are things that turn into monsters better than monsters that turn into things?

me

tell me about this monster

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md96dyJ7gO1r0i205o4_500.jpg

Jack:

it's a ferret made of daggers

People are like "oh what a lovely dagger I'll just pick it up" and then it turns into a ferret and bites them.

me

what i had was:
SCATTERDOG: can turn into a swarm of needles

Jack:

Why would anyone pick up a swarm of needles?

you're not thinking straight, matt

me

well, you try to pat a dog and then OOPS swarm of needles

are things that turn into monsters better than monsters that turn into things?

Jack:

Yes.

me

discuss

Jack:

If you're looking at a monster you already expect it to attack you

you don't expect a thing to attack you

me

i still think the most boring thing to do with monsters is kill them/have them kill you

Jack:

That's what always happens though

and it keeps working

me

it gets you through

Jack:

I don't think razordogs would be better if they didn't attack you

or skinlings

or vorn, I guess

me

these are better monster things:
chases
riddle games
heists
uneasy alliances
legal situations

Jack:

Or Alien

or freddy kruger

etc

me

where you need the monster for a thing, or they're toying with you, or something - you can't kill the monster and the monster just doesn't care about you

and you're like MAN i want to kill this monster but i can't

like with vorn it wouldn't work if we just killed vorn or vorn just killed everything

Jack:

I think you're really underselling how interesting being attacked by a monster is

Aliens would not have been better if they made an uneasy alliance with the aliens

or a heist, or a legal situation

me

i disagree

i dont mean never-fighting-monsters-is-ideal

Jack:

The buddy movie thing worked well with shodan, but I don't think it's always ideal.

me

i mean you should do monster-fighting in like 25% of monster situations

Jack:

Ok, these things are worse than being attacked, because monster movies are not about the monsters.

like a zombie movie is not at all about the zombies, it's about how characters interact in an apocalypse situation

doing uneasy alliance stuff with the zombies takes emphasis away from the important stuff

IE how do you avoid being killed by this monster

which is the fundamental D&D problem

me

there's something to that

how do i get the treasure out without being killed by this dungeon

is kind of the same

but i want a d&d to be much bigger than that

i mean, diplomacy is awesome, recurring villains would probably be awesome if we didn't keep killing them

i'm not totally sure if i believe that

maybe becoming a part of the monster empire and tearing it apart from the inside is cool?

the difference between having a REFLEX save and ROLL-UNDER-DEX is kinda negligible.

ROLL-UNDER-REFLEX works maybe 10% better (like +2) for bad ability scores.
ROLL-UNDER-DEX works maybe 15% better (like +3) for good ability scores.