What Even is Old School Gaming? (Part 5) The Monsters Actually Have to be a THREAT

 Hey, there, Old School Gamers!

Today we have Part 5 for you of our series on "What Even is Old School Gaming".

Part 5 here is called "The Monsters Actually Have to be a THREAT."

This is an extension of Part 4 about how player characters should actually be able to permadie, although it should be rare.

One of the things that I noticed about 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, is that the monsters and creatures are incredibly, incredibly nerfed.

Now, the whole reason to get into this is because nerfed monsters mean that they're not challenging. Not being challenged eventually makes D&D, for Old School Gamers anyway, seem stale. After several sessions of simply stomping through every situation like you're a god,  it's going to get a little old for the true old school gamer, kind of boring. And that's because there was no risk and with no risk you never really earned anything.

These days there's a pop culture awareness of brain chemistry in terms of dopamine hits. Non-challenging Dungeons & Dragons, or other RPGs, can certainly provide hours and hours of dopamine quick hits just satiating people's immediate short-term fantasies. However, earning something long-term that was a goal for a long time, eventually brings the ultimate dopamine hit and much greater satisfaction and memories and feelings that last many more years instead of just a quick rush of soda, caffeine, and instant gratification.

I'm going to discuss here two distinct ways in which the monsters of 5th edition are nerfed. I'm not a big believer in generalities. I like to get specific because generalities are just an unsupported opinion. They're just a blanket statement. So let's explore two ways that the monsters in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons are nerfed.

The first way that monsters in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons are nerfed concerns to-hit rolls and Armor Class. Last year, in 2022, I was running a mass combat with a large party of player characters versus a few dozen trolls, maybe 20 to 30 trolls. The trolls simply could not hit the party's armor classes without rolling natural twenties.

I even paused the game and did something that I've never done before. I just invented it and called it an Armor Class audit. I quickly went around the party and calculated everybody's Armor class for them. It turned out that their armor classes were completely legit. This party ranged in levels from 8th to 12th. All of their characters had started at first level under me as the DM and they had no magic items that they hadn't gained adventuring under me as the DM. I truly didn't think, in my opinion, that the party had some kind of unbalancing, overabundance of magic items. I thought that considering their campaign history, which I had been the only GM for and so I knew it all myself, that they had a fair and reasonable amount of magic items contributing to their Armor Classes. The trolls were plus seven to hit. They should have been formidable. But they were not.

Also, monsters in 5th edition have had their armor classes severely reduced if you compare the armor classes of their fifth edition entries to their armor classes in their entries in previous editions of the game. They are no much, much easier to hit.

The second way in which fifth edition monsters in Dungeons & Dragons have been nerfed, is that their special powers and abilities simply have been stripped of any teeth. One of the first things I noticed, in a game that I played in and wasn't the DM, is that the petrification effect of cockatrices times out. Times out? What's that all about? At the next available opportunity, I looked up the 5th edition medusa and at least her petrification is permanent until fixed.

Perhaps the most nerfed creature of all in 5th edition is the rust monster. Rust monsters were created specifically by the developers back in the day to be terrifying and to create attrition for groups that had acquired too many magic items and armor for game balance. Now, in 5th edition, somehow for some silly reason, a rust monster's effect is powerless against enchanted metal and only works on mundane, muggle metal. In previous editions of the game, magic metal was even more delicious, nutritious, and could be smelled from further away then non-enchanted, mundane, muggle metal.

But, no, the developers would never want to make D&D players feel bad because they lost their favorite magic sword. That might hurt some precious snowflakes feelings. Forget the idea that overcoming loss makes for great story arcs. Forget the idea that it adds challenge to the game. All of the great characters have endured loss. Recently, DC Comics killed off Alfred, Batman's butler. Batman, in DC Comics, has been struggling to deal with the loss of his functional parent, since his biological parents died so young for him. And you're telling me, Wizards of the Coast, that players of Dungeons & Dragons couldn't handle stories in which their character loses a magic item?

Lame.

Similarly, I have noticed that the digestive acids of black puddings and gray oozes for example no longer can dissolve magic, enchanted metal, but only non-enchanted, muggle metal. It's the same idea. Since so many players have only played 5e and nothing else for their entire gaming lives, when black puddings, gray oozes, or rust monsters show up in a session, I warn the players that I run these beasties old school and explain exactly what that means. This way they know not to let these things touch anything made of metal that they want to keep. That's how these creatures were originally intended to work.

Fighters used to be terrified of rust monsters and would actually run behind the mage and hide. It was funny and it was glorious.

So to wrap this up, Part 5 of our series on "What Even is Old School Gaming?" is that the monsters actually have to be a threat. This is related to Part 4 that player characters actually have to be able to die. This is where the challenge comes from. And with no challenge, eventually, comes boredom. 

But what do you think?