I'm curious about the reasoning behind changing the monster stat block so significantly from what appears in the books. It's pretty jarring and takes more time than I'd like to find information. I'm sure I would get used to it if everything were formatted the same way, but going between the standard book layout and this would be annoying.
For me, the only real priority with any digital support is this: Will this make the oft difficult job of DMing at the table easier... specifically:
1) Can I add all the monsters that I want in an encounter/dungeon/adventure to common location, such as a piece of paper or screen? I'm content to copy the statblocks and paste them into a Word doc that I can print (which this layout precludes), but being able drop several monsters onto an encounter page in an app would be great as long as there are links to spells and other rule data.
2) Can I find all the information I need to run an adventure with minimal book flipping? Not having linked spells, conditions, etc. is pretty disappointing.
I have to imagine linking will happen, it's a sort of strange omission, but an easy enough thing to overlook when you're working on something like this.
As for your first question, that's a bit more of a mystery, isn't it? We know there will be some tools for campaign management, but what that means isn't (to my knowledge) entirely clear. I think the idea of an encounter sheet is great, something I've really liked on VTTs I've used is having all the information available in one place for quick reference.
I actually kind of like the format of the monster stats in the compendium. Not that I think there is anything wrong with the Monster Manual format, just think I'm going to be pulling up what monster stats I can on my laptop instead of in my books.
That will be especially true if spells in monster stats get linked to their descriptions in the compendium.
I'm curious about the reasoning behind changing the monster stat block so significantly from what appears in the books. It's pretty jarring and takes more time than I'd like to find information. I'm sure I would get used to it if everything were formatted the same way, but going between the standard book layout and this would be annoying.
For me, the only real priority with any digital support is this: Will this make the oft difficult job of DMing at the table easier... specifically:
1) Can I add all the monsters that I want in an encounter/dungeon/adventure to common location, such as a piece of paper or screen? I'm content to copy the statblocks and paste them into a Word doc that I can print (which this layout precludes), but being able drop several monsters onto an encounter page in an app would be great as long as there are links to spells and other rule data.
2) Can I find all the information I need to run an adventure with minimal book flipping? Not having linked spells, conditions, etc. is pretty disappointing.
I have to imagine linking will happen, it's a sort of strange omission, but an easy enough thing to overlook when you're working on something like this.
As for your first question, that's a bit more of a mystery, isn't it? We know there will be some tools for campaign management, but what that means isn't (to my knowledge) entirely clear. I think the idea of an encounter sheet is great, something I've really liked on VTTs I've used is having all the information available in one place for quick reference.
I agree. The stat blocks here are terrible. They should mirror the layout in the book.
I actually kind of like the format of the monster stats in the compendium. Not that I think there is anything wrong with the Monster Manual format, just think I'm going to be pulling up what monster stats I can on my laptop instead of in my books.
That will be especially true if spells in monster stats get linked to their descriptions in the compendium.
If you use the Encounters interface the monster Stat blocks have links for spells as well as die rolls for attack and damage.
Encounters is not very slick yet, but, has potential if they add the right things.