Quote from: Palleon on May 24, 2022, 01:23:25 PM

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on May 24, 2022, 12:13:55 PM
Mordenkainen's Tome Of Foes was a fairly recent book. To find most of its contents having been given updates in this book makes me ask some serious questions. Like: Where was the playtesting of Tome Of Foes. How could they have not caught stuff that didn't work in it? Where is their quality control?

It's more likely the continuous stream of new player options like Tasha's breaking earlier design assumptions under Mearls' leadership.  The more "cool shit" added for the sales outside the traditional DM focus always breaks everything.

It's more like the old 3.x book where you could assign Effective Character Levels (ECL) to monsters more than anything else.

The books that predate this had rules for abilities and races that were all over the place. This book is a way to standardize all that had come before and reset the baseline for moving forward with creation of PC playable races (30' movement max, 1/long rest abilities vs spells, less Immunities more Resistences, etc.)


The best part is you can either use this book or ignore it and use your old stuff.  That's upto you.

I don't know if this is a way of shitting all over Mearl's methodologies or not.   This feels more like someone from upper management said "Fix all this terribad mess and K.I.S.S" QA finally came to 5E.

I previewed the first 22 pages in Apple Books and looked at War Priest stat block changes on a blog. I find the stat blocks to be a major improvement. Part of the approach is to make sure players are maxing out the intended CR for each monster. CR rating and encounter creation is no doubt a clunky affair. I see how this will help.

Monster descriptions are pretty vanilla, which I have mixed feelings about. Longer write-ups can aid a DM's imagination. Although the best version of a Djinn for your game remains the one you research from several sources, not a long or short write-up in a Monster Manual.

The "Fantastical Races" are also streamlined. Rolling up a Bugbear PC is super easy. But then you still must use the more complicated character creation version from the PHB for other players at the table who wish to use standard race options.

For the record, I do not find the original options to be complicated at all AND I understand Tasha's brings most of those standard options into the streamlined zone. It is a call out that just like you will still need the Monster Manual, complete with the original stat blocks, if you want regular dragons, vampires, etc., these races are only stand alone changes if you restrict use just to the book. Nobody will do that.

Overall, this seems like transition content testing out ideas and approaches that will be fully unleashed with 6e. While beigification is certainly part of woke ideology, and is obviously an undercurrent throughout Mordenkainen's, I saw nothing in the first 22 pages that stood out to me.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 24, 2022, 10:25:19 AM
New players that don't own the previous products won't notice, and that's their target audience. WotC just doesn't care about past players coming back and it barely registers whether current players are sticking around. It's all about the players of tomorrow.

There are a lot of current D&D players who don't have either of those books (Volo's Guide to Everything and Mordenkein's Tome of Foes). I'm an active DM and I don't own either of those.

I'm pretty sure most DMs don't buy all the D&D books - and a lot only have the core three.

Being a rehash is definitely annoying to anyone who bought either of those books, but it sounds like there are some positive changes, which makes me more interested in this book than buying either of the previous two. I have never liked the monster flavor text / fluff that have come with some other books, and some of the mechanical changes sound better. I hate monsters with spells, for example - it's a major pain of page flipping.

I was ranting a bit in my first post in this topic, so I should clarify that I believe that most of the mechanical changes are good or at least streamlined to make better sense as a whole.

But that doesn't change that this should have been free errata, because yes, it's mostly updates to recently published works. I'm well aware that I can continue to use the "Legacy" books just fine moving forward, but I don't think it's asking too much to have free access to the most recent, best playtested version of the material when I already paid for the Legacy books. That's typically how updates work.

The woke part is just the cherry on top of the shitshow.

And yes, I do need to find a good small publisher.

I finally finished reading through the whole book. And it left me with one very sharp impression.

There was a lot of padding of this book with unnecessary statblocks. Statblocks for different types of Wizards and Warlocks etc. This was already information one could get from the Player's Handbook. It wasn't needed here.

There were new monsters mixed in. But obviously not enough taken and updated from Tome Of Foes. This makes needing that original book still a thing. This is not an adiquate replacement.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on May 24, 2022, 12:13:55 PM
...
Mordenkainen's Tome Of Foes was a fairly recent book. To find most of its contents having been given updates in this book makes me ask some serious questions. Like: Where was the playtesting of Tome Of Foes. How could they have not caught stuff that didn't work in it? Where is their quality control?

Mk 1 Mod 0 eyeball...

They throw stuff out on UA, but that is mainly a popularity check.

Then, if they see no obvious problems; In the game it goes!

Quote from: Bloody Malth on May 24, 2022, 09:23:58 PM
I was ranting a bit in my first post in this topic, so I should clarify that I believe that most of the mechanical changes are good or at least streamlined to make better sense as a whole.

But that doesn't change that this should have been free errata, because yes, it's mostly updates to recently published works. I'm well aware that I can continue to use the "Legacy" books just fine moving forward, but I don't think it's asking too much to have free access to the most recent, best playtested version of the material when I already paid for the Legacy books. That's typically how updates work.
...

Define "playtested".

I don't think WotC "playtests" stuff the way most D&D customers think.  They mostly just rely on their "professional game designers" to decide if something will work or not.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on May 24, 2022, 10:27:43 AM
Simplifying the monsters attack patterns to a more 4E approach (1/round, 3/day, etc.) instead of a litanny of spells you'll NEVER use in combat for a monster.

I think they took the absolutely wrong approach to "fixing" this. Creating new Special Moves(tm) to replace spells just totally breaks verisimilitude for a couple reasons. First, because it's just better cantrips, effectively, but don't operate under the same rules. And second, because they are completely inaccessible to players despite them being on player-like creatures. There's plenty of magic rituals (e.g. mythals), divine powers, etc, that go beyond the magic that players can normally use, but these specifically feel like big neon lights spelling out "THIS IS A GAME AND THIS MONSTER ONLY EXISTS TO BE KILLED BY THE PLAYERS."

I would have prefer a list of their most likely combat spells, including short summaries, plus important utility spells that might come up and buffs assumed to be already cast (e.g. Mage Armor), and then a note of how many other spells they can have prepared at the DM's option. That's basically what I do with monster spell lists as is. I pick out about 3 or 4 spells that actually matter and then pull out whatever I feel like that makes sense for them to have if I need it.

Quote from: Innocent Smith on May 25, 2022, 12:23:53 AM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on May 24, 2022, 10:27:43 AM
Simplifying the monsters attack patterns to a more 4E approach (1/round, 3/day, etc.) instead of a litanny of spells you'll NEVER use in combat for a monster.

I think they took the absolutely wrong approach to "fixing" this. Creating new Special Moves(tm) to replace spells just totally breaks verisimilitude for a couple reasons. First, because it's just better cantrips, effectively, but don't operate under the same rules. And second, because they are completely inaccessible to players despite them being on player-like creatures. There's plenty of magic rituals (e.g. mythals), divine powers, etc, that go beyond the magic that players can normally use, but these specifically feel like big neon lights spelling out "THIS IS A GAME AND THIS MONSTER ONLY EXISTS TO BE KILLED BY THE PLAYERS."
....

I disagree with all of these points.

For virtually all RPG's monsters only really exist to be killed by the players. Gameplay as intended.

How do 'Special Moves' break verisimilitude from the players POV? How will they know the difference during combat? Unless the group finds the GM not having to stop everything to look up how a spell works immersion breaking.

Who cares if monster powers are inaccessible to the PC's? Yeah, a monster can do things a PC can't. Who complains about that?

Quote from: Jaeger on May 25, 2022, 02:18:31 AM
I disagree with all of these points.

For virtually all RPG's monsters only really exist to be killed by the players. Gameplay as intended.

How do 'Special Moves' break verisimilitude from the players POV? How will they know the difference during combat? Unless the group finds the GM not having to stop everything to look up how a spell works immersion breaking.

Who cares if monster powers are inaccessible to the PC's? Yeah, a monster can do things a PC can't. Who complains about that?

Agreed.

In my own system I have three levels of opponent/monster design;

- Standard - built to be an opponent in a single encounter with various special abilities to set it apart. As a rule of thumb, if something has more than three special abilities they're better built at the next level.

- PC-Light - built like a PC and then run through a filter to sort of automate various resource expenditures a PC fighting for their lives would make. Good for bosses and recurring NPCs (ally or enemy).

- Full PC - Just use a PC as is; usually only needed for ubiquitous NPCs like long term henchmen and the like.

Worth noting, PCs are presumed to be exceptional (there's a whole sidebar on what the abilities of "mere mortals" are vs. the abilities of PCs). The companions and hirelings they can pick up through their backgrounds and with coin are generally the top 1%, but even a starting PC is more like the top 0.01%. That doesn't make them invincible... they're just the SEAL Team Six equivalents relative to the military and general population as a whole.

As such, the standard build often better reflects the less capable nature of many creatures in the world (i.e. the city guard isn't an organization of PCs; they're the pool from which a PC or two might emerge).