The more I work on monsters for 5e D&D, the more I’m convinced that it was a mistake to design NPCs based on player character options, especially spellcasters. For combat, these NPCs should, as in 4e, be distilled to their core functionality to make them easy for a DM. 1/ By "easy" I mean the action cycle is obvious, which tends to make the NPC's tactics obvious. Frex, you don't need the whole spell list for the average battle. You need the NPC's goto options to deal with a life-threatening situation. 2/
— Chris S. Sims (@ChrisSSims) June 8, 2021
And this design methodology opens up design space. You can totally include alternative and narrative NPC builds, especially for spellcasters. Here are this wizard’s prepared spells on a particular day. Here’s their spellbook for customization. And so on. 3/ When determining Challenge in D&D, you must distill these NPCs to their goto options anyway. The problem ends up being that the stat block doesn't convey those options to the DM among the plethora of spells on a list. 4/
— Chris S. Sims (@ChrisSSims) June 8, 2021
The same thing goes for monsters with numerous innate spells. Other monsters can stay as they are, because their core functionality is clear. But, restricting monsters, especially NPCs, to analogs of player character functionality is not a good design choice. 5/ And it's largely a joke, anyway, because a survey of monsters shows that they have all sorts of shenanigans to get them to do what they need to do in their Challenge space. And those that fail to use shenanigans often fail to function as they should be expected to in play. 6/
— Chris S. Sims (@ChrisSSims) June 8, 2021
And I suspect this disparity is the source of many “monsters aren’t challenging enough” problems. The solution, as shown in 4e, is to let the monsters do what they need to do for a satisfying gameplay experience without tying them to player material. 7/ Instead, fake the connection. Model monster powers on player-facing mechanics while still allowing them to be what they need to be for the monster to function. Done well, the feel will still be right from the players' perspective. 8/
— Chris S. Sims (@ChrisSSims) June 8, 2021
And if you’re going to engage in design shenanigans to get that functionality anyway (as 5e does in many places) well… 9/9 (maybe) The thing is, when you have a theme for a spellcaster NPC, that theme can fall by the wayside of a "better" spell. Why would the NPC use a thematic element when fireball is just better? And yes, by "better" I mean better at killing the heroes–that's what most monsters aim to do.
— Chris S. Sims (@ChrisSSims) June 9, 2021