The Monsters Know What They Are Doing Review

I'd forgotten all about Monsters Blindly Adhere to Arbitrary Patterns of Behavior until someone brought it up on a Discord server a while back, claiming that it’s “the best book any budding or veteran GM can read”, with another guy stating that he reads it to get “the brain juices flowing” before reading the actual monster entries.

At the time the people praising it seemed at least reasonably intelligent, and so I figured that even if they were exaggerating there was bound to be at least one or two shreds of wisdom buried somewhere within its pages, that it would have at least some subtle insights to offer that you couldn't glean by briefly glancing at the source material.

How wrong I was. As superfluous as it may sound it is not merely woke trash, it is also pretentious and useless, a laughably mediocre and misleading strategy guide that I can only conclude is intended for casuals somehow unable to comprehend 5th Edition’s brand of statblocks and flavor text:

Oh whatever shall I do? If only there was a book that would explain how to “properly” use an ogre. Oh, wait, there’s the Monster Manual, which provides a better explanation of how an ogre thinks and operates than this vapidware trash book which states that, because it has Darkvision, the ogre will only ever go hunting at night.

Ignoring its Dexterity penalty and prodigious size, I don’t think ogres have the patience or intelligence to hunt. I figured it would just wander around, and when it found a village go there, time of day be damned, snag an animal or a person, and then saunter off to eat. Rinse and repeat until everyone’s gone, or they muster up a defense sufficient to repel it.

Which turns out is more inline with what the Monster Manual says. Plus what if the ogre is hungry during the day? What if it’s had bad luck “hunting” at night? There are plenty of reasons to have it go looking for food whenever it pleases, but not according to this book. And it’s not just the ogre: every monster I looked at has one or more hardcoded patterns of behavior.

But let’s start from the beginning, by which I mean the cover:

In an impotent effort to demonstrate how much of a good straight white male ally Keith purports to be (and he sneaks a few other virtue-signally bits into the book), most of the characters on the cover are ambiguously brown. One is fantasy middle easternish. Another has mental-illness danger hair. Two I'm only fairly certain are women, and two I’m not so sure about, but since they are terrified I’m guessing are supposed to be (biological) men.

What I find more amusing than the token effort at virtue signaling, is that there’s a campfire at the center, but none of them have anything that resembles camping supplies. No one is wearing any sort of pack. They’re just kind of there, all decked out in "adventuring garb", which consists of lots of bizarrely overlapping shapes. It reminds me of a somewhat more subdued Wayne Reynolds piece, just without any of the passion or talent.

I’m curious as to why the muslimish-person is holding his/her spellbook. Wizards don’t need to do that and never have. What, is he/she going to prepare spells right now? In the middle of combat? Someone should tell these Tumblr-tier, post-modern posers that you can just as easily and more accurately visually depict a D&D wizard by simply having him in the process of casting a spell. 

Not a good start, and while it’s the content that counts as I’ve already briefly demonstrated with the ogre example the book fails in that regard equally if not more so.

In the Preface Keith provides a bit of personal backstory; basically, he was initially too stupid to figure out how to play Dungeons & Dragons by way of the Basic Set from the late 70s. Once he miraculously managed to make it to high school he was finally able to obtain a tenuous grasp on the game, though only after watching others play.

At the time he recalls that he “didn’t think of what we were doing in our D&D games in strategic or tactical terms”, implying that this was somehow an issue even though–unless you’re playing 4th Edition–D&D isn’t much of a strategy game, especially not at the combat level. His group disbanded, his wife wanted to play, and despite being far older was none the wiser, opting for 5th Edition of all things.

Keith claims that he’d always been interested in strategy games, but by his admission sucked at them because, in his words, he “never learned to think strategically”. Given his gaming history (or lack thereof) this comes as no surprise. It also comes as no surprise that, despite how awful he is at those sorts of games, he never bothered to do any research until he started playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown and consistently lost on the easiest difficulty.

For context, Keith was 10 years old in 1979, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown came out in 2012. Assuming he played it that year, he would have been in his early 40s. This is when he finally, in his words, “learned how to learn”, which translates to mimicking what other people are doing so as to hopefully not suck at a game despite playing on the easiest difficulty (or learn how to play a game aimed at children).

This somehow caused Keith to believe that “something was missing” regarding how he was running combat encounters. Given what he has said so far–and what I’ve already read from the monster entries–I’m inclined to agree, just not with his conclusion that the solution was to concoct frequently bizarre pre-game “action plans” for monsters.

Not content to keep his terrible ideas to himself, Keith first decided to create a blog where he reads parts of statblocks and overstates the obvious to a baffling audience of halfhearted half-wits, before recycling his inane content into this godawful book.

Knowing all of this won’t make the book any better or worse, but it will provide context for Keith’s absurd advice: he’s not approaching this from the perspective of a role-playing game, where monsters and NPCs have personalities and goals. Where they possess flaws, make mistakes, sometimes behave in a manner that might seem irrational, and aren’t aware that their imaginary lives are governed by the rules of a game.

Instead, he treats it all like a strategic board game, where monsters will almost always perform an action whenever certain conditions are met. Sometimes it’s because Keith thinks it’s the most advantageous action, and sometimes it makes no fucking sense at all, such as devas attacking enemies based on alignment (other, more important factors be damned):

Fighting a party of mixed Evils, and the only one that can do anything to the deva is Neutral Evil? It doesn’t matter: gotta take out the Chaotic Evil guy first, because Keith doesn’t understand alignment and thinks that Chaotic Evil is inherently worse than Neutral Evil and that Neutral Evil and Chaotic Neutral are basically the same.

Actual fans of the game might be wondering why a deva would attack Chaotic Neutral or even Chaotic Good creatures at all. Nothing in the description even hints at any inherent animosity towards Chaotic alignments. If you bother to read the general angel description, it explicitly states that they are formed from the essence of benevolent gods, and that “even chaotic good deities command lawful good angels”.

Keith prattles on about devas for something like two and a half pages, when this is all you need to know:

Read the fucking description for angels and the deva’s stat block. Neither are long or complicated.

That’s it! Nothing is confusing about it. There is no need to stretch a simple stat block into over two pages of bombastic bullshit, like a high school student increasing font size and line spacing so that his pittance of paragraphs meets a minimum page requirement on some insipid report. But, if you want some useful advice that the stat block won’t spoon-feed you, then something to consider is using Change Shape to sneak up on enemies (or even observe them for a while), hide, and/or escape.

Before I get into more examples, I want to highlight a few things from the Introduction, which opens with this quote:

“Any creature that has evolved to survive in a given environment instinctively knows how to make the best use of its particular adaptations.”

I’m sure this is intended to come across as profound, but it’s just pretentious. Keith offers no examples and doesn’t even attempt to clarify what the hell he’s talking about. Not that a monster necessarily evolved, but even if it knows how to do the things that it knows how to do, this doesn’t mean that, during the heat of combat, it will always make the right decision.

This is because, despite combat being resolved through an ordered series of turns and rounds purely for convenience, unlike XCOM it is “in-game” chaotic and unpredictable.

Keith follows this up by lamenting how, even though this principle that he just pulled out of his ass is straightforward “monsters in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns often fail to follow it”.

Again, no examples or clarification. No evidence. Keith just declares it to be a commonplace dilemma, which he chalks up to players—and I’m not kidding–not having “much experience with how the world works” and’/or having “little or no background in evolutionary biology, military service, martial arts, or even tactical simulation games…”.

As opposed to, say, the mental shortcomings one could infer by an inability to figure out how to play a children’s game, or beat a turn-based strategy game on the easiest difficulty. No, no: it must be a lack of knowing martial arts and military service!

Though from what I've heard, the 5E scene needs more Dungeon Masters. Wonder why?

It gets even sillier when Keith starts explaining what he thinks certain ability score values mean. For example, according to his arbitrary metrics, an Intelligence of 7 or less means monsters “operate wholly or almost wholly from instinct”, and only have one “modus operandi and can’t adjust if it stops working”. 

For context, a 7 is a mere -2 modifier. A creature attempting any Intelligence-based check or save is only 10% less likely to succeed compared to someone of average Intelligence. 

Skimming the 5E Monster Manual, I come across bullywugs, which average an Intelligence of 7. Although their description mentions that they follow an etiquette of sorts when dealing with outsiders and each other, introduce themselves with grand titles and can advance via murdering rivals or bribing superiors with loot, according to Keith, when it comes to combat they only have one tactic and are too stupid to shift gears if it’s not working out (I suppose the bullywugs have yet to “learn how to learn”).

And what is that one tactic? It’s an ambush, one of the most esoteric strategies, I know, and we should all be so fortunate that Keith “the Prometheus” Ammann could even be bothered to gift us mere mortals with these embers of wisdom.

In further, undeserved kindness, he even goes so far as to elaborate: the bullywugs will hide 15-20 feet away, then spring out of hiding and attack. On the second round, and only on the second round, they will then demand that the PCs surrender. They’ll of course only do so in bullywug, because…they’re too stupid to realize that the PCs don’t speak bullywug.

Ah, of course.

Bullywugs are smart enough to create and utilize tools, to develop a system of etiquette, to have a legal system of sorts where murder is punishable by execution, and even though they routinely capture intruders and bring them forth to their lords so that they can beg for mercy, they’re too fucking retarded to realize that other languages exist.

Even stupider–if you can believe it–if a PC surrenders then “the nearest bullywug will grab the PC, pull them away from the fight” and start rifling through their stuff for loot. The other bullywugs apparently have no problem with this, even though much of their society is based on giving tribute to their lord. Sure, why not?

Given that bullywugs have a good Stealth modifier and have an even easier time in swampy terrain, Keith states that they “won’t venture outside such areas”, even though the Monster Manual states that they can also be found in rainy forests and damp caves. 

I guess it’s good to know that, at least in Keith’s games, they’ll never, ever go outside of their comfort zone for any reason, even out of necessity, or if it’s to try and rob a caravan for loot to present to a bullywug lord to curry favor, which sounds like a perfectly plausible reason why they would, and would also surprise players.

Keith also repeats the bit from the Monster Manual, where they’ll have giant frogs swallow creatures whole in order to transport them back to home base, unsurprisingly not realizing that, by the time they get back, either the PC will have carved his way out of the frog, or he’ll have been dissolved by acid. Or suffocated. Unless of course, the bullywug’s lair is only a minute or two away.

If you reduce a bullywug to 7-5 hit points “it will leap away”. It won’t flee, but it will run away and try to hide, potentially hopping back into the fray later. If you manage to drop a bullywug to 4 or less hit points they will flee. Always. Bullywugs only have 11 hit points on average, meaning that a single attack is likely to get it to hide or (frog)leg it out of there.

I have nothing against monsters fleeing when the odds are against them, but I don’t like that it’s both absolute and arbitrary. I much prefer morale from 2nd Edition’s Dungeon Master’s Guide. It explains the general behavior of animals and intelligent creatures, and while you can roll it’s ultimately the DM’s call. I find this far more interesting because you can get monsters that flee quicker than expected or stick around longer for whatever reason.

Here’s something also more interesting than a stat block skim: bullywugs can apparently communicate over a “large area” by croaking. So you could have some bullywug scouts just lurking in the muck. One of them spots the characters and starts croaking. This communication is transmitted all over the swamp, giving other bullywugs plenty of time to assess the threat and gather their forces.

Characters that know what’s up, either due to experience or some sort of skill check could try to locate and kill the sentry. Otherwise, they could let the rest of the characters know that they’ve been spotted, and probably expect a confrontation soon (depending on how many characters are in the party, hirelings, etc).

At some point, they’d bump into a group of bullywugs, who would demand some sort of toll or tribute for passage (in broken common or something, because how the hell would anyone beg for mercy if the bullywugs have no idea what’s being said). Whether or not they are being honest about it, this provides a distraction for other bullywugs to set themselves up, either because they are going to try and take prisoners anyway, or in case the PCs refuse (or don’t have enough loot to bribe them with).

This gets the demands out of the way. It also makes more sense than attacking and then demanding surrender: the bullywugs have already just attacked, so why the hell would you surrender at that point? Do you think they’re going to let you go? Plus 5th Edition is notorious for level-appropriate battles, anyway, so why not just try and fight your way out?

During combat, there’s no way a bullywug is just going to pull a character aside and rifle through his shit: a good way to get sucker-punched by a character (possibly even the one that just “surrendered”), or earn the ire of your companions. That’s insane. I could instead see bullywugs hauling unconscious characters away, and/or their possessions if retreating. I could also see them having giant frogs gobble up loot to barf up later.

Finally, bullywug encounters will not always occur in swamps. That’s not only predictable and boring, but it contradicts the fact that they can be found in other environments and raid settlements. Saying that they’ll only be found in swamps because they have all of one advantageous feature that is keyed to swampy terrain is the DM equivalent of a sheet-gazing player, who only ever tries to overcome challenges and obstacles by trying to justify using whatever high-modifier skills and abilities are on his character sheet.

Getting waaay back to ability score interpretations, Keith pegs an 8-11 Intelligence as “unsophisticated in its tactics and largely lacking in strategy, but it can tell when things are going wrong and adjust to some degree”.

10-11 is the average, while 8-9 is a -1, yet both have the same capacity to strategize and adapt. You apparently can’t come up with a good plan until you hit at least a 12, 14 means you can not only plan but “also accurately assess” an enemy’s weaknesses and target accordingly. An 18 is apparently considered superhuman, even though if you’re using 4d6 drop the lowest, before modifiers nearly 2% of people will have an 18.

I do find it strange that he broke things up for Intelligence of 8 and up, but just lumped all the 7-and-belows into one group, and wrote them all off as being on par with animals.

Keith does the same thing with Wisdom. Got a 7 or less? Then you’ve got an underdeveloped survival instinct and “may wait too long to flee”, even though Wisdom is in no way even hinted as being tied to self-preservation. And just who has a Wisdom of 7? Well, for starters, kobolds.

They also have an Intelligence of 8, so by Keith’s completely batshit retarded assumptions, they not only might linger around too long but will have a single unsophisticated strategy that they employ. So how does he describe kobold behavior?

Well, because of their Pack Tactics trait, kobold society has obviously “evolved to be highly cooperative”. They “instinctively work together, even without having to discuss what they’re doing.”

You know what also has Pack Tactics? Among many other monsters, hell hounds, baboons, blood hawks, giant rats, reef sharks, and thugs.

I always chalked up Pack Tactics as a way of mechanically reflecting a group of monsters ganging up on a single target as being especially effective, but apparently reef sharks possess a society that has simply evolved to be highly cooperative or some shit. They know how to instinctively work together, without having to communicate at all. 

Which is good because they’re underwater.

Also, according to Keith, a kobold will never, ever “fight an enemy hand-to-hand by itself, not even one its own size”, and “any kobold that’s the only one left fighting a single foe retreats”. Certainly doesn’t sound like what he describes as Wisdom 7 behavior, but then he does contradict himself quite a bit.

I’m just imagining a halfling wizard, completely out of spells, down to a few hit points, and the rest of the party is dying or dead. He kills a kobold with a lucky quarterstaff strike, but there’s still one left. Kobold looks around: it’s just him and the wizard, who’s bleeding badly, breathing heavily, and struggling to stay standing.

And then, because of Keith’s stupidity, the kobold just legs it. Not because it makes any sort of sense, but because, again, Keith treats monsters as being operated by a poorly coded, unwavering AI script.

The kobold isn’t aware that it’s a game. The kobold isn’t aware of the game mechanics, his chance to hit, his average damage, the expected average hit points of whatever. So from a common sense roleplaying perspective, there are plenty of instances where I would fully expect a kobold to go toe to toe with someone.

Maybe he’s hot-headed. Maybe he saw one or more of his friends killed and wants revenge. Maybe he thinks he can take the PC. Maybe he wants to do so for personal glory. Maybe the PC stole treasure and he wants it back. Maybe the PC was injured by a trap, and he thinks he can finish the job. Or maybe he feels shame that the PC got past his trap.

“They also know to stay out of bright sunlight. If their enemies retreat into a well-lit area, kobolds simply won’t pursue.”

This is some Taylor Lane DiceDream II tier bullshit. There are numerous reasons that kobolds would pursue PCs into sunlight, especially if they think they have them on the ropes and can take them down. You really want the party coming back again? Healed up and better prepared? What better time to attack them, than when they least expect it?

Also, they have to be in sunlight. In an area with plenty of cover, like a forest, they can simply remain in the shadows and fight without any issues. Or they could just follow the PCs, sunlight be damned, see where they go, wait for them to sleep (and strike before they magically regain all of their hit points).

“Kobolds that retreat don’t bother switching to ranged attacks, because their slings don’t have enough range to keep target PCs from closing with them again.”

Slings have a maximum range of 120 feet. Granted they have disadvantage for some bizarre reason past all of 20 feet, but they can hang back up to 120 feet and at least give it a literal and figurative shot. Even better, because 5E operates on retarded mechanics, they can do this in the sunlight with no additional penalties whatsoever!

They could also just pursue the characters, hide when they stop, and try and bombard them with sling stones. Guessing being hidden cancels out the distance-based disadvantage.

Of course, there’s absolutely no reason for kobolds to stick with slings. Again, this isn’t a board game or video game, so you can give them weapons that make (more) sense. Like crossbows, which they could scavenge off of victims, steal from nearby settlements, or even construct on their own given their expertise with traps.

Daggers are a likewise pathetic weapon. They should be using at the least shortswords, but spears make the most sense (tie your daggers to sticks), especially in narrow tunnels: get a group with spears at the front, another row behind, and then crossbows behind that. Oh, and give all the spear-wielders shields. Why the fuck kobolds run around essentially naked with knives is beyond me.

Do you see? That’s useful information: I didn’t just read some of the stat block and over-explain what you’d already know were you to read it yourself and make up a bunch of stupid shit on the side about arbitrarily monolithic behaviors that still fail to make sense even if everyone acts under the pretense of playing a turn-based strategy game.

That would have also made for a better book, but that would have also required some semblance of effort and creativity, so Keith is relegated to reading parts of the book to you, in hopes you’re dumb enough to pay him for the privilege.

Moving on, let’s see what Keith has to say about goblins:

“Because of their darkvision, goblins frequently attack under the cover of darkness.”

Their description states that they shun sunlight and sleep underground during the day, so no shit.

“A picture of goblin combat is starting to coalesce, and at the center of it is a strategy of ambush.”

If a creature can reasonably ambush the party, why wouldn’t it? I know I previously joked about the idea of an ambush being an obscure tactic, but really I just assume that pretty much any intelligent creature that can ambush, will.

As with bullywugs and kobolds, there’s nothing of value here, but there are a few things to mock. The first is when he states that goblins don’t look out for their buddies, because while goblins will gather, create something resembling a village, have children, and take care of them (along with pets), they are completely incapable of cooperation, even if it’s to their immediate benefit.

Nothing about the Monster Manual entry implies this. I can only assume that Keith believes this to be the case because he’s a stat block-gazing DM and they lack a mechanic like Pack Tactics.

Skipping ahead to the gnoll, the author suggests ditching the longbow because, to him, it doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t a monster capable of utilizing weapons pack a ranged weapon if at all possible? Whelp, his retarded reasoning is that they gain little advantage from using one, they aren’t smart enough or “social” enough to barter for one, and longbows are “designed to puncture armor”.

The “little advantage” is having a missile weapon with a range of 600 feet that inflicts damage on par with its spear, provided it is wielding the spear in one hand. It also doesn’t need to be smart or “social” to get one, as the description specifically states that gnolls just take whatever weapons and armor they can find.

As for the bit about puncturing armor: what? First, bows weren’t invented to penetrate armor, and in the context of the game have no armor-penetrating capability (unlike, say, Dungeons & Delvers). Second, they have an incredible range and adequate damage. If you can use a longbow, why the hell not pack one around? It’s not like weight means anything in 5th Edition or anyone tracks supplies.

Do you know what straightforward tweak you can make to gnolls that would make sense? Give them shields. Shields are easy to make and/or could be scavenged and provide a meaningful tactical advantage. But there I go again, giving advice that builds on the game and makes sense, as opposed to just explaining parts of the gnoll stat block to you.

Unsurprisingly, Keith can’t even keep his information straight. For the ghoul, after stating the obvious about it being undead, immunities, and how its claws can paralyze most creatures (did you know that?!), he eventually gets around to declaring that once they’ve eaten living flesh, they have no immediate reason to keep fighting.

Now, not only does the actual description state that their hunger is insatiable, Keith even later states that “a ghoul is always hungry” and that once it has paralyzed a victim it “can’t resist the compulsion to keep eating”. He also claims that they “possess a stronger self-preservation instinct” than zombies and skeletons, since the “whole point of eating is to fuel one’s continued existence”, which is bullshit because ghouls don’t eat to survive, but purely to eat: the Monster Manual even states that a ghoul can persist in a crypt for untold ages without feeding.

The good news is, if you’re unfortunate enough to play in Keith’s games I wouldn’t worry so much about ghouls. Because Keith is a stat block-focused DM, they’ll never try to sneak up on you since they aren’t trained in Stealth. Instead, they’ll just run right toward you. Even better, they’ll do so even when outnumbered!

So, in Keith’s (board)games, a single ghoul will always just charge headlong into a party and claw the nearest non-elf (so much for that self-preservation bit). Doesn’t matter what class the elf is, if it poses the greatest threat. Assuming it hits and paralyzes the target (the save DC is only 10, so not likely) and survives the following round where everyone beats the shit out of it (also not likely), it will then try to pick up the paralyzed creature and run away.

This means the party gets another few attempts to beat the shit out of it. Poor bastard’s only got 22 hit points and an AC of 12, so it’s almost always going to get hit by even 1st-level characters. Assuming it’s still alive at this point, it’s only going to get like 60 feet away, easy enough to get shot at, or for a character to double-move up to, and then get an opportunity attack after the ghoul tries fleeing again (the Charger feat makes this even easier).

Next up, the kuo-toa. Keith overly focuses on a throwaway line about how “many” kuo-toa weapons are designed to capture, before declaring that he will have them behave with murderous intent, anyway. Kuo-toa are mostly insane, so why not?

Since kuo-toa have average Dexterity and no Stealth bonus, Keith does what all terrible sheet-focused players do and just discards it as an option, period. Melee combat is also out, even though the standard model kuo-toa is a meager CR ¼ baddie with a whopping 18 hit points, a passable AC of 13, and +3 to hit.

Keith states that the net is “effortless” to escape from, even though it’s not: you either risk your turn trying to make a Strength check to escape, or hack it to pieces. In either case you’ve wasted your turn, and assuming a kuo-toa lands a net hit, then the rest of his buddies get a hefty bonus to hit you.

Despite this obvious advantage, Keith takes all common sense and roleplaying out of the equation: kuo-toa will never attack without a four-to-one or better numerical advantage, and will always throw nets until a character is hit by at least two (meaning, due to Disadvantage on the net throws, an entire gang of them could waste their entire turn doing fuckall).

I imagine in Keith’s games, assuming he runs, that it’s like a bad isekei anime with RPG elements, where everyone can “see” their character sheet and stats.

Now, Keith doesn’t specify if the four-to-one is either the entire party or just whether the kuo-toa will gang up on one guy. But imagine a party of four going into a kuo-toa lair, and due to 5th Edition’s handholding difficulty bullshit there are only like four kuo-toa, but they refuse to do anything because they don’t sufficiently outnumber the party.

Even if you go “deadly” and throw in, say, six? For a modified XP total of 600? They still wouldn’t attack! Not that it would amount to much, what with all the wasted net-throws.

But let’s assume he just means going after a single character: a 1st-level fighter can start with chainmail, for a base AC of 16. Add a shield for a starting AC of 18. That means that the net attack only has something like a 9% chance of landing because 5E is retarded like that, and nets for some reason are more likely to just magically slide off of chainmail and plate.

They could instead just stab the fighter. 30% chance of hitting, and at around 4 damage a pop they could take down the fighter in three or so hits. Personally, I wouldn’t even bother with the net unless there was a way to negate the Disadvantage. But then I’d also go with the number of kuo-toa that makes sense, so players might end up facing down a dozen or so of the goggle-eyed freaks.

I'd also give the net a more reasonable range of at least 10 feet, and have it force a Dex save or something to dodge (since I don't think 5E does the reasonable and logical touch AC thing). Wielding spears is nice, but what's with the utterly pathetic 5-foot range? Give them javelins or harpoons for throwing, and 10-foot-long spears to help keep the PCs at bay.

Let’s check out the wyvern. It’s got an animal-grade intelligence, which seems more like Keith’s speed. 

His advice is to essentially have the wyvern fly constantly, making flyby attacks so that characters without reach weapons can never attack it. Now I’m not intimately familiar with 5th Edition combat, but there’s a very obvious flaw in his, well, let’s just say “logic”.

If Keith were to try and pull this amateur hour bullshit in a game that I was playing, I’d simply tell him, okay, I’m going to ready an action and strike at the wyvern when it swoops by to bite and/or sting me. It doesn’t matter that the wyvern has a 10-foot reach, as its head and/or stinger must physically touch my character, which is close enough to be struck by whatever the fuck I’m wielding.

Or, get even crazier, and try to jump on it when it tries to swoop in and attack. 

Of course, I’m not a retarded player, so I’d also have a ranged weapon (again, weight doesn’t mean anything in 5E, anyway). And as far as I know, every spellcaster almost certainly has access to some sort of ranged at-will spell, so they’d either be able to attack the wyvern with ease or ready an action to attack once it got close enough.

But this all assumes your 6th-level spellcaster–ie, most 5E characters–doesn’t have access to fly or some other spell or effect that can knock the wyvern out of the sky. Not sure, as I don’t play 5th Edition, but it’s D&D on game journalist mode so I would be shocked if there wasn’t.

But you know what? Credit where it’s due: congratulations, Keith, you finally devised a strategy that may slightly inconvenience characters capable of making two attacks per round, and are dumb enough to only bring along a melee weapon.

For our next stop, let's take a peek at the shambling mound.

Keith’s strategy, so-called, is to whack a PC twice and try to engulf it, and once it succeeds to just start shambling away “since it’s got what it came for”.

Shambling mounds are speed 20. This means that it can only go 40 feet a round by doing nothing but moving. Most any character can hit it with ranged attacks, every now and then needing to spend his turn moving in order to catch up (characters with the Charger feat have an even easier time). Were I in Keith’s games, I’d just throw a pack animal at the thing, and then beat the crap out of it without any real danger.

What would make more sense is for the shambling mound to keep attacking anything it can detect because it’s so slow there’s no way it can escape. At the least, to retaliate against anyone in melee. But, nope: according to Keith once the mound gobbles something up, just have it walk away regardless of circumstances.

Going off of Keith’s tactics, this is not the easiest way to defeat a shambling mound. According to him, if a shambling mound is struck by a ranged attack by an enemy it cannot detect (ie, beyond its blindsight range of 60 feet), it will always move in the opposite direction. So, just have everyone group on one side, hit it with ranged attacks. The mound will move away, everyone moves up again, more attacks, and rinse and repeat until it is slain.

Something I wasn’t surprised to not see, even though Keith makes mention of this, is that shambling mounds will sometimes play dead. At no point in his tactics does he say that, if the shambling mound cannot escape or find its attackers, that at a certain point it should just play dead, waiting to attack when something gets close (or just stay put in general).

Earlier in the shambling mound entry, Keith expresses confusion as to why a shambling mound wouldn’t be trudging through the woods when the PCs encounter it (because it has "shambling" in the name, you see). In his words, and only his words, shambling mounds “must feed all the time”. The answer to the question that the astute needn't ask comes if you would only bother to read the Monster Manual entry.

First, shambling mounds can consume plant life. The Monster Manual states that it “feeds on any organic material, tirelessly consuming plants as it moves and devouring animals that can’t escape it.” Nothing says that the shambling mound must consume living creatures: it just does so whenever it can.

Given its size and speed, this isn’t something I would expect it to accomplish by plodding after most animals. Instead, it’s an ambush predator that waits for something to get within its reach, before suddenly lashing out. And lo and behold, when I continue reading the entry, the book essentially says the same thing!

That is how you should use a big, slow monster that any party could easily see and just run away from, or kite and take down via ranged attacks: it waits (ideally amongst foliage), and when the PCs get too close it suddenly attacks.

For the last entry, I decided to check out elementals. The first is air, so I’ll just go with that one.

Air elementals aren’t complicated monsters: they can punch twice, or use a recharging whirlwind ability. Punches inflict 14 damage on average, while the whirlwind does slightly more and allows a save for half, and can affect up to four creatures at once (assuming they are all bunched together).

Problem is, the save DC is a meager 13, so good chance everyone is going to shrug it off. Its only value is if there are things to knock the characters into, but this requires a failed save and the direction is random (though the entry doesn’t tell you how to determine this), so even if it works it might still be pointless.

So most of the time the air elemental should simply fly toward the nearest PC and punch the shit out of him. It can fly pretty far, so you can have it fly up and over the party to get to whoever you want whilst avoiding opportunity attacks. If everyone does cluster together, then you could give whirlwind a go.

Keith’s advice is predictably bizarre. First off, always use whirlwind when there are two opponents close together. Doesn’t matter what they are, just do it. Knowing his audience, he also states that you should only use it when the elemental “has it available”. You know, just in case you were thinking of using it when it’s not available.

He also tells you to have the air elemental “move continuously in narrowing and widening circles”, attacking two different opponents it passes over, only targeting an opponent twice if it passes over one during that time. It will always move at its full speed of 90 feet and “couldn’t care less about its opponent’s opportunity attacks”.

Hooboy. 

In case you’re the target audience for this book and so haven’t read the Monster Manual (or, in all likelihood, are too busy watching D&D-themed top x whatever videos and narcissists pretending to play to actually play yourself), first off the air elemental receives no benefit for moving at all. It’s not like, say, 4th Edition where you might have expected it to gain some sort of bonus to AC or damage by moving a minimum distance.

Worse, its AC is only 15, which if encountered at the “expected level” means everyone is going to have a really easy time hitting it with what is essentially a free attack. Keith doesn’t even bother trying to employ wyvern tactics, having the elemental hang out in the air, flying down to pummel someone before flying directly back up again.

This might at the least prompt the party to group together and ready attacks to hit it when it gets close, which would be ideal conditions for whirlwind (not that I would use it since everyone in the area would get an opportunity attack, first). But, nope: just zip around for no reason so that one or more characters can try to get a free hit in!

The Monsters Operate Under Board Game AI feels like a pathetic grift that's even sillier than those D&D For Dummies books that came out I think during 4th Edition, or maybe at the end of 3rd Edition. I hesitate to call it the Troika or Mork Borg of strategy guides because while it's pretentious, worthless, and the art is universally bad it's at least legible.

It's the sort of book you buy and pretend to care about so you can make YouTube videos in an attempt to garner attention and a pittance of revenue by pandering to a crowd of lazy, miserable sycophants willing to gobble up any and all D&D media in between official-albeit-uninspired-and-overpriced rehashes of once competent material, episodes of Critical Role and buying specialty dice that will never leave the box.

The advice is obvious when it isn’t contradictory or downright stupid. From the entries I read, the best it’s had to offer is a possible slight inconvenience to retarded characters that primarily rely on melee attacks. Maybe there’s something at least marginally more useful buried in there, somewhere, but I doubt it. You're better served just reading the Monster Manual. Or don’t: it’s not like most 5th Edition lifestyle adherents even play.