I was formerly in research. You do not need to have very many responses to get a representative sample.
You don't need that many responses to not worry about random error -- given X respondents, your responses will 95% of the time be within 100/sqrt(X)% of the true value -- but number of responses doesn't help at all with non-random bias.
When dealing with population surveys, degrees of generalizability is assumed based on the kind of data and the number of data collected. If you think that those who self-select for surveys inherently play D&D differently than those who do not, you would need to support that statement with data, otherwise you are simply projecting your own bias onto the results to accomplish what seems to be some kind of rhetorical goal. Self-select is a non-random bias, but is only material when that data would be unequal between the two groups.
I was formerly in research. You do not need to have very many responses to get a representative sample. You can get a representative sample with as few as 100 completed surveys. The smaller the sample, the larger the margin of error. Fortunately, WotC does not have that problem and reliably gets thousands of surveys whenever they put one out. This is representative data and the margin of error would be small. It took my team about two years to gather the number of surveys WotC gets in a couple weeks, and my research was representative of tens of millions of people.
You only need small samples if you have a good idea of how things intersect with demographics. For example, if you know that white males tend to make similar voting choices, then you only need to sample enough white males to be confident that you know how white males are likely to vote, and extrapolate. Then repeat for white females, black males, etc. Then from a fairly small sample, you can project how the population is going to vote. That's true because a lot of money, time and effort over the decades has been poured into understanding how all these factors interact and play on each other (so they can adjust for more than just race and sex, but age, location, income bracket and so forth).
And we all know how those polls have never gotten things wrong, right.
If your sample is that biased, you need to understand extremely well how everything interacts in order to extrapolate an accurate picture (and bigger industries with much more money riding on the results being accurate pouring much more resources into constructing better models get things wrong).
Sorry. I'll agree that homebrew makes a substantial proportion of the makeup of games. Telling me that they know that 60% of games are in homebrew settings with error bars small enough to make that number more meaningful than the previous statement is going to be a hard sell.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I was formerly in research. You do not need to have very many responses to get a representative sample. You can get a representative sample with as few as 100 completed surveys. The smaller the sample, the larger the margin of error. Fortunately, WotC does not have that problem and reliably gets thousands of surveys whenever they put one out. This is representative data and the margin of error would be small. It took my team about two years to gather the number of surveys WotC gets in a couple weeks, and my research was representative of tens of millions of people.
You only need small samples if you have a good idea of how things intersect with demographics. For example, if you know that white males tend to make similar voting choices, then you only need to sample enough white males to be confident that you know how white males are likely to vote, and extrapolate. Then repeat for white females, black males, etc. Then from a fairly small sample, you can project how the population is going to vote. That's true because a lot of money, time and effort over the decades has been poured into understanding how all these factors interact and play on each other (so they can adjust for more than just race and sex, but age, location, income bracket and so forth).
And we all know how those polls have never gotten things wrong, right.
If your sample is that biased, you need to understand extremely well how everything interacts in order to extrapolate an accurate picture (and bigger industries with much more money riding on the results being accurate pouring much more resources into constructing better models get things wrong).
Sorry. I'll agree that homebrew makes a substantial proportion of the makeup of games. Telling me that they know that 60% of games are in homebrew settings with error bars small enough to make that number more meaningful than the previous statement is going to be a hard sell.
A very impassioned response. Do you think that you are approaching the data with clarity of thought or lack of your own bias? Because as an observer, that really does not seem to be the case. Why does this matter to you so much?
That's called poisoning the well, I was discussing this in good faith and talking about the problems that are inherent to the claimed numbers, no "passion". Apparently that's not a reasonable assumption for me to have of others. Check my signature. I'm out.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The same people that are not meanfully interacting with D&D and are not interacting with the surveys are also the same people that are not meaningfully engaged in the lore or settings. They don't care about any of it beyond what the campaign book they are playing tells them. If t6hey did, then they would be meaningfully interacting right?
So if you were a company, which people's opinions do you think matter most, the ones that don't care or the ones that do?
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When dealing with population surveys, degrees of generalizability is assumed based on the kind of data and the number of data collected. If you think that those who self-select for surveys inherently play D&D differently than those who do not, you would need to support that statement with data
I'm sorry, that's not how the burden of proof works. A survey is a good indicator of the opinions of the class of people who respond to the survey, but if you want to extrapolate the results beyond that class, you'll need to give reasons for believing that it's valid to do so.
Now, Wizards does have a fairly good data set -- it's a lot better than, say, asking the people you personally know, or a random D&D YouTuber polling their followers, both of which are typical of their critics -- but it's by no means perfect, which is easily demonstrated by their multiple fumbles over the last few years.
None of which means that Wizards is wrong to cut down on lore in the monster manual -- personally, I suspect they're right -- but it's useful to understand the limits of data (my suspicion is that there's a group of people who are running a game with a published module, and are therefore using a published setting... but also don't care about the lore).
When dealing with population surveys, degrees of generalizability is assumed based on the kind of data and the number of data collected. If you think that those who self-select for surveys inherently play D&D differently than those who do not, you would need to support that statement with data
I'm sorry, that's not how the burden of proof works. A survey is a good indicator of the opinions of the class of people who respond to the survey, but if you want to extrapolate the results beyond that class, you'll need to give reasons for believing that it's valid to do so.
Now, Wizards does have a fairly good data set -- it's a lot better than, say, asking the people you personally know, or a random D&D YouTuber polling their followers, both of which are typical of their critics -- but it's by no means perfect, which is easily demonstrated by their multiple fumbles over the last few years.
None of which means that Wizards is wrong to cut down on lore in the monster manual -- personally, I suspect they're right -- but it's useful to understand the limits of data (my suspicion is that there's a group of people who are running a game with a published module, and are therefore using a published setting... but also don't care about the lore).
Surveys are far better at telling someone what people don't like, or what they think they would like better than how to actually produce what they would like in a profitable manner.
It is simply not a given that consumers have reasonable expectations. It is also a simple reality that coming up with great new products consistently is really not simple at all.
That's called poisoning the well, I was discussing this in good faith and talking about the problems that are inherent to the claimed numbers, no "passion". Apparently that's not a reasonable assumption for me to have of others. Check my signature. I'm out.
It is a fair question to ask, in context. You don't have data to support your dismissal of the numbers; it is baseless speculation. One is fair to ask where that is coming from, if not a conclusion drawn from the data itself. This response does little to indicate that I was off the mark. The data isn't biased because you don't like it and these are not political opinion polls that are snapshots of opinions in that moment, which shift dramatically between months of data points. You are right - market researchers do need to understand how this data all interacts, but they are professionals in the field, with much better insight into that data, and you and I are just consumers looking at the drawn conclusions of that research.
When dealing with population surveys, degrees of generalizability is assumed based on the kind of data and the number of data collected. If you think that those who self-select for surveys inherently play D&D differently than those who do not, you would need to support that statement with data
I'm sorry, that's not how the burden of proof works. A survey is a good indicator of the opinions of the class of people who respond to the survey, but if you want to extrapolate the results beyond that class, you'll need to give reasons for believing that it's valid to do so.
Now, Wizards does have a fairly good data set -- it's a lot better than, say, asking the people you personally know, or a random D&D YouTuber polling their followers, both of which are typical of their critics -- but it's by no means perfect, which is easily demonstrated by their multiple fumbles over the last few years.
None of which means that Wizards is wrong to cut down on lore in the monster manual -- personally, I suspect they're right -- but it's useful to understand the limits of data (my suspicion is that there's a group of people who are running a game with a published module, and are therefore using a published setting... but also don't care about the lore).
Actually, that is how burden of proof works. You made the positive claim (or implied one) that there is a meaningful difference in D&D players and how they play between those who choose to voluntarily take surveys and those who do not. The burden of proof, therefore, becomes yours upon making that claim. Back it up with evidence or it will be dismissed.
Further, the statement that 60% of players play in a homebrew setting is not an opinion, it is a conclusion reached based on surveys of behaviors.
No one said their surveys were perfect; they don't need to be. They only need to provide data that allows for approximate conclusions to be drawn. Is it exactly 60%? No, probably not. But it is reasonable to say that it is approximately 60% of players that do X and Y based on their responses. This methodology is good enough to draw conclusions on in population health, economics, epidemiology, and all the social sciences, and it is far far more than what is required to base business decisions on in what content to expand on and what content to cut. When you are looking at populations, you cannot be exact, but you can be accurate and precise, which is what you strive for in research that deals with population data.
So, something to keep in mind is that the market research done is not merely Polls. Polls are often the smallest practical portion of it, and function as a correction and a guideline in reading results of other research. A Poll is a very specific tool -- and there are other ways to get stuff that a layperson would probably think of as a poll, but is not a Poll.
It does depend on the kind of research one does, but market research in general is not overly reliant on Polls (which have a different structure than other research tools, including others that have similar self selection bias). Not to mention that the nature of how the research is conducted affects the manner in it which that Self selection bias is controlled for.
For example, the UA feedbacks are not polls. And while they can be used for market research, they are not in and of themselves market research tools.
Furthermore, Polls (such as political polls) and Polling have different structures and rules depending on how the Poll is going to be used and for what purpose.
Which I mention because a lot of the stuff about data polls being biased and correction algorithms are referencing approaches that do not apply in market research.
There is no doubt in my mind that the team at Wizards paid attention t the decade of videos, blog posts, forum whines, reddit threads, and other things -- no doubt because among the most common oof complaints was the monsters were too weak. They looked at why the monsters are too weak, and realized that part of it was the design approach in 2014, and so they attempted a correction there that also reflects their own creative impulses. They did a great job of it -- the monsters are, overall, now more capable of a consistent output in key metrics for their given CR, regardless of how they are used. They also, in other books, put more emphasis on tactical and strategic play.
Which I mention because this is a thread not about statistics and data modeling, but one about how people feel about the new monster manual.
One of the other common complaints was that people did not want the lore in the core books. That was one of the earliest complaints in the new edition -- 2015 and 2016 saw it frequently. It is something that they receive as consistent feedback -- enough that it has been referenced a few times (such as the source of my percentages). So, they addressed that.
Most of the major issues come from people not liking the way that the designers tackled certain things, because it goes against the grain of what they would have done. I am still super annoyed by the way classes work in 5e, myself, so I get it.
I like the new Monster Manual. I can see why they did things, what they did, and how they did it. I may not like some decisions, but so what? It's done. My not liking them won't change them for anyone else, but I can sure as heck change things for myself (like making all my dragons CR 30 monsters).
To me, that's always been the greatest strength of D&D -- that the DM is expected to change things themselves. Other folks don't see things that way. As was pointed out earlier, some folks want the game to only be played in a certain way, without changes by the DM. But they are always going to be angry because the game changes, "evolves", shifts according to the design lead and the edition focus, and that happens because of that core concept that has existed since the earliest era of a box with three little books in it: the DM is supposed to change things.
Just like I was angry when I saw 3e and said "nah".
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Actually, that is how burden of proof works. You made the positive claim (or implied one) that there is a meaningful difference in D&D players and how they play between those who choose to take surveys and those who do not. The burden of proof, therefore, becomes yours upon making that claim. Back it up with evidence or it will be dismissed.
It's fairly obvious that the people who visit D&D websites and take the time to fill out polls have a different attitude towards the game than the people who get together a couple times a month with their gaming group and don't think about the game the rest of the time. Only polling high engagement players is a problem a lot of games have.
Actually, that is how burden of proof works. You made the positive claim (or implied one) that there is a meaningful difference in D&D players and how they play between those who choose to take surveys and those who do not. The burden of proof, therefore, becomes yours upon making that claim. Back it up with evidence or it will be dismissed.
It's fairly obvious that the people who visit D&D websites and take the time to fill out polls have a different attitude towards the game than the people who get together a couple times a month with their gaming group and don't think about the game the rest of the time. Only polling high engagement players is a problem a lot of games have.
Nope. My burden of proof is "point out a plausibly relevant distinction between the two populations". At that point, the polltaker has to explain why they believe this distinction is not relevant, or come up with a means of correcting for that distinction. So... why do you believe that this distinction is not relevant?
Nope. My burden of proof is "point out a plausibly relevant distinction between the two populations". At that point, the polltaker has to explain why they believe this distinction is not relevant, or come up with a means of correcting for that distinction. So... why do you believe that this distinction is not relevant?
But you haven't pointed out a plausibly relevant distinction between two populations. You certainly are asserting that there is one and you are doing an awful lot of work to avoid having to demonstrate how you came to hold this opinion. That which is asserted without evidence... well, I am sure you know the rest.
This conversation has moved so far off topic, i'm surprised it hasn't been locked.
Thanks for the callout. It is easy to lose track of the actual topic when some discussions catch my interests. I apologize.
Getting back on topic, I do not really mind too much that there is only one monster that is at CR 30. It would be nice if there were more, and I recall that the designers wanted to incentivize higher tier play, you can still get a CR 30 threat with CR 20+ monsters. I mentioned in another thread that I appreciate the conversion page. I also think there is a good spread of monsters by type and groups. Habitats is another nice way to categorize them. Of course, I only can see this in digital form, which makes things very easy to organize. I did see some valid complaints before about how the organization doesn't really work well in print.
But CRs 14, 15, 18, 19, and 25 seem a bit empty. That does make it harder to argue that the designers followed through on their stated desire to incentivize higher tier play. But then again, maybe they are considering the MM to be the template by which we use to add more monsters to our games. 60%, after all.
While there are still fewer monsters at the higher CR'S than the lower ones, there are still a lot more in the 2024 book compared to the 2014, and for me that is really the important part. I have new fey, new giants, new oozes, new elementals, new humanoids at higher CR's capable of challenging my tier 3 and 4 players making it feel a little less stale. Groups of CR 7's as minions also feel good.
As I observed earlier, CRs 26, 27, 28, and 29 are absent.
For the most part, the higher the CR, the fewer the options -- which works, in my mind, even though I would prefer to see them spread out much more evenly and would organize certain monsters differently.
One thing that does stand out to me is the absence of the beings who would occupy those higher tiers -- No Asmodeus or Orcus, no Fae Lords, and the like. Went to grab Asmodeus stat block for creating something and was startled to not see him in there.
So I am expecting an updated Tome of Foes, which actually has Foes instead of just monsters in it -- and it will be all the big bads of the regular game. And with a "secret" book coming out later this year, and some comments made in the videos, I have a small hope (20% fanciful probability) that it will happen this year.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I wouldn't expect stats on the likes of Titania or Asmodeus from WotC anytime soon; looking at the 2014 DMG and which beings got stats in the Tome of Foes and similar works, it's fairly clear that they've decided to present beings who rate as full-fledged deities or equivalent positions as something core player facing options cannot affect. Now, the distinction does exist since Orcus had an entry in prior books and if you look at the Domains of Delight supplement they brought out a while ago, there's notes on how to adapt a statblock to an archfey. Now, they'll most likely bring the high tier fiends from Tome of Foes/Monsters of the Multiverse forward sooner or later, but I don't think they're gonna be offering options to square off with the ruler of Hell or the Queen of a Fey court.
No no, leave those goalposts where they are. You're not alluding to a mere slant in the survey responses, but the notion that huge swaths of the playerbase are not capable of being represented in them at all.
There is a huge swath of the playerbase that does not meaningfully interact with D&D media (many don't interact with D&D at all outside of their games). This group is hard to poll (it's hard to even know how many there are, though counting sales of the PHB is at least a semi-plausible proxy).
If there's no meaningful way to poll this group, then there's no reason not to continue basing their business decisions on the responses they are getting.
When dealing with population surveys, degrees of generalizability is assumed based on the kind of data and the number of data collected. If you think that those who self-select for surveys inherently play D&D differently than those who do not, you would need to support that statement with data, otherwise you are simply projecting your own bias onto the results to accomplish what seems to be some kind of rhetorical goal. Self-select is a non-random bias, but is only material when that data would be unequal between the two groups.
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You only need small samples if you have a good idea of how things intersect with demographics. For example, if you know that white males tend to make similar voting choices, then you only need to sample enough white males to be confident that you know how white males are likely to vote, and extrapolate. Then repeat for white females, black males, etc. Then from a fairly small sample, you can project how the population is going to vote. That's true because a lot of money, time and effort over the decades has been poured into understanding how all these factors interact and play on each other (so they can adjust for more than just race and sex, but age, location, income bracket and so forth).
And we all know how those polls have never gotten things wrong, right.
If your sample is that biased, you need to understand extremely well how everything interacts in order to extrapolate an accurate picture (and bigger industries with much more money riding on the results being accurate pouring much more resources into constructing better models get things wrong).
Sorry. I'll agree that homebrew makes a substantial proportion of the makeup of games. Telling me that they know that 60% of games are in homebrew settings with error bars small enough to make that number more meaningful than the previous statement is going to be a hard sell.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
A very impassioned response. Do you think that you are approaching the data with clarity of thought or lack of your own bias? Because as an observer, that really does not seem to be the case. Why does this matter to you so much?
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That's called poisoning the well, I was discussing this in good faith and talking about the problems that are inherent to the claimed numbers, no "passion". Apparently that's not a reasonable assumption for me to have of others. Check my signature. I'm out.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The same people that are not meanfully interacting with D&D and are not interacting with the surveys are also the same people that are not meaningfully engaged in the lore or settings. They don't care about any of it beyond what the campaign book they are playing tells them. If t6hey did, then they would be meaningfully interacting right?
So if you were a company, which people's opinions do you think matter most, the ones that don't care or the ones that do?
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I'm sorry, that's not how the burden of proof works. A survey is a good indicator of the opinions of the class of people who respond to the survey, but if you want to extrapolate the results beyond that class, you'll need to give reasons for believing that it's valid to do so.
Now, Wizards does have a fairly good data set -- it's a lot better than, say, asking the people you personally know, or a random D&D YouTuber polling their followers, both of which are typical of their critics -- but it's by no means perfect, which is easily demonstrated by their multiple fumbles over the last few years.
None of which means that Wizards is wrong to cut down on lore in the monster manual -- personally, I suspect they're right -- but it's useful to understand the limits of data (my suspicion is that there's a group of people who are running a game with a published module, and are therefore using a published setting... but also don't care about the lore).
Surveys are far better at telling someone what people don't like, or what they think they would like better than how to actually produce what they would like in a profitable manner.
It is simply not a given that consumers have reasonable expectations. It is also a simple reality that coming up with great new products consistently is really not simple at all.
It is a fair question to ask, in context. You don't have data to support your dismissal of the numbers; it is baseless speculation. One is fair to ask where that is coming from, if not a conclusion drawn from the data itself. This response does little to indicate that I was off the mark. The data isn't biased because you don't like it and these are not political opinion polls that are snapshots of opinions in that moment, which shift dramatically between months of data points. You are right - market researchers do need to understand how this data all interacts, but they are professionals in the field, with much better insight into that data, and you and I are just consumers looking at the drawn conclusions of that research.
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Actually, that is how burden of proof works. You made the positive claim (or implied one) that there is a meaningful difference in D&D players and how they play between those who choose to voluntarily take surveys and those who do not. The burden of proof, therefore, becomes yours upon making that claim. Back it up with evidence or it will be dismissed.
Further, the statement that 60% of players play in a homebrew setting is not an opinion, it is a conclusion reached based on surveys of behaviors.
No one said their surveys were perfect; they don't need to be. They only need to provide data that allows for approximate conclusions to be drawn. Is it exactly 60%? No, probably not. But it is reasonable to say that it is approximately 60% of players that do X and Y based on their responses. This methodology is good enough to draw conclusions on in population health, economics, epidemiology, and all the social sciences, and it is far far more than what is required to base business decisions on in what content to expand on and what content to cut. When you are looking at populations, you cannot be exact, but you can be accurate and precise, which is what you strive for in research that deals with population data.
Edit: Edited to be more specific.
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So, something to keep in mind is that the market research done is not merely Polls. Polls are often the smallest practical portion of it, and function as a correction and a guideline in reading results of other research. A Poll is a very specific tool -- and there are other ways to get stuff that a layperson would probably think of as a poll, but is not a Poll.
It does depend on the kind of research one does, but market research in general is not overly reliant on Polls (which have a different structure than other research tools, including others that have similar self selection bias). Not to mention that the nature of how the research is conducted affects the manner in it which that Self selection bias is controlled for.
For example, the UA feedbacks are not polls. And while they can be used for market research, they are not in and of themselves market research tools.
Furthermore, Polls (such as political polls) and Polling have different structures and rules depending on how the Poll is going to be used and for what purpose.
Which I mention because a lot of the stuff about data polls being biased and correction algorithms are referencing approaches that do not apply in market research.
There is no doubt in my mind that the team at Wizards paid attention t the decade of videos, blog posts, forum whines, reddit threads, and other things -- no doubt because among the most common oof complaints was the monsters were too weak. They looked at why the monsters are too weak, and realized that part of it was the design approach in 2014, and so they attempted a correction there that also reflects their own creative impulses. They did a great job of it -- the monsters are, overall, now more capable of a consistent output in key metrics for their given CR, regardless of how they are used. They also, in other books, put more emphasis on tactical and strategic play.
Which I mention because this is a thread not about statistics and data modeling, but one about how people feel about the new monster manual.
One of the other common complaints was that people did not want the lore in the core books. That was one of the earliest complaints in the new edition -- 2015 and 2016 saw it frequently. It is something that they receive as consistent feedback -- enough that it has been referenced a few times (such as the source of my percentages). So, they addressed that.
Most of the major issues come from people not liking the way that the designers tackled certain things, because it goes against the grain of what they would have done. I am still super annoyed by the way classes work in 5e, myself, so I get it.
I like the new Monster Manual. I can see why they did things, what they did, and how they did it. I may not like some decisions, but so what? It's done. My not liking them won't change them for anyone else, but I can sure as heck change things for myself (like making all my dragons CR 30 monsters).
To me, that's always been the greatest strength of D&D -- that the DM is expected to change things themselves. Other folks don't see things that way. As was pointed out earlier, some folks want the game to only be played in a certain way, without changes by the DM. But they are always going to be angry because the game changes, "evolves", shifts according to the design lead and the edition focus, and that happens because of that core concept that has existed since the earliest era of a box with three little books in it: the DM is supposed to change things.
Just like I was angry when I saw 3e and said "nah".
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An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
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It's fairly obvious that the people who visit D&D websites and take the time to fill out polls have a different attitude towards the game than the people who get together a couple times a month with their gaming group and don't think about the game the rest of the time. Only polling high engagement players is a problem a lot of games have.
So... just your opinion then? Dismissed!
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Nope. My burden of proof is "point out a plausibly relevant distinction between the two populations". At that point, the polltaker has to explain why they believe this distinction is not relevant, or come up with a means of correcting for that distinction. So... why do you believe that this distinction is not relevant?
Self-selection bias is a well established phenomenon.
But you haven't pointed out a plausibly relevant distinction between two populations. You certainly are asserting that there is one and you are doing an awful lot of work to avoid having to demonstrate how you came to hold this opinion. That which is asserted without evidence... well, I am sure you know the rest.
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This conversation has moved so far off topic, i'm surprised it hasn't been locked.
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
Thanks for the callout. It is easy to lose track of the actual topic when some discussions catch my interests. I apologize.
Getting back on topic, I do not really mind too much that there is only one monster that is at CR 30. It would be nice if there were more, and I recall that the designers wanted to incentivize higher tier play, you can still get a CR 30 threat with CR 20+ monsters. I mentioned in another thread that I appreciate the conversion page. I also think there is a good spread of monsters by type and groups. Habitats is another nice way to categorize them. Of course, I only can see this in digital form, which makes things very easy to organize. I did see some valid complaints before about how the organization doesn't really work well in print.
But CRs 14, 15, 18, 19, and 25 seem a bit empty. That does make it harder to argue that the designers followed through on their stated desire to incentivize higher tier play. But then again, maybe they are considering the MM to be the template by which we use to add more monsters to our games. 60%, after all.
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While there are still fewer monsters at the higher CR'S than the lower ones, there are still a lot more in the 2024 book compared to the 2014, and for me that is really the important part. I have new fey, new giants, new oozes, new elementals, new humanoids at higher CR's capable of challenging my tier 3 and 4 players making it feel a little less stale. Groups of CR 7's as minions also feel good.
As I observed earlier, CRs 26, 27, 28, and 29 are absent.
For the most part, the higher the CR, the fewer the options -- which works, in my mind, even though I would prefer to see them spread out much more evenly and would organize certain monsters differently.
One thing that does stand out to me is the absence of the beings who would occupy those higher tiers -- No Asmodeus or Orcus, no Fae Lords, and the like. Went to grab Asmodeus stat block for creating something and was startled to not see him in there.
So I am expecting an updated Tome of Foes, which actually has Foes instead of just monsters in it -- and it will be all the big bads of the regular game. And with a "secret" book coming out later this year, and some comments made in the videos, I have a small hope (20% fanciful probability) that it will happen this year.
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I wouldn't expect stats on the likes of Titania or Asmodeus from WotC anytime soon; looking at the 2014 DMG and which beings got stats in the Tome of Foes and similar works, it's fairly clear that they've decided to present beings who rate as full-fledged deities or equivalent positions as something core player facing options cannot affect. Now, the distinction does exist since Orcus had an entry in prior books and if you look at the Domains of Delight supplement they brought out a while ago, there's notes on how to adapt a statblock to an archfey. Now, they'll most likely bring the high tier fiends from Tome of Foes/Monsters of the Multiverse forward sooner or later, but I don't think they're gonna be offering options to square off with the ruler of Hell or the Queen of a Fey court.
If there's no meaningful way to poll this group, then there's no reason not to continue basing their business decisions on the responses they are getting.
I suggest you not hold your breath waiting for them to stop using surveys.