The important distinction is that DMs are expected to track spell slots on spellcasting monsters in addition to running the entire rest of the encounter. Conversely, a player only has to track spell slots for their character, their character that they use over multiple sessions and so get to time grow familiar with. A DM doesn't have that luxury of time to familiarise themselves to the same degree with each spellcasting monster.
Ultimately, the changes are an improvement in my opinion as it reduces the mental overhead for DMs, freeing up headroom for focusing on making the encounter interesting. I'd rather be concentrating on cool tactics and snappy one-liners than having to bookkeep spells slots. The 'cooldown timer' option, having used it a fair bit with other monsters, is orders of magnitude easier for me, and many other DMs as it's just a case of checking off how many times you've used a spell (or if you've used it at all in the case of 1/Day each). Compared to spell slots where in order to figure out if you can use a spell, you have to look up and down all the spell slots and see which ones you've used.
Well if you think about it, D&D Beyond *could* greatly simplify the spell slot issue by allowing DM's to track the spells cast on the monster descriptions on encounter builder for instance, that would greatly enhance the D&D Beyond offering to DM's. And when you think about who primarily buys the books and content - The DM's. Most players go for 7 sessions or level 7 or less according to WotC and are casuals. Meanwhile the DM's are your bread and butter economically speaking.
PC rules are meant for PCs. You are correct that if I had a PC make that jump, there are going to be rolls for it and there should be. I think that within reason, the DM has latitude to do whatever they want and it's been that way by design, since original. It sounds like you want a very mechanically intense game where both the PCs and the DM play by the same exact rules and roll for the same exact things. This just doesn't exist in 5th, and frankly hasn't existed in any form of D&D. From jump street monsters have been able to do things without question that the PCs can't and from a very broad perspective that has to be that way from a game design standpoint. From jump the DM has the latitude to make sure the game runs in their world, that the table makes sense, and then that the players are happy.
It's not just "highly storytelling" dms, its just storytelling. There is somewhat of a suspension of rules knowledge when it comes to the DM setting a table, again and as I have always said in this thread, within reason. In short, I don't know what DM hurt you, but it's ok for there to not have to be rolls for certain things to set the stage as long as it doesn't present a challenge to the PCs that will be inherently unfair OR that the players would get to act in.
Sauron in LoTR once he loses corporeal form and becomes the bbeg, his old stats are gone. His old ways are gone. He has to play by a new set of rules and a lot of it is done through these heavily veiled shrouds of secrecy. Sephiroth in FF7 is a player character and then isn't, and once he isn't his old stats are gone and uses spellcasting abilities instead of spell slots, and once he transforms isn't playing by nearly the same rules.
Dungeons and Dragons isn't seen as an antagonistic game, and the way it seems you're describing it wound lend to that very fast where every single thing would be opposed rolls. That once I design a big bad, every action of theirs was dictated by the same RNG that the players would experience, the same rules and rolls and that just doesn't work and if you look at most forms of traditional media, just isn't the case.
In humor, thanks for thinking about what GM hurt me. But in truth it is a way I have seen GM's play at Con's, game stores and from people describing their gaming experiences to me.
Movies, TV and books are defined by the author, director and actors and they can do what they want for the parts they are in charge of. If there are differing sets of rules for PC's and mobs and the players do not know of what the differences are I have found when they do find out it can sink a game and or push people to another hobby.
I have also played in a tournament in which it was a store based adventure back in the late 90's and it was of the type you could do anything in this small box and it did not affect other things. I had fun but it would be a problem in a longer term game for me. I also saw another group implode because of a simple mistake by a PC that wiped out the rest of the party. Talking to the GM later this was the 6th time he ran the adventure and we were only the 2nd group (2/6 or 1/3 or 33%) that was successful.
I agree D&D is not supposed to be the GM vs the players but often when people describe "player-GM's" that is the way they describe it and as I have said I have see it in action in home games when younger and when older in various venues.
PC rules are meant for PCs. You are correct that if I had a PC make that jump, there are going to be rolls for it and there should be. I think that within reason, the DM has latitude to do whatever they want and it's been that way by design, since original. It sounds like you want a very mechanically intense game where both the PCs and the DM play by the same exact rules and roll for the same exact things. This just doesn't exist in 5th, and frankly hasn't existed in any form of D&D. From jump street monsters have been able to do things without question that the PCs can't and from a very broad perspective that has to be that way from a game design standpoint. From jump the DM has the latitude to make sure the game runs in their world, that the table makes sense, and then that the players are happy.
It's not just "highly storytelling" dms, its just storytelling. There is somewhat of a suspension of rules knowledge when it comes to the DM setting a table, again and as I have always said in this thread, within reason. In short, I don't know what DM hurt you, but it's ok for there to not have to be rolls for certain things to set the stage as long as it doesn't present a challenge to the PCs that will be inherently unfair OR that the players would get to act in.
Sauron in LoTR once he loses corporeal form and becomes the bbeg, his old stats are gone. His old ways are gone. He has to play by a new set of rules and a lot of it is done through these heavily veiled shrouds of secrecy. Sephiroth in FF7 is a player character and then isn't, and once he isn't his old stats are gone and uses spellcasting abilities instead of spell slots, and once he transforms isn't playing by nearly the same rules.
Dungeons and Dragons isn't seen as an antagonistic game, and the way it seems you're describing it wound lend to that very fast where every single thing would be opposed rolls. That once I design a big bad, every action of theirs was dictated by the same RNG that the players would experience, the same rules and rolls and that just doesn't work and if you look at most forms of traditional media, just isn't the case.
In humor, thanks for thinking about what GM hurt me. But in truth it is a way I have seen GM's play at Con's, game stores and from people describing their gaming experiences to me.
Movies, TV and books are defined by the author, director and actors and they can do what they want for the parts they are in charge of. If there are differing sets of rules for PC's and mobs and the players do not know of what the differences are I have found when they do find out it can sink a game and or push people to another hobby.
I have also played in a tournament in which it was a store based adventure back in the late 90's and it was of the type you could do anything in this small box and it did not affect other things. I had fun but it would be a problem in a longer term game for me. I also saw another group implode because of a simple mistake by a PC that wiped out the rest of the party. Talking to the GM later this was the 6th time he ran the adventure and we were only the 2nd group (2/6 or 1/3 or 33%) that was successful.
I agree D&D is not supposed to be the GM vs the players but often when people describe "player-GM's" that is the way they describe it and as I have said I have see it in action in home games when younger and when older in various venues.
The base rules of the game should be the same, Actions, Bonus action, movement, surprise etc. In that respect anything a Player can do a Monster should be able to do and vice versa.
But, the actual abilities a monster has, they are fully flexible, want to give a creature an infinite number of casts for a spell, thats fine, want to make something reload after an hour/10 mins/1 min, again thats fine, we all tweak and change the monsters from whats in the book. I suppose the questions comes are you doing this ahead of an encounter, or mid combat because that cool effect got counter spelled?
I very much play by the encounter runs as I set it up, if I underestimated how dangerous it was then thats a lesson for me. I don't run XP campaigns so "cheap" xp isn't a thing. I know some DM's who will tweak HP's on the fly mid combat to lengthen/shorten an encounter. much the same as some will fudge the damage they roll, or the attack roll to go easy/harder on a party and add challenge. I don't see anything wrong with looking at a spell caster in the monster manual etc and deciding, pre combat, only 1 spell per day, thats rubbish, I am buffing that up. Given most encounters the Monsters get maybe 3-4 rounds of combat max then buffing it to 5 spell slots a day means you don't really need to track because the fight will be over in 3.
No two parties are the same and no two encounters are really going to be the same, so any published encounter as is is pretty much calibrated for some nebulously defined average group of PCs that will never be the actual party a DM runs an adventure for. Looking at the encounters in a module beforehand and checking if they need to be tweaked a bit should arguably be standard operating procedure. I know some players feel they want to get served adventures without changing anything because otherwise they might get the impression the DM is kid-gloving encounters for them and that lessens their sense of accomplishment; I'm not saying that's nonsense, but to me the DM and the adventure writer have the same goal - creating interesting and appropriate challenges for the party - and the DM is far better placed to make that happen. And if you don't trust the DM to do right by you, well, that's a big problem right there. In the end it comes down to finding that common ground where everybody's happy with how things are done, so if you're not it's best to speak up and get a conversation going with everyone else who's involved in the game - but you shouldn't expect things to necessarily be done exactly to your liking regardless, since "common ground" usually requires some extent of compromise.
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Well if you think about it, D&D Beyond *could* greatly simplify the spell slot issue by allowing DM's to track the spells cast on the monster descriptions on encounter builder for instance, that would greatly enhance the D&D Beyond offering to DM's. And when you think about who primarily buys the books and content - The DM's. Most players go for 7 sessions or level 7 or less according to WotC and are casuals. Meanwhile the DM's are your bread and butter economically speaking.
In humor, thanks for thinking about what GM hurt me. But in truth it is a way I have seen GM's play at Con's, game stores and from people describing their gaming experiences to me.
Movies, TV and books are defined by the author, director and actors and they can do what they want for the parts they are in charge of. If there are differing sets of rules for PC's and mobs and the players do not know of what the differences are I have found when they do find out it can sink a game and or push people to another hobby.
I have also played in a tournament in which it was a store based adventure back in the late 90's and it was of the type you could do anything in this small box and it did not affect other things. I had fun but it would be a problem in a longer term game for me. I also saw another group implode because of a simple mistake by a PC that wiped out the rest of the party. Talking to the GM later this was the 6th time he ran the adventure and we were only the 2nd group (2/6 or 1/3 or 33%) that was successful.
I agree D&D is not supposed to be the GM vs the players but often when people describe "player-GM's" that is the way they describe it and as I have said I have see it in action in home games when younger and when older in various venues.
The base rules of the game should be the same, Actions, Bonus action, movement, surprise etc. In that respect anything a Player can do a Monster should be able to do and vice versa.
But, the actual abilities a monster has, they are fully flexible, want to give a creature an infinite number of casts for a spell, thats fine, want to make something reload after an hour/10 mins/1 min, again thats fine, we all tweak and change the monsters from whats in the book. I suppose the questions comes are you doing this ahead of an encounter, or mid combat because that cool effect got counter spelled?
I very much play by the encounter runs as I set it up, if I underestimated how dangerous it was then thats a lesson for me. I don't run XP campaigns so "cheap" xp isn't a thing. I know some DM's who will tweak HP's on the fly mid combat to lengthen/shorten an encounter. much the same as some will fudge the damage they roll, or the attack roll to go easy/harder on a party and add challenge. I don't see anything wrong with looking at a spell caster in the monster manual etc and deciding, pre combat, only 1 spell per day, thats rubbish, I am buffing that up. Given most encounters the Monsters get maybe 3-4 rounds of combat max then buffing it to 5 spell slots a day means you don't really need to track because the fight will be over in 3.
No two parties are the same and no two encounters are really going to be the same, so any published encounter as is is pretty much calibrated for some nebulously defined average group of PCs that will never be the actual party a DM runs an adventure for. Looking at the encounters in a module beforehand and checking if they need to be tweaked a bit should arguably be standard operating procedure. I know some players feel they want to get served adventures without changing anything because otherwise they might get the impression the DM is kid-gloving encounters for them and that lessens their sense of accomplishment; I'm not saying that's nonsense, but to me the DM and the adventure writer have the same goal - creating interesting and appropriate challenges for the party - and the DM is far better placed to make that happen. And if you don't trust the DM to do right by you, well, that's a big problem right there. In the end it comes down to finding that common ground where everybody's happy with how things are done, so if you're not it's best to speak up and get a conversation going with everyone else who's involved in the game - but you shouldn't expect things to necessarily be done exactly to your liking regardless, since "common ground" usually requires some extent of compromise.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].