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MonsterEnvy posted:You are not taking it the other things about the monsters into consideration. There is more about them then just damage. They're evenly matched in their melee attack bonuses. They're both Large. The Ogre has the centaur beat on HP (by 14). It has a better Str by 1, and better Con by 2. It has Darkvision, which the centaur does not. It's base ranged attack is +2 better to hit and does more damage (but see below). The Centaur has better AC (by 1). It has better Dex by 6, Int by 4, Wis by 6, and Cha by 4. It has a better move by 10'. It has a better passive perception by 5. It has three skills where the ogre has none. It has a special ability where the ogre has none. It has a longer reach with its pike than the ogre does with its greatclub. The Ogre's melee attack is +6 hit, 2d8+4. The Centaur's melee attacks are +6 hit, 1d10+4 and 2d6+4. The Ogre's ranged attack is +6 hit, 11 (2d6+4). The Centaur's ranged attack is +4 hit, 6 (1d8+2) but it gets two of them so it's actually 12 (2d8+4). So... Ogre is better by: 14hp, Darkvision, 2 points of ranged attack bonus. Centaur is better by: 1 AC, 13 stat points (which affect saves), 10' of speed, Charge (+3d6 damage), +5 passive perception, 3 skills, one extra attack. (late edit: it's also better by 5' reach) SO it looks very much like nobody ever sat down and compared the two. Even if they did they got it wrong.  MonsterEnvy posted:Anyway the Building encounters thing is stated to not be final and I hope it changes a bit more. Maybe we could wait and see if the monster math is fixed in the DMG! It's not like we're arguing about monster math for monsters that have already been released in a book or anything... Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 23:32
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MonsterEnvy posted:Have you looked at them yourself yet? It's not that complicated if you look at the chart. I hope it changes in the future myself however as it prevents lower level creatures being used with higher level creatures in any decent number. Yes, I have, and it IS unnecessarily complicated and, more irritating to me, founded on nothing concrete. I'm going to break down everything wrong with this approach to encounter building right here and now, and why it infuriates me so much. You have an exp budget that is meaningless in the face of a CR difficulty calculation. As an example, the rules state the general idea that 4 Level 1 PCs = 1 enemy of CR 1 (The "Medium" difficulty). However, 4 Level 1 PCs does NOT equal 4 enemies of CR 1/4, which, for all intents and purposes will give the PCs an exact same reward in exp as if they had fought ONE CR 1 enemy. BUT, in difficulty terms, this set up would be in the "Deadly" category since you multiply the encounter exp by 2 when facing 3-6 enemies... but you don't give the PCs more exp. The party would be effectively fighting an encounter WORTH double the standard exp, but do not actually get rewarded that much exp. Why on earth would you even HAVE this if the PCs are not getting rewarded for overcoming it. What is CR based on? There is no formula that determines challenge rating. The only thing we have to go on is AC, HP, saves and abilities, but NONE of these things are founded on any kind of actual honest to God MATH. Hell, there aren't even any GUIDELINES to how CR is determined, which would still miss the efficiency mark by a hundred yards, but at least it would be SOMEthing. Regardless, every monster we have seen so far has seemingly arbitrarily assigned statistics founded on no concrete math formula to help prospective DMs understand how and why the system works the way it does. Why does the Winter Wolf, with a 14 CON, 13 AC and CR 3 have 75 HP compared to a YETI who has 12 AC and 16 CON, 51 HP and is also a CR 3 monster . The Winter Wolf has nothing but abilities that HELP IT while the Yeti has an ability that gives it disadvantage if it takes fire damage. These two monsters do not make any kind of logical sense why they are BOTH CR 3, and you CANNOT reverse engineer how they were assigned that CR because none of their numbers are even remotely comparable to one another. Hit Die doesn't even factor into it apparently because the Wolf has 10 while the Yeti has 6. So what we have is an encounter building system that: A) has an unnecessary step that dicks players out of experience for overcoming a challenge against multiple enemies that would net them more if they were to have just fought a SINGLE enemy worth the same amount, and B) is founded on a CR system that has no concrete math at all to back it up other than arbitrariness and is completely impossible to reverse engineer. Does ANY of this actually sound like exemplary game design to those who want to run their own drat game? I have been a DnD DM for almost 15 years now, and I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that this makes encounter building a complete crapshoot. Not only that but creating said encounters using this method requires you, the DM, to look CLOSELY at the enemy's actual abilities to determine whether or not the encounter you just made won't just end in a TPK. Last, but certainly not least, this will eat huge chunks of your time when crafting your own game. It is why I no longer run 3E or any of its derivatives, and it is very much so why I will not be running 5E. Building encounters shouldn't be a struggle, it shouldn't take hours to do, and you shouldn't have to double check poo poo the game designers made to make sure they didn't gently caress it up along the way. Edit: ^ Yes, AlphaDog, you demonstrate my second argument better than I did. Agent Boogeyman fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 23:33
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MonsterEnvy posted:You are not taking it the other things about the monsters into consideration. There is more about them then just damage. Those monsters were all judged to be exactly as significant a challenge as the mind flayer guard dog that eats everyone's brains.
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Oct 5, 2014 23:40
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PeterWeller posted:Already is. One of the few smart moves in 5E is making average damage default for monsters. You're thinking of 13th Age maybe? 5E monsters still roll dice. e: But you also get less swingy misses when there's more than one actor attacking. moths fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 23:42
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Really Pants posted:Those monsters were all judged to be exactly as significant a challenge as the mind flayer guard dog that eats everyone's brains. ROLEplaying not ROLLplaying! A centaur could eat your brains too if the DM decides it wants to.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:03
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moths posted:You're thinking of 13th Age maybe? 5E monsters still roll dice. 5e monsters have average damage listed in the statblocks as an option, as later 4e monsters also did (or maybe that was just LFR I don't know)so you can just say 8 instead of rolling 2d6+1 or whatever.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:05
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http://surfarcher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/d-5e-monsters-master-index.html This guy is doing the math as I liked last page.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:18
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AlphaDog posted:
I am not talking about that. The basic rules even say the system is not final.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:20
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MonsterEnvy posted:I am not talking about that. The basic rules even say the system is not final. Has anything actually been improved once it was copy/pasted from the free rules you can totally play the game with right now to the rulebook you still for-sure need to buy? How, given the way the monster numbers are already loving published, can they go about fixing the problems I've stated? Also, where's your response to the rest of my post? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 00:29
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MonsterEnvy posted:I am not talking about that. The basic rules even say the system is not final.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:34
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Nihilarian posted:So, assuming I want to play DnDNext, when will the final, for-real rules be available? How long am I going to have to play with the busted rules before they fix them to be not busted? 2017 is the projected release date for Next.5.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:41
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MonsterEnvy posted:http://surfarcher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/d-5e-monsters-master-index.html This guy wrote a whole lot of words/did a whole lot of math to end up just sorta tummy feeling his way through building his monster, who is just a spell caster with access to limited 3rd level spells.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:43
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Misandu posted:This guy wrote a whole lot of words/did a whole lot of math to end up just sorta tummy feeling his way through building his monster, who is just a spell caster with access to limited 3rd level spells. Hey, we should at least give that guy credit for trying to run it through the rules in the first place! Some people don't even do that much
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Oct 6, 2014 00:52
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MonsterEnvy posted:I am not talking about that. The basic rules even say the system is not final. You know, eventually, you're going to have to agree that the game has in fact been released.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:54
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Grimpond posted:Hey, we should at least give that guy credit for trying to run it through the rules in the first place! Some people don't even do that much What he's really doing is just figuring out what's actually challenging for PCs of a certain level and then basing monster math around that. It's the best way to do it I just don't know why he's making scatter plots that boil down to things like "most monsters have two traits." It's the 4th Edition approach but he's hiding it behind pointless math and natural language.
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Oct 6, 2014 01:01
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Misandu posted:What he's really doing is just figuring out what's actually challenging for PCs of a certain level and then basing monster math around that. It's the best way to do it I just don't know why he's making scatter plots that boil down to things like "most monsters have two traits." It's the 4th Edition approach but he's hiding it behind pointless math and natural language. Oh. Well, at least he's still trying?
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Oct 6, 2014 01:02
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Agent Boogeyman posted:The only explanation I can think of for such ludicrous and needlessly overcomplicated encounter building rules is that the developers just don't want anyone to actually use their system to run a game. I was only lukewarm to 5E until the whole CR bullshit reared its ugly head again and now I'm already kind of hating it. I will never even attempt to run 5E unless I feel especially masochistic. It's SO overcomplicated and bullshit that I'm willing to bet hard money that no one will be building encounters properly; Not out of desire to change said rules, but out of ignorance of how the rules actually WORK and being none the wiser about it. I was going to take issue with your post until I reread and saw "building encounters properly," as in, according to RAW. This is pretty true. I've been really enjoying the 5e campaign I'm Dming thus far, but a large portion of that is because I rarely cleave to RAW in any game I run. I've cobbled together monsters from 4 and 5e, to find monsters that maintain their lethality and squishiness while still having mechanically interesting properties. I like 5e, but the whole CR thing is super dumb. I hated it in my 3.5 books and I hate it now.
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Oct 6, 2014 03:12
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Misandu posted:What he's really doing is just figuring out what's actually challenging for PCs of a certain level and then basing monster math around that. It's the best way to do it I just don't know why he's making scatter plots that boil down to things like "most monsters have two traits." It's the 4th Edition approach but he's hiding it behind pointless math and natural language. It's the same approach that Treeboy and I were using, solving for monster stats based off PC output because that's how you're supposed to do it. The problem with Surfarcher's analysis is that it's just a trend-line analysis and not an actual content analysis. It's easy enough to arrive at the various ranges based on averages, but that still doesn't tell you if any given monster is actually cohesive, and after paaaaaages of math he still doesn't have a simple set of rules for making a monster of a given CR. All he's really proving is something that we figured out ages ago: there's no actual formula, just that as CR goes up numbers get bigger. One of the critical holes is that none of our work has managed to produce a useful metric for monster modifications. If you put an Ogre in plate mail what's its new CR? Keep in mind that Surfarcher's formulae look like this: code:
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Oct 6, 2014 03:23
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ProfessorCirno posted:You know, eventually, you're going to have to agree that the game has in fact been released. You're giving him too much credit.
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Oct 6, 2014 03:31
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It has been released but the DMG is not out yet. And it says that the building encounters entry is a work in progress. Also I need some help.  Does anyone know were I can get the full image of this.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:00
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MonsterEnvy posted:It has been released but the DMG is not out yet. And it says that the building encounters entry is a work in progress. I'll tell you if you actually engage in the discussion you started when you came in talking about the rules for monster and encounter building
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Oct 6, 2014 05:06
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What concerns me isn't that they haven't posted encounter/monster building rules yet, it's that the monsters themselves don't appear to adhere to anything more than loose guidelines, so any "rules" will be at the mercy of which monsters you're picking. Monsterenvy are you asking for the source of the piece of art or an actual link to the full image? It's from HotDQ page 26, but I don't know where to find it online.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:08
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branar posted:What concerns me isn't that they haven't posted encounter/monster building rules yet, it's that the monsters themselves don't appear to adhere to anything more than loose guidelines, so any "rules" will be at the mercy of which monsters you're picking. oh come on, I thought we'd finally have a hook to get ME into the discussion
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Oct 6, 2014 05:10
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MonsterEnvy posted:It has been released but the DMG is not out yet. And it says that the building encounters entry is a work in progress. And nothing seems, I dunno... weird to you, that the instructions for how to actually use a book that has already been finished and released are considered "a work in progress"? Like, that's not a red flag? 'cus, I mean, it's not like they can just alter the way that CR is calculated, or anything, unless they're looking to errata 350 pages of monsters once the DMG comes out. But what do I know. It's not like fighting things for their loot and XP is a core part of the game, or anything. Certainly not something you'd consider to be a pillar; the kind of thing that you'd want squared away before you release a giant book of monsters for fifty bucks.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:10
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branar posted:Monsterenvy are you asking for the source of the piece of art or an actual link to the full image? It's from HotDQ page 26, but I don't know where to find it online. The later. I own the book and I have been able to get every piece of art from it other then the guard drake. LFK posted:And nothing seems, I dunno... weird to you, that the instructions for how to actually use a book that has already been finished and released are considered "a work in progress"? The only thing I think that needs some work is how the multipliers are calculated. Because the multiplier gets too high despite the fact its not going to be as deadly as it says it would be. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 05:11
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MonsterEnvy posted:It has been released but the DMG is not out yet. And it says that the building encounters entry is a work in progress. Is that from Monster Hunter?
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Oct 6, 2014 05:13
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That looks suspiciously like the crop I did for my HODQ game.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:15
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ritorix posted:That looks suspiciously like the crop I did for my HODQ game. It is. I can't PM and this thread was a better place to ask for the full picture then your game thread.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:19
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MonsterEnvy posted:The only thing I think that needs some work is how the multipliers are calculated. Because the multiplier gets too high despite the fact its not going to be as deadly as it says it would be. So wait, 4 orcs aren't a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? How many orcs are a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? What about if they're Hobgoblins instead? Tell me, what can they do with multipliers and so on that will make the hosed CR/XP system they already published actually work? While you're at it, please explain to us how the system will handle stuff that gets better when there's more of it (like the Hobgoblin) as opposed to things that don't get better near allies (like the Orc). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 05:44
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I've got the full body of the dragon thing copied to imgur and everything! You can do it ME, i believe in you.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:48
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Glukeose posted:I was going to take issue with your post until I reread and saw "building encounters properly," as in, according to RAW. This is pretty true. I've been really enjoying the 5e campaign I'm Dming thus far, but a large portion of that is because I rarely cleave to RAW in any game I run. I've cobbled together monsters from 4 and 5e, to find monsters that maintain their lethality and squishiness while still having mechanically interesting properties. I'm a firm believer that a system should be able to stand on its own, RAW, without having to resort to house ruling to fix obvious and glaring mistakes or bad game design decisions that should have been weeded out long before it hit publication. Not to say I take umbrage to the idea of house ruling itself, because I have done my fair share of it in the past, but there is a stark difference between making meaningful adjustments to the rules for your game in order to add something to the overall experience (Example: The way 4E handled Dark Sun) compared to having to tear half the book out, then rewrite everything to get the drat thing to function at all (IE: changing rests in 5E to five minutes because mechanically the Fighter does not function properly with rests being an hour long). What I'm saying is that us DMs shouldn't feel like unpaid editors of someone else's fuckups. Fuckups we paid money for, mind you.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:57
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We can easily boil this down to: Are the differences between monsters of an equivalent CR equitable in some fashion? I field this to MonsterEnvy and other NEXT defenders since it seems like, for example, the Centaur is just plain more threatening when compared to the Ogre.
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Oct 6, 2014 06:47
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Just remember that the post that his custom title links to was also an argument about CR.MonsterEnvy posted:Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about a formula. The Chart there is pretty much higher CR means more hp and or damage.
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Oct 6, 2014 07:01
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Stepping aside from the ME pig-pile, or really, alongside it, I am more scared of seeing what the system in the DMG looks like than if there were really no system at all. Like think about it - what if they did cobble together something comprehensive? What if the occulted 'math team' has actually been hard at work reverse engineering forumlae from the MM? I haven't taken calculus in a while, but I'm pretty sure you'll have to use derivatives and let CR approach infinity or something to backsolve for AC. Also algebra, I'm sure there will be algebra. Maybe that's how we bring in the AD&D crowd?
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Oct 6, 2014 09:03
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Has anyone played a game far enough yet to get to the awesome Animate Dead?
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Oct 6, 2014 09:16
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So, wait, 5e's system for encounter-building has XP-budget bean-counting like 4e combined with 3e-style CR, and at some point in the formula you're supposed to multiply the amount of XP gained by the number of monsters or something to find out how tough the challenge is, but this multiplication in no way affects how much XP the characters actually get out of the encounter? 
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Oct 6, 2014 09:25
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Mendrian posted:Stepping aside from the ME pig-pile, or really, alongside it, I am more scared of seeing what the system in the DMG looks like than if there were really no system at all. Like think about it - what if they did cobble together something comprehensive? What if the occulted 'math team' has actually been hard at work reverse engineering forumlae from the MM? I cast Mordenkainen's Continuously Differentiable Function!  It's countered by Evard's Fallacical Argument and then I'm killed by a dude wielding a Non-sequitur +4. The Dread Philosopher of Skull Mountain wins again... Ratpick posted:So, wait, 5e's system for encounter-building has XP-budget bean-counting like 4e combined with 3e-style CR, and at some point in the formula you're supposed to multiply the amount of XP gained by the number of monsters or something to find out how tough the challenge is, but this multiplication in no way affects how much XP the characters actually get out of the encounter? It's more like 5e's system for encounter building Then there's a 3e-style CR which is hard-linked to XP (and therefore to the XP-budget) but has different guidelines that don't produce the same encounters. Maybe this is modules? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Oct 6, 2014 |
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Oct 6, 2014 09:49
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AlphaDog posted:Maybe this is modules? I laughed out loud at the notion that this is scribbled in the margins of Mearl's notes for 5e, which are of course just bar napkins covered in pictures of dwarves fighting beholders and the occasional note like, "Modules?" and "Backsolve for HD" and "wizardbone" and an arrow pointing at a wizard's groin.
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Oct 6, 2014 10:29
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I don't get the difference between half-dragons and dragonborn. One is a race of proud, warlike humanoids with dragon blood that share the breath attack of their draconic ancestor. The other is a race of proud, warlike humanoids with dragon blood that share the breath attack of their draconic ancestor, but seem to be stronger. Playing HotDQ, the bad guys aren't dragonborn like one or two PCs are likely to be, but instead look identical and are totally different. It's almost like they didn't think about integrating legacy D&D content with the new ideas from more modern editions or anything.
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Oct 6, 2014 12:27
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I'm not sure I understand the whole xp budget thing. If the multiplier doesn't effect the earned xp, why are you supposed to use it? I've just been flat adding all monsters together and dividing by number of players.
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Oct 6, 2014 12:56
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