Monster Builder

Wizards released the Monster Builder beta yesterday through the Insider website. I've downloaded it and played with it a little, so I thought I'd give my first impressions.

The interface is pretty slick - the heavy use of drag-and-drop for monsters and powers is definitely intuitive when you're building up a variant monster. The browsing of both monsters and powers, and the filters available, make finding a theme very easy. Adding optional features is very easy and intuitive, popping up new blocks for you to fill in

The builder automatically figures out abilities, hp, to-hit and damage for you, based on the role(s) you give it, which for most people will make this tool the most valuable -- the numbers are the real "rules", and the system knows them and calculates with them so you don't have to.


It's still beta, and so there are a few niggly bits that need to be fixed; when adding a power, you have a Description line, but then an Attacks block inside the power also has a Description line, and an Attack Info. It takes typing something into each of these to get a sense of where each will appear in the final block and eventually determine what info goes where. This revealed a minor bug that I've reported, where if you fill in one of these fields and then decide afterwards you don't want anything there, the parentheses it had put around your initial text stay in the power block, but empty: "Range 10; +41 vs. Will; ();" Nothing horrible, but something to be cleaned up (and, as the Wizards team responded to me, you can just delete the power and re-make it -- it's not like it takes any time to do.)

Other fields, such as Range or Damage, are hit-and-miss on how free-form they are; Range lets you type in anything you like, where perhaps it should adhere to the handful of "valid" ranges that 4e supports (so you know whether you should type "10" or "Ranged 10" to make it look like a Monster Manual entry). And Damage, which kindly fills in a "typical" value based on the frequency of the power's use, also lets you customize it - to a point. When making a joke monster as my first test, I wanted to put in a different type of damage, but any thing that wasn't a number or of the for XdY+Z popped back to the recommended value.

My biggest complaint, given my limited experience with it, is that while the abilities and hp and defense scores are all nicely calculated for you, you don't get any indication on how many powers are appropriate for your new monster. Even if the number of at-will powers isn't that important, the number of encounter and recharge powers probably are - you don't want them to have so many of these that they never have to rely on their at-wills, do you?

Or maybe you do -- in our last gaming session, the group fought a spellcaster that had three recharge-56 powers to choose from, and not once did she have to rely on a basic attack - perhaps my dice were hot that night, but for a level four or five encounter, that seemed pretty impressive (and considering the spellcaster by-far dominated the combat, perhaps it *was* too much?) The back of the DM's Guide suggests "...[t]hen add one encounter power or rechargeable power per tier (one at heroic, two at paragon, three at epic)." If the second module in the series violates this rule, are my hand-made monsters going to be challenging enough if I was to abide by it?

The final output is the other issue that I and others seem to have; you can print them out, but there's no export to an image or to some other format. I haven't found where my custom monsters are stored yet, so I'm not sure if it's in some nice readable format, but even if they don't want us pilfering monster data for our own uses, but an export for posting to the web would be very useful for those who like to blog about their new creations.


I'll have to play with it a little more to really see how flexible it is -- I haven't tried making a base monster and then using the tools to add the "warlord"/"sneak"/"minion"/"captain" versions of it, but the tools definitely look set up for making that easy. Oh, and the monster button uses the portrait of the gnome from the cartoon.

Is this all there is?

We had another gaming session on Friday night, and it went well enough; no one died, new creatures were encountered and their "special traits" were seen. The players (and characters) used some good tactics, but weren't taxed - it was a good night for experience gains.

But it was also a night of combat. And combat. Oh, and a little clue found there in that pile. But that's it, and that's what this module has started to feel like - just a dungeon crawl.

Not that there's anything wrong with a dungeon crawl; fighting monsters, especially ones that are new, or that challenge you to fight with some strategy, is definitely something core to 4e D&D. And, yes, the characters assume that there's a reason they're muscling through the area, seeking the right wrongs and such, as heroes often do.

And I know that previously, I've commented that these combats have been welcome, because we needed to learn the new combat system of 4e, to get a feel for moving from saving throws to defense attacks and for the plethora of powers we now have to manage.

But I want something more. Yes, this adventure has a story in it, and there are hooks that have the characters' motivations fueled, and they have a goal, and a name of some baddie out there, but it just feels very off-balanced towards combat combat combat. We had some roleplaying in earlier sessions, but there's only so much you can do with a mindless opponent, one that doesn't seem ready to parlay.

I know that, as the DM, I can add whatever I like - but I'm trying to follow this adventure as close to written as I can, just to leave it in someone else's hands to invent this time around as we all learn the new rules. I guess I had hoped that a published Wizards of the Coast module would be a little more balanced in such things, since they're the professionals. I like to think that my own adventures mix things up a bit. Perhaps the characters are just going the wrong way, the hack-and-slash way, instead of mixing it up the way the adventure expects.

That's right - always blame the players.

The 4.0 tightrope

The blog postings continue about monster design, so the developers certainly have my attention.

Matt Sernett's latest post talks again about the formulas that attempted to make balanced monsters in the 3rd edition system. He mentions that advancing monsters by HD was a good example of where it may or may not work, and this is why I always avoided the advancement system. If I was going to improve a monster, I always added class levels or a template, as I found them a little more balanced. But, as he goes on to say, sometimes the CR wasn't always right to begin with.

The one that comes to mind is the Lhosk in Monster Manual III. I had just picked the book up, and a forest-dwelling foe of CR4 is exactly what I needed. It was meant to look like a random encounter, but was there only to keep the party on their toes on a long journey. Did you read that, players? It was not a random encounter! Needless to say, the lhosk wiped out the party. I never did go back to look at the creature's stats to figure out whether my rolls were just lucky, if the party's rolls were bad, or if the creature is unbalanced, but I had always suspected the last one.

Sernett's mention of level "ranges" sounds like something that will help in this regard. They seem to be putting a lot of effort into the roles that opponents play in encounters, and having their effective challenge rating reflect this. This rings clear with me, because more than one spellcasting lieutenant has been dispatched too easily simply because he couldn't get out of range from the melee fighters in the party. Sure, I could have given him a balcony from which he stood, safe but from missile weapons, but sometimes the terrain dictates the encounter, regardless of how omnipotent you are as the DM. This role idea is something I'm looking forward to.


James Wyatt's latest talks about the dragons that will appear in the first Monster Manual, and my feelings are mixed.

The idea of an out-of-the-box dragon, all figured out and ready to be thrown at the pitiful party, is going to be welcome for many. Not having to figure out age, or size, or spells, or whatever else is going to save some people some time.

But the dragon is iconic, and I don't think there should be anything rushed about introducing one, whether a wyrmling or an ancient wyrm. Any encounter with a dragon should be something memorable, never something rolled up on a random encounter table. And this is why I disagree with the idea of having a ready-made dragon. Make the system a little easier to make the unique, majestic creature you need, but don't lump them into the same class of beast as a goblin or demon.

The myth of party balance.

I'm hoping that 4e will finally put to rest the mindset that a party has to be "balanced" in order to survive. By balanced, I mean the traditional Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric group.

Yes, another class can fill in for one of those roles. A paladin, barbarian, or even a monk can take the fighter spot. A druid can fill in for a cleric.

But, in essence, for a party to be called "balanced" you need to have a damage dealer, a damage healer, a caster, and a trap disarmer.

I say bollocks to that. A group of good players can overcome or find their way around any obstacle with enough time, ingenuity, and skill. A bit of luck never hurts either.

We've had parties of characters that didn't have a cleric or a true rogue, but we did just fine thank you very much. We've also had parties that were the definition of balanced, and were wiped out. It always comes down the player smarts and the roll of the dice. The dreaded natural 1 on a saving throw is the case in point.

I'm optimistic that 4e is going to emphasize versatility and variation within each class. If my wizard uses some of his book smarts to learn how to disarm traps or pick locks, then why do we need a rogue? If my barbarian learns to set bones and bandage wounds then we can do without a cleric.

So, I'm hoping that with rumors of talent trees and race abilities that grow in level, that the idea of needing party balance will go the way of THAC0.

(Over?)simplifying rules

One of the parts of the 4th Edition teaser that really hit home was when they all had to go their books to look up the rules on grappling. Our group has done exactly that, on grappling and various other rules.

There are certainly rules that need to be simplified, or easier to commit to memory. We really enjoy that various combat options that are provided with 3.0/3.5, such as tripping, grappling, disarming, etc. but when they're not used often, they do cause a delay in play. The upcoming Rules Compendium sounds like it will at least provide all of these esoteric rules in one nice, convenient place, but one must wonder why they're releasing such a thing so close to the release of a new set of rules.

My worry, of course, is that they're going to make the game too simple. But where's the fine balance? Let's hope that Wizards of the Coast, being professional game designers, can find that balance.