Savage Worlds vs. Mutants & Masterminds and the Importance of Dice

 

I know, but we'll get to it I promise ...

Let's talk about two systems for a minute. I'm prepping to run a Savage Worlds game and I just finished running a short M&M campaign in May. At one point I figured I would still be running M&M for most of this year but given a break point and an off-ramp my players chose to change to a different system. Why might that be?

In general, M&M is a more abstract system than many but Savage Worlds uses a lot of similar concepts so it may be the most similar game to M&M mechanics-wise on the market. Comparison points:

• M&M stats are a bonus to a d20 roll, SW stats are the type of die you roll
• M&M skills are a bonus to a d20 roll, SW skills are the type of die you roll
• M&M has Advantages and Complications that help customize your character. SW has Edges & Hindrances that do the same thing.
• M&M Powers are abstract effects-based abilities personalized by Descriptors - it's not just "ranged damage" it's a "fire blast". Savage Worlds has Powers as well and they are generic effects-based abilities personalized by "Trappings" in the same way.
• In both games Powers can be modified by various bonus effects or reduced effects that can increase or decrease the points cost (talking super powers here for Savage Worlds).
• In M&M points are spent to purchase stats, skills, advantages, and powers. SW has separate pools for each but points are spent on stats, skills, and powers and taking hindrances allow one to add edges. 

As you can see they work in very similar ways. M&M in general can be more complicated and more detailed - SW is more broad strokes - but they are not that far apart in approach. 

Then we get to combat. With M&M one rolls a d20 +/- relevant modifiers to equal or beat a target's defenses. In SW one rolls the relevant skill die (typically Shooting or Fighting). In melee the roll has to equal or beat a target's Parry defense. For ranged attacks one has to beat a fixed number (4) modified by range, speed, light conditions, size, and other possible modifiers or abilities. They are similar but SW treats ranged combat differently from melee to a degree though it ends up being a roughly similar process.

The effects of that hit though ... that's where our paths diverge.

• M&M hits mean the target rolls to resist the incoming damage. That damage is a static number based on the power or weapon used - this is the target number for the defender. The defender rolls a d20 modified by the relevant defense and the degree of success or failure determines how hard they were hit. It is possible, though unlikely, to take out another powerful opponent in one shot if they roll badly enough  and they are hit hard enough. 
• Savage Worlds hits have the attacker roll dice based on the power or weapon used. The total of those dice is then compared to the target's Toughness (plus any armor) and meeting or exceeding that Toughness will impose a Shaken or Wounded status on the target. It is possible, though not likely, to take out a powerful opponent in one shot with any attack or weapon in the game because damage uses exploding dice. Your pistol does 2d6? Roll a "6" and keep on rolling a "6" and you can inflict 5/10/20 wounds in a system where most things will not exceed a 3 wound capacity.

I think this is a basic, visceral difference and one that is not readily apparent just reading the games. Having run and played a lot of RPG sessions over the last 40+ years I can tell you players like rolling big numbers!  Having run a long Deadlands campaign in Savage Worlds in the last few years I can tell you players get very excited when that one damage die just keeps exploding. It's a triumphal moment that everyone can see and it's hard to replicate when your damage system depends on someone rolling low to fail rather than rolling high to succeed and I think that's where M&M loses some people. 

 It's not just in comparison to Savage Worlds. Most RPGs these days have some kind of stat & skill system and have players roll to hit in combat and then roll for damage - and higher is better. This is from D&D (going all the way back) to related offshoots from Runequest to Pathfinder to other approaches like Traveller, Champions/Hero System, GURPS, and various Star Wars games. Even Powered by the Apocalypse games tend to use a fixed damage system where a bigger Harm number hurts more. There are RPG's where both attack and defender roll - one to hit and one to dodge or deflect a hit - with opposed rolls, but the attacker, if successful, tends to be the one rolling for damage. 

M&M is one of the few RPGs where damage is a) the result of a defense roll and b) directly determined by the result of that defense roll and with experience in both approaches over the last few decades I would say it is just less satisfying to most players. With M&M you know that your possible results are 1-20 plus your Power level. A critical hit can make it worse for the target, and of course you can build up that effect level in as many ways as possible before you strike, but it's still the other guy rolling vs. a target number. It's a big deviation from the way RPGs in general work and I think it mutes the excitement people have in M&M combat scenes.

A more specific example:

• Strong Guy in M&M has a +8 Fighting and a +12 Strength. Enemy Robot has Toughness 10 so if hit it rolls a d20 + 10 to beat a 27 target number in M&M 3E. Most likely he will take a bruise and maybe a stun. Maybe some Knockback too. A 27+ means it takes nothing but a 7 or less means it is out of the fight, with various damage conditions popping up in between.
  
  Odds here are not too hard to figure if it matters to you. A critical hit will shift things up a bit but the basics there are a 35% chance to knock out the robot and about a 20% chance to do nothing. 

• In Savage Worlds Enemy Robot might have Toughness 15 while Strong Guy punches for 3d10. a 14 or less total means Guy does nothing, a 15 shakes the 'Bot, a 19 = shaken + a wound, 23 ups it to 2 wounds, and a 27 ups it to 3 wounds and most likely out. 
  
  Odds are trickier to figure in Savage Worlds as a few 6's in there can jump the damage up a lot and a raise on the to-hit roll adds another d6 into the pool for damage so it can snowball quickly. That said multiple dice also makes it a bell curve so it tends to stay in the middle range
  
  
• Then just for fun let's do it in Champions: Strong Guy has a 60 Strength so punches for 12d6 damage - that means you get to roll a fistful of dice and add them up looking for the total (for Stun Damage) and for specific numbers (for Body Damage) figure out some knockback (and see if that did any more damage) then compare those numbers to Robot's Physical Defense and start marking off Stun and Body if you exceeded it. Then you also compare it to it's Con score and see if you Stunned them. It's great! With tons of dice flying around the table and multiple calculations on each roll it feels like every swing that connects is impactful to say the least. Is it faster? No. But sometimes speed is overrated.  
  
  

  

  See?!

Now I love M&M and this is in no way a call for a hit point system to be added to M&M. Savage Worlds , though, does show that a non-hit point system can still embrace a "roll your damage dice" approach . I suspect that if there were ever a radical shake-up with M&M that this would be a good area to consider for a change. I don't know exactly how it would work* and it would take a big rethinking of how defenses work in the game. With 2nd - 3rd - 4th editions really being refinements of a solid framework I would not expect to see anything like this soon - but it's something to think about. 

*First rough idea: Attacker rolls to hit like now and if they do hit then we flip the Toughness roll around from how it works today: attacker rolls Effect level + d20 vs. a target of the opponent's Toughness + something. Yeah, it looks a lot like Savage Worlds, I know - but I know that works and it keeps things fairly similar to the current M&M approach. The main problem is that it means everyone is "rolling a d20 for damage" all the time and I'm not sure that changes it up enough to get people excited. The real jump would be rolling a fistful of dice based on power level of the attack but that's a whole other level of change. 

Mutants & Masterminds - Converting Between Editions

 

A lot of the stretch goals with the new M&M Kickstarter are 4th edition conversions of 3rd edition adventures. I get why they are doing this - it's easy to do and they're already written so, sure, and you're getting them for free but they're only 6$ PDFs anyway so ... I don't know. 

Back to that "easy" part - how easy is it to convert something between editions of this game? Well ... most of the time it's pretty straightforward. One key item: the difficulty chart is the same for every edition of the game!

This one is taken from the 4th edition playtest document but it is the same for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th edition:

• 1st edition: Page 147
• 2nd edition: Page 7
• 3rd edition: Page 13 (Deluxe Hero's Handbook)
• 4th edition: Page 15 (Playtest Origin Edition)

Outside of combat and individual character powers that chart up there has the numbers you need and the amazing thing is that regardless of edition you don't have to update them! 

So you might go through the text, find anywhere that "DC" is mentioned, and check what it's referring to - typically a skill, possibly an ability. These do change from edition to edition but most of the time it's pretty obvious what you need to change to. A DC25 "Computers" check in a 2E adventure becomes a DC 25 "Technology" check in 3E or 4E. In 1E it would likely have been a Computers or Repair. In some editions the right "Expertise" skill is a good substitute, at least when I'm running. 

The abilities do change with every edition but they are always centered around the six D&D type abilities and they are on the standard d20 scale that we've been using for the last 25+ years, sometimes with a score, sometimes with just the modifier, but an 18 in 1st edition is still a +4 in 4th. 

Attacks and Damage work pretty consistently across editions so there's not usually much to worry about there.  

The area with the most effort required should be translating characters. Assuming we are talking about the NPCs from an adventure or some setting guide then it's not really that bad. The biggest thing here is the Powers - those change every edition, sometimes dramatically, from how they are built to how they work in-game. You might get a character with a complicated build that relies on mechanical tricks that don't translate to a different edition. If you want to stay consistent with what the character used to do then you may have to rebuild it from the ground up, possibly using a completely different power to achieve a similar effect. If you run into this a lot it could eat up some time but there are alternatives:

• Assuming it's an NPC villain of some kind, well, despite the edition change this guy's powers work like they did in the other version - here's his hit bonus with it, here's the target # to resist it, have at it! It's not the most elegant solution but sometimes it's the best solution and since the mechanics of the game system are so similar across editions it can still work. 
• Look at the general effect of what the character does in that edition - don't worry about all the tricky details and add-ons, just look at the main impact it has on the game. Find a power in your edition of choice that does something similar - it may not be as complicated, it may not be as flashy as the old version, but if it let's Think Tank mind control innocent bystanders then you're good even if it doesn't specifically account for some of those details. As you work through it in the new version you might find some new tricks that are still cool and fun for the GM to impose.
• Archetypes: I see Chimpanzoom has a writeup in 1st edition Time of Crisis. I see he has one in 2nd edition ToC. To run it in 3rd I could go back through one or both of those and try to re-create him as closely as possible ... or I could just grab the Speedster Archetype, maybe tweak it a little in some way to make him a little different, and run that instead. Remember that the mechanics give you the numbers but the way the character acts, speaks, and reacts are largely outside of those. You were going to have to decide on those anyway regardless of edition. Whether he has a 14 or a 15 Dodge isn't nearly as important as the personality and the look. 

These guys know ...

When translating also keep in mind that the points don't matter. It's good to have a Power Level in mind for your character - maybe it's the same as the other version, maybe it's not depending on what you want to do - but the points are more for PC's than NPCs. Archetypes are an incredibly useful tool for anything like this. 

So yes, it's not difficult to modify things to work in different editions with this game. That's part of why I'm a little disappointed with this part of the Kickstarter. The first four were all this kind of thing and there are two more down the road if it keeps going. The latest achieved goal is the Earth Prime Gazetteer which is at least not a simple update of an existing thing ... wait ...

Ah ... right. Now Steve Kenson has said they are revising the setting with this edition - the Freedom City setting specifically. That's probably smart after 20+ years of building it out and advancing the timeline so I don't have a problem with that plan and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. Buuuut ... this is still an intro type document for the world, not a new version of the complete thing. So it's better than the adventures at least, to me, because it is going to cover some new ground. 

The next goal is a new character record folio. It's a big character sheet. Once a new builder is out these won't see much use and let's be honest here, "Character Sheet" as a crowdfunding stretch goal is ... well it might be a new low as far as effort required. These are things that are typically a free download on the company website or at DTRPG. No one should be particularly excited about this.

The final other type of stretch goal that we know about right now are Alternate Archetypes. Now I was excited about this when I saw the name as I was a huge fan of the Archetype Archives and Instant Superheroes in 2nd Edition that added new archetypes and more options to the existing ones. They were great for GMs and for players too. Well, it's not that. It's the archetypes in the game at PL8 and the other one is at PL12. I am assuming there will not be radical re-conceptualizing of each concept and that this will mainly be a math exercise. Well ... OK. I mean I can use them - the PL12 versions will make for handy drop-in villains but in Hero Lab for 3rd edition that's two clicks on "Scale Up" or "Scale Down" for the basics and then some tweaking on what else I want to enhance or downgrade. It's not a whole lot of effort if that's all that it is. 

So yeah, I love Mutants & Masterminds - I'm running it right now! I think the people working on it are good at what they do and I hope the KS hits a million dollars. I know there are constraints on what they can do right now with the Diamond situation. I'm just a little disappointed at the low effort on the stretch goals for this one. That said I am looking forward to the new edition even if I'm not going to run it until next year at least, after we get through a nice long run with 3rd which will no doubt end with another Crisis of some kind and turn things upside down for a new era and edition.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - Combat Discussion

 

Initial discussion in the previous post.

OK let's look at some of these new combat interactions. First up the general Degree of Success chart:

A critical hit here (Nat 20) adds one degree of success
A critical miss (Nat 1) adds a degree of failure

• Hits and misses are determined using a d20 + your relevant attack bonus vs. a DC of 10 + your Defense score. As long as you get a success - meet or exceed the target DC - you have scored a hit on the target and now you need to check for damage.
• An extra success here adds 5 to the Effect rank
• An extra failure here, if it somehow still hits, gives the target a +5 on their Resistance check
  
  
• Damage is handled by rolling the d20 + your toughness rank vs a target of 10+ damage rank. That's a change from the 15 + damage of 3E. Then Degrees of Success enter the fray:
• Success (two or more degrees): If the target has Hardened, Impervious, or Impenetrable resistance against the attack and this degree of success, they receive no damage conditions. Otherwise, this is the same as one degree of success.
• Success (one degree): The target receives the Hit condition. For each Hit condition, apply a –1 penalty to the character’s further resistance checks against Damage.
  
• Failure (one degree): The target receives a Hit condition, and the Dazed condition. If the target already has the Dazed condition, it becomes Stunned instead.
  Compared to 3E this adds Dazed - in 3E this was just a -1 to future Toughness checks
• Failure (two degrees): The target receives a Hit condition, the Stunned condition, plus the Staggered condition.
  In 3E this was just Dazed & a -1
• Failure (three degrees): The target receives the Hit and Staggered conditions, plus the Incapacitated condition. If an Incapacitated character fails a Damage resistance check, their condition becomes Dying. If a Dying character fails a Damage resistance check by any degree, they are Dead.
  In 3E this was just Staggered and a -1, and an additional Staggered result went to Incapacitated which could then go to Dying and then to Dead in the same way.
  
  Some significant changes here: From 3E the target number has dropped by 5, but the table has bumped everything up a notch for starters. Then we add in Hits being cumulative so even resisting the damage to a degree means they are still piling up. I like this as it puts more of a clock on the combat. 3E had a similar condition but it was only applied on a failure. Now with it applying to at least some successful saves it will accumulate that much faster. It also adds a benefit to doing really well on a Toughness check as you avoid this cumulative penalty. Players tend to be disappointed when they roll really well and there is no additional benefit to it so this feeds right into the drama of each roll. 
  
  (Also, this is starting to look like Savage Worlds' system a bit - "Hit", or "Hit and a Raise to add damage", failing the save by more causes a worse effect, etc. Lot of parallels there.)

Let's talk about Conditions real quick. Beyond "Hits" the damage table can make you:

• Dazed - One standard action, no reactions, still get free actions. 
• Stunned - No actions at all and Dodge rank is halved. I'm wondering if this is correct or if it's supposed to affect Defense scores as well? In 3E it was just the "no actions" part so I don't know. 
• Staggered - Dazed and Hindered (that means half movement speed)
• Incapacitated - Stunned, Unaware, Defenseless, and usually Prone. This is the KO you're looking for in a fight.
• Dying - Incapacitated and making death saves ala D&D 5E. 

Characters might be Resistant to a particular attack - that means they cut the effect ranks in half before making the roll. Immunity means you make no roll at all - so you won't be accumulating hits from those attacks. Susceptible means you have a penalty to resistance checks of half the incoming effect rank. Weakness is that plus your best result is one degree of failure on the check.

With the basics out of the way, let's say our Battlesuit faces off against their evil twin - how does that go?

• Evil Battlesuit flies up and blasts Justice Battlesuit:
•  Evil shoots with a d20+8 (Their Attack of 8 is the modifier here) against a Defense Class of 18 (the target's Defense of 8 + the basic 10). Needing an 18, an average roll will get them a 10-11 and so they hit!
• To resist damage Justice will be rolling a d20 + 12 (their Toughness) with a target of 22 (base 10 + 12 for the Rank 12 Force Beams). Another average 10-11 roll here will match that target for a success and while it is Hardened it is Rank 11 while the force beams are Rank 12 so no extra roll and Justice will take a Hit even with the success. 

This could go on for a while but at least those -1's will be piling up until someone gets lucky.

Let's say Justice has been rendered Vulnerable by some other attack or event. The Vulnerable condition reduces Defense by half so he would be a DC14 to hit - you just need an slightly better average roll of 11 + 8 (Attack Bonus) = 19 which is 5 over and so an added success on an attack check which increases the Blast Effect by 5.

Now the resistance target will be 27 (base 10 + 12 + 5) and an average roll for Justice will give us 11 + 12 (Toughness) = 23. That's a failure so he will be Hit + Dazed.

Clearly Vulnerable is a good thing to have on your side and outside of any powers it comes up when one is Surprised: "A surprised character is Stunned and Vulnerable, caught off-guard and unable to act. Surprised normally only lasts for one round." So there's one way to set things up in your favor.

It looks to me like combat could go on a bit but with those Hits stacking up on most attacks it should go quicker than 3E's combat. I do wonder about the effect of numbers now, both with a team of PC's attacking a single villain and with a group of mooks ganging up on one PC, and will that make for a significant impact in a fight.

Final point for today: One of the long time debates in 3E is over Defense versus Toughness. Many players thought Toughness was just better, as far as game effectiveness in 3E, and while that's not everything it did come up fairly frequently. Here's why: 

• Toughness is not reduced by Vulnerable or Defenseless Conditions
• Toughness is not ignored by Perception or Area Effects
• Toughness increase is 1/2 the PP cost of Dodge/Parry increase 

Most of these are still true. The only exception is that while an overall Defense is still 2 pts to Protection's 1 pt, you could raise either ranged or close defense for 1 pt per level. Despite this list remaining true I feel like the other adjustments to the way damage works alongside the Defensive Roll update should help balance this out. Against area effect attacks the 4E version of Evasion gives a +5 to avoid with 1 rank and "no damage on a success" with 2 ranks so there's another way to mitigate that. 

Defenseless is just bad for everyone, and Vulnerable is still mainly bad for Defense-shifted characters. The other consideration is that Vulnerable is still a first degree condition for the Affliction power so it's not too hard to land on someone. I'd say until I see a problem in-game that it's just something you need to be aware of.

That's all for now but I do want to try out some more combat examples. Look for that down the road a bit. Please feel free to check my math and thinking here too and let me know if you see something off.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - First Impressions

 

Alright I've read it. I haven't tried to run it yet or make a new character, I just compared some old ones and looked at possible changes but I need to dig in a little more and have some of my players update their old characters too, just to give it a workout. My short take is: it's an evolution, not a revolution.

It's more like 3E in my opinion than 3E was to 2E. I was thinking the loss of the Fighting and Dexterity stats was an indicator of larger changes but I don't feel like it turned out that way. There are a lot of smaller changes and adjustments and tweaks but the basic structure of the game and of characters is very similar. 

4th Edition Battlesuit Archetype

3rd Edition Battlesuit Archetype

Comparing the two you can see that it works pretty much the same way - both provide enhanced Protection , flight via boot jets, life support, radio comms, a sensor suite, some combat computer enhancements, and then a two-power array to throw power into either blaster beams or enhanced strength. Many of the point costs are quite similar and many of the ability scores are the same (and if you're wondering the number after the slash is the "out of the suit" number). The game is still a d20 + modifiers vs a target DC or a contest of rolls so the basic framework of the game is the same as well. You still have power levels and there are still limits related to it like Defense & Toughness needing to add up to PLx2. 

Now there are some differences:

•  Right up front Fighting and Dexterity have been shifted over into a different set of stats: Attack and Defense. Instead of a built-in split between Melee and Ranged capabilities here the default is now that you have one number for both. You can certainly split those up through various means to have a lower default and then a bonus on either Ranged or Melee or unarmed or a specific weapon type to have more of a focus for your character, but you don't have to. I actually do like this change as it will be simpler for someone new to see and I think it's just a clearer label overall. Who knew you could have a superhero game with one Offensive Combat Value and one Defensive Combat Value? 
• The defensive numbers are rearranged a bit. Toughness is still your damage save, and Fortitude/Dodge/Will are now strictly your other "saves". Parry goes away as you just use your Defense for your to-be-hit target now.
• Advantages have changed in many places too. 
• There are more types of advantages and each type can have some limitations or conditions. For example Heroic is a new class of Advantage and characters are limited to half Power Level in ranks of these - because they are more powerful.
• In 3E there was a set of combat maneuvers one could do - Accurate Attack to trade damage down to increase attack bonus, All-Out Attack to trade Defense for an attack bonus, its opposite Defensive Attack to trade hit bonus for improved defense, etc. - and these gave a +/-2, but if you took the related Advantage gave a +/-5.
  In 4E these maneuvers now just grant a straight-up +/-5, no Advantage needed, so these moves will be more consequential. Note that this is "up to +/-5", not automatically the maximum bonus. So the maneuvers are better and the Advantages related to them are gone.
• Defensive Roll is better now as it still adds +1 Toughness per rank but also gives the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened (see below). You lose that extra when Vulnerable or Defenseless but keep the Toughness - unlike 3E. You do lose all of it when Stunned though so it's not a perfect replacement for pure Toughness which makes sense.
• Finally let's talk about Improvised Effect. This is a new one that is really the gateway to the variable power effects so many players love and so many GM's hate. The description is innocent enough: You can use a technical skill to prepare and use Improvised Effects. Now it's tied to one skill like Technology or Magic but you can take it more than once to cover more skills. This is a Heroic advantage so it is limited by PL but this is your gadget pool or magic crafting ability right here. Looking it over again I don't believe it requires any additional power points, like a pool, but it does calculate the points required and that does affect the skill roll needed to create and use the effect, plus they are only good for one scene, so this might be OK after all. That said, it's potentially a lot of flexibility for a highly skilled character for all of one point.
  
  

  

  Absolutely love this artwork

  
  
• For Powers the degree of change depends on the power. Some changed a great deal, some barely changed at all. You can see here that even the point costs are very similar for most of this character's powers. One significant change is with Protection and the options one can apply, so let's look at that one more closely:
• Protection itself is still a Permanent Defense so the default assumption is "armor" of some kind and it's +1 Toughness per rank. You can make it sustained instead if you want a more force-fieldy power, etc. But for Extras we now have Hardened, Impervious, and Impenetrable.
• Hardened: If the damage coming in is at or below your ranks of Hardened resistance then you roll two dice and take the highest - so basically our Battlesuit here in 4E has advantage on damage saves at rank 11 or less. I like that this is now an option. There is a second clause though: If you get two or more degrees of success on the save then you take no damage conditions including Hits, which is a new thing I will discuss below. I like this though -  something better than standard protection but not immune to a bunch of stuff.
• Impervious: This continues much like it did before where a character is just immune to incoming damage at or below their Impervious Protection rank. Note that last part - equal to or less than ... not half! Now it is capped at Power Level and it does cost 2 per rank instead of 1, but ridiculously resistant Bricks are certainly back! This one also has the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened.
• Impenetrable: This is the same as Impervious but ignores Penetrating. Alright, let's look at that.
• There are several levels of defense in M&M. One of those is "Resistant" which means you take half of the damaging effect. "Fire Blast 10" is effectively "Fire Blast 5" to a Fire Resistant target.
• "Immune" means you are unaffected by attacks based on whatever you are immune to. If you are Immune to fire then "Fire Blast Whatever" means nothing to you.
• Except ... ranks of "Penetrating" ignore some of this. If our Battlesuit with Force Beams 12  shoots them at Dr. Impervious (Impervious Protection 15) he does nothing. If he upgrades to Force Beams 12 with 6 ranks of Penetrating and hits then Doc Impervious is going to be rolling to resist rank 6 damage - so a DC16 Toughness check. Penetrating doesn't add anything to your attack - it just ensures some of it gets through. Unless the target is Impenetrable  - then you are out of luck.
  
  You can add these modifiers on to your normal Toughness too -  you don't have to buy Protection to unlock them.
  
  Now you're not going to take all 3 of them on one character as they overlap. If our Battlesuit took Impervious 11 on their Protection then Hardness becomes redundant as it's giving you Advantage on a roll you're never going to make. Same with Impenetrable - it's the highest level of defense.
  
  Now you might take more than one to represent some kind of layered defense. Say, Protection 11 with Impervious for 6 ranks and then Hardened for 11 - that would mean you don't even have to roll against the smaller stuff, then you get Advantage up through the remaining ranks. I don't know that it's cost effective but it would still help against Penetrating attacks with the extra roll. Say you get hit with a Blast 5 (Penetrating 3). The Impervious 6 would normally stop it but Pen 3 means you have to roll against a DC13. Hardened would give you the extra d20 for that.
  
  By wording it would also give you the "2+ degrees of success = no damage conditions) as Penetrating specifically mentions negating only Resistance and Impervious but I'm not sure that's the intent.
  
  It's interesting. I suspect my Battlesuit player will be digging into all of this a lot.
  
  

  

  No not him ...

  
  
• Regeneration is one I've seen people complain about with 3E and in 4E it's a lot simpler. There is a table that lists what it does for each rank and I do really really like the clarity:
• Rank 1 is "Recover your least Severe Damage Condition every 10 rounds". 
• This improves by 1 round per rank until at Rank 10 you're dropping one every round, then it goes to multiple conditions removed per rank.
• Then at 15 you start recovering from being Dead in ever-decreasing increments of time up to Rank 20 where you recover from everything every turn. Nicely done Green Ronin! 
• Yes there is still a Variable Power, there are about two pages of discussion on it, and the described way of handling it is excellent. Unlike the Advantage this one is based on a pool of points. That said I will leave this one with the last sentence in the sidebar discussion for this power: In short, Variable is a “last resort” in power design, and the GM should treat it as such.

So lots of interesting changes without too much being drastically different. I do want to check on the Defense-is-inferior-to-Toughness debate as I'm still not sure about that one so let's work through a combat example tomorrow and see how it works now.

The Ups and Downs of Playing These Games for Decades

 

Well the #1 Up is that I'm still around to play them and a close second is that I have friends I have known since the 80's that I still play with regularly - that's important.

At times though the years catch up and I get to feeling a little cranky when I see something praised as a brilliant new innovation that has been around for most of those same decades. Over the past year or so one of the highlights has been "Shadowdark has you roll to cast spells"-OK? And? People constantly praise games for innovation that they didn't innovate.

I realize a lot of people came into D&D specifically and RPGs in general with 5E but c'mon: we've had "rolling to cast spells" in games for 40+ years. Fantasy Hero (85) had it, GURPS (86) had it, Shadowrun (89) had it and if you want a more D&D-descended game Dungeon Crawl Classics has had it since 2012! I don't expect every teenager who starts playing D&D to know the complete history of RPGs but you'd think that somewhere in the online discussion around this stuff there would be some ancient guardians of knowledge who would emerge and share some enlightenment but maybe there are fewer of us out there than I realized. 

So yes a downside is that very little these days seems innovative. When I read a new set of rules I can quite often start picking out where certain mechanics came from. It doesn't make a game bad - there are a lot of good mechanics out there that work very well in an RPG and deserve to see more playing time. I'm always happy to see something I liked in an earlier system make a return in a new one. 

The counterpart of this is when you see an online discussion lamenting how a game works and someone mentions how they think it could work better and, well, yeah - it used to work that way and then they changed it. For whatever reason. There was a long discussion on EN World recently about high level play in 5E D&D - mainly about how it's so uncommon - and it was mentioned that high level characters had too many options and one solution was that it would be better if lower level abilities were replaced by higher level abilities as one leveled up rather than everything being additive and just piling up. 

<sigh>

Just tell me you never played 4th edition D&D - at least not for long - as this is one of the things 4E does, Starting at 13th level you replace attack powers instead of adding them. Since the game runs up to 30th level that is starting at not even the halfway point of the leveling process and yes it does solve a lot of the "pile-up" problem. If you want to make high level play work in a D&D type game 4E did a ton of good work on that. But a lot of people decided they didn't like that version - mostly without playing any of it in my experience  - and so some of the really smart, innovative, mechanics go unnoticed 10+ years later.

I suppose one of my main points with all of this is that it's worthwhile to read other RPGs, even if you aren't running or playing them at the moment, to see how other people are doing things. You may see something that can be stolen for a game that you are running.

• Take Advantage/Disadvantage from 5E D&D. This is a tremendously useful concept for a looser/more casual RPG and gets rid of almost all of those wonderful lists of modifiers we used to see in older editions. It has shown up in a ton of games over the past decade and I think it could be used in more. Any game that has long lists of +1 for this and -1 for that ... ask yourself "do we really need that level of precision? Is it actually precision or just the illusion of that? What would we lose by taking another approach?" 
• Besides Advantage there is 4E D&Ds approach of +/-2 or +/-5 for all modifier scenarios. A lesser condition or situation = a +/-2 and a major condition or situation = +/-5 and that's it - there are no more levels to it. Limited visibility? then it's a -2. Full darkness? It's a -5. No need to refer to charts for specific modifiers - that's it. 
• Now for a bit more granularity consider mixing those two options. Minor advantages or complications = +/-2 to a roll and for a Major situation you could go to Advantage/Disadvantage. I haven't tried it this way but it might work better for some games. 

 I suppose that's an "up" - I've seen a lot of cool innovations with mechanics over the years. It's a "down" when so many newer players are unaware of them. 

• If you think rolling for spells is a cool idea try "no levels". Traveller was the first game I played that had no levels and it was pretty damn revolutionary to see it in action the first time.
• Traveller was also the first game I played with a skill system - remember early D&D did not use skills - and that was mind-blowing as well.
• In the early days Champions was the first game I played where you didn't roll for stats. Nowadays point-buy stats are pretty common but Champions with point-buy for everything - again no classes here but points for stats/skills/powers - was again revolutionary. This was also the first place I saw advantages and disadvantages for characters. This was not rolling multiple dice but could be seen today as the forerunner of Feats in D&D terms. From having a code of honor to  missing a limb to going berserk when injured it was a new way to codify a character beyond stats or skills or class abilities and make yours unique.
• The FASA Star Trek RPG was not the first but was probably the biggest game to use Action Points. Early D&D really only accounted for move, attack, or cast a spell as things you could do in a round. Champions kind of had it's own system for all of the things one could do in a round, and Snapshot was the first AP system I know of but it was a separate boardgame-type optional add-on to Traveller that not everyone had or used. Star Trek built it into the game for resolving personal combat and I loved it. Opening a door might cost 1AP, drawing a weapon 1AP, movement might be 1 AP per square, applying first aid might be multiple AP ... basically everything you could do in a round had an AP cost and every character/NPC had an AP allowance, typically based on Dexterity. it was pretty easy to adjudicate costs if something unusual came up. if you needed to arm and load a photon torpedo in the middle of a gun battle in the torpedo room maybe that's 6AP or 10AP - the GM could make a call there based on other costs and the situation. How is this relevant to today? You think Pathfinder 2E's 3 actions per round with variable action costs came from nowhere? That's a 3AP/round system in action. 

This doesn't even touch on so many other "firsts" over the years - the first dice pool systems, the first fate point mechanics giving players some control over die rolls, the first time we saw templates for characters, the first abstracted chase systems ... there are a lot of games from 30-40 years ago that have directly influenced what's popular today.

The last thing to note in my rambling notes on longevity is that over the years you will see both rules and settings show up again and again and again and something to keep in mind is that games are not technology - the newest is not always the best and a new edition is not automatically superior to what has come before. Many times you will find improvements mixed with unnecessary changes. Another thing to remember is that you don't have to play the latest and greatest version of an RPG - or any tabletop game. 

Rules-wise I started with Holmes Basic D&D. After that you get Moldvay B/X, Mentzer BECMI, the Rules Compendium if you want to count it as a separate edition from BECMI - that's 3-4 editions of a relatively simple early version of D&D in slightly more than a decade. Then we have 5-ish versions of what was AD&D. Plus Pathfinder 1E & 2E. Plus all of the OSR stuff like Labyrinth Lord and Black Hack and OSE and the rest. Plus offshoots like DCC. There are 15 versions of D&D type gaming rules just with what I have mentioned here. The companies that own them are not going to stop putting out new versions and other people are not going to stop riffing on those versions with their own versions.

Traveller has at least 5 versions of Marc Miller Traveler, a couple of Mongoose Traveller editions, plus a GURPS version or two, plus a d20 version. Roughly ten editions of Traveller. I doubt we have seen the last.

Champions has become the Hero System and we're on the 6th version of that unless you want to count the "completes" as a new edition in which case we're up to 7. Down the road I'm sure we will see another. At least these are fairly consistent and compatible with each other.

Shadowrun is a fairly niche game and we're on a 6th edition of that. You'd think something like that could settle out for a long edition run but like most games someone new comes in, wants to put their stamp on it, and decides to put out a new edition where you will no doubt see some innovations and a bunch of unneeded and likely unrequested changes that will not be playtested nearly enough leading to ridiculous levels of errata and FAQs. 

That's another takeaway from all of this time I have spent - there is never enough playtesting. Many times I expect there is near-zero playtesting based on how quickly people find broken or nonsensical things in RPG rulebooks. A designer playing with his home group is not "playtesting" at anything approaching useful levels because they are right there to explain. Let people learn it cold, straight from your draft rulebook - and I mean multiple groups - and then you're getting somewhere.

Then we get into IP games - we've seen at least 5 versions of Star Trek - Heritage, FASA, Last Unicorn, Decipher, and Modiphius and they are all dramatically different from each other. Considering FASA and Modiphius both have second editions I suppose we are up to 7 total editions.  That's a lot for one setting but Star Trek has been adding new material for most of the last 40+ years so maybe there is some need for it but I'm pretty sure you could do everything one might expect to do in a Star Trek game using FASA or Last Unicorn's rules. New aliens, new spaceships, sure - but are they really doing anything significantly different in the newer shows and movies?

With Star Wars we have 2 West End Games d6 editions, 3 WOTC d20 versions, and one (kinda) version with FFG. Again, these are radically different mechanical takes but having played them all I can say - they all work. It really comes down to personal preference for feel and what kind of support you want for a given era or type of campaign though lord knows given that it's Star Wars there is a vast array of fan-created material for all of that across all versions. 

Lord of the Rings has what, two editions with Iron Crown, a Decipher edition, and then One Ring with Cubicle 7, One Ring 2E with Free League, and a 5E sidestep edition with both? So around 7 different versions? I've never felt compelled to run a LOTR campaign but I know the people that love one of these systems really love them and often continue playing them after an edition change. I mean ... it's not like the lore changed so if edition x works for you and your players why not? 

Them there are the superhero licenses - we've had these for 40 years as well, mainly Marvel and DC, and a lot of them have been good. A few of them have been terrible so again, newness and a name brand are absolutely no guarantee of quality. I won't enumerate all of the versions here but superhero games tend to be pretty innovative when it comes to mechanics because they push all of the boundaries of a roleplaying game both physically and dramatically. If you want a universe-spanning campaign with time travel, soap opera drama, and ridiculous physical and mental powers along with all of the stupid technology and magic you can think of this is where you come. They're not all good, but a lot of them are and a lot of them are also really interesting even just to read - but if you get the chance try a few test scenarios at least, just to see what they can do.

I'm not even getting into things like Conan, Babylon 5, Ninja Turtles, Robotech, Battlestar Galactica, Call of Cthulu, James Bond, and other former or potential licensees here. There are a ton and they can get really niche-y - looks like we're getting a new Invincible RPG. I wonder what it's going to do that you couldn't do in an existing superhero game? I guess we will see.

Again, and especially with licensed games, there will always be a new version sooner or later. Someone will come along and think they have unlocked the secret to making money with a property in the RPG space but I can promise you two things:

• It will have a limited lifespan. The deal only lasts so long or the licensing fees will increase and the publisher will have to let it go. Even if it's published in-house - looking at you here new Marvel RPG - the odds are that it will not make enough money to be worth the hassle and the line will be cancelled and eventually handed off to an outside team that will try to do it once again. So my advice is to just hope that it lasts long enough to crank out all of the supporting material you could possible want or need before it ends. 
• When it ends, all of those wonderful PDFs will become unavailable to buy. because of the way licensing an IP works that's just how it is. Can you buy any of the d20 Star Wars material from WOTC these days? No. They didn't really do PDFs then but a lot of their older D&D material is available - because they own it. The MWP Marvel stuff was all available in PDF - until a little while after they announced the end of the license - and then it wasn't. So if a new version of one of these IP games comes out and you like it then grab it as it does because it gets trickier later. 
  
  Also many times the physical books get a lot more expensive too. Not always, but quite a bit of the time it will cost more to acquire them once it's out of print than before.

Finally there are the settings. RPG companies love to reprint setting material. Presumably it sells well but also I suspect it's because most of the work is already done. All they have to do is update the timeline if it has one that has advanced - and/or update the metaplot if it has one of those - and look, here's a book that's ready to go, barring art - and they will probably reuse some of that too. Should we be upset about that? Probably not but that means you end up buying a lot of material that you already own if you stick with a game for a long time.

Take the Forgotten Realms as an example. We have had:

• An AD&D 1E box set
• An AD&D 2E box set
• A 3E hardcover book
• Two 4E hardcover books
• A 5E hardcover book ... kind of ... and then other campaign material spread across multiple adventure books ... it's messy here.

Sure, there is some timeline advancement here so there is a layer of new history and current events added on with each one, and there are usually some new edition game mechanics included as well, but a huge chunk of each of these is pretty much what you got in the prior version. 

Do you want it? Well, if you're a fan of the setting, probably.

Do you need it? Well, how much of that new stuff actually affects your campaign? Some of the mechanics, maybe. The change to which obscure god is now worshipped in Narfell? Which new continent has arisen or sunken or teleported in from a moon for this edition? The current order of battle for the Mulmaster Beholder Corps? Eh, probably not. 

But with every new edition of a game a setting update will be published. In fact, you will probably get a basic overview of the setting in the main rulebook and then a separate setting book with the full story on it. I mean, would be real new edition of  Shadowrun without a "Seattle 20xx" book incrementing the last one by 10-20 years? 

Yes this is very much like buying a movie on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K Blu-Ray, and whatever 8K or 16K comes next ignoring side trips like Laserdisc, or a digital copy. It's the same content, possibly even the same special features, as what you bought 20+ years ago with some updates that don't really change what you are watching. It may be prettier but it's unlikely to surprise you. Vader is still Luke's dad (spoiler). 

Sometimes they break things here too. A lot of people hated the 4E changes to the Forgotten Realms. A lot of people hated the Rebellion in Megatraveller splitting up the Imperium. A lot of people then hated the next edition with Traveller the New Era making the setting a sort of interstellar post-apocalyptic thing while also changing all of the rules mechanics at the same time. This did not help GDW. The GURPS version avoided it by ignoring it for one version and dropping back hundreds of years in the next. I believe Mongoose has also gone with the approach that "we are a separate timeline where none of that stuff you hated ever happened" and it seems to be working out for them.

To me it seems that the best long term solution for setting stability after the top choice of "make your own" is "pick one that you already like, pick a version of it or a time period in it that you like, and stick with that - regardless of rules changes". it will save you a lot of time and churn over the years.

Anyway that's more than enough rambling for today. I've been digging into games and systems a lot lately which spurred this epic monologue and I'm sure that drive will continue for a while longer. It's an interesting time in the hobby and it feels like changes are in the wind. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. 

Encounter Balance in Modern D&D and Tales of the Valiant

I've never been too concerned with "encounter balance" as in most editions the guidance and numbers given for it are terrible. In my experience 4E did a pretty decent job at providing something useful but that's the only one I liked. I haven't been worrying about it much with the current game but now I feel like the group is verging on having too easy of a time with a lot of the dungeon and then suddenly ending up in a life and death struggle when they hit a certain area or combination of inhabitants. 

I'm running Temple of Elemental Evil but the characters are from Tales of the Valiant. So the old school encounter setups are somewhat offset by them having old school numbers in the party and then being characters in a post-5E system and having much greater individual power than an AD&D character, slightly balanced out by using late/post-5E monsters with more interesting capabilities as the opposition most of the time. I mean, in the end they will most likely win but I do want them to work for it. 

Given the way my players are flattening a lot of the opposition now I am paying more attention to how the various CR's in an area add up and I intend to do some tweaking for some of them - mainly the big temples as they should be some epic, memorable, fights and they should involve some actual elementals which are surprisingly sparse in some areas. Between the various monster books, some allegedly solid encounter guidelines, a big dungeon map, and the 3D printer, I can drop all kinds of elemental evil on them. But ...

What is "balance" when it comes to a dungeon-crawling D&D game? Is there a solid way to define that? How about ...

• 0 characters drop = easy encounter
• 1 character drops = challenging encounter
• 2+ characters drop = hard encounter?

I mean words and descriptors get tossed around with this stuff without any real definition but the focus on systems like this is on math. ToV's system is this for 5th to 10th levels, which is where we will be living for most of this game:

• Half of total PC levels in the party is your "Benchmark"
  (so this is 15-20 for me depending on who shows up)
• Add up total monster CR in an encounter:
• Total > Benchmark = "difficult or dangerous" encounter
• Total < Benchmark= "Less challenging" battle
  (So going by this a total CR of 10 would be easy, 15 would be average, and 20 would be challenging)
• Maximum single monster CR = average party level x 1.5
• Minimum monster CR = 1/2

Now to be fair they do mention adjusting these to better fit your own party and there is a handy chart with average level in the left-hand column going from 1-20 and the top row covering number of PCs from 3-7 and then the cross reference gives you the Challenging Benchmark. 

As far as adjusting for my game I decided to count them as one level higher due to magic items in the party and figured I would start with a 6 character party as my target. That means my Min CR is 1 and my Max CR is 9 and my Benchmark is 18. To try this out I threw two Young Green Dragons at them on the return trip from Verbobonc as that made some kind of sense for the region. That's two CR 8 critters for a 16 total. We only had 5 characters for that session  which made the Benchmark CR 15 so we were right there. 

The party knew something was up as they heard traffic on the road had dwindled over the past week.  They spotted something up in the air as they traveled and made for the ruined keep that marks the halfway point between Hommlet and the city. They determined that it was a dragon about the time they reached the keep and that's when the second dragon stepped out from behind a tower. 

The fight lasted 5 rounds which is probably fine. The fighter charged one, caught the breath weapon, then caught it again when the other one landed nearby and that was it for him - down. The wizard hit them with a Slow spell and that really reduced the melee output as it means even if they have multiattack - they do - they can only make one attack per round so instead of a claw/claw/bite they get a claw or a bite. I think the first one dropped round 3 or early round 4 and the second one was attempting to flee on round 5 when it got fireballed by the wizard (wand) and blew its save. 

Going by their method and my own method mentioned up there I'd say this was in the "challenging" ballpark. One character down, most of the party damaged in some way, they had to use at least one potent spell followed by a powerful wand ... sounds like "challenging" is a good description. 

The party mix in this case was fighter, cleric, ranger, wizard, mechanist. Typically we would have a bard and/or a paladin in there too but not this time. I have seen discussion online that having a second healer in the party really amps up the difficulty in challenging them and I do concur with that - between a full cleric, a paladin who can heal here and there, and a bard that can give out the option to use healing surges during combat they do tend to be very resilient. I will watch the specific party mix  to see if I notice any patterns developing.

I will say I do find this kind of thing fairly tedious. I lean much more towards the "natural world" kind of approach where asking around, looking for rumors, and doing research will tell you what kinds of things live in an area and then knowing that some of those are extremely dangerous will guide your decisions. The world is the world and your characters are living in it - it doesn't level up or down with them. 

If I were to take this way too seriously and actively recalculate each possible encounter every session for the number of players I had it would rapidly drain significant fun from the run. So I won't ever be doing that. These things may work alright as guidelines but don't take them too seriously. All of the math presumes that each creature has been given a CR that accurately reflects the danger they pose to a party. Given the variation one could have in a typical group I think that's optimistic at best and misleading much of the time. If everyone in the party has fire resistance then that red dragon is somewhat less threatening than if no one does. There are ranges give for things like damage output and hit points at each CR but having lived with these kinds of frameworks for 25-ish years now I remain skeptical. That said I will give it a chance, keep trying it out, and see what I find.

This did not go well for our greatsword guy

The 2024/5 Monster Manual Kerfluffle

 

Yeah ... yeah ... so they took orcs out of the Monster Manual. Drow too. It's the "50th anniversary of the game" edition and they took two pretty significant D&D monsters out of the monster book. 

Now I've read massive discussion threads online about how this is good or bad and watched some takes on YouTube as well. I've seen WOTC's sort-of-stated position that "if it's a playable race in the PHB then it's not a monster in the MM" which is just a ridiculous take. Let's look at why:

First up there is a set of generic NPC statblocks in it which are pretty much human. The suggestion is that one can just reskin those as an orc commoner or wizard or whatever. Except that there is nothing provided to further customize them by species such as orcs, say, seeing in the dark, or being tougher than a human, or perhaps going berserk or hitting harder in some way.

So what are we trying to do here?

If the point of the book is to provide the numbers a DM needs to run opposition for their party of player characters then there should be ready-to-go stats for all of the typical D&D monsters. I shouldn't have to make calculations or edits or apply templates for the typical common versions of these things. If this is a great approach then why not use it for other beasties too? How about a single "dragon" statblock for each age category and then just reskin it by saying what color it is and changing up what kind of damage the breath weapon does? You could do the same thing for giants and many demons and devils as well.

Except the point of the monster book is to provide a variety of interesting things for players to encounter. Quite a bit of time they will end up fighting but not always. But if they do end up opposing each other then mechanical differences matter a great deal - even if it's not a straight-up combat. Does this thing have a high save vs. charm abilities? How about AoE damage spells? Does it get by with a higher armor class or is it a huge block of hit points?  Does it have any special senses? Immunities? What is it good at? What is it terrible at? All of this matters.

Taking iconic D&D "monsters" out of the core D&D monster book is a terrible decision made for no solid reason. 

Secondly I saw some discussion of how the tastes of modern players are different than they were years ago which is why Orcs are a playable race - players today, mainly younger players in this discussion, expect different things in their fantasy. Sure, that's fine - we've had half-orcs in the game from very early on and it's not a huge leap to just go full-orc. That doesn't concern me a great deal. But D&D is it's own fantasy "thing" at this point with its own settings and assumptions and expectations and one of those is that orcs are a very common low-level opponent and Drow are a pretty common mid to high level opponent. Adding in some new player options - sure. Taking DM options away? Why? How does it make the game better? I have yet to hear how this makes for a better game.

World of Warcraft is often cited as an example of how players have come to see orcs as a playable race. Sure, they are in that game and that spilling over into D&D really isn't a huge problem. But if one plays an  Alliance character you will be fighting orcs in great numbers in the game. So why do we only get one part of that situation and not the other?

Next up I believe that organized intelligent races as enemies are hugely important to a D&D campaign. Sure, the big monsters are cool but infiltrating the underground Drow city full of a variety of dark elf types is a huge challenge. Orcs, Drow, Goblins, Bugbears, Giants ... all of these should have multiple statblocks reflecting different roles in whatever civilization they have - not fewer, and not "zero". Sure there can be a basic Orc Warrior entry but then there could also be Orc Berserker, Orc Ambusher, Orc Fire Wizard, Orc Priest of X, Orc Necromancer, Orc Greater Chieftain, etc. Drow could have similar takes and specialists. This has been a concept going back to AD&D even if it was often "for every 50 orcs there is a boss that fights as a hobgoblin and for every 100 there is a big boss that fights as an ogre". 

Third edition pretty much went back to one entry per monster but then had a bunch of templates you could add to these statblocks for the weird stuff but it also had a the option for adding class levels to monsters which opened up a huge number of options by turning the PHB into a monster options book as well. Now granted, you had to do the work ahead of time but on the upside you could end up with the Fiendish Orc Priest of Gruumsh who had a magic item he could use and 7 levels of cleric so it was a lot of fun with a bit of prep. 

Fourth edition went with my favorite approach to this by including no less than 7 statblocks for orcs alone: Orc Drudge, Orc Warrior, Orc Raider, Orc Berserker, Orc Eye of Gruumsh, Orc Bloodrager, and Orc Chieftain, tactics for each type, sample encounter groups for various levels, and a list of results for an Orc Lore check at various DCs!

But sure, just taking them out is much better. 

(Drow have 4 entries + bonus info in MM1. They get more later. Goblins get 7. Hobgoblins get 7. Humans get 6)

The 2014 5th Edition Monster Manual carried this forward with 4 distinct statblocks for Orcs and Drow. Goblins were down to 2 and Hobgoblins had 3. 

So yes, this is a weird direction to take. As a DM more mechanically distinct representations of a type of monster give me more options to work with when placing that monster in my campaign. That helps me differentiate "a patrol of" vs. "a camp of" vs. "a city of" as my players journey around the setting. Having some other ways to adjust them as well like templates or level adjustments or size adjustments just enhances those selections, and even if I don't intend to use goblins in this campaign, reskinning is only made better with more complimentary types - those 4E goblins made a mean band of gnomes if the PC's got on the wrong side of them. 

Give me more monsters - not less, especially in the "Monster Manual" that so many campaigns will be based on. Taking them out means that if I want to run old adventures (like I am doing) using the 2024 rules I have to either sub in another statblock (hopefully not one I'm going to be using in the same adventure), make up my own entirely (seems kind of stupid to have to do this for orcs of all things), or I have to fall back on the 2014 version since this edition is Totally Backwards Compatible. This feels like a lot of effort for something as common as "orcs"  in a D&D campaign - because they should have just been in the MM to begin with.

Finally, The idea that being a playable race should mean no entry in the monster book is just a strange take. No other game does this. 

• In Runequest I'm pretty sure you can play a Troll via one of the supplements but you will also likely fight them at some point. They are one of the signature races of Glorantha and have been detailed pretty extensively as a culture for over 40 years but they are also still opponents to be fought. 
• In Pendragon you play knights and you will also likely fight some knights. 
• In Traveller you can find character creation options for almost any intelligent race and you can also find statblocks for them to be used as opponents. 
• In Star Trek you can play as a Klingon or a Romulan or any number of aliens and you will often end up fighting any of those plus other Federation species! 
• Even Paizo, who gleefully included goblins as a playable race in Pathfinder 2E, have a "goblin" entry in Monster core - with multiple statblocks to boot!

(Honestly, think about how many times Klingons end up fighting Klingons in the shows and movies.)

Again, no other game takes this stance because no one feels like it is necessary or improves the game. 

Yet here we are. Thankfully Tales of the Valiant does include a couple of entries for Orc in the Monster Vault (Drow too) so we will just continue using that for this campaign.