Using 4th Edition Combat Roles to Build Better Derro

I’ve been running D&D 5th Edition for a little while now and I’ve begun to form some opinions about the monster design in this edition of the game. At a high level, individual enemies don’t feel very organic to me. Let’s talk about why that is, and what we can do about it.

Before we go any further, I should mention that I learned about this technique from Matt Colville’s Running the Game videos:

Let’s put this technique into practice and build some better derro!

Background

5th Edition D&D has this thing called bounded accuracy, which (to greatly simplify things) means that as characters gain levels, their combat modifiers don’t change too much. A character’s attack roll boils down to:

1d20 + Proficiency bonus + attribute modifier + magic bonus + situational bonus

This is essentially what it’s been since 3rd edition came out (though we called it Base Attack Bonus back then). The big change has been the rate at which these different numbers change. The attribute modifier is mostly about the same, however in 5e there is a hard maximum that did not exist in 3.x, meaning that a similar 3.x character might have another point or two from attribute modifiers. Similarly, magic item bonuses from weapons are roughly similar, though the 3.x values tended to be a bit higher. Where you see the big difference is in proficiency bonuses and magic/situational bonuses.

• A 5th edition PC’s proficiency bonus starts at +2 and goes to +6, while a 3rd edition PC’s base attack bonus ranges from +0 all the way to +20 (depending on class selection).
• A 3rd edition PC generally has access to far more magic items that affect attacks than a 5th edition PC. This is for a couple of reasons: 5th edition has attunement requirements for many items (particularly ones which impact attack rolls), 5e’s treasure tables give out way fewer items overall, and it regularly gives advantage or disadvantage rather than a strict modifier to the roll.
• A 3rd edition PC has many ways to stack up situational bonuses that are typically not available to a 5e PC. These are things like flanking (which gave +2 to attack instead of advantage), charging, feats, spell effects, and so on. Many things that gave small modifiers in 3.x give advantage in 5e.

The net effect here is that in 3rd edition, the range of values from an attack roll was quite large, while in 5th edition it doesn’t change too much. In 3rd edition, a low-level challenge such as a goblin or kobold was simply not a threat at high levels, as you only missed if you rolled a 1 and it only hit you if it rolled a 20. The same situation is much more threatening and challenging in 5th edition: if your AC has only increased by +3, then the goblin is only 15% less likely to hit you. If your attack bonus has increased +5 (which is a really huge amount in 5e) you are still only 25% more likely to hit a goblin.

The impact on the game? Goblins (and kobolds, and orcs, and so on) are still meaningful threats at higher-level play, when in 3rd edition they weren’t even speed bumps. This is pretty cool!

The problem

Something seems to have been lost as a lot of monsters went through the design process to achieve this. Especially if we take a look at what monsters in 4th edition looked like, it seems like enemies not only have a lot less variety, but also that they are generally less interesting. I think this may be a result of trying to keep enemies relevant across many levels? Anyways, let’s take a look at derro in 5e:

• AC 13
• 3 HD
• Advantage on saves against spells
• Melee: hooked spear, +2 to hit, 1d6 damage, can knock the target prone
• Ranged: light crossbow, +4 to hit, 1d8+2 damage

Let’s look at what Keith Ammann has to say about Derro over at The Monsters Know:

With high Dexterity and above-average Constitution but merely average Strength, derro are skirmishers, but not especially mobile ones. Their Intelligence is average, but their Wisdom, for some reason, is in the cellar. This is unusual; the reverse is far more common, especially since Wisdom supports the Perception skill. Not only are they easy to get the drop on, they also have an underdeveloped survival instinct, making them more likely to fight to the death. They are, however, proficient in Stealth, predisposing them toward an ambush strategy.

Look, this is a boring enemy. And while that’s fine, not every enemy is going to be all that interesting, this is still the foot soldier for this faction. Speaking of factions, the other kind of derro is a savant, who is a 5th level spellcaster with 8HD and AC 13. One challenging thing here is that derro have CR 1/4 and the derro savant has lightning bolt so it can be challenging to thread the needle of appropriate danger for your party (if you are worried about that sort of thing).

The bigger issue is that there’s not a lot going on here. There are two kinds of derro, the kind that are easy to surprise and weak and the kind that cast lightning bolt and are weak. So tactically speaking they’re somewhat boring.

But the bigger issue here is that they are essentially a monoculture, they’re cookie-cutter by nature. I’d like to have my PC’s face enemies that impart a sense of believability. Intelligent creatures (like derro, goblins, or any other kind of traditional enemy like that) are not going to conform to descriptions like this. There has to be more going on, doesn’t there?

How can we do better?

So what do I think we should do instead? Is there a better way to handle intelligent enemies? Isn’t this how we’ve been playing D&D for 50 years?

Well, yes and no. It is mostly how we’ve been playing, certainly since the late 80s when I first played. But there was a period of time when enemy design was quite a bit more interesting. Take a look at the derro from 4th edition Monster Manual 3:

Role	Attacks	Special
Artillery	Hand crossbow, dagger	Bolt spray close AoE, +2d6 damage w/advantage
Minion	Club	Suicide to turn miss into a hit
Skirmisher	Battleaxe	-2 attack/+2d6 damage when bloodied, free attack if opponent bloodied
Lurker	War pick	move and hide as an action, knock target unconscious if hidden as an action, shackle a target as an action, +2d6 damage w/advantage
Soldier	Spear, punch	knock target prone as minor action
Controller	Scourge, psychic scourge (ranged)	creates a lasting AoE centered on an ally, push all creatures within AoE as minor action
Brute	bite, tentacle	flailing tentacle (AoE, must be bloodied), constant AoE damage

If you’re unfamiliar with how 4th edition worked, this probably looks strange. The basic idea is that characters (player and otherwise) filled certain reasonably-well-defined combat roles that informed the sorts of things they did. The derro in 4th edition are much higher level but we can see from this list that they all do something interesting, they have attacks that are mostly different from each other, and when they bring special abilities into play they create really interesting enemy variety.

What I find really appealing about this method of enemy design is that you really don’t need any more details to get a pretty decent understanding of how a fight with these folks is going to go down:

• The brute is going to wade into the thickest clump of enemies and try and get everyone in range of its AoE tentacle attacks
• The soldiers will try to create a sort of front line and knock enemies prone to grant advantage to their allies
• The artillery (personally I would’ve chosen archer as the name) has a hand crossbow so they’ll try to maneuver into a position to hit as many enemies as possible with their bolt spray attack.
• The lurkers do a crapload of damage if they’re able to get advantage, and they have the ability to eliminate individual targets, so they’ll sneak around and attack the lfnaks
• The controller will put their zone ability on the most convenient ally and then move enemies around to create advantages for their side

So if we imagine our PC’s fighting against a lot of derro (they’re clearing out a fort, for instance) they’ll experience a lot of different encounters. Of course you’re not going to get a huge mix of all of these different enemy types in every group, most will be soldiers and artillery probably, but even just that small change makes a huge difference.

The solution

So let’s take a look at changing our 5e derro with a mindset to creating different roles and make things a bit more interesting. We’ll stick to just tweaking stats and modifying equipment because we don’t want to change their CR. And we’ll leave the savant alone for now. Let’s take the regular derro and create a soldier version. The original version is already a pretty decent archer so we’ll have it lose the spear and use a dagger instead. On top of that we’ll tweak its stats a little bit by reducing its constitution and bumping its dexterity.

For the soldier, we’ll tweak the stats a bit. They’ve got a bit more strength and a bit less dexterity and intelligence (smart and nimble derro don’t get into melee combat, after all). They’ve got chain shirts instead of leather armor and javelins instead of a crossbow.

Trait	Archer	Soldier
Strength:	10	13
Dexterity:	14	12
Intelligence:	11	8
Constitution:	10	12
AC:	13	14
Attacks:	Dagger +2/1d6, crossbow +4/1d8+2	Hooked spear +3/1d6+1

This is a pretty small set of changes, but the result is a clear differentiation between different groups of enemies. When your PC’s see these derro, you can describe the archers as small, nimble-looking crossbow wielders wearing leather armor, who scamper around and keep their distance. The soldiers, in comparison, look like absolute hulks, wearing chain shirts and wielding spears.

In combat we haven’t really changed their overall capabilities very much (since we haven’t added any new attacks or actions), we’ve just divided the group up. Now your players can look at their enemies and intuit their behavior based on their appearance and their equipment. This makes the encounter more interesting, and it makes it more rewarding when the players win.

Final thoughts

This is a pretty basic example where we only slightly modified some equipment and stats. If we really want to instill character into our enemies we can go much further, by adding new actions and capabilities. This is difficult at low level because your PC’s aren’t very powerful, but as they gain levels you can do things like give certain enemy types damage resistances that others don’t have, feats, significantly better equipment variation, and so on. I also suggest mining the 4th edition books for other implementations of roles. We’ll do some more of this in later posts and make some higher level enemies.