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TrT8r
2018-04-14, 09:33 PM
Monster Hunter fans, unite! Time to make the awesome wyverns of Monster Hunter into D&D monsters. Any game, any edition, any monster is allowed. Let's see what we can make!

demonslayerelf
2018-04-14, 10:19 PM
I've got Anjanath and Barroth for 5e. I started working on these a while ago, just going through the alphabet. I overdesign stuff so people can have fun using them.

Stuff (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/rJZxAlVgfz)

Hykeru
2018-04-15, 04:06 PM
I've got Anjanath and Barroth for 5e. I started working on these a while ago, just going through the alphabet. I overdesign stuff so people can have fun using them.

Hey, just checked out your stuff, and it looks pretty sweet! You seem to have covered both monster's movepools pretty well, although for the sake of keeping things a little easier on the DM I might remove some of the fluff in the monster's traits section.

The trait describing the monster's size seems pretty complicated and unnecessary. Have you thought about how it will affect the monster and combatants in combat? Cubic monsters are easy to handle because no matter what direction they are facing they take up the same space. With a rectangular monster, what happens when the monster tries to turn around in somewhat narrower spaces, or when the monster is surrounded by attackers and tries to turn? Think about how this will work with current D&D mechanics.

Also, having fought these monsters many times, I would say that they are not Gargantuan, but rather just Huge. Monsters that would be Gargantuan would be the Dahren Mohen, Lao-Shan Lung, and Gogmazios. Monsters even bigger than that, like the Dalamadur, might fall into the unofficial category of Colossal.

I like the implementation of the stunning and the frightening, but I would argue that they're not so much elements of Anjanath, and Barroth, but rather just mechanics of the Monster Hunter games in general. I would be tempted to remove them from the monsters themselves, and instead list them as separate house rules for players playing Monster Hunter themed games.

The Multiattacks are also kind of confusingly written, and also maybe a bit too much. You may want to consider looking at and mimicking the way they are written in the MM.

I think my primary concern with these designs is scalability. You've chosen monsters from the early to mid-game in Monster Hunter, but you've given them such high stats that there's not much room in the D&D system to make even bigger, more powerful monsters. Even the Terrasque has maximum scores of 30, and he's not even designed to be beaten by most parties. Maybe cap the lesser monsters to 22-25 scores, and then leave the bigger numbers to the late game monsters. '

All in all though, it's a good start, and I love the enthusiasm! Maybe just take another peek at the Monster Manual and see how they do things in there. I promise it's written that way to maximize the fun. I know you can keep improving it to capture that sweet feeling of Monster Hunter victory!

demonslayerelf
2018-04-15, 05:25 PM
Ima go through those in this order;
Size/Shape, Stats, Multiattack/Traits

I'm gonna say this about both size and shape; I did the math, and they're definitely gargantuan... Sort of. The anjanath measures almost 60 feet long according to it's canon size(About 1500 cm to about 2000 cm), which is almost bigger than colossal. That's mostly tail and snout though, so it falls comfortably within the gargantuan range of 32-64 feet.

It's not a gelatinous cube, though, so it's a little weird; It doesn't have the shape to be able to curl up like a dragon might, so in one dimension it's comfortably gargantuan, but in another, it's an awkward 10-15 feet, if you're being generous about it. At that point, I compared it(And the Barroth) to a T-Rex, which is a Huge creature on it's own. It only measures 40 feet from tip to tip, a solid 20 less than the anjanath. It's also shorter, but it's actually about the same thickness. I figured a t-rex and a half would be gargantuan.

The weight is also a little weird; Older editions placed weight limits on the creatures of any given category(For instance, 125 tons on gargantuans in 3e). I don't remember if 5e does, but scaling generously, the anjanath would only weigh about 10 tons which is within the LARGE category, of 3.5, that is.(3.5 does also rate quadrupeds(And I mean, Anjanath isn't really quadruped, but he leans really far forward like one, so meh) from snout to tail tip, so that would place him gargantuan at about 60 feet.)

On the T-rex angle, let's talk stats; A T-rex has 25 strength, with a +7 modifier. The Anjanath is the same shape, but bigger and nastier; Saying the anjanath has a 28 strength score was honestly too small, if I'm completely honest. Barroth is only a bit bigger, but it wears heavy mud everywhere, so I gave it the +1, for 26.

Then we get to the traits and multiattack.
The multiattack is a little weird, but I can't model it perfectly after 5e's normal multiattack. The Anjanath and Barroth simply have way more options than most 5e creatures, even through the relatively sloppy recreation that I did. If I had followed the normal multiattack format, the Anjanath would ALWAYS use the same combination of biting, charging, fire breathing, etc., which moreso than anything else, I think, ruins the feeling of Monster Hunter. It's explicitly not about memorizing patterns, just getting better as a player, and knowing the OPTIONS available to the monster. The Anjanath won't use it's fire breath every 3rd bite after the charge, or something like that.


Finally, the stunning and frightening stuff; Yeah, your way would probably work better. But I designed them not to run a MH-themed game, just for people to put MH monsters into DnD games. DnD doesn't have these rules, so I just include them with the monster.


Anyway, yeah, hope that clears up why some of these things are a little weird. If you have a solution to the weird sizing things, please say something, but... I mean, I don't understand how you could give a 60x15x20 a cube-shaped space, personally.

VictoriousLoL
2018-04-15, 06:23 PM
I really like your statblocks for the Anajanath and Borroth; they're very well designed - definitely plan on throwing that at my players sometime!

Hykeru
2018-04-15, 07:57 PM
If you have a solution to the weird sizing things, please say something, but... I mean, I don't understand how you could give a 60x15x20 a cube-shaped space, personally.

For me, the spaces creatures take up is less about their actual mass, and more about the area they affect/control with their body. No creature is actually a square, but the space they take up is best represented as such, because one can imagine them taking many shapes within that space, such as curling their tail around them.

That also brings up an interesting point, that you are including in your measurement (because Capcom includes it), the tail, which D&D does not include in the sizes of its monsters. This makes sense because the tail is not so much a solid part of the body, but one which is flexible and can be moved around according to the environment. Instead, monsters that have significant tails, such as Dragons, and even the T-Rex, are given Tail Attacks with Reach 10ft+. This allows the mechanics to take those long appendages into account, without restricting the movement of the player, or the monster.

Cutting off the tail, and even the extended neck of these monsters, I would still say that they occupy the space of a Huge monster.

demonslayerelf
2018-04-15, 10:08 PM
For me, the spaces creatures take up is less about their actual mass, and more about the area they affect/control with their body. No creature is actually a square, but the space they take up is best represented as such, because one can imagine them taking many shapes within that space, such as curling their tail around them.

That also brings up an interesting point, that you are including in your measurement (because Capcom includes it), the tail, which D&D does not include in the sizes of its monsters. This makes sense because the tail is not so much a solid part of the body, but one which is flexible and can be moved around according to the environment. Instead, monsters that have significant tails, such as Dragons, and even the T-Rex, are given Tail Attacks with Reach 10ft+. This allows the mechanics to take those long appendages into account, without restricting the movement of the player, or the monster.

Cutting off the tail, and even the extended neck of these monsters, I would still say that they occupy the space of a Huge monster.

I'll agree with this, for the most part. There are two points I have, though; If you completely remove the t-rex' tail and extended neck, it shortens them to under 20 feet, which is actually incredibly, incredibly close to simply being a Large creature, not a huge one. And, it's worth noting, that for T-rex shaped creatures, they CAN'T curl it up or anything.

The other thing, though, is that the Anjanath and Barroth, even without their heads and tails, are twice as long as they are wide. Sometimes the ratio is even more screwed for both MH monsters, as well as actual dinosaurs, like the Spinosaur. This means that, even if you cut the head and tail off, they still wouldn't threaten a cube-shaped area, they would still be threatening a rectangle.

(Also, as for no creature taking up a square, I refer to you; The Gelatinous Cube.
lol)

TrT8r
2018-04-16, 04:08 PM
I've got Anjanath and Barroth for 5e. I started working on these a while ago, just going through the alphabet. I overdesign stuff so people can have fun using them.

Stuff (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/rJZxAlVgfz)

Great stuff, but complex. Do you think you could shrink the block to one page?
Also, about the size, the monsters can spin in place, even in a narrow space.

demonslayerelf
2018-04-17, 07:24 AM
Great stuff, but complex. Do you think you could shrink the block to one page?
Also, about the size, the monsters can spin in place, even in a narrow space.

Fine, real logic be damned, I'll bow to game logic :P

TrT8r
2018-04-17, 01:28 PM
Did a quick snoop and I found out that the square it takes up is, in fact, the are that it Controls, not the area it takes up. If you got in that space, even if the monster does not occupy all the space, you would be knocked away or just unable to get in.

demonslayerelf
2018-04-17, 04:10 PM
I don't think anybody was debating that, I'm just saying that it controls an area that's not a cube/sphere.

(On a different topic, I also finished Tobi-Kadachi, in all it's lightningy glory. Put it on the original page, 3rd creature down.)