions of the same monster out there seems a strange choice...
Tarrasques fall, everyone dies.
Re-alphabatized? Please say you improved the Index as well? Have it make a bit more sense instead of "See this" and "See that" and chaining the index entries. I'm looking forward to this book.
Don't all of the books have a table of contents? 😅
CR will never be accurate simply because so many different things are simply impossible to be taken into account. Sure, whether the DM plays the monster optimally or not plays a role, but the amount of ressources they have, the terrain they're fighting on, party composition, the amount of magic items and the list goes on. if Strahd ambushes the party while they're asleep and gets to cast fireball on everyone twice before they even get to play, they're probably gonna TPK very quickly. But if they're 4 10th level clerics and paladins decked out in magic items, and they're all full hp full spellslots, it's going to be an easy fight no matter how strategic you play him.
In my opinion giving monsters resistance to say slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning dmg unless the players have magical weapons totally undermines the monster. The player having a +2 sword giving the player an additional +2 to hit and dmg is already a reward, the weapon also acting as a debuff to the monster’s resistances is to much.
huh, while this is an interesting take, I think the point is less to give the monster actually useful resistances but to make it so that low level players or npcs just can't fight it. It's there to show that the being is just too powerful for normal attacks to hurt it. Anyone fighting these creatures at the level they're suppose to will probably not even know that they have these resistances.
Spelljammer is next up?
be nice, but we've been asking for that forever. despite the screenshot, id bet they go something more like planescape.
Switched to pathfinder because the challenge in 5e is so poor from monsters.
I will take a look at this and rethink the decision, but seeing an eye tyrant get shut down by level 7 characters is hard to come back from.
Just add more hp or attacks to the monster if it's getting steam rolled. Same vis versa
Imo I prefer demons and devils all to be grouped together.
The CR system has always been a mess, and I hardly expect this book to fix that. It's a complex problem, and CR is always going to be an oversimplified solution. Nonetheless, an attempt to try to make it better is of course welcome.
In my experience it's often enough to simply give important NPCs enough extra HP to ensure they don't get completely taken out before they can do something cool.
I'm not sure I feel about the albitization changes though. I might not remember the names of all of the demon lords, but I definitely know they're under D. Changing that can sometimes make things more difficult, not easier.
Then again, I'm unlikely to waste my money on this book anyway, so it won't really affect me.
We all need some tougher monsters , l usually don't like playing over level 6 because of time constraints. However,
I enjoy the "new blood " l can always modify for my specific player groups.
There's some easy fixes that work for me.
1. when a monster has an odd stat, round up to 1 higher for the extra +1. This is a small increase of maybe +1 to hit and damage/+1 to AC and a few extra hitpoints, but it helps.
2. Give them a relevant feat. Tough is a basic one that's good, resilient-con/warcaster for a caster who needs concentration, or any other that makes sense, like sharpshooter for ranged attackers, lucky for a miniboss, etc.
3. Give them PC hitpoints (max at lvl 1, and 4 for d6, 5 for it is March 6th 2022, 2:37:44 pm right now, 6 for d10, 7 for d12).
4. If needed, for tougher mini bosses or similar, give them a bonus action and/or reaction for extra damage and/or damage mitigation.
@@Miggy19779 thanks , all good ideas
I love how they blame their awful design flaws on DMs incorrectly running their monsters. Talk about pass the buck...
I like that the MM and new entries don't hold your hand on how to run monsters. And I'm glad they're addressing the accuracy of the CRs.
Change is always good, because you can find new ways of doing things that work well, and you can always change it again if needed.
We should embrace a company whose philosophy currently is listening to its base and wanting to do better.
I really there's more monster history/history/materials from processing the remains/etc..
Let's polymorph!
I use the CR calculations every time, it’s easy and honestly it’s accurate.
Same here, especially if you create the monster yourself.
Thank god!
As a DM of 24 years, I wonder if they should've just left CR out. I see a lot of commenters here still whining about how it isn't perfect. Honestly just ignore the CR and build the encounter with what you know. If the math says 3 ogres but you know they can take 6 ogres then use 6 ogres. I am not a grognard but "back in the day" there was no CR and DMs were just expected to know what the party could handle. I don't recall it going particularly better or worse than today.
It could be somewhat simplified by giving player equivalent threat leave. CR 5 monsters means 1 on 1 versus a lvl 5 character, it has a of winning of 50%. Still won't be accurate though due to wildily different PC builds but hey at least it's a slight guideline, similar to how GM's would eyeball it in older editions.
I had a moment like Todd mentioned with the Tarrasque, my party took control of a giant tree that had an ancient arcane device built into its root systems that allowed the tree to teleport to the different provinces, well they decided to teleport the tree into a volcano to stop the lich they were fighting from using it to restore himself from the battle they just had, and one party members had teleported away from the whole thing with a death knight that was serving the lich so he was left on the other side of the continent, and my party had forgotten about the nomadic tribe of friendly were-creatures living within the tree, so they sentenced hundreds of innocent people to a fiery grave, now the father of werebeast is going to be sending his champions to hunt them down for this one. On the bright side they killed the lich permanently and his death knight, but I put the deck of many things in the loot and like fools they took the bait, now I have a side quest for them to retrieve the soul of the party member who caused it all and I’ve got plenty of time to figure out where to go from here 😂
So excited for this book - it addresses all the problems I have with DnD combat currently.
Talk about insulting…. Instead of admitting CR sucks you say the DMs don’t know how to optimally run creatures?
whats the creature at 1:34?
Jeremy blaming DMs for the problem is amusing, but every talking head DM on YT I've heard talk about high CR creatures was forced to customize them because they weren't designed well enough for use against high level parties.
Bring back DCA!
If the way you alphabetize monsters is a constant complaint, why not have an index in the back where you can look up Zuggtmoy under both Z or D?
IMHO all monsters are only as good as their action economy. A single high CR monster is never as dangerous as a number of much lower CR monsters.
Remember that legendary and lair actions are supposed to give more action economy to those higher CR monsters. I think 3 legendary actions might be too low, though. I always run 1 legendary action per character in the party with a minimum of 3 (though I don't adjust the cost of abilities that use more than one action).
"Shenanigans by design" may sound nice but it's what causes high levels to be nearly unplayable without either the players purposefully limiting themselves or the DM having very good knowledge and making rules changes to remove broken combos. You can make things interesting and open to creative uses without making them busted.
Also it sounds a lot like monster statblocks are going to get more boring. I already didn't like several of the ones in FToD, like the greatwyrms that had lazier designs than the dragons printed 7 years prior, and the new spellcaster style where they give them "spells, that aren't technically spells" are just bad game design.
They've made some monsters weaker, like the Nagpa and The Matron mother. So really, despite all this waffling, they have no idea what they're doing in the end. smh
Off Topic but ...
I'm designing a character using Tasha's Cauldron spell Summon Fey
I'm planning to have the Fuming, Mirthful, and Tricksy moods result in summoning one of the same three Fay each time.
I have created them entirely on my own without copying any super awesome cartoon from 1998.
I named them Buttercup, Bubbles, and Blossom respectively.
Buttercup has a feisty personality, has short black hair, green eyes, and wears green clothes.
Bubbles is playful, has pig tailed blond hair, blue eyes, and wears blue clothes.
Blossom is confident, has a pony tail of bright copper hair, red eyes and wears red clothes.
Nooo... I don't know what you're talking about...
I've never even heard of this Powder Poof Girl...
Any similarities must be entirely coincidental.
Good, 5e is definitely way too easy as levels go up.
the problem isnt the monsters. the problem is the power level that characters get at those high levels.
Pick optimal plays .. ok, I played a beholder and TPKd my party every time.
Oh boy! Raid shadow legends has a new paid update! 🙄
CR is a joke mechanic anyway. I've never used it so this update is pointless for me since I can tell if my group can handle a monster just by looking at it's stat block. I played and ran AD&D for 15 years.
Who decided to scatter NPCs throughout the book? Who found it hard to remember that "Bard" would be in the NPC section? If I'm DMing a fight against a group of, say, NPC street thugs, I'd rather like those NPCs to be grouped together in the book so they're easier to run. I don't want to keep flipping 100 pages between the "Bard" and the "Thug".
Same goes for demons, devils, and anything else that is likely to appear as part of the same group.
one of these days, someone will accept that the core problem behind dnd is that they've made characters too powerful. they are superheroes by mid levels, and gods at high levels.
not to be an old far, but yes, players will always do something creative, but it used to be that monsters were more powerful than players, and they needed to do that to beat them. thats what made it a challenge. now, non creative players can do so by just the dice rolls, and creative players always wipe the monsters.
Its honestly not good for the game.
I don't like the sound of them taking away options for how a monster is played and saying how they will be used in one optimal way dictated by statblock.
Alphabetical is not good. Have an Index.