At this point, I think you're fear-mongering. We don't yet know what the new stat blocks will all look like. Monsters of the Multiverse is months away. The closest we have is this.
And, you know what, it's okay. Damage was a little low, and Holy Fire (clearly modeled after sacred flame) isn't actually a spell so it can't be the target of counterspell. And neither can Healing Light, for that matter. I do miss some of their old Spellcasting, like upcasting magic weapon and spiritual weapon to 4th-level, but tweaking this to slip them back in as a Spellcasting Bonus Action (or some other trait) isn't that hard. It could even be fun to figure out.
The biggest problem with the old spellcasting creature stat blocks is they weren't intuitive. Fun-ish for building your world and roleplaying the character, but terrible for actually running. You had to pour over every spell, know how and when they could be cast, plan your tactics ahead of time, and defenestrate them because no plan survives first contact with the enemy. This is a bit more reader-friendly. Yeah, they're not "proper" spellcasters, but that's not a big deal. Each NPC does whatever is needed of them. And we don't yet have the rules for how to use and customize them. Remember how monsters that use a class' spell list can swap out their spells for others from that same list? Yeah, well this War Priest has a Cleric tag. We don't yet know how that's going to be implemented.
So, cool your jets.
The problem with the stat block listed is that it is ok for running a combat encounter but is almost useless for other purposes. As a DM, I have no problem changing the characteristics of creatures to fit what I want them to do but I don't think the published stat blocks should force the DM to do this.
Let's just look at the listed stat block -
The NPC is called a War Priest and is listed as a humanoid of type "cleric". Both "priest" and "cleric" come with some possible expectations.
However, they are given a spellcasting feature and a limited selection of spells usable only 1/day. What happens if you run into a War Priest out of combat? Will they have access to a healing spell? Will they be able to cast Zone of Truth? What if the War Priest was assigned to an entry check point to a temple for the day? Does this mean that the "War Priest" isn't really a cleric? They have fewer prepared spells and no spell slots to use to cast them - they are somehow limited to casting each once/day.
I can just imagine the chat between the PC cleric and the War Priest "Man, you worship the wrong diety, you only have 8 spells that you can cast 1/day and you can't cast any healing spells? You need to find a new diety!". Though maybe the conversations goes more like "Man, that's crazy! Where does your diety give you the HUGE amount of healing ability? Every minute you can heal 5 commoners to full health, all day, every day! The town's you live in must have NO ONE who is every sick. They can only die."
I also guess that their temples must have a "Healing priest" NPC so that they can heal up supplicants since the War Priest stat block (as published) is useless for that. Also, any reasonable "War Priest" I have ever run into is going to have Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon as spell options for example - why not this one? Edit: I need to read the whole stat block since I missed the truly overpowering bonus action healing ability.
Also, the bonus action healing ability is UTTERLY immersion breaking. Any town with ONE war priest could heal anyone who gets hurt all day every day. There is no rarity, no cost, nothing of significance involved in having this creature heal 5 creatures every 30 seconds. In combat, it isn't that big a deal, out of combat it is game breaking - and honestly world breaking - which is why powers like this rather than spells are a concern. (and this is based on ONE published sample). At the very least the healing ability should be limited to proficiency times/long rest.
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Any DM can homebrew the spell lists or powers - change the #/day, add or change spells - adjust however, they think appropriate but the point is that the revised monster stat blocks are only useful for facilitating the running of a combat encounter with ONE specific flavor of NPC, not for incorporating/role-playing the NPC in a logically consistent game world where clerics prepare spells granted by their diety and can change those spells daily (that is part of the fundamental nature of a "cleric" in 5e and personally I apply it to both PCs and NPCs since it doesn't make sense otherwise).
Do I mind the change? Not really, my NPCs will always do exactly what I want them to and they will always appear more or less consistent with the internal logic of the game world to the players but there are lots of DMs who will just lift the stat block, use it as is and miss out on the fact that the NPC is still supposed to be a cleric. In addition, eventually, the players will realize that the NPCs just aren't like them - they can't cast Banishment twice - so if a PC passes their save they don't need to worry about that one coming up again. Whereas a 9th level PC spell caster could have 3 of them available in case one or more fail. (The war priest can also heal thousands of people all day every day - 5/minute is 300/hour or 3600 people healed on a 12 hour shift - that ONE war priest will keep whole armies at full hit points as long as they get to him before being killed outright).
P.S. The original has standard spell slots for a 9th level cleric and healing word .. so it was a FAR more sane and balanced creature stat block.
None of this breaks reality. They're NPCs. They already have features, traits, and even weapons that player characters simply cannot have. The veteran doesn't have Extra Attack; it has Multiattack. "Monsters" simply are not built like characters unless you want to go out of your way to do it with a class. How is a different form of spellcasting any different?
Again, you don't even know what's really coming. Practice a little patience. You can still use the playable races within Monsters of the Multiverse, even if you don't use the bestiary. You have older books for that. I might hybridize the two. Heck, the examples in the books are explicitly only typical examples. There are always exceptions.
Calm down.
I appreciate your feedback but if you really want me to calm down, you're actually making it harder for me do so. I do not feel that the tone here or in your previous post is constructive, but you probably feel the same way about me. So, given that we're not really communicating very well at the moment, I will try to engage with you better and real in my overly emotional side. I get what you are saying. You're right that we don't know what's coming.
To answer your question, you're also right that multiattack is different than extra attack, and you know what, that's absolutely fine, because your players will never figure out the difference. It takes zero effort to hide that they're different. You NPC attacks twice, your PC fighter attacks twice...What's the difference?
A different form of spell casting could (again you're right we don't know what's coming) feel very different at the table. From what I've already seen, it's going to be harder for me to sit down at the table and describe this in a way that makes if "feel" like: my NPC wizard casts a spell, my PC wizard casts a spell...What's the difference? The spells are different, because some aren't spell at all, the spell variety is different, because wizards don't have prepared spells and so on and so forth.
Your PC fighter will never get multiattack envy, they have access to something that is close to identical, your PC wizard (if they're like me) will get "shiny spell like ability I can't have" envy.
On my side, as DM, I don't want the objectively best thing I can do with my NPC in an encounter is the same thing every round. That they don't play that way is why I like casters. Yes, you can still fire off 3 different spells in the example you show above, that's fair. And in the next encounter, you might have 3 different spells again... But this looks like it's supposed to be emulating a 9th or 10th level cleric. It should have a spell list of 12 to 13 spells, it has 8 that's...not bad. It should have more castings than it has but that's not a big problem. Though, one of the spells that didn't make the list could be clutch for the situation you're in. You could just swap it in on the fly, but that doesn't "feel" fair to me.
Looking at the stat block shown, this isn't bad. There's no real issue with the spell like ability for this NPC.(Edit: Oops also missed OP healing ability, so there is that.) However, that is not the case with some of the other things I've seen. There are issues in other cases. For example, with Arrant Quill . He appears to be a 15th or 16th level bard, but has an ability that is not in line with what PC bards of that level can do.
You can also compare Halaster to Iggwilv. Halaster has many, many more choices. You can structure an encounter with him in more ways, you can build an entire campaign around him, but both are supposed to be ancient archmages of great power. To me Halaster feels right, Iggwilv feels limited. She's short about 20 spells.
Don't get me wrong, at the moment I really am up in arms about this but eventually I'll trick my brain into being ok with it and figure out how to hide the change from players. If you were to meet me face to face, I'd probably drive you up the wall too, but not intentionally. Thank you for your time.
I think most of your frustration is due to a disconnect. If you want your players to encounter an NPC wizard, then you build them a wizard. But if you want to use the default stat block for such a creature, what you're looking for is a mage. Likewise, they don't usually meet a cleric tending a temple or shrine, but they can find a priest. That might not seem like a significant difference, but it is.
Remember, a creature doesn't need to belong to a class to make use of a class' spell list. Both arcane tricksters and eldritch knights pull their spells exclusively from the wizard spell list (albeit with limitations) without being wizards. And with the correct Fighting Style, both paladins and rangers can learn cantrips from the cleric and druid spell lists, respectively. Technically, following the rules in the Monster Manual, each of these subclasses can attune to magic items reserved for wizards; like an arcane trickster attuning to a Robe of the Archmagi. But that's for monsters; not players. D&D is a game build on exceptions. Whatever you think the general rules are, there's bound to be at least one exception to it.
So, instead of playing Chicken Little, give the new War Priest a chance. Run it in an encounter. See how it plays. And see how it compares to the original vision from Volo's. Play with both of them.
On my side, as DM, I don't want the objectively best thing I can do with my NPC in an encounter is the same thing every round.
If you're using a single signature npc, building them like a PC caster isn't that much trouble (though it's usually pointless, there's probably not more than five spells you have a high chance of actually using). When you're managing five NPCs, it is.
On my side, as DM, I don't want the objectively best thing I can do with my NPC in an encounter is the same thing every round.
If you're using a single signature npc, building them like a PC caster isn't that much trouble (though it's usually pointless, there's probably not more than five spells you have a high chance of actually using). When you're managing five NPCs, it is.
Yes, this is a very good point. My own experiments have absolutely validated that you will not get many spells out before the end of the encounter. Though I don’t think it is as pointless to build an NPC like a PC caster as you appear to. What if you want to have multiple encounters in one day, for example?
Edit: Also we’re going back to just homebrew it. I’d like WotC to occasionally do this too. For example Iggwilv above. She’d be fantastic as the anchor of a campaign.
Yes, this is a very good point. My own experiments have absolutely validated that you will not get many spells out before the end of the encounter. Though I don’t think it is as pointless to build an NPC like a PC caster as you appear to. What if you want to have multiple encounters in one day, for example?
Unless it's an ally, that's an unusual situation. It's not an unheard of situation, spellcasters with hit and run capabilities (Strahd von Zarovich is a good example) might burn through their entire spell lists, but if that's the case you're probably dealing with a solo caster once again.
On my side, as DM, I don't want the objectively best thing I can do with my NPC in an encounter is the same thing every round.
If you're using a single signature npc, building them like a PC caster isn't that much trouble (though it's usually pointless, there's probably not more than five spells you have a high chance of actually using). When you're managing five NPCs, it is.
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. With your help, I think I've settled on how I'm going to handle this change.
-I'm going to pretend that casters still have spell slots for flavour (at the table description) purposes and are clerics, wizards and so on, just like the PCs. In combat encounters the PCs shouldn't notice the difference, particularly if I swap out spells from time to time. Even with the out of combat stuff, I should be able to keep track by using pseudo-spell slots. It'll be more work, but that's life.
-When I want to use a caster as a centre piece to an adventure I'll homebrew them so that they have a full spell list and spell slots. For example Iggwilv will get "fixed" so she has the full spell list a 20th level wizard should have.
-If a caster NPC has an over the top "spell" ability that is really flavourful and thematic (like Iggwilv's black speech for example) and I can come up with a good reason PCs can't have this shiny (You're not an immortal archmage from another world who's literally crafted artefacts, you can't do this for example) then they get to keep it.
-If the ability can be presented as a spell the PCs have access to, that's what I'm doing, and I'll hide that this is an ability, not a spell, behind the DM's screen. For example, if the PC wizard really wants to counterspell the War Priests "word of healing" then it happens, even if it's not really a word of healing.
-If the ability can't be presented as a spell and I have to bend myself into a pretzel to figure out why the PCs can't have this shiny, then it's out. I'll adjust the CR for the creature if I have to.
I've never liked modifying official content in any way, I've always been a "rules as written" kind of person. I always assumed the makers of the game know it better than I do. However, I've never encountered a situation like this where my own personal view of how things should run is so different from how the game is "intended" to be played, while still genuinely loving the game enough to continue playing. When this happens normally, I don't kick up a fuss, I just quietly walk away. It's what I did for 4th edition.
For those who think I'm more than a little over the top, that is probably true. However, look at my join date and look at my post count. If you look at my history, you'll see I've only ever posted about this. If it wasn't for how passionately I feel about this, you would never have known I'm alive. I am not very social, I am not on social media, and I dislike posting on Internet forums. If I wasn't standing on the metaphorical ledge on this, and wanting somebody to talk me down, I wouldn't have come here.
I apologize if I've offended anyone and I appreciate your input. Thank you all again for your help.
Personally, I think both the new and old way of portraying NPC casters is useful. In a large fight with many casters, the new way is better, but if you have a druid NPC who will be accompanying the party long term, you might want the old way.
Another thing to consider is that the monster stat block just says what it can do in combat. Outside of combat, it can do anything you think it should logically be able to do. The more magical the monster, the truer that is. The hag entry for Volo's even tells you to invent new powers on the spot for them.
At this point, I think you're fear-mongering. We don't yet know what the new stat blocks will all look like. Monsters of the Multiverse is months away. The closest we have is this.
The problem with the stat block listed is that it is ok for running a combat encounter but is almost useless for other purposes. As a DM, I have no problem changing the characteristics of creatures to fit what I want them to do but I don't think the published stat blocks should force the DM to do this.
Let's just look at the listed stat block -
The NPC is called a War Priest and is listed as a humanoid of type "cleric". Both "priest" and "cleric" come with some possible expectations.
However, they are given a spellcasting feature and a limited selection of spells usable only 1/day. What happens if you run into a War Priest out of combat? Will they have access to a healing spell? Will they be able to cast Zone of Truth? What if the War Priest was assigned to an entry check point to a temple for the day? Does this mean that the "War Priest" isn't really a cleric? They have fewer prepared spells and no spell slots to use to cast them - they are somehow limited to casting each once/day.
I can just imagine the chat between the PC cleric and the War Priest "Man, you worship the wrong diety, you only have 8 spells that you can cast 1/day and you can't cast any healing spells? You need to find a new diety!". Though maybe the conversations goes more like "Man, that's crazy! Where does your diety give you the HUGE amount of healing ability? Every minute you can heal 5 commoners to full health, all day, every day! The town's you live in must have NO ONE who is every sick. They can only die."
Edit: I need to read the whole stat block since I missed the truly overpowering bonus action healing ability.
Also, the bonus action healing ability is UTTERLY immersion breaking. Any town with ONE war priest could heal anyone who gets hurt all day every day. There is no rarity, no cost, nothing of significance involved in having this creature heal 5 creatures every 30 seconds. In combat, it isn't that big a deal, out of combat it is game breaking - and honestly world breaking - which is why powers like this rather than spells are a concern. (and this is based on ONE published sample). At the very least the healing ability should be limited to proficiency times/long rest.
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Any DM can homebrew the spell lists or powers - change the #/day, add or change spells - adjust however, they think appropriate but the point is that the revised monster stat blocks are only useful for facilitating the running of a combat encounter with ONE specific flavor of NPC, not for incorporating/role-playing the NPC in a logically consistent game world where clerics prepare spells granted by their diety and can change those spells daily (that is part of the fundamental nature of a "cleric" in 5e and personally I apply it to both PCs and NPCs since it doesn't make sense otherwise).
Do I mind the change? Not really, my NPCs will always do exactly what I want them to and they will always appear more or less consistent with the internal logic of the game world to the players but there are lots of DMs who will just lift the stat block, use it as is and miss out on the fact that the NPC is still supposed to be a cleric. In addition, eventually, the players will realize that the NPCs just aren't like them - they can't cast Banishment twice - so if a PC passes their save they don't need to worry about that one coming up again. Whereas a 9th level PC spell caster could have 3 of them available in case one or more fail. (The war priest can also heal thousands of people all day every day - 5/minute is 300/hour or 3600 people healed on a 12 hour shift - that ONE war priest will keep whole armies at full hit points as long as they get to him before being killed outright).
P.S. The original has standard spell slots for a 9th level cleric and healing word .. so it was a FAR more sane and balanced creature stat block.
I think you and MoonElfWizard are having this trouble because the way you THINK about the game world that it should be an analogue of how (you understand) the actual world to function. If physics in the real world is consistent, magic powers should also be consistent. If you play the game because you enjoy "the puzzle" of the fictional world of Faerun, Arrakis, MIddle Earth, what-have-you, then you will likely be annoyed that spellcaster NPCs and monsters gnerally have such different stat blocks from players. The problem for you, from what I understand, is that the streamlining of Stuff-related-to-Combat is so prevalent that it sorely sticks out as a part of the D&D-as-Puzzle that does NOT fit in with the other pieces. However, the majority of D&D players and a large percentage of DMs just want to play a power fantasy about heroic deeds and phat loot - and having full stat blocks for NPC spellcasters got in the way of that because it tended to tilt the game towards delays during combat, which already took a bit too long for many people (a fact not helped by the easy availability of smartphones and society's adoption of them as gaming/video platforms causing shorter attention spans). So the Purpose of the game is different for you than it is for most of its players.
I sympathize with you because I don't like games that have (or appear to have) inconsistent rules; and it also annoys me when fiction that appears to not make sense based on its own made-up premise (*cough* Parry Smotter *cough*). It's partly for this reason that I am exploring non-D&D games. However, I do also appreciate the kind of outlet and easy reference point that D&D provides, even if the game mechanics and info-layout tends to cater to people who don't think like storytellers. It's popularity makes it easier to find other players. Personally, how I've adapted to this is to compartmentalize and redefine: D&D 5th edition is not meant to be consistent. It is not meant to be a level playing field. The DM has most of the power. The game is inherently asymmetrical and uneven in its allocation of resources. That also means that if I don't like something as written in the rules, I can change them if I am DM and I DO.
I do think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The stat blocks of the many NPCs in the several books are not representative of the capabilities of a player character. They are, rather deliberately, not supposed to be. This is a notable departure from, say, 3rd edition and its kin: D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1st edition. There, creatures were built using classes and templates. A goblin NPC was a 1st-level warrior with the goblin race tacked on. A vampire was an undead template that could be applied to virtually any creature. But this is an aberration. In my experience, most TTRPGs don't work that way.
Case in point, the NPCs already didn't follow the same rules as those in the PHB. A mage is not a wizard. They might have equivalent spell slots to a 9th level character will full spellcasting progression, but they don't have class levels. They don't have Arcane Recovery. They don't have an Arcane Tradition. Even the more specialized stat blocks from Volo's Guide to Monsters don't give them all of the "subclass" features. The Evoker notably has Sculpt Spells, but not Potent Cantrips or Empowered Evocation; despite being a 12-level spellcaster.
Even the above War Priest originally came with both the spells granted by the War Domain and the 12 more that a 9th-level cleric with a +3 Wisdom modifier could prepare. Plus their a weaker version of their War God's Blessing (incorrectly named Guided Strike) channel divinity, but not the Turn Undead channel divinity or Divine Strike. And that's to say nothing of their 22 spells for 14 spell slots. That's a bit of a mess.
The druid is a 4th-level spellcaster with no Wild Shape.
The priest has Divine Eminence; which no other spellcaster has. The closest analogous feature is Divine Smite, but they're fundamentally different.
You bring up a fair point about the game being asymmetrical by design. I don't know a TTRPG that isn't. Anything with a Dungeon Master, Game Master, Marshal, Storyteller, or what have you needs to be. The one needs the tools to be able to challenge the many or the several. And the physics don't line up with the real world, either. In D&D, the math, is all non-Euclidean by default. The Pythagorean Theorem doesn't exist. We have to check our biases and unlearn what we have learned if we're to abide by the rules as written.
Revisiting the revised War Priest above, I also sympathize with the truncated and altered spellcasting. I believe I'd said so at least once before. But, and this is a two-fold question, should an NPC be solving problems for the PCs with spells like zone of truth and should they be casting a lot of spells outside of combat? I'm also looking at how it's been redesigned and what it's supposed to do. Now, the bulk of its damage is not coming from big spells like a flame strike in the opening round that can be subject to counterspell. I mean, that can still happen, but now it's Multiattack can better share the load. They went from dealing 20 damage per round to 52, on average. Fitting, in my opinion, for a war priest. It lacks spiritual weapon, but (A) it doesn't need it anymore and (B) it's supposed to be using Healing Light every other turn. (In a 3-round battle, expect to see it used twice.) And they can do it all day, which makes them terrific allies. This makes them easier to run. There's no decision paralysis. If someone wanted to continue using the old one and make more work for themself then I won't begrudge them. It's not going away. And if they want to hybridize them, as I still might, then more power to them. But that's a personal choice. It's important to remember that these stat blocks only represent a typical example. They are not the only ones encounterable in the world. They're not all identical. I like tacking on the racial templates in the DMG to NPCs, even if a published book doesn't say to do so.
Paper and ink also cost money, so there's always a logistical side to stat block creation. If they have a lot of monsters to reprint, they're going to need space to avoid blowing up the cost of the book. I tailored my own Strahd von Zarovich to be a 16th-level spellcaster with some old school magic items from his AD&D days. I prefer him this way, but I also recognize his stat block would be far too big for publication in a book. The one we got in Curse of Strahd barely fit on a single page. I don't want a creature spread out over a page and a half to two pages. Do you?
What bothers me the most about this is all of the doomsaying; all because things are changing before anything is even being given a fair shake. Yeah, I'm not going to lie, my eyebrows raised when I first saw the new War Priest. I'm still excited for it and what it means for other potential changes.
Honestly, I think a lot comes down to how a person sees the DMs role in the game. In my view, DMs build the world. They create the geography, the peoples and the plot lines. The DM creates and is aware of the threads that run through the world they create and with which the player characters interact.
There are many ways to look at this. From one perspective, the PCs are unique and special, different from every other creature in the game world. They are heroes and there isn't any other creature like them in the world. The only adventurers in the world are the PCs.
On the other hand, many if not most fantasy stories have the main characters being "special" in some way but also with mundane and simple origins. They start off very little different from any other creature in the world and they likely aren't the only heroes or adventurers.
How a DM chooses to tell the story of their world differs depending on whether they consider the PCs to be unique or just a particular example of adventurers where the spotlight is being focused.
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How does this relate to the change in monster stat blocks?
The older version provides more input for world building while the new version facilitates and simplifies the building and running of encounters. The new version focuses only on combat relevant features so that running combat can be more streamlined, so that the DM might have fewer decisions to make and has to spend less time becoming familiar with the creature stat blocks. For a good DM, who typically prepared for likely combats, the difference is minimal since it didn't matter how many choices an NPC had, the DM had already decided the NPC likely actions for a range of circumstances. For a DM who typically limited their prep time and took time to think about what the NPC would do during the combat including reading the spells, the new format streamlines the process for the DM and requires less effort in combat.
However, the new stat blocks require more effort when world building. The healing light ability of the war priest for example is very easy to use in combat but it is game/world breaking with its overwhelming healing power when considered out of combat.
Depending on the group - some DMs don't care about world building - they throw out a bunch of encounters with lots of phat loot so their audience is happy and the fact that single war priest could keep an entire town healed, or an entire army healed, is a meaningless detail. Other DMs create a magical world whose parts work together (I am not talking about physics - it is magic after all) but if you want to create a world with typical conflicts, nobles, commoners, factions, clergy, wizards, plots, etc then the existence of singular NPCs with massive healing abilities is an issue so the DM in these cases has to homebrew a fix for it so that the new NPC stat block format designed solely for the ease of combat encounters doesn't break the game world when the characters ask why the war priest ally can't keep healing them outside of combat.
P.S. Think about it - what adventuring group would not go out of their way to gain or hire a war priest ally/NPC to come with them and ensure that they are at full hit points between every single event as well as providing decent in combat healing without using any spell slots and only costing a bonus action? Sign me up! This also has nothing to do with game mechanics but simple observation by characters in the game that the war priest has useful and extensive healing capabilities that the party could use ALL the time. However, then the DM has to come with some storyline reason to explain why it is impossible for the party to hire any sort of war priest ally but if they want a fighter - no problem. The existence of the NPC in this format requires either homebrew changes or a DM to adapt their storyline to explain why this kind of NPC is never available to assist the party.
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P.P.S. Final comment - either way, it won't really have a significant effect on my usage of the NPCs since I'll just homebrew or adjust the monster abilities in such a way that they will work from both an encounter and world building perspective. However, I think the format has issues for DMs that might have more problems recognizing and making the needed changes before the existence of the NPC becomes an issue in their game.
Real life is eating my time at the moment, but I appreciate your further comments. Please note that I "grew up" in 3.5 where, as was pointed out by others, there was a much stronger degree of consistency in how PCs and NPCs were handled. This created a very strong norm in my mind for how D&D "should" work and that expectation carried over to 5e.
The lack of consistent rules in 5e drives me up the wall. If you were to ask me the top ten changes I'd make to 5e the entire list would be "make the rules consistent," repeated over and over again. This new change was very triggering because, instead of making things what I would consider better, they made things "worst". They also made them worst in the part of the game I care the most about, making it impossible for me to ignore.
I appreciate people taking the time to point out the fact that 5e is a different game to 3.5, that this is one of the significant differences, that mages are not wizards (or sorcerers) and war priests are not clerics and so on. This does not change the fact that I think they should be and, in the "old way" of doing things, there were enough similarities that I could see them as the same. It was "close enough" and now it's not.
For me, a universe with consistent rules that bind both players and DMs equally is key. For example, I'd been working on a page of fluff explaining how spell slots work in universe, pulling in ideas from real world physics, and how they're different from how use per day abilities. I actually want my PCs talking about spell slots in character. I view them as integral to how magic works in game.
I want to be able to tell my PCs "The wizard looks at you with horror in their eyes, you recognize this look, it is the look all spell casters have when they run out of spell slots in the middle of a fight." This change was a rotten surprise for me. That people like it doubly so.
Because people like the new way, I'm trying to be sensitive to their feeling as well. I'm sorry that I've failed in that. I agree that I've been pushing a narrative of "this isn't how the game should work" with a lot of doom and gloom, even as I say that I'm trying to be constructive.
So, I'll say openly "I do not think this is how the game should work." Please feel free to disagree with me, it's your game too. I should also say that very good points were made for how other things have been improved and that I do need to keep this in mind.
As for the rest, It's great to have more variety in what NPCs can do in combat, but I really liked how 3.5 did this. In 3.5, options were added for everybody, PC and NPCS alike. When everybody gets the shiny new trick, then everybody is happy and the rules stay consistent.
Finally, I don't think a stat block should be purely "combat focused." I look up a creature's stat block to know how to roll play it as much, if not more, then I do to know how to run it in combat. More generally, 5e is supposed to have three pillars, this is an idea that is genuinely better developed in 5e than in 3.5 and it is a good one. In my opinion, creature stat blocks should speak to all three pillars, not just one. Again, this is my opinion and I could be wrong. The point about stat block length is a very good one.
As I mentioned, I'm very much an "official rules only" type of person, I don't want to change a big part of the game to meet my expectations for how it should work. What I've more or less picked up from this tread is that, as DM, I can and should change aspects of the game, particularly if that will be more fun for me and those I play with. I just wished I didn't have to.
I buy official products to save time, having to go through and change a lot of things diminishes their value in my eyes. Something that used to be purely "Oh...shiny and wonderful new content!" becomes "Oh for Corellon's sake! I have to fix this, and I have to fix this and..."
I'll also need to talk this over with my players as well because I really don't want to be one "those" DMs, the ones that bad stories are told about. This deviation from how the game is "officially" played might cost me players, but I hope not.
In any event, I've settled on what I'm going to do and made my opinion known. You're probably not going to hear from me again, but I will keep reading the thread from time to time. I'm only writing this note because I'm procrastinating again and I need to get back to work. Thank you all for your time.
The problem with the stat block listed is that it is ok for running a combat encounter but is almost useless for other purposes. As a DM, I have no problem changing the characteristics of creatures to fit what I want them to do but I don't think the published stat blocks should force the DM to do this.
Let's just look at the listed stat block -
The NPC is called a War Priest and is listed as a humanoid of type "cleric". Both "priest" and "cleric" come with some possible expectations.
However, they are given a spellcasting feature and a limited selection of spells usable only 1/day. What happens if you run into a War Priest out of combat? Will they have access to a healing spell? Will they be able to cast Zone of Truth? What if the War Priest was assigned to an entry check point to a temple for the day? Does this mean that the "War Priest" isn't really a cleric? They have fewer prepared spells and no spell slots to use to cast them - they are somehow limited to casting each once/day.
I can just imagine the chat between the PC cleric and the War Priest "Man, you worship the wrong diety, you only have 8 spells that you can cast 1/day and you can't cast any healing spells? You need to find a new diety!". Though maybe the conversations goes more like "Man, that's crazy! Where does your diety give you the HUGE amount of healing ability? Every minute you can heal 5 commoners to full health, all day, every day! The town's you live in must have NO ONE who is every sick. They can only die."
I also guess that their temples must have a "Healing priest" NPC so that they can heal up supplicants since the War Priest stat block (as published) is useless for that. Also, any reasonable "War Priest" I have ever run into is going to have Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon as spell options for example - why not this one?
Edit: I need to read the whole stat block since I missed the truly overpowering bonus action healing ability.Also, the bonus action healing ability is UTTERLY immersion breaking. Any town with ONE war priest could heal anyone who gets hurt all day every day. There is no rarity, no cost, nothing of significance involved in having this creature heal 5 creatures every 30 seconds. In combat, it isn't that big a deal, out of combat it is game breaking - and honestly world breaking - which is why powers like this rather than spells are a concern. (and this is based on ONE published sample). At the very least the healing ability should be limited to proficiency times/long rest.
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Any DM can homebrew the spell lists or powers - change the #/day, add or change spells - adjust however, they think appropriate but the point is that the revised monster stat blocks are only useful for facilitating the running of a combat encounter with ONE specific flavor of NPC, not for incorporating/role-playing the NPC in a logically consistent game world where clerics prepare spells granted by their diety and can change those spells daily (that is part of the fundamental nature of a "cleric" in 5e and personally I apply it to both PCs and NPCs since it doesn't make sense otherwise).
Do I mind the change? Not really, my NPCs will always do exactly what I want them to and they will always appear more or less consistent with the internal logic of the game world to the players but there are lots of DMs who will just lift the stat block, use it as is and miss out on the fact that the NPC is still supposed to be a cleric. In addition, eventually, the players will realize that the NPCs just aren't like them - they can't cast Banishment twice - so if a PC passes their save they don't need to worry about that one coming up again. Whereas a 9th level PC spell caster could have 3 of them available in case one or more fail. (The war priest can also heal thousands of people all day every day - 5/minute is 300/hour or 3600 people healed on a 12 hour shift - that ONE war priest will keep whole armies at full hit points as long as they get to him before being killed outright).
P.S. The original has standard spell slots for a 9th level cleric and healing word .. so it was a FAR more sane and balanced creature stat block.
I appreciate your feedback but if you really want me to calm down, you're actually making it harder for me do so. I do not feel that the tone here or in your previous post is constructive, but you probably feel the same way about me. So, given that we're not really communicating very well at the moment, I will try to engage with you better and real in my overly emotional side. I get what you are saying. You're right that we don't know what's coming.
To answer your question, you're also right that multiattack is different than extra attack, and you know what, that's absolutely fine, because your players will never figure out the difference. It takes zero effort to hide that they're different. You NPC attacks twice, your PC fighter attacks twice...What's the difference?
A different form of spell casting could (again you're right we don't know what's coming) feel very different at the table. From what I've already seen, it's going to be harder for me to sit down at the table and describe this in a way that makes if "feel" like: my NPC wizard casts a spell, my PC wizard casts a spell...What's the difference? The spells are different, because some aren't spell at all, the spell variety is different, because wizards don't have prepared spells and so on and so forth.
Your PC fighter will never get multiattack envy, they have access to something that is close to identical, your PC wizard (if they're like me) will get "shiny spell like ability I can't have" envy.
On my side, as DM, I don't want the objectively best thing I can do with my NPC in an encounter is the same thing every round. That they don't play that way is why I like casters. Yes, you can still fire off 3 different spells in the example you show above, that's fair. And in the next encounter, you might have 3 different spells again... But this looks like it's supposed to be emulating a 9th or 10th level cleric. It should have a spell list of 12 to 13 spells, it has 8 that's...not bad. It should have more castings than it has but that's not a big problem. Though, one of the spells that didn't make the list could be clutch for the situation you're in. You could just swap it in on the fly, but that doesn't "feel" fair to me.
Looking at the stat block shown, this isn't bad. There's no real issue with the spell like ability for this NPC.(Edit: Oops also missed OP healing ability, so there is that.) However, that is not the case with some of the other things I've seen. There are issues in other cases. For example, with Arrant Quill . He appears to be a 15th or 16th level bard, but has an ability that is not in line with what PC bards of that level can do.
You can also compare Halaster to Iggwilv. Halaster has many, many more choices. You can structure an encounter with him in more ways, you can build an entire campaign around him, but both are supposed to be ancient archmages of great power. To me Halaster feels right, Iggwilv feels limited. She's short about 20 spells.
Don't get me wrong, at the moment I really am up in arms about this but eventually I'll trick my brain into being ok with it and figure out how to hide the change from players. If you were to meet me face to face, I'd probably drive you up the wall too, but not intentionally. Thank you for your time.
I think most of your frustration is due to a disconnect. If you want your players to encounter an NPC wizard, then you build them a wizard. But if you want to use the default stat block for such a creature, what you're looking for is a mage. Likewise, they don't usually meet a cleric tending a temple or shrine, but they can find a priest. That might not seem like a significant difference, but it is.
Remember, a creature doesn't need to belong to a class to make use of a class' spell list. Both arcane tricksters and eldritch knights pull their spells exclusively from the wizard spell list (albeit with limitations) without being wizards. And with the correct Fighting Style, both paladins and rangers can learn cantrips from the cleric and druid spell lists, respectively. Technically, following the rules in the Monster Manual, each of these subclasses can attune to magic items reserved for wizards; like an arcane trickster attuning to a Robe of the Archmagi. But that's for monsters; not players. D&D is a game build on exceptions. Whatever you think the general rules are, there's bound to be at least one exception to it.
So, instead of playing Chicken Little, give the new War Priest a chance. Run it in an encounter. See how it plays. And see how it compares to the original vision from Volo's. Play with both of them.
If you're using a single signature npc, building them like a PC caster isn't that much trouble (though it's usually pointless, there's probably not more than five spells you have a high chance of actually using). When you're managing five NPCs, it is.
Yes, this is a very good point. My own experiments have absolutely validated that you will not get many spells out before the end of the encounter. Though I don’t think it is as pointless to build an NPC like a PC caster as you appear to. What if you want to have multiple encounters in one day, for example?
Edit: Also we’re going back to just homebrew it. I’d like WotC to occasionally do this too. For example Iggwilv above. She’d be fantastic as the anchor of a campaign.
Unless it's an ally, that's an unusual situation. It's not an unheard of situation, spellcasters with hit and run capabilities (Strahd von Zarovich is a good example) might burn through their entire spell lists, but if that's the case you're probably dealing with a solo caster once again.
Good point.
Hey all,
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. With your help, I think I've settled on how I'm going to handle this change.
-I'm going to pretend that casters still have spell slots for flavour (at the table description) purposes and are clerics, wizards and so on, just like the PCs. In combat encounters the PCs shouldn't notice the difference, particularly if I swap out spells from time to time. Even with the out of combat stuff, I should be able to keep track by using pseudo-spell slots. It'll be more work, but that's life.
-When I want to use a caster as a centre piece to an adventure I'll homebrew them so that they have a full spell list and spell slots. For example Iggwilv will get "fixed" so she has the full spell list a 20th level wizard should have.
-If a caster NPC has an over the top "spell" ability that is really flavourful and thematic (like Iggwilv's black speech for example) and I can come up with a good reason PCs can't have this shiny (You're not an immortal archmage from another world who's literally crafted artefacts, you can't do this for example) then they get to keep it.
-If the ability can be presented as a spell the PCs have access to, that's what I'm doing, and I'll hide that this is an ability, not a spell, behind the DM's screen. For example, if the PC wizard really wants to counterspell the War Priests "word of healing" then it happens, even if it's not really a word of healing.
-If the ability can't be presented as a spell and I have to bend myself into a pretzel to figure out why the PCs can't have this shiny, then it's out. I'll adjust the CR for the creature if I have to.
I've never liked modifying official content in any way, I've always been a "rules as written" kind of person. I always assumed the makers of the game know it better than I do. However, I've never encountered a situation like this where my own personal view of how things should run is so different from how the game is "intended" to be played, while still genuinely loving the game enough to continue playing. When this happens normally, I don't kick up a fuss, I just quietly walk away. It's what I did for 4th edition.
For those who think I'm more than a little over the top, that is probably true. However, look at my join date and look at my post count. If you look at my history, you'll see I've only ever posted about this. If it wasn't for how passionately I feel about this, you would never have known I'm alive. I am not very social, I am not on social media, and I dislike posting on Internet forums. If I wasn't standing on the metaphorical ledge on this, and wanting somebody to talk me down, I wouldn't have come here.
I apologize if I've offended anyone and I appreciate your input. Thank you all again for your help.
Personally, I think both the new and old way of portraying NPC casters is useful. In a large fight with many casters, the new way is better, but if you have a druid NPC who will be accompanying the party long term, you might want the old way.
Another thing to consider is that the monster stat block just says what it can do in combat. Outside of combat, it can do anything you think it should logically be able to do. The more magical the monster, the truer that is. The hag entry for Volo's even tells you to invent new powers on the spot for them.
I think you and MoonElfWizard are having this trouble because the way you THINK about the game world that it should be an analogue of how (you understand) the actual world to function. If physics in the real world is consistent, magic powers should also be consistent. If you play the game because you enjoy "the puzzle" of the fictional world of Faerun, Arrakis, MIddle Earth, what-have-you, then you will likely be annoyed that spellcaster NPCs and monsters gnerally have such different stat blocks from players. The problem for you, from what I understand, is that the streamlining of Stuff-related-to-Combat is so prevalent that it sorely sticks out as a part of the D&D-as-Puzzle that does NOT fit in with the other pieces. However, the majority of D&D players and a large percentage of DMs just want to play a power fantasy about heroic deeds and phat loot - and having full stat blocks for NPC spellcasters got in the way of that because it tended to tilt the game towards delays during combat, which already took a bit too long for many people (a fact not helped by the easy availability of smartphones and society's adoption of them as gaming/video platforms causing shorter attention spans). So the Purpose of the game is different for you than it is for most of its players.
I sympathize with you because I don't like games that have (or appear to have) inconsistent rules; and it also annoys me when fiction that appears to not make sense based on its own made-up premise (*cough* Parry Smotter *cough*). It's partly for this reason that I am exploring non-D&D games. However, I do also appreciate the kind of outlet and easy reference point that D&D provides, even if the game mechanics and info-layout tends to cater to people who don't think like storytellers. It's popularity makes it easier to find other players. Personally, how I've adapted to this is to compartmentalize and redefine: D&D 5th edition is not meant to be consistent. It is not meant to be a level playing field. The DM has most of the power. The game is inherently asymmetrical and uneven in its allocation of resources. That also means that if I don't like something as written in the rules, I can change them if I am DM and I DO.
I do think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The stat blocks of the many NPCs in the several books are not representative of the capabilities of a player character. They are, rather deliberately, not supposed to be. This is a notable departure from, say, 3rd edition and its kin: D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1st edition. There, creatures were built using classes and templates. A goblin NPC was a 1st-level warrior with the goblin race tacked on. A vampire was an undead template that could be applied to virtually any creature. But this is an aberration. In my experience, most TTRPGs don't work that way.
Case in point, the NPCs already didn't follow the same rules as those in the PHB. A mage is not a wizard. They might have equivalent spell slots to a 9th level character will full spellcasting progression, but they don't have class levels. They don't have Arcane Recovery. They don't have an Arcane Tradition. Even the more specialized stat blocks from Volo's Guide to Monsters don't give them all of the "subclass" features. The Evoker notably has Sculpt Spells, but not Potent Cantrips or Empowered Evocation; despite being a 12-level spellcaster.
Even the above War Priest originally came with both the spells granted by the War Domain and the 12 more that a 9th-level cleric with a +3 Wisdom modifier could prepare. Plus their a weaker version of their War God's Blessing (incorrectly named Guided Strike) channel divinity, but not the Turn Undead channel divinity or Divine Strike. And that's to say nothing of their 22 spells for 14 spell slots. That's a bit of a mess.
The druid is a 4th-level spellcaster with no Wild Shape.
The priest has Divine Eminence; which no other spellcaster has. The closest analogous feature is Divine Smite, but they're fundamentally different.
You bring up a fair point about the game being asymmetrical by design. I don't know a TTRPG that isn't. Anything with a Dungeon Master, Game Master, Marshal, Storyteller, or what have you needs to be. The one needs the tools to be able to challenge the many or the several. And the physics don't line up with the real world, either. In D&D, the math, is all non-Euclidean by default. The Pythagorean Theorem doesn't exist. We have to check our biases and unlearn what we have learned if we're to abide by the rules as written.
Revisiting the revised War Priest above, I also sympathize with the truncated and altered spellcasting. I believe I'd said so at least once before. But, and this is a two-fold question, should an NPC be solving problems for the PCs with spells like zone of truth and should they be casting a lot of spells outside of combat? I'm also looking at how it's been redesigned and what it's supposed to do. Now, the bulk of its damage is not coming from big spells like a flame strike in the opening round that can be subject to counterspell. I mean, that can still happen, but now it's Multiattack can better share the load. They went from dealing 20 damage per round to 52, on average. Fitting, in my opinion, for a war priest. It lacks spiritual weapon, but (A) it doesn't need it anymore and (B) it's supposed to be using Healing Light every other turn. (In a 3-round battle, expect to see it used twice.) And they can do it all day, which makes them terrific allies. This makes them easier to run. There's no decision paralysis. If someone wanted to continue using the old one and make more work for themself then I won't begrudge them. It's not going away. And if they want to hybridize them, as I still might, then more power to them. But that's a personal choice. It's important to remember that these stat blocks only represent a typical example. They are not the only ones encounterable in the world. They're not all identical. I like tacking on the racial templates in the DMG to NPCs, even if a published book doesn't say to do so.
Paper and ink also cost money, so there's always a logistical side to stat block creation. If they have a lot of monsters to reprint, they're going to need space to avoid blowing up the cost of the book. I tailored my own Strahd von Zarovich to be a 16th-level spellcaster with some old school magic items from his AD&D days. I prefer him this way, but I also recognize his stat block would be far too big for publication in a book. The one we got in Curse of Strahd barely fit on a single page. I don't want a creature spread out over a page and a half to two pages. Do you?
What bothers me the most about this is all of the doomsaying; all because things are changing before anything is even being given a fair shake. Yeah, I'm not going to lie, my eyebrows raised when I first saw the new War Priest. I'm still excited for it and what it means for other potential changes.
Honestly, I think a lot comes down to how a person sees the DMs role in the game. In my view, DMs build the world. They create the geography, the peoples and the plot lines. The DM creates and is aware of the threads that run through the world they create and with which the player characters interact.
There are many ways to look at this. From one perspective, the PCs are unique and special, different from every other creature in the game world. They are heroes and there isn't any other creature like them in the world. The only adventurers in the world are the PCs.
On the other hand, many if not most fantasy stories have the main characters being "special" in some way but also with mundane and simple origins. They start off very little different from any other creature in the world and they likely aren't the only heroes or adventurers.
How a DM chooses to tell the story of their world differs depending on whether they consider the PCs to be unique or just a particular example of adventurers where the spotlight is being focused.
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How does this relate to the change in monster stat blocks?
The older version provides more input for world building while the new version facilitates and simplifies the building and running of encounters. The new version focuses only on combat relevant features so that running combat can be more streamlined, so that the DM might have fewer decisions to make and has to spend less time becoming familiar with the creature stat blocks. For a good DM, who typically prepared for likely combats, the difference is minimal since it didn't matter how many choices an NPC had, the DM had already decided the NPC likely actions for a range of circumstances. For a DM who typically limited their prep time and took time to think about what the NPC would do during the combat including reading the spells, the new format streamlines the process for the DM and requires less effort in combat.
However, the new stat blocks require more effort when world building. The healing light ability of the war priest for example is very easy to use in combat but it is game/world breaking with its overwhelming healing power when considered out of combat.
Depending on the group - some DMs don't care about world building - they throw out a bunch of encounters with lots of phat loot so their audience is happy and the fact that single war priest could keep an entire town healed, or an entire army healed, is a meaningless detail. Other DMs create a magical world whose parts work together (I am not talking about physics - it is magic after all) but if you want to create a world with typical conflicts, nobles, commoners, factions, clergy, wizards, plots, etc then the existence of singular NPCs with massive healing abilities is an issue so the DM in these cases has to homebrew a fix for it so that the new NPC stat block format designed solely for the ease of combat encounters doesn't break the game world when the characters ask why the war priest ally can't keep healing them outside of combat.
P.S. Think about it - what adventuring group would not go out of their way to gain or hire a war priest ally/NPC to come with them and ensure that they are at full hit points between every single event as well as providing decent in combat healing without using any spell slots and only costing a bonus action? Sign me up! This also has nothing to do with game mechanics but simple observation by characters in the game that the war priest has useful and extensive healing capabilities that the party could use ALL the time. However, then the DM has to come with some storyline reason to explain why it is impossible for the party to hire any sort of war priest ally but if they want a fighter - no problem. The existence of the NPC in this format requires either homebrew changes or a DM to adapt their storyline to explain why this kind of NPC is never available to assist the party.
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P.P.S. Final comment - either way, it won't really have a significant effect on my usage of the NPCs since I'll just homebrew or adjust the monster abilities in such a way that they will work from both an encounter and world building perspective. However, I think the format has issues for DMs that might have more problems recognizing and making the needed changes before the existence of the NPC becomes an issue in their game.
Hey all,
Real life is eating my time at the moment, but I appreciate your further comments. Please note that I "grew up" in 3.5 where, as was pointed out by others, there was a much stronger degree of consistency in how PCs and NPCs were handled. This created a very strong norm in my mind for how D&D "should" work and that expectation carried over to 5e.
The lack of consistent rules in 5e drives me up the wall. If you were to ask me the top ten changes I'd make to 5e the entire list would be "make the rules consistent," repeated over and over again. This new change was very triggering because, instead of making things what I would consider better, they made things "worst". They also made them worst in the part of the game I care the most about, making it impossible for me to ignore.
I appreciate people taking the time to point out the fact that 5e is a different game to 3.5, that this is one of the significant differences, that mages are not wizards (or sorcerers) and war priests are not clerics and so on. This does not change the fact that I think they should be and, in the "old way" of doing things, there were enough similarities that I could see them as the same. It was "close enough" and now it's not.
For me, a universe with consistent rules that bind both players and DMs equally is key. For example, I'd been working on a page of fluff explaining how spell slots work in universe, pulling in ideas from real world physics, and how they're different from how use per day abilities. I actually want my PCs talking about spell slots in character. I view them as integral to how magic works in game.
I want to be able to tell my PCs "The wizard looks at you with horror in their eyes, you recognize this look, it is the look all spell casters have when they run out of spell slots in the middle of a fight." This change was a rotten surprise for me. That people like it doubly so.
Because people like the new way, I'm trying to be sensitive to their feeling as well. I'm sorry that I've failed in that. I agree that I've been pushing a narrative of "this isn't how the game should work" with a lot of doom and gloom, even as I say that I'm trying to be constructive.
So, I'll say openly "I do not think this is how the game should work." Please feel free to disagree with me, it's your game too. I should also say that very good points were made for how other things have been improved and that I do need to keep this in mind.
As for the rest, It's great to have more variety in what NPCs can do in combat, but I really liked how 3.5 did this. In 3.5, options were added for everybody, PC and NPCS alike. When everybody gets the shiny new trick, then everybody is happy and the rules stay consistent.
Finally, I don't think a stat block should be purely "combat focused." I look up a creature's stat block to know how to roll play it as much, if not more, then I do to know how to run it in combat. More generally, 5e is supposed to have three pillars, this is an idea that is genuinely better developed in 5e than in 3.5 and it is a good one. In my opinion, creature stat blocks should speak to all three pillars, not just one. Again, this is my opinion and I could be wrong. The point about stat block length is a very good one.
As I mentioned, I'm very much an "official rules only" type of person, I don't want to change a big part of the game to meet my expectations for how it should work. What I've more or less picked up from this tread is that, as DM, I can and should change aspects of the game, particularly if that will be more fun for me and those I play with. I just wished I didn't have to.
I buy official products to save time, having to go through and change a lot of things diminishes their value in my eyes. Something that used to be purely "Oh...shiny and wonderful new content!" becomes "Oh for Corellon's sake! I have to fix this, and I have to fix this and..."
I'll also need to talk this over with my players as well because I really don't want to be one "those" DMs, the ones that bad stories are told about. This deviation from how the game is "officially" played might cost me players, but I hope not.
In any event, I've settled on what I'm going to do and made my opinion known. You're probably not going to hear from me again, but I will keep reading the thread from time to time. I'm only writing this note because I'm procrastinating again and I need to get back to work. Thank you all for your time.