Regarding NPC stat blocks..can't there just be a reference to the DMG like we do for monster manual entries? WOuldn't that save space?
Thoughts?
jh
I do not know about others, but some of us post from work and do not have access to a DMG at work. I tend to post when ever I can.
Dungeon for me is easy to slip into my things and work with like that, but its bulky to carry my books, also, I have found in table top my DMG is opened to other sections, and too many book marks, make for confusion in a game, so it by far makes it easier for me as A GM to have them included.
I would say that the generic representations in the DMG aren't sufficient for all adventures.
Nah; the generic NPCs in the DMG are not only not good for most encoutners, they're also not in the current stat block format. I'd much rather include a full stat block for all important NPCs in an adventrue.
Yes, and we love you for it. At least my group.
I'm a big fan of the current stat-block format. Nonetheless, I concur with the premise that gargantuan stat blocks, particularly in high-level adventures, are cumbersome and gobble up space better suited for other aspects of adventure description.
Is there any way to abbreviate these stat blocks? I'm willing sacrifice some detail and accuracy for space. Most less-than-top-villain foes expire in 4 to 6 rounds (if not sooner) without using the bulk of their lesser powers, so do we really need all of their lesser capabilities detailed? Does anyone care what 0-level spells the 17th-level wizard has prepared? He's got a staff of power. Do we care that he has the Craft Staff and Craft Magic Arms feats to have built it himself? Do we give a flying fig about his jump skill bonus?
We all know that you can't plan for everything. Nonetheless, can't we shorten these stat blocks with some judicious decisions about what info the adventure's context is likely to make relevant? Competent DM's can (and will) make up necessary but missing information on the fly -- and, in my experience, not be too far off the mark.
Regarding NPC stat blocks..can't there just be a reference to the DMG like we do for monster manual entries? WOuldn't that save space?
Thoughts?
jh
I'm not with you on this. In my case I seldom run Dungeon adventures as such (except for Shackled City) but take parts I find interesting. Included carefully-professionnally-detailed NPC statblocks. D&D3.x requires a lot of time when you're designing NPCs. I tend to trust Dungeon staff on this even if I re-read to check for any mistakes or make changes to fit my campaign. But it saves me time I need very much on other matters than game preparation. Same reason why I enjoyed MM IV or why I'm still buying WotC books, I let the professionals do the maths for me.
Bran.
Is there any way to abbreviate these stat blocks? I'm willing sacrifice some detail and accuracy for space. Most less-than-top-villain foes expire in 4 to 6 rounds (if not sooner) without using the bulk of their lesser powers, so do we really need all of their lesser capabilities detailed? Does anyone care what 0-level spells the 17th-level wizard has prepared? He's got a staff of power. Do we care that he has the Craft Staff and Craft Magic Arms feats to have built it himself? Do we give a flying fig about his jump skill bonus?
0-level spells you may have a point (though I've used them with baddies in pre-fight conditions. Things like ghost sound can have some fun effects.
But the feats, I think are harder to leave out. Let's say you leave Craft Wand and Craft Staff off the 17th level wizard's stat block. Now I'm running the adventure. I look at the stat block and see he has two feats missing. Do I ignore it? Do I add feats? Well, if I add feats, I'm going to add things that'll impact game play most likely. So now the wizard is a bigger challenge than was originally intended.
What if my players do something that causes that wizard to have to make a Jump check? Would I rather the stat block have two extra words to say "Jump +2" or would I rather have to go through, see his Strength mod, check his speed to see if there's a bonus or penalty, look for magic items like boots of striding and springing or a ring of jump and then add it all together? Personally, I'll take the two extra words.
I can see the incompleteness causing all sorts of problems. I'm likely to get the right number, but why should I need to spend the two minutes or so checking the stat block for all those other things, when I could've just looked for two words on the skills line?
All good points. Perhaps any form of stat-block abridgement sacrifices too much. I nonetheless remain disappointed that these cyclopean blocks overrun pages that authors could otherwise devote to plot, atmosphere, additional enounters, or other defining adventure elements. I have no viable solution to offer, however.
I considered proposing abbreviated stat blocks in the magazine buttressed by full stats in online downloads. Myriad obvious impediments render this solution untenable, however. Some DMs lack internet access, printers, or other physical necessities to use online downloads. Many wouldn't want to devote the time, paper, or printer ink to downloading and printing. Many would consider the resulting printouts less convenient than having all necessary content in the magazine itself. Moreover, if I were publishing a magazine, I'd want purchasers to be satisfied with its content straight off the magazine rack. One shouldn't have to go online to appreciate its content fully.
But I still mourn the loss of pages gobbled up by these elephantine blocks.
well, there are ways to slightly shorten a stat block. Using core material is the easiest. For example, the stat block for an elven wizard is shorter than the stat block for an elven wu jen, because the wu jen's stat block also has to provide you information about any of the wu jen's class abilities. The same holds true for races - use a race from the PHB or MM and your stat block is shorter than one for the same class with a race from another monster book, again because racial abilities might need to be detailed to describe how they work so they can be used as is.
Another way for a writer to save word count on stat blocks is to reuse material from the same adventure. If your adventure calls for four guards, make them all the same; then you only need one stat block instead of four. You can even do something like, "See page XX, but with a longsword (1d8) instead of a shortsword." Now your guard is "different" without having a whole big stat block.
I think long stat blocks is just the nature of the beast when dealing with high level adventures, and it's just one more challenge for the writer to overcome.
Creative Director
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Stat blocks are part of what makes D&D what it is. Abridging them is just as bad as abridging the text of an adventure. It's best to find a happy medium where stats and text and maps and art are nicely balanced, which is what we aim for in Dungeon. When we get to a point where we've got more words than will fit in an issue, we don't just trim text. We trim from everything (although we try to cut maps and art last, since they're more expensive) but make sure that what's left still functions, and we especially don't cut any of the parts of an adventure that make it what it is.
I hope that makes sense; it sounded like it kinda started rambling there...
Its certainly a fine line that has to be walked. I think Dungeon does a fair job deciding when they can get away with a "refer to page 123 of the DMG" and when a more important NPC needs to be statted out.
What about human hero-fodder? A low-level NPC, with one or two levels of commoner or warrior, is only going to last a few seconds. They aren't going to have ability modifiers, and perhaps only one skill or feat that might affect play. How do I stat these suckers?
The utility of full stat blocks is that they present the variables we need to reference. The downside is that there's a great deal of standard information in each one that doesn't represent what makes the listing unique and intersting.
As a DM who favors low-fantasy campaigns, I'm constantly replacing monster stat-blocks with humanoid mooks of equal challenge rating, and it would suite my playstyle (to the tune of an hour or more of prep saved) to have some standard mook stat-blocks in the reference literature. Specifically, I'd like to see full write-ups for thugs, guards, murderers, raiders, soldiers, innocents, and so on in a handful of CRs each, worked up generically as we have the generic ogre or the generic skeleton already in the monster manual. We already have the option with monsters to swap out some feats or move some skills around and use the middle-short form stat write-up. Since it seems unlikely that WotC/Hasbro is going to make a Folio of Generic NPCs a core book anytime soon, it would be nice to see the NPC listings in the DMG brought up to the level of definition where they could be listed as a standard
reference and customized from there by the same feat-swapping tricks and such we have at our disposal for monsters.
And as a side note: the #1 mook in campaigns I run:
Human Rog1/War2. (CR2)
Represents a skilled agent of most any organization the party might face, has 3 feats worth of customizatiom for flavor, enough skill points to do a couple things well, and packs a little extra threat if they surround a partymember, thanks to the sneak attack die. In short, they've got just enough up their sleeve to make a fight interesting, and not so much as to clutter my brainspace.
Stat blocks are part of what makes D&D what it is. Abridging them is just as bad as abridging the text of an adventure. It's best to find a happy medium where stats and text and maps and art are nicely balanced, which is what we aim for in Dungeon. When we get to a point where we've got more words than will fit in an issue, we don't just trim text. We trim from everything (although we try to cut maps and art last, since they're more expensive) but make sure that what's left still functions, and we especially don't cut any of the parts of an adventure that make it what it is.
I hope that makes sense; it sounded like it kinda started rambling there...
Ramble away James.
Whilst I, too, and concerned at the amount of space that high-level stat-blocks chew up, using the NPC's from the DMG makes thing a little too cookie-cutter for my tastes. And I'd certainly want all the relevant stats in one place for easy prep and use at the game table.
I'll advertise Lillith's excellent resource for hard-pressed DM's at
http://www.dmtools.org/
It's got lots of different CR NPC types statted up already for your convenience.
I'll also mention HeroForge (available by Googling) in which I can put together a high-level adversary for my group relatively quickly. In fact, I threw together a L12 Fighter for a new player in about half-an-hour recently.
Contributor
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I have to jump in and say that as a brand spanking new DM, I LOVE the NPC stat blocks. I ran my first game session yesterday, and having the major players all laid out for me was a huge boon. Thanks, Paizo!
An excellent point Elora. Let's not forget that EVERY issue of Dungeon is someone's FIRST issue of Dungeon. That new DM needs all the help he can get, because, frankly, DMing is hard. ;)
I have to jump in and say that as a brand spanking new DM, I LOVE the NPC stat blocks. I ran my first game session yesterday, and having the major players all laid out for me was a huge boon. Thanks, Paizo!
Congrats, Elora! And welcome!
I have to jump in and say that as a brand spanking new DM, I LOVE the NPC stat blocks. I ran my first game session yesterday, and having the major players all laid out for me was a huge boon. Thanks, Paizo!
What adventure did you run?
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Thanks for the welcome, all! :-)
I ran Riding the Rails, with a few modifications. We made it about half-way through last Sunday, and everyone seemed to enjoy it - especially tossing the party's gnome cleric across the top of the rail cars. And dangling him over the side with a rope to look through the windows. Although they had me concerned when they almost immediately began climbing around on top of all the cars and exploring the storage areas instead of playing nice and going to sleep. I had nice little index cards set up for everyone they would run into for the first three scheduled encounters, but I barely kept them from jumping straight to the guarded storage cart. *whew*