The Silent “Nerfing” of Dungeons & Dragons Monsters.

There’s been an unsettling trend in D&D Monsters over the last three decades.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1^st Edition monsters were fearsome, a true force to behold in the depths of a dungeon. Dragons were intimidating on and off the table. You didn’t want to run into a Manticore in a dark alley, and the Chimera was no joking matter. While the art may have evolved on the Displacer Beast, the statistics have gone down. Wyverns are but a mere shadow of their former deadly selves.

I think the real change in dynamics happened right around the time 3.5^rd Ed D&D came out. 2^nd Ed AD&D monsters were no laughing matter much the same as their 1^st Ed cousins weren’t a joke. Wizards of the Coast designers brought changes to the way we view Armor Class, Hit Points, Attacks, Damage, Special Attacks, Saving Throws and character deaths.

By the time 4^th Ed rolled around, real depth of monster design fell off. The 4^th Ed video game feel made even the most menacing of monsters just another little obstacle in what would become epic length combat sessions. The power creep amongst characters had been cemented in at this stage of development.

Is it any wonder 5E D&D is such a mess? The designers gave the very best of every edition to the Player Characters, made life miserable on the Dungeon Master from the get-go, and hit every freakin monster with the Nerf bat. Now we have super heroic player characters at level one and out of control at level three. People are literally coming up with new game-breaking combos for level one characters on YouTube all the time now. Meanwhile if you want truly good monster hacks, there are dozens of PDFs available on the DMsGuild.com and DriveThruRPG.com. Apparently WotC just wanted the fans to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running the game. (*Sounds like lazy game design to me, but what do I know?)

A 1^st Ed AD&D monster would mop the floor with later iterations.

I realize mechanics of the game have changed radically over the years and character classes, equipment, and spells have done so as well. Back in the 1^st Ed days, we had different ways of doing everything, although different is not always better. Even the way a stat block is read has changed.

For one thing, there was an interesting statistic at the top of every block called No. Appearing. If one of these things was bad news, image if a DM rolled up with four of these things! The chances of encountering monsters was listed as “Frequency.” Rare monsters were harder to randomly come by.

Back in the good old days, we even had to figure out what dice to roll based on the sets of damage given. For example, 1-6, 3-24, and 5-50 meant rolling 1d6, 3d8, and 5d10. Nothing was spelled out for us.

A lot of old statistics keyed off of the number of Hit Dice in those days. The bigger the monster’s HD, the better it could hit, the better its Saving Throws were, and obviously the more health it had. All Hit Dice were d8 unless otherwise noted. (Exceptions were almost nonexistent.)

Back in my day, we didn’t have those pesky Challenge Ratings. We had Hit Dice, Treasure Types, and how much experience it was worth for kil- um, defeating the monster. Back then PCs also exercised the options of avoiding combat at all costs and running away before they could experience a Total Party Kil-…Wipe. (*We could also use a lot of different words to describe things, especially around other gamers, and nobody freaked out.)

Let’s take a look at the humble Chimera first.

Looking at the 1^st Ed Chimera, we see that it’s rare, but the group could encounter 1-4 of them! Maybe that’s not intimidating enough until we look at their Armor Class of 6/4/2. (The Chimera was rare in that each part of the body had a different AC.) Remember, in old D&D, a low AC was a very good thing.

Now, the part that should inspire panic- 9 Hit Dice! Look out, this thing is going to hit often with its 6 attacks. 2 claws, 2 horn, 1 lion bite, and one dragon bite doesn’t sound like much nowadays. And the damage was okay but given that every one of those attacks was probably going to hit all but the most heavily armored party members, that’s a lot of damage per round. Oh, and a 50-50 chance the thing might hoot fire on the group for 3d8 fire damage, Save vs Breath Weapon for half.

For a mid-level party, Chimeras would be a challenge. For a low-level party- they were a nightmare, especially if there were more than one of them. High level parties could even fall prey to them under the proper circumstances.

(* Funny side note:2E gave us the Gorgimera, replacing the goat head with a bull head and petrifying breath.)

3.5 Edition:

Okay, fast forward a few years. Now the Chimera is a CR 7 creature with 9 hit dice. That’s still pretty respectable. 19 AC was pretty good in those days. There’s a possibility of running into one, three to five, or a lot them. Their breath weapon does 3d8 damage, recharges every 1d4 rounds, and has the potential to be one of five chromatic dragon types. Their attacks went down from six to five plus a breath weapon, but the damage per attack rose slightly.

This seems like a step up, except by this time in the game PCs were a walking arsenal of Feats and multiclassing. Prestige classes were all the rage taking the game to an all new level for the players. At least monsters also had the chance to advance along with the group, but oftentimes a low level party could take down a 7-9 HD creature irrespective of what the CR system would indicate.

I would say this is really where things start breaking even for the PCS. They had ridiculous official content to pull from with massive power creep. Then add in all of the insanely fun third party content that added new weapons, spells, Feats, classes, and so on. Even with the addition of templates onto monsters, they rarely stood a chance. We watched many a BBEG die swiftly in those days.

After the disastrous 4^th Ed, we reached 5E D&D in 2014.

I remember the first time I read through monster stats in 4^th Ed and just being appalled at the power level differences. Some of my favorite monsters were neutered in size and statistics. Meanwhile players gained access to ridiculous amounts of self-healing abilities and all kinds of cool paths and things to pump them up.

5E was supposed to be the best of all worlds. The Chimera is down to CR 6, but 12d10+48 hp sounds great. The attacks are a little choppy and one of the heads has to give up a melee attack to hoot fire. 7d8 save for half at DEX DC 15 which even most low level characters tend to make now.

WotC has even admitted that the Challenge Rating system as written for 5E doesn’t work. They don’t even use it in house. Balanced encounters have become all the rage, except “balance” apparently means the PCs always get to win now.

Characters come out of the 5E gates at first level ready to take on the world. At third level most get even more ridiculous. Experience points for monsters don’t even matter any more because many DMs have long since abandoned them. There is no longer a number appearing, morale score, or anything terribly special about the Chimera.

That’s why we see so many homebrew and Third Party Publisher monster resources on various websites. Many of the 5E creatures don’t pack enough punch to put the fear of death into the Muppet ancestry any more unless they come from a non-official sourcebook. Even more recent official sourcebooks give us monsters that go “meh” instead of “ROAR!”

I think this is one more reason why a lot of players and DMs have turned away from 5E to other games or 3PP sourcebooks. This might also explain why Bigby’s Glory of the Giants went straight into the discount bin at Ollie’s after a less-than-stellar launch. (I’d almost consider buying it at 75% off, but I already have better 3PP material sitting on my shelves.)

I think this is also why we have so many books such as Flee, Mortals! coming out even this late in D&D 5E’s lifespan. Third parties and homebrewers are still trying to make the best of a broken Monster Manual and DMG. A lot of us are finding ourselves wanting a greater challenge for these 5E heroic and superheroic low level characters. We’re just not getting it from the official WotC titles any more.

Anyway, I’ll probably be doing a few more of these comparison articles. I want to talk about a couple of my other favorites, the Manticore and the Wyvern. I just shudder when I see how far some of my favorite monsters have fallen. This is why I’m so pumped to be converting more and more monsters over to Shadowdark RPG and other games where they can be appreciated. 3.5E and 4E had so many great monster references that deserve some love somewhere.

Thank you for stopping in today. I’m working on reviews and my Deck of Portals release daily now. More to come on that. I appreciate you being here with us today. Please embrace that which brings you the most joy today.