When the new DnD Player’s Handbook released in September, some players were concerned that the game was going to be far too easy, thanks to powerful new spells, more free actions and bonus actions, weapon mastery traits, and more. Reassuringly, the new Monster Manual shows that the player characters won’t have it all their own way: initiative scores for the most imposing monsters are way up, and players will find themselves starting combat on the back foot more often than ever before.
The beating heart of Dungeons and Dragons combat is the action economy: how many characters are in the fight, how many meaningful actions can they take each turn, and what can they do to disrupt the other side, either by killing fighters or hitting them with debuffs. Rolling high in the initiative order is a big deal: the first side to act has the first opportunity to chip away at their opponents’ action economy and tip the scales in their favor.
In the 2014 rules, the initiative was skewed to favor the players. All characters’ initiative bonus was determined by their Dexterity modifier, but PCs could add extra bonuses from DnD classes, the ‘Alert’ DnD feat, magic items, and a wider range of spells than monsters.
At low level play the disparity wasn’t very obvious, but when it cam time to fight those big bad boss monsters, the players had a major advantage over their enemies. There were good odds that most of the party would be able to act before the monsters could lace their boots up.
That has changed in the updated Monster Manual. Many DnD Monsters now have initiative scores in line with their status as terrifying end-game fights. So whereas the 2014 version of an Adult Red Dragon made initiative rolls at +0, the version in the updated Monster Manual rolls at +12.
The 5e version of the Beholder might be incredibly paranoid, but it only had a +2 on its initiative checks; now it gets the same +12 bonus to initiative rolls that it gets on perception checks.
Mechanically, monsters are adding their proficiency bonus, or even twice their proficiency bonus, to their initiative modifier. It’s as if initiative is a skill they are proficient or have expertise in.
5th edition has always given the biggest and nastiest monsters ways to ‘cheat’ the action economy a little, through Legendary Actions that allow them to take a small action every time a player does, and Legendary Resistances that hold back the worst of the party’s debuff spells. Now they’re far more likely to start a fight right at the top of the initiative order, and open hostilities with a full turn of attacks, debuffs against the players, and buffs for their minions.
Though the print version of the new Monster Manual isn’t quite out on the DnD release schedule yet, it is accessible to Master Tier subscribers on DnD Beyond. To our very slight disappointment there are no sneaky rules for creating monster player characters, which wouldn’t have taken up too much space given how simplified DnD races are now: but at 384 pages we can see why that didn’t make the cut.
Source: Wargamer
