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Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 5960596" data-attributes="member: 710"><p>The detailed monster construction rules were part of the illusion - the illusion this all models something in the "real" fantasy world. </p><p></p><p>4E said: "You know what, it doesn't matter if this monster has chitin armor or can wear full plate - a Level 15 Brute must have an AC of about 27 to be a reasonable Level 15 foe. We don't even tell you what its AC were if you could remove its armor. </p><p>The Kobold is Shifty - that doesn't mean he has some spell-like ability, class aility or some feat - he just can do it because he's a Kobold. There is no way for someone other than a Kobold to get this ability (barring DM fiat). </p><p></p><p>3E had elements that were a bit like that, for example saying that some creatures could have Breath Dragons - which was just a design decision that followed no construction rules in and on itself. But people tended to believe the illusion that these monsters "made sense" in the game world with their statistics. They didn't really, because if you looked really closely, there wasn't really an explanation for some natural armor values other than "it will need high natural armor since it doesn't wear normal armor but is CR 9". </p><p>The unfortunate side effect of this approach was that the illusion they were trying to uphold actually lead to their Challenge Rating system being lead ad absurdum - despite all those constructions rules, it couldn't tell you what CR or your new monster should be. 4E stripped away this simulative aspects and said what final numbers are required to make a decent monster of a certain level. But this clarity bothers some people - because it doesn't really explain how the numbers got there. In 3E, they could tell "ah, the armor comes from its natural armor". Of course, they missed that the natural armor value was not really following any meaningful guideline and couldn't tell what it meant. Or they didn't miss that little fact, but they still preferred knowing how these creature statistics are build together, even if some values are essentially random. They'd probably hope that the next edition would make even these random values go away and put a system behind it.</p><p></p><p>4E kinda hat the power to go there, since it actually made explicit assumptions about attack bonuses and defense values, and introduced that 1/2 level bonus, replacing Save and BAB progressions from 3E.</p><p>D&D NExt may also be able to go there, thanks to its Bounded Accuracy. And maybe we can have both - the clear goal-focused approach of 4E - "Level X monster must have AC this tall" and the more simulation-focused approach of 3E - "A monster with this equipment, size, strength and a bony exoskeleton has this AC, and would probably be appropriate for Level X".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 5960596, member: 710"] The detailed monster construction rules were part of the illusion - the illusion this all models something in the "real" fantasy world. 4E said: "You know what, it doesn't matter if this monster has chitin armor or can wear full plate - a Level 15 Brute must have an AC of about 27 to be a reasonable Level 15 foe. We don't even tell you what its AC were if you could remove its armor. The Kobold is Shifty - that doesn't mean he has some spell-like ability, class aility or some feat - he just can do it because he's a Kobold. There is no way for someone other than a Kobold to get this ability (barring DM fiat). 3E had elements that were a bit like that, for example saying that some creatures could have Breath Dragons - which was just a design decision that followed no construction rules in and on itself. But people tended to believe the illusion that these monsters "made sense" in the game world with their statistics. They didn't really, because if you looked really closely, there wasn't really an explanation for some natural armor values other than "it will need high natural armor since it doesn't wear normal armor but is CR 9". The unfortunate side effect of this approach was that the illusion they were trying to uphold actually lead to their Challenge Rating system being lead ad absurdum - despite all those constructions rules, it couldn't tell you what CR or your new monster should be. 4E stripped away this simulative aspects and said what final numbers are required to make a decent monster of a certain level. But this clarity bothers some people - because it doesn't really explain how the numbers got there. In 3E, they could tell "ah, the armor comes from its natural armor". Of course, they missed that the natural armor value was not really following any meaningful guideline and couldn't tell what it meant. Or they didn't miss that little fact, but they still preferred knowing how these creature statistics are build together, even if some values are essentially random. They'd probably hope that the next edition would make even these random values go away and put a system behind it. 4E kinda hat the power to go there, since it actually made explicit assumptions about attack bonuses and defense values, and introduced that 1/2 level bonus, replacing Save and BAB progressions from 3E. D&D NExt may also be able to go there, thanks to its Bounded Accuracy. And maybe we can have both - the clear goal-focused approach of 4E - "Level X monster must have AC this tall" and the more simulation-focused approach of 3E - "A monster with this equipment, size, strength and a bony exoskeleton has this AC, and would probably be appropriate for Level X". [/QUOTE]
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