Designing a Better Stat Block
A few weeks back, we looked at the various stat blocks across Dungeons & Dragons’ history, and before that, we broke down the stat block in 5th edition. Across both articles, I had my gripes about the different stat blocks and how I think they can be better organized. So that is what we are going to do today, we are going to create a stat block that I think is better, conveys information faster, and is just more visually appealing… or it’ll just be an abbreviated stat block.
Of course, you may disagree and have your own ideas for a better stat block, in which case, share it down in the comments! Maybe we can do a second, even better-designed stat block!
Important Elements
There are several things that one needs when one looks at a stat block, with the major ones being (in no particular order): Hit Points, Armor Class, To Hit, and Damage. While these elements are split, they are at least somewhat grouped together (unlike in some editions). HP is grouped with AC, and Damage is grouped with To Hit.
BUT, they have a ton of extra information splitting it up, forcing you to scan the stat block, slowing down the retrieval of the monster’s statistics.
After that, the next most important elements are going to be its speed and special abilities that augment its attacks. So that would be something like Pack Tactics on a kobold or the Dive Attack on an aarakocra, but that information should be directed to by the attack of the creature. So in the kobold’s case, it should list the attack, and then tell you to check out Pack Tactics so you know that that attack can be augmented by a special ability instead of you having to remember that Pack Tactics is applicable.
And yes, it’s easy enough to remember that a kobold has Pack Tactics, but when you have a bunch of different monsters with different stat blocks, I always appreciate a bit of a reminder of what juicy abilities a monster has that will augment its attacks.
Least Important Elements
Just as there are important elements in a stat block, there are some rather… not that important elements on there that I think can be removed, or at least reduced in prominence.
The first thing that comes to mind are ability scores and having them at the top of a stat block. I’m going to strip out the ability scores, but keep the ability modifiers, and then place them down at the bottom. Sure, they have some use since you need them for saving throws or impromptu skill checks, but we don’t need the ability scores. The only thing I can think of why you might need an ability score is something like the Shadows who can decrease your Strength score or an Intellect Devourer who has to roll 3d6 and try to exceed your Intelligence score, but those are monster abilities to be used against the players. We don’t need scores, and if a GM ever does, they can just use the base score for that modifier, so a +0 would be 10, +1 a 12, etc.
The other less important elements are going to be things like languages, alignment, and even skills. While you might need to use skills every once in a while, it’ll probably be something used outside of combat and we don’t need them in the way of finding a monster’s combat abilities. All of those go to the bottom of the stat block, out of the way of quickly finding a monster’s special abilities and how easily they are going to TPK your party.
With that said, let’s go ahead and show off a stat block as a reminder, first we will look at a blank stat block.
It has AC & HP at the top, which is good, but then has the ability scores directly after that. Why? They aren’t that important.
We then get more of the monster’s defensive abilities (separated from HP & AC), along with skills separating the Saving Throws (a defensive ability) from Vulnerabilities, Resistances, and Immunites - which seems weird. Why are we breaking those apart for the sake of skills? Are skills that important? No, they aren’t.
After skills we get senses, languages, CR, XP, and Proficiency. Not really important elements of a combat.
Then we get to special abilities, which might be useful in combat or just let you know that the very obvious aquatic creature can breathe water. Not very helpful when you are attacking your players with glee. Only then do we finally get to the monster’s actions. Which is way too long to go until you get the stabby-stabby that you need.
Improved Stat Blocks
So now, let’s see what happens when we consolidate all the important information we need to know in a single place. First, we have our normal kobold stat block and next to it our new stat block (I’ll let you guess which is which).
As you can see, all defensive abilities are up at the top of the stat block immediately followed by offensive abilities. After that are any special abilities rewritten to be faster to parse, and then we get the extra information that is nice to have but not really needed to run combat quickly.
There aren’t that many differences other than just consolidating the information down to take up less room. We’ve removed hit dice, since we don’t need that in combat, removed the word “feet” with just its symbol everywhere, got rid of “weapon attack” in the actions section since its pretty obvious it’s an attack with a weapon (hint: it’s always a weapon or spell attack and it’s pretty easy to figure which one is which), and we are just shortening everything that we can.
Sure, at first it might look a bit more confusing than before, but you take a few seconds to just read through it and get used to it, and you’ll understand it quickly. It has some old school tendencies, as all I want to do is get you all the information you need as fast as possible, so that means I’m cutting down on excessive jargon like “Damage”, “Hit”, “Attack”, and a lot of the natural language in 5e because, while it might seem friendly to someone new to the hobby, it does ultimately create bloated and large stat blocks that are hard to quickly parse.
But hey, this is only a kobold, no matter how majestic they might be, you still need to see what spellcasters will look like, maybe you want to see another dragon stat block, or perhaps you are curious what a CR 30 stat block would look like. Well good news, if you look down below, you can feast your eyes on some stat blocks!
So what are your thoughts? Am I completely off base? Is there a type of monster that I’m forgetting about that would create a lot of problems with this pseudo-abbreviated stat block? Please share it down below!
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