Blog (A5E) Spellcasting Monsters in Level Up

One of our goals with the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition Monstrous Menagerie was to make enemy spellcasters less of a pain to run. With an updated stat block format, we've made it possible to run a complex battle without looking up spells in another book or online resource–all while working as expected with existing spells and features like counterspell and antimagic field.

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition

Level up your 5E game! The standalone advanced 5E tabletop RPG which adds depth and diversity to the game you love! #levelup5e

www.kickstarter.com

As an example, here's our NPC priest stat block:

In Level Up, if a monster or NPC's spell is likely to see use in combat, we include it as an action (or reaction, or bonus action) in their stat block. For instance, in the priest's stat block, spirit guardians is fully detailed as an action, just like their mace attack. You don't need another book or an online tool to run a monster.

Spells are spells​

The spirit guardians action is listed in the priest’s Spellcasting trait, which means that it's a spell. It interacts with the usual spellcasting rules: a rival priest can cast dispel magic on it, and the priest can't cast it and healing word in the same turn. It doesn't break or ignore any of the usual rules of the game.

Our stat block also notes that spirit guardians is a concentration spell (so whack that evil priest and force a concentration check!), and we list its spell components of V, S, and M (someone cast a silence spell!)

Guidance for the Narrator​

We don't convert every spell into an action. That would lead to unmanageable, multi-page stat blocks. If it's a utility spell or it's not usually worth casting in combat, then it appears only in the monster's spell list and not as an action. You might find a clever use for a utility spell - or want to look up additional rules, like how to cast a spell with a higher slot. In that case, you'll have to consult the spell description. Most of the time, though, you can run a monster quite efficiently without consulting another book.

Powerful spellcasters have a lot of options! That's a feature of the game, not a bug. Our most complex spellcaster, the lich, has 22 spells prepared, of which nine are detailed in its stat block. Still, the lich stat block fits handily on one page spread - with room left for a section of combat advice.

Between our various stat block changes–the curated list of spells in the stat block, the notes for concentration and components, and the combat advice–Level Up lets you run every spellcaster, even a complex and high-level one like a lich, with zero prep.

We're proud of our spellcaster format. Rather than inventing new tech that changes the way the game works, we've polished the presentation to provide maximum usability. We think it's going to be the state of the art for quite some time.

 

[Steampunkette]

I -do- happen to love the way you've got monster actions set up...

One of the good things out of 4e. The idea to list what actions a creature can take to make things easier on the DM.

 

[WinnableBadger]

I would prefer the new WotC attempt at removing levelled slots to be integrated with the layout of spells, but I guess it was far too late into development.

 

[lichmaster]

This makes high level spellcasting monsters so much easier and fun to use!
Also, the variety of actions, reactions and bonus actions that do not consume spell slots makes it possible to use the lich in a more simple fashion without it losing too much of its power and versatility. Spells really become a tactical option more than a must, which is awesome!

Also, just the fact that the lich has bonus actions and reactions on top of legendary actions makes him stay on even ground on the action economy aspect when fighting against groups. This was not the case with o5e lich, whose only bonus actions and reactions could come at the expense of spell slots and thus limiting future offensive options.

I also noticed a small quirk, definitely intentional: spellcasting DC is 20, but Lightning arc and Paralyzing Touch have a DC of 18, probably based on its CR. I guess this has also to do with the fact that these abilities do not consume any resource, so a lower DC kind of balances them wrt spells (which have a limited usage, except for cantrips). However, I'm wondering how easily this could be forgotten or misread during actual play, as normally all DCs of a given creature and player are equal

 

[lichmaster]

I would prefer the new WotC attempt at removing levelled slots to be integrated with the layout of spells, but I guess it was far too late into development.

For me it's the exact opposite instead. With A5E approach spells remain spells: you know the level, they can be dispelled and counterspelled, you can tell what kind of components they require, whether they work in an antimagic field or how they interact in a wild magic area, and so on.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Looks good to me! It's along similar lines of how I approached it with the homebrew spellcasting monster stat blocks that I use for my games, although I didn't think to include spell components and I just included a statement "The foo casts bar at nth level" which looked awkward in spell attack entries, so I definitely like your format better.

 

[Teemu]

It's a good improvement on what we have right now. I also did something very similar for a 3.5 game I ran a while back, just to make the creatures faster and easier to reference during play.

That said, the lich is a little ridiculous. It's true that an epic enemy like that can be complex, but 4e did complex epic enemies without resorting to quite that level of intricacy. Instead of four different level 4+ spells, the lich could have two or even just one that it could use four times. Now, you might say that it's a spellcaster so it should work more or less like a player character spellcaster (with slots), but the lich already has arc lightning, which is not a spell even though it looks like one, and it has paralyzing touch, which again could easily be a spell instead of a lich's special ability.

Point is, the lich already has custom lich-specific abilities that don't interact with counterspell or even dispel magic necessarily, so there shouldn't be a reason why you couldn't simplify its suite without sacrificing power.

 

[duneguy]

I would prefer the new WotC attempt at removing levelled slots to be integrated with the layout of spells, but I guess it was far too late into development.

We actually considered this option before we started writing the book! We thought about converting every caster to, basically, an "innate" caster with spells castable x/day instead of using spell slots.

I think both approaches could work perfectly well. For a big, complex caster like a lich, though, we decided that we slightly preferred to keep the spell slots.

Spell level is another tool for us to sort spells for the Narrator's convenience. When you're not sure what the lich should do, it's not a bad idea to just have them cast the highest-level attack spell they still have slots for. An innate-casting lich, however, doesn't have spells listed by level; they have a giant list of a dozen or more 1/day spells that you need to scan through to find the best spell. Not a big deal, but I thought the spell-slot approach was a bit better for user interface.

That said, I generally prefer the innate spellcasting format for most monsters. The only slot casters are the creatures with a story reason to be part of the same magical traditions as the characters (NPC priests and mages and so on, plus the mummy and the lich and maybe a few more).

 

[Tsuga C]

Acererak might just object to his name being deleted, as might Vecna. I'd delete the Nameless Horrors feature instead.

 

[Stalker0]

Completely OT and no bearing to LU at all, but it always saddens me that a high priest, one who has 6th level spells and can command life and death itself…would be highly expected to get ganked by just two 6th level characters in a straight up fight.

It’s the aspect of 5es bounded accuracy I just do not enjoy, that a person who may be the highest avatar of the gods in the entire region could be taken out with such a minimal amount of resources.

anyway back to our regular channel, thr statblocks look solid. If I had one critique I would rather the higher levels be listed first as that’s how I’m going to start the fight usually…but a minor nitpick, overall solid. I also always appreciate the components listed for the rare times that comes up