BG3 and the fun of transparency

[Cikomyr2]

I havent tried the Honor difficulty mode, so please forgive me if it completely wrecks my arguments.

I was just thinking of the degree of transparency in Baldur's Gate 3 actually making the game more fun. You know how many HP enemies have. You know their saves, you know their AC. The game outright tells you the to hit % or the likelihood someone will make their saving throw, allowing you to approach the game with more knowledge.

And i know all dnd game i played, the GM wouldnt tell us monsters' stats, the idea being that you wouldn't know an enemy AC or saving throws or HPs. Part of the fun is "figuring these things", a paradigm i never challenged until i had such a great time playing with the same ruleset, just transparent.

Do you have an opinion? Have you experienced better or worse tabletop experienced when the stats are freely shared?

[OldTrees1]

I have played Honor mode. The transparency Cikomyr2 noticed remains in Honor mode. When Honor mode gives a creature another feature or legendary action, you can read up on that feature/action in game. Thus when you face the owlbear, you can choose to be surprised, or you can read how it was made harder.

Personally, for TTRPGs, there are areas I like transparency, areas I like temporary mystery that turns into transparency, and areas I like mystery.

• I like transparency in areas describing the character's knowledge of their own abilities. The character knows how mobile they are. The player should not need to guess how far and fast the character can jump, climb, wall run, etc.
• I like some temporary mystery for describing the character's knowledge of their abilities matched vs an unfamiliar foe. I start with AC, Saves, Atk, etc of NPCs hidden from the players. However I do nothing to maintain that secrecy. I openly roll attacks/saves and I let the group know when the enemy was hit.
• I like permanent mystery for describing the outcome of a character's failed knowledge gaining efforts. If the party is searching for a secret and don't find it, it stays secret until they do find it.

Part of the reason I don't announce the enemy AC values up front is laziness. My VTT does not display those values to the Players. If it had, then I would be fine with that transparency. As it is, after a few attacks the AC of the enemy is usually known or remarked upon.

[icefractal]

I used to be more on the side of "keep everything a secret until discovered", but over the years I've realized that in most cases it has the same issue as certain other things that are cool in theory - the game just isn't long enough.

We have a limited number of hours to play each week, and most GMs have a limit how long they can run a single campaign before burning out or just wanting to try something new. So that cool payoff that would happen after 200+ battles? It won't happen at all because there won't be that many battles.

So in practice, a lot of the secret information becomes just "eh, we have no info so use standard tactics I guess" rather than any kind of deduction challenge.

I'm not saying this applies to *everything* - if the question is "How did the BBEG know where the army was going to move?" then figuring that out is the gameplay. A spy? Divination? He's a genius at predicting people? Figure it out in-game, I'm not going to say up front. But "what attack bonus does this guy we're likely only fighting once ever have?" isn't usually going to be in that category.

[kyoryu]

I'm a huge fan of transparency. Reveal as much as is reasonable (not necessarily plot stuff). Make figuring out how to deal with the creatures the fun bit, not trial-and-erroring their shtick.

It also has the side benefit of making most metagaming irrelevant.

[Amnestic]

I generally keep stuff to myself when DMing, but don't have an issue revealing stuff as it happens, so like, saves etc. will be rolled openly, and I'll go "okay, 3+7=10, they fail", and from then on the party knows "okay, they've got +7 to that save".

If my players came to me and said "we'd probably have more fun if we knew what the enemies can do, just as you know what we can do" then I don't think I'd have an issue sharing statblocks. Ultimately it's not happened yet, possibly since everyone's 'satisfied' with the existing paradigm.

From a player perspective part of me might prefer just seeing the 'stats' for enemies (HP/AC/Saves) and not their abilities. Maybe I wanna be a little bit surprised when the dragon breaks out a special breath weapon instead of just the standard fire? Idk.

[Biggus]

I don't like the players to know things their characters wouldn't know. This is partly because it disrupts my suspension of disbelief, I like my fantasy to feel as real as possible.

I don't mind if they've had a reasonable chance to size up their opponent; I often just tell them the enemy's AC after a couple of rounds of combat for example, because they already know roughly what it is and it speeds things up.

Also, sometimes an enemy will have an unusual AC or save value for their level/type, or have a special ability I don't want them to know about immediately, I like being able to surprise them sometimes.

I do agree with OldTrees1's point about the characters' own abilities though, they should have a pretty clear idea of how much they can lift or how far they can jump.

@OP: what was it about knowing the enemy's stats you liked? In what way did it make the game more fun?

[Anonymouswizard]

The enemy's stats might not be open, but their rolls are so they can be deduced. If it's a combat focused campaign then Standard Mook X might be open information so attack resolution can be faster.

But like, every GM I've known has actively and occasionally openly fudged to keep things interesting. There's enough ways to do it that you can manage with open rolls. Heck even if the players know the BBEG's exact spell/power list there's nothing stopping them from pulling out a contingency item they didn't have before. Transparency is great for those who want a wargame, but most people I know who want to play a wargame play wargames.

[Yora]

I tend to let players know the target number of a roll after they commited to the action and before they roll the die. At that point there is no more backing out, but for the players there is a certainty that now it's really up to the dice if their action succeeds. My own preferences as GM are now meaningless. I have no more chance to ignore the roll and say it's success or failure arbitrarily.
I can of course set the target number trivially low or impossibly high, but when I do the players know that I did, for whatever reason.

[Beelzebub1111]

I like how Solasta does it and Incorperated it into my games. After battle roll a relevant knowlege or survival check to increase your "Rank" of knowlege. you start off knowing nothing but as you pass checks you learn more after each encounter. First their average HP (I like rolling for every monster this just gives your players a baseline to think of what they will be around), then you learn their typical ac and saves, then you learn abilities and resistances at full knowlege. This is things you can learn through play but this would just be confirmation.

You can also borrow from pathfinder 2e and just roll knowledge as an action to ask a specific question. The difference is you should always give helpful information like if the enemy doesn't have any vulnerabilities or resistance when they ask, you should at least tell them their best and worst saves so they know which to target.

[Catullus64]

As someone whose DM philosophy generally goes against sharing a monster's game statistics, I can say that for myself it has very little to do with any tactical challenge from figuring it out. Quite the opposite: the aim is to draw players' attention away from the mechanical elements of the game so they can focus their attention on imagining the narrative of the fight. Too much information on a monster's AC, HP, attacks, saves, etc, and players start fixating on numbers instead of roleplaying their characters in the fight.

A single-player CRPG is a very different beast. You have visual and auditory elements doing much of the work which, at the table, largely has to be done by imagination. Meanwhile, although numbers may be visible to players, the actual arithmetic of manipulating those numbers, and then translating them back into game outcomes, is handled by a computer. Because of both of these things, the numbers don't get in the way of the fantasy of the fight even when visible.

In brief, this kind of thing works well in a video game because so much imaginative and mechanical work is being done by the machine and not the player. Be wary of importing this thinking to a tabletop setting.

Of course, there's an implicit value judgement in my argument, that presenting players with a fun tactical puzzle to solve is of secondary importance to helping them imagine and roleplay the fight, a value judgement you may simply choose not to share.

[LibraryOgre]

I like how Solasta does it and Incorperated it into my games. After battle roll a relevant knowlege or survival check to increase your "Rank" of knowlege. you start off knowing nothing but as you pass checks you learn more after each encounter. First their average HP (I like rolling for every monster this just gives your players a baseline to think of what they will be around), then you learn their typical ac and saves, then you learn abilities and resistances at full knowlege. This is things you can learn through play but this would just be confirmation.

You can also borrow from pathfinder 2e and just roll knowledge as an action to ask a specific question. The difference is you should always give helpful information like if the enemy doesn't have any vulnerabilities or resistance when they ask, you should at least tell them their best and worst saves so they know which to target.

4e also had DCs to know things about the various enemies. Hit a DC 10, and you know this. Hit a 20, and you know this and that.

For the general topic, though, secrets should be saved for things that have a real impact. That orc is wearing chainmail and has a shield? It shouldn't take long to figure out he has a 3 AC. The only reason I should bother keeping that a secret is if he's actually a polymorphed dragon or the like. You might not know every spell the wizard can throw at you, but you can probably take a reasonable guess at level.

[Batcathat]

As someone whose DM philosophy generally goes against sharing a monster's game statistics, I can say that for myself it has very little to do with any tactical challenge from figuring it out. Quite the opposite: the aim is to draw players' attention away from the mechanical elements of the game so they can focus their attention on imagining the narrative of the fight. Too much information on a monster's AC, HP, attacks, saves, etc, and players start fixating on numbers instead of roleplaying their characters in the fight.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I'm at, too, and as a player I've never been very interested in figuring out the specific numbers of an opponent. Now, if it's something major like them being immune to a particular type of damage or something like that, that's another thing, but that can usually be easily conveyed without complete transparency.

[Beelzebub1111]

4e also had DCs to know things about the various enemies. Hit a DC 10, and you know this. Hit a 20, and you know this and that.

For the general topic, though, secrets should be saved for things that have a real impact. That orc is wearing chainmail and has a shield? It shouldn't take long to figure out he has a 3 AC. The only reason I should bother keeping that a secret is if he's actually a polymorphed dragon or the like. You might not know every spell the wizard can throw at you, but you can probably take a reasonable guess at level.

I do remember that, but it was a bit inconsistent with what you might know. I remember the Bear Lore meme from those days. DC 15: Bears live in caves. DC 20: Bears attack with their natural weapons. I think a successful check should at least tell you something mechanically useful.

[King of Nowhere]

I am also on the side of realism. the players should know what the characters should know, and i use that as a guideline more than everything.
but i am transparent with what the players know.
the characters know, by having done a bit of research, that the high priest of vecna is a powerful cleric whose spells are extremely hard to resist, who relies strongly on save-or-die effects to take advantage of his spells being stronger than others. once the players have discovered that, I can easily tell them that his implosions have a save DC above 35, but lower than 40. it's the same information, just translated. in fact, if they know that the hpov often uses such spells even against fighters and barbarians, which should be especially resistant to such magic, they could easily do the math themselves and figure out that if a 20th level fighter type in our campaign generally has a fort save around +25, the hpov must have a 35+ to his save dc to target high fort saves with a fair chance of success. I generally don't give exact numbers, but I wouldn't have many qualms against it.
the party know, by their own research, know that the noble scion trained from birth to fight is an accomplished sniper, taking down enemies from afar. ooc, i tell them that the sniper rifle allows applying precision damage from afar, and that this enemy is a rogue/assassin delivering death strikes with it. i don't even need to tell them any stat, because they can easily figure them out: they know their opponent is a world elite, so they know she's level 20 (she could be 18, but it doesn't change too much), with high dex, a +5 rifle, and all the available buff items, and they can get a rough statistic from that.

on the other hand, when they went into a sealed plane and encountered monsters never seen before, i didn't give them any stats.

As someone whose DM philosophy generally goes against sharing a monster's game statistics, I can say that for myself it has very little to do with any tactical challenge from figuring it out. Quite the opposite: the aim is to draw players' attention away from the mechanical elements of the game so they can focus their attention on imagining the narrative of the fight. Too much information on a monster's AC, HP, attacks, saves, etc, and players start fixating on numbers instead of roleplaying their characters in the fight.

Indeed; the more the players know the enemy, the more they can strategize. according to the group you have, people will be more or less inclined to strategize. if your group is more roleplay-heavy, it's better to hide the numbers. if the group likes to fight tactically, they'll prefer to know them.

in the specific case of bg3, I always approach videogames more tactically. While I always praised that specific game with all my friends for its open world, plot, and out of combat options, in the end it never compares with sharing a good story with your human party and interacting with the story with a human dm. not if you have a good human party, which i'm lucky to have. so, for all that i like having plenty of use for social or investigation skills, in the end 90% of what i want in a videogame is to powergame my way through my enemies. so I like transparency

[Cikomyr2]

@OP: what was it about knowing the enemy's stats you liked? In what way did it make the game more fun?

I felt I had more control over my actions. My spellcasters knew which enemies have the best intelligence/wisdom/charisma saves, and which had the worst, and it made like casting certain spells was less of a waste of time; which sometimes it feels like in DnD.

Also, a better idea of how much HP was left on enemy, so I would more optimally dish out the damage.

In a way, also having an idea of a monster's HP scale helped figure out when I was outmatched. Something that's always delicate to balance in DnD, since it relies on the DM knowing the encounter in unbalanced and giving the proper hints about it. Full transparency puts the entire burden on the player(s). It's up to them to read the stats and figure if they should just zip out, rather than play 20 questions with their lives, an exercise I find terribly annoying.

(what is annoying to me is not the possibility of overwhelming encounters that can beat the PCs, but the uncertainty about who has the onus to flag the information to the other. 100% transparency of stats removes all ambiguity, as the players can freely draw their conclusion about the 260 HP dragon).

[Biggus]

I felt I had more control over my actions. My spellcasters knew which enemies have the best intelligence/wisdom/charisma saves, and which had the worst, and it made like casting certain spells was less of a waste of time; which sometimes it feels like in DnD.

Also, a better idea of how much HP was left on enemy, so I would more optimally dish out the damage.

In a way, also having an idea of a monster's HP scale helped figure out when I was outmatched. Something that's always delicate to balance in DnD, since it relies on the DM knowing the encounter in unbalanced and giving the proper hints about it. Full transparency puts the entire burden on the player(s). It's up to them to read the stats and figure if they should just zip out, rather than play 20 questions with their lives, an exercise I find terribly annoying.

(what is annoying to me is not the possibility of overwhelming encounters that can beat the PCs, but the uncertainty about who has the onus to flag the information to the other. 100% transparency of stats removes all ambiguity, as the players can freely draw their conclusion about the 260 HP dragon).

OK, thank you for the explanation. I'm certainly not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't enjoy, but to me it just doesn't feel like a roleplaying game at that point, it feels like a tactical combat game. Which I know a lot of people enjoy, but it feels out of place in something where you're supposed to be playing an actual character rather than just moving miniatures about on a board. Each to their own I guess.

[Telok]

Its something I've come to call the "armor-guy with sword problem" over the years. GM describes some guy wearing armor and wielding a weapon. Is it a mook with 12 hp, ac 15, & 1d8 attack? Is it a construct with 300 hp, ac 21, and a 5d6 attack? Is it a teleporting undead thing with 100hp, ac 27, and a 1d8 + 10d6 nectotic + save vs fear quad attack? Is it a wizard? A cleric? Radiates antimagic? Damage aura? No clue, its a armor-guy with a sword until it starts pounding on you.

Many monsters have the same issue, especially in D&D. The GM describes them, but the description has no basis in the rules. Size, speed, armor, claws & fangs, none of it is rules-mapped to even approximate what the critter is like. The descriptions stopped telling us anything and thus meaning anything.

This led to an interesting phenomena. We, as players, stopped caring what we fought and stopped using tactics. Combats became repetitive exercises in just beating down the hit points of the most recent sack of miscellaneous unattached of stats. Without being able to know the abilities of what we were fighting we couldn't plan for anything and we stopped trying to do anything interesting beyond "hit it with basic attacks until it falls down".

[Mastikator]

I don't like the players to know things their characters wouldn't know. This is partly because it disrupts my suspension of disbelief, I like my fantasy to feel as real as possible.

I don't mind if they've had a reasonable chance to size up their opponent; I often just tell them the enemy's AC after a couple of rounds of combat for example, because they already know roughly what it is and it speeds things up.

Also, sometimes an enemy will have an unusual AC or save value for their level/type, or have a special ability I don't want them to know about immediately, I like being able to surprise them sometimes.

I agree and I think the important thing is that if players don't know what their characters wouldn't know, then they should be made aware of what their characters should know. For example if I have a newbie player who's playing a wizard and they're facing an iron golem and he wants to fireball it I'd just tell him that fire will heal the iron golem, and his character knows this because he's a wizard. Likewise a ranger will just know that perytons have resistance to non-magical BPS. A paladin (and necromancer) will know that zombies can't use undead fortitude if they're hit by radiant damage.

The AC one I typically tell them, especially if the AC comes from armor. An enemy with chainmail will have an AC of 16. I prefer to tell them what kind of armor the enemy is wearing.

[kyoryu]

Its something I've come to call the "armor-guy with sword problem" over the years. GM describes some guy wearing armor and wielding a weapon. Is it a mook with 12 hp, ac 15, & 1d8 attack? Is it a construct with 300 hp, ac 21, and a 5d6 attack? Is it a teleporting undead thing with 100hp, ac 27, and a 1d8 + 10d6 nectotic + save vs fear quad attack? Is it a wizard? A cleric? Radiates antimagic? Damage aura? No clue, its a armor-guy with a sword until it starts pounding on you.

Many monsters have the same issue, especially in D&D. The GM describes them, but the description has no basis in the rules. Size, speed, armor, claws & fangs, none of it is rules-mapped to even approximate what the critter is like. The descriptions stopped telling us anything and thus meaning anything.

This led to an interesting phenomena. We, as players, stopped caring what we fought and stopped using tactics. Combats became repetitive exercises in just beating down the hit points of the most recent sack of miscellaneous unattached of stats. Without being able to know the abilities of what we were fighting we couldn't plan for anything and we stopped trying to do anything interesting beyond "hit it with basic attacks until it falls down".

Another reason why I like giving more information - the characters see a lot of info - just how good the armor is, how they move and hold themselves, any subtle auras, etc.

What the GM says is a pretty narrow band of communication. The PCs have a lot more. Just give it to them!

[King of Nowhere]

This led to an interesting phenomena. We, as players, stopped caring what we fought and stopped using tactics. Combats became repetitive exercises in just beating down the hit points of the most recent sack of miscellaneous unattached of stats. Without being able to know the abilities of what we were fighting we couldn't plan for anything and we stopped trying to do anything interesting beyond "hit it with basic attacks until it falls down".

we did that? not in my experience.
if i have to pick something vaguely familiar in that, it's the "hit with basic until it falls"
wait, that clearly refers to 5e, while my experience is 3.5. so ok, not totally relatable. but in my 3.5 experience, for fighter types basic attacks are your strongest feature. so it makes sense to hit with those as the first resort. and if it works, why try something different? as for the casters, they have the big guns, but they can only use the really powerful stuff once or twice per day. so they generally limit themselves to buff and support.
if, and only if, you encounter something that is more problematic, then you use the high level spell slots. and if even those fail, you start to get creative. the reason we use the same tactics 90% of times is that they work. it's more of a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

incidentally, i do believe that if a fight can be breezed through just by basic attacks, it's often not worth rolling dice for. it can better be narrated as "and you easily dispatch the puny foes", and move on with more interesting stuff. but then, it's hard to know which fight it will be. balacing a fight is always a lot of guesswork

[Cikomyr2]

OK, thank you for the explanation. I'm certainly not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't enjoy, but to me it just doesn't feel like a roleplaying game at that point, it feels like a tactical combat game. Which I know a lot of people enjoy, but it feels out of place in something where you're supposed to be playing an actual character rather than just moving miniatures about on a board. Each to their own I guess.

For me, the fact that we dont know what im dealing with and i cant use my character's in-universe immersion and observation to derive information about enemies that would be useful for their survival is what brings me out of immersion.

In real life, an experienced fighter would see how someone holds their sword. Whats their stance. How they move, where their attention are focused on. The little things that help jauge an opponent.

So maybe an experienced fighter knows what an enemy's AC is? A wizard would see the deep cunning that would help defend against some of their spells? A cleric would know which of the adversary looks weak-willed to their Command?

That sort of thing, that translates in "you are knowledgeable about the enemy".

If the DM wants to keep things hidden because it makes sense (monster deliberately try to look more impressive as a mean of intimidation. An assassin hiding his capabilities to look nonthreatening).

You know, it gives a measure of transparency that you can then play with. Rather than start with "so should i guess this orc is supposed to be a 7 hp nobody or hes a veteran warrior of 40 campaigns?". What about the next orc?

[Telok]

we did that? not in my experience.
if i have to pick something vaguely familiar in that, it's the "hit with basic until it falls"
wait, that clearly refers to 5e, while my experience is 3.5. so ok, not totally relatable...

Basically that last sentence. Its a D&D 4e & 5e thing where what a npc/monster is and does is unrelated to the description and type. For example, in most games and D&D 3.x size has a rules defined effect making bigger critters stronger and smaller critters more nimble. Players can use that to prepare tactics. Likewise in 3.x undead have specific traits & weaknesses that can be planned for or exploited.

Without that consistency describing a monster as "a huge hill giant zombie" doesn't actually mean much of anything because the words "huge" and "zombie" don't carry that information any more. You're now facing a bag of hit points with some attacks and any special abilities the GM or writers wanted to throw on. The "huge hill giant zombie" is just as likely to have a good dex save, resist fire damage, and have a 15' reach as it is to have a bad dex save, be vulnerable to fire, and have a 5' reach.

It wouldn't be as bad if it were just a few outlier critters that broke some guidelines. But the npc stats are so divorced from anything beyond hp/ac/dpr and there are so many unique mini-rules in the thousands of stat blocks, that many of the descriptions are as useful to the players as "a person in armor with a weapon". So much information is hidden from the players by the lack of consistency that you can't practically plan anything but the most generic tactics like "haste the fighter and spam damage".

[JNAProductions]

Basically that last sentence. Its a D&D 4e & 5e thing where what a npc/monster is and does is unrelated to the description and type. For example, in most games and D&D 3.x size has a rules defined effect making bigger critters stronger and smaller critters more nimble. Players can use that to prepare tactics. Likewise in 3.x undead have specific traits & weaknesses that can be planned for or exploited.

Without that consistency describing a monster as "a huge hill giant zombie" doesn't actually mean much of anything because the words "huge" and "zombie" don't carry that information any more. You're now facing a bag of hit points with some attacks and any special abilities the GM or writers wanted to throw on. The "huge hill giant zombie" is just as likely to have a good dex save, resist fire damage, and have a 15' reach as it is to have a bad dex save, be vulnerable to fire, and have a 5' reach.

It wouldn't be as bad if it were just a few outlier critters that broke some guidelines. But the npc stats are so divorced from anything beyond hp/ac/dpr and there are so many unique mini-rules in the thousands of stat blocks, that many of the descriptions are as useful to the players as "a person in armor with a weapon". So much information is hidden from the players by the lack of consistency that you can't practically plan anything but the most generic tactics like "haste the fighter and spam damage".

Do you have examples?

And I'd like monstrous examples, not humanoid ones, if possible. "A dude in armor and with a weapon" describes a 1st level Fighter and an 11th level Barbarian and a 20th level Cleric and a 5th level Bladesinger and a 17th level Swords Bard and... Need I go on?

[King of Nowhere]

"A dude in armor and with a weapon" describes a 1st level Fighter and an 11th level Barbarian and a 20th level Cleric and a 5th level Bladesinger and a 17th level Swords Bard and... Need I go on?

I must point out, though, that in the case of humanoids magic gear is generally a telltale sign. Magic weapons often glow, or have pulsating runes inscribed. plus there's ioun stones, and all the plethora of amulets and trinkets... even without identifying, you can have a passable idea of someone's gear power, which is linked to level.
sure, it could be a 1st level dude that inherited everything from his adventurer dad, or it could be a 20th level dude that just got hit by disjunction and is looking for replacement. but those are rare cases, you generally can tell.

[JNAProductions]

Okay-but that doesn’t tell you what their abilities are besides “Weak” or “Strong”.

Glowing sword could be any of those.
Ioun stone, any.
Magic armor, any.

[Telok]

Do you have examples?

And I'd like monstrous examples, not humanoid ones, if possible. "A dude in armor and with a weapon" describes a 1st level Fighter and an 11th level Barbarian and a 20th level Cleric and a 5th level Bladesinger and a 17th level Swords Bard and... Need I go on?

Dude, I'm just a player this edition. I can't tell a shardy-koi from a celestial foo from a... well hardly anything. Like we fought t-rex and zombie t-rex but the only difference was the zombie one occasionally spat out some minions. Couldn't tell the difference between fighting a dragon and a draco-lich, no noticable difference, barbarian was multi-round feared each time. Fought over a dozen different kinds of demons but that's all just "fire & poison don't work on these", no other real differences, and frankly those are such common resists we don't use those spells anyways. Lots of different shadowy spectral undead too, sometimes they phase, sometimes they drain, sometimes both, sometimes neither. Same with big boney undead, some poison, some teleport, some have auras, but nothing about their descriptions tells us anything and there's enough of them in the MMs (or perhaps the GM reskins like people keep saying to) that they all end up descriptively similar. Even when the GM shows us the pics from the books its meaningless because having or not magic sfx in the pic doesn't indicate anything, having or not having wings doesn't mean it can or can't fly, etc. Then we fought an ooze once that turned out to be a phasing spellcaster. No idea what was up with that or if it resisted or vulnerable to anything. Just beat the hp sack down because that's the only thing we know works.

People want to blame the GM but the same guy running Shadowrun, D&D 3.5, and Starfinder didn't have this problem. Its only with D&D 4e & 5e that we stopped planning and caring what we fought because we

[Witty Username]

Some unity of types could help this some.

For example, Undead coming with a pile of internally consistent stuff, helps undead comunicating ideas and players a bit more world interaction.

[JNAProductions]

Some unity of types could help this some.

For example, Undead coming with a pile of internally consistent stuff, helps undead comunicating ideas and players a bit more world interaction.

Like being immune to poison and often inflicting maximum HP drain?

[Witty Username]

Like being immune to poison and often inflicting maximum HP drain?

That and,
Not needing to eat, sleep or breathe, Immunity to necrotic damage. No decernible anatomy (feel bad things like sneak attack Immunity is probably good to stay out, but Immunity to physical effects like blindness, deafness, paralysis etc. could work for that.), Immunity to exhaustion.

3.5 types could mean alot about a creature right off the bat.

[Ignimortis]

Like being immune to poison and often inflicting maximum HP drain?

Like being immune to poison, fatigue, anything having to do with bodily reactions to stuff (sickened/nauseated/etc), negative energy healing them, positive energy dealing damage to them...

In short, way more commonality in abilities than whatever 5e proffers for its' creature types. That's something 3.5 did completely right as a concept, and, more importantly, 99% right as a final result, with some basic issues (undead seem to be immune to mind-affecting stuff regardless of having an INT score, which should be the actual criteria, that sort of thing). But if you see an undead in 3.5, you also know about their blanket immunities (unless you're like level 1 and nobody invested in Knowledge (Religion).

5e? Vampires are not immune or even resistant to poison. Neither are some specific zombie types, and some others are merely resistant. Positive energy does not damage undead specifically, it's on a spell-by-spell basis, and the most basic ones just do nothing. Negative energy/necrotic damage does not heal undead by default, either. There's basically no uniformity to creature types anymore.