5e Also Knows How to do Monsters

In my last post, I admitted that I could not speak for 5e, due to my relative unfamiliarity with it, but made that case that monsters in MM1 are implicitly and explicity personifications of something seriously wrong with the world. Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the monster descriptions from several of the monsters I used as examples from the MM1 in the 5e MM. This is what I found: 

Blink Dog

Blink dogs harbor a long-standing hatred for displacer beasts and attack them on sight. 

Bulette

Some sages believe the bulette is the result of a mad wizard's experiments at crossbreeding snapping turtles and armadillos, with infusions of demon ichor. 

Displacer Beast

The warriors of [the Unseelie Court] selectively bred the beasts to reinforce their ferocious and predatory nature, using them to hunt unicorns, pegasi, and other wondrous prey. 

Gnoll

The origin of the gnolls traces back to a time when the demon lord Yeenoghu found his way to the Material Plane and ran amok. 

Hobgoblin

Across the borderlands of civilization, settlements and settlers must contend with these aggressive humanoids, whose thirst for conquest is never satisfied. 

Orc

Grasping his mighty spear, he laid waste to the mountains, set the forests aflame, and carved great furrows in the fields. Such was the role of the orcs, he proclaimed, to take and destroy all that the other races would deny them. To this day, the orcs wage an endless war on humans, elves, dwarves, and other folk. 

Owlbear

The most common theory is that a demented wizard created the first specimen by crossing a giant owl with a bear. 

So, 5e also knows how to do monsters, too.

D&D Does (Did) Know What Monsters Are

Talysman, over at Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, has highlighted a post over at Throne of Salt which makes the claim that D&D doesn't know what monsters are.  Their conclusion is that monsters should be a symptom that somewhere, somehow the world has gone seriously wrong and that the way D&D does monsters fails in this regard. 

Now, I cannot speak about later editions of the game (though I can believe this of 5e, which seems to have forgotten how to teach players how to play the game), but I can speak for 1e. The MM1 was one of my very first purchases when I got into the hobby, and I spent many hours as a kid being inspired by what was depicted therein. I can, without hesitation, say that the MM1 explicitly and implicitly depicts monsters as symptoms of something gone horribly wrong.

Take the entry on the Bulette:

 The bulette (or landshark) was thought to be extinct until recently when this horror reappeared. It was a result of a mad wizard's experimental cross breeding of a snapping turtle and armadillo with infusions of demons' ichor.

Some idiot magic-user went and pulled a Frankenstein, but we took care of it. What? The monster is still out there? Who has been mucking with magics that shouldn't be messed around with?

Or, how about the Ghoul:

Ghouls are “undead” once human creatures which feed on human and other corpses. Although their change from human to ghoul has deranged and destroyed their minds, ghouls have a terrible cunning which enables them to hunt their prey most effectively.

Couple this with the entry on Ghasts, which boast an Intelligence of 11-12, you have the makings of a cult that seeks to cheat death through cannibalism. While functionally undead, these creatures are actually human.

Of course, there is the Owlbear:

The horrible owlbear is probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard.

Those pesky wizards, trying to play God in their towers, churning all kinds of vile things into the world. 

My favorite examples, though, are statements like this one, under Hobgoblin:

If elves are nearby, hobgoblins will attack them in preference to any other troops because of the great hatred they bear.

Similar statements can be found under kobolds, blinkdogs and displacer beasts. These statements invite us to imagine why such hatred exists in the first place — something is terribly wrong and these monsters are personifications of it.

So, for those of us who want to have archetypal evil in our FRPG worlds with monsters who personify sin, D&D has done us right since at least 1979.

Toward an OId School 5e Monster Stat Block

My benchmark for a monster stat block is the 1ed Monster Manual because that is the stat block that I used for years in the formative youth of my RPG life. While too big for my (now curmudgeonly) taste, it does set a marvelous example for visual clarity and simplicity. In contrast to its modern counterparts, the 1ed MM stat block was perfectly happy to merely inform its user that there was a special attack (say, a breath weapon) at leave it that. The crunchy stuff was in the description. At a glance, I know all the essentials and am invited to investigate further for more details if I should so choose:

Frequency
No. Appearing
Armor Class
Move
Hit Dice
% in Lair
Treasure Type
No. of Attacks
Damage/Attack
Special Attacks
Special Defenses
Magic Resistance
Intelligence
Alignment
Size

One of the biggest headaches (literally) for me in 5e is the monster stat block. For some unknown reason, it isn’t possible to simply inform a user that there is a breath weapon. Instead, it must also be accompanied by every single bit of data about the breath weapon, as well as every other possible attack that monster is capable of. I am no longer allowed to get a handle on a monster at a glance. I am required to read all the details, because…stat block. It is visually muddy and crosses wires in my brain.

Therefore, if I am going to stay sane while DMing a 5e game I need a stat block I can understand at a glance. To that end (and inspired by the 1ed MM stat block) I would like to propose the following:

Hit Dice (with an average hp total in parenthesis)
Armor Class
Ave. Bonus (the average of all the ability score bonuses/penalties)
Attack Bonus (the total of the Proficiency Bonus, Str bonus and any special bonuses)
Damage/Attack
Advantages (including any listed skills)
Disadvantages (including any listed weaknesses)
Special Abilities (with no elaboration)
Alignment
Size

For all non-combat rolls, I use the Ave. Bonus (and can adjust that up or down depending upon how I want the monster to run). For all combat rolls, I use the Attack Bonus. If I need to understand a special ability, I can look in the description or just make it up as I go along (which I’d probably do anyway).

As an example, here is the 5e Goblin as represented by my old-fangled stat block:

Goblin
Hit Dice: 2d6 (7)
Armor Class: 15
Ave. Bonus: 0
Attack Bonus: +4
Damage/Attack: 1d6+2
Advantages : Stealth
Disadvantages: none
Special Abilities: Nimble Escape
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Small
Goblins usually wear leather armor and carry a shield. They are armed with scimitars and short bows. When using their Nimble Escape ability they can use a bonus action to either disengage or hide. Goblins are used to living underground and have dark vision 60ft.

This makes sense to me. I can riff of this info in seconds and I know how to run a group of goblins without having to give myself a headache.