Cadfan said:
Right. See, you've long since left the realm of monster manual entries. This is adventure module territory now.
I need at least a nod to adventure design so that I can get an idea of where to place the monsters. I don't need much, but something beyond a pat description that essentially repeats the obvious. I mean, for a successful example of what I need, check out the Mockery Bugs in the MMV, or, really, most of the entries from the MMV. Or the blurbs for the Archons and the Formorians. Or any monster manual with "adventure seeds" (Denizens of Avadnu, I'm looking at you!).
LostSoul said:
A succubus is a random high-Cha NPC. Except that, since she features in the game, she's not random, and she's an evil demon.
Right. What does that
mean when I sit down and play the game? Why should I use a succubus?
But: "Phanes can manipulate time, which they use to sow chaos among mortals. Occasionally they form pacts with powerful beings that share their destructive propensities." That sounds good enough to me.
But their actual time manipulation powers don't so much sow chaos as kill people with AARP lazers. And of course things would ally with things that are similar -- that's self-evident.
Again, what does that mean when I sit down to play the game? What is the phane trying to do?
The backstory is that a phane has just showed up and wants to mess with the current political situation, so it goes back in time, gives its support to an ambitious dude (better if he's a relative of a PC), and manipulates the dynasty over the years to shape it into the tool he needs right now.
Throw in a bunch of skill challenges that hinge on finding this stuff out, then a ritual to go back into the past, and there you go. You've got all you need.
I didn't look at the statblock to come up with that; I don't think I would need to.
The thing is, nothing in the phane's entry tells me it can go back in time. Nothing in the phane's entry tells me that it cares about political dynasties. Nothing in the phane's entry tells me where to use skill challenges to uncover its plot.
That's all stuff I would have to create, doing the hard grunt work of it from scratch.
I'm going to need a book of challenges for my PC's to have more in it than the rolls they're forced to make.
Mallus said:
Honestly, I prefer not to codify details like that until it comes up in play and a players asks. Schroedinger's DM'ing, as my friend shilsen puts it. This way, the game surprises me as much as the it does the players (+5 seconds).
I'd rather have a codified thing that I can use and worry about the world around it than worry aobut the thing itself.
One of those codified things I want to have are monsters.
I don't want to have to manufacture what my monster does whole cloth. I want the MM to tell me what the monster wants to do, and all I have to do is let it do that.
LostSoul said:
You could come up with all of that on the fly.
Right, but I shouldn't have to, and if I *do* have to, I won't be using much in the way of anything that isn't already anchored in some deep mythic tropes.
I know 4e is going to be partially supporting that (gnomes get lairs, right? and that Archon text and that Fomorian text is going to be in the game, right?), but where it doesn't, it's going to suck more.