Hi everyone. I took a brief look around, and didn't see anything that matched this topic, and it's been brewing around in my head for a little while, so:
Why are creature statistics determined by their type?
By this I mean to ask, why do all humanoids get a d8 hit die, 3/4 BAB, and so forth? Why do all outsiders, regardless of their warlike inclinations or low mobility have the same attack bonuses and reflex saves?
During the creation of the game, it made a lot of sense, I suppose-- in 2000, when we didn't have all this d20 material around. But after 5 years, I can say that to me, it presents a bunch of problems, or at least, bothersome aspects.
What creature type do you give to a dragon from the Abyss? It could either be outsider or dragon, and you'll probably introduce a special rule either way so that it counts as both-- but you have to make a decision for its size of hit die, BAB & save advancement, and skill points.
What about a flesh golem (in a campaign set appropriately); shouldn't it be both undead and construct? This one can go either way, I admit.
The simple example: The dryad could be both plant and fey, and I'd like it if it could be.
The vampire template changes a humanoid into an undead(augmented humanoid). This robs us of information, as the Humanoid type has 4 limbs, looks vaguely like a person, and so forth; undead (and outsiders) are much more general, which means that we have to work harder to describe the beastie.
What to do?
Well, nothing, now. The system works well enough that you can just say "treat this as type X in addition to its actual type Y"; this is more of a disguised "4th edition" thread, I suppose, than I meant it to be.
But in the future, what I would really like is for all of the current creature types to become descriptors, though there are two ways to go here:
we could use some sort of inheritance hierarchy, and give Lawful Evil daemons the [baatezu] descriptor, and assume that that includes the Evil Lawful Outsider aspects of their being,
or we could give them [Baatezu, Evil, Extraplanar, Lawful, Outsider] descriptors.
Matter of taste, I suspect
Anyway: So how would things such as hit die size and skill point allocation get decided?
Well, ideally, parallel to the class system, though that presents another few interesting complications:
As it is now, creature type gives something with which to contrast class levels; they don't work the same.
Unlike the fighter class, they don't measure what you do, they measure what you are.
Unfortunately, players will always want to play as monsters, and the sorcerer muddles the issue anyway: is assigning hit dice a good measure of what you are?
I would argue that it isn't a very good method, both because it makes multiclassing as a monster very difficult to work out [non-level-based-HD! Eeek!] but can also be nonsensical, because it says that all animals fight approximately as well as a cleric;
even those that are herbivores versus those that are predators.
Finally, it makes polymorph difficult, since there's all this junk associated with hit dice, and all this junk associated with type; drawing a distinction between them (and building the distinction into the core books!) would be fantastic.
So, again, what would monsters use instead? I'd argue for a modified class system, with individual monsters being templates slapped on top of this system.
It means that playing as a monster is easier; you still need to stagger the monster template, thus levels without hit dice, but now it's being built explicitly for this purpose, which makes everything better somehow (automagically!)
Note that I'm cheating, since I can't think of a decent class system here, but I'll keep thinking about it, honest.
In the same breath, I'd ask for the monsters to be presented as, in general, with fewer hit dice.
Now that we're okay with monsters taking class levels & players taking monster levels, I think it is the time for, say, Hill giants to only have 5 or 6 or 8 hit dice-- exactly enough to balance out their incredible stats with wimpy NPC classes, however many you'd need--
and for the rest of their bonuses to come from embedded fighter or barbarian levels, since that's what they do/are, in my opinion.
To be clear: I'd like the gaint entry to present me with the Base Giant, with no class levels at all, just racial hit dice, and then the Giant Warrior, what the players are *expected* to fight, with a few levels of fighter.
This has the advantage that the wizard of the tribe, their shaman, isn't automatically tougher than the rest of the roving band, because the DM would just substitute wizard levels for fighter levels.
It's very hard to do this, otherwise, because you have to either regress the giant to a point where you can give it a few levels of wizard (the Base Giant), make the encounter very difficult, or explain why they have a captive spellcaster of another race.
Anyway. I think I ended this post in a different state than when I started it, and I'll come back later & edit for legibility (edit: Done, I hope!), but basically:
1) Some monsters are a little too powerful to add class levels to, and they're generally the "we bash stuff" monsters--
it would be nice if "bashers" had and explicit number of levels of fighter factored into them, and we were told how many that was, so we could replace those with different classes.
2) In general, monster type (Giant, Fey, Undead, Outsider) is too broad while at the same time too general.
I would prefer that all of the types be descriptors and a rough class system replace the current type system.
Thanks for bearing with me!
Why are creature statistics determined by their type?
By this I mean to ask, why do all humanoids get a d8 hit die, 3/4 BAB, and so forth? Why do all outsiders, regardless of their warlike inclinations or low mobility have the same attack bonuses and reflex saves?
During the creation of the game, it made a lot of sense, I suppose-- in 2000, when we didn't have all this d20 material around. But after 5 years, I can say that to me, it presents a bunch of problems, or at least, bothersome aspects.
What creature type do you give to a dragon from the Abyss? It could either be outsider or dragon, and you'll probably introduce a special rule either way so that it counts as both-- but you have to make a decision for its size of hit die, BAB & save advancement, and skill points.
What about a flesh golem (in a campaign set appropriately); shouldn't it be both undead and construct? This one can go either way, I admit.
The simple example: The dryad could be both plant and fey, and I'd like it if it could be.
The vampire template changes a humanoid into an undead(augmented humanoid). This robs us of information, as the Humanoid type has 4 limbs, looks vaguely like a person, and so forth; undead (and outsiders) are much more general, which means that we have to work harder to describe the beastie.
What to do?
Well, nothing, now. The system works well enough that you can just say "treat this as type X in addition to its actual type Y"; this is more of a disguised "4th edition" thread, I suppose, than I meant it to be.
But in the future, what I would really like is for all of the current creature types to become descriptors, though there are two ways to go here:
we could use some sort of inheritance hierarchy, and give Lawful Evil daemons the [baatezu] descriptor, and assume that that includes the Evil Lawful Outsider aspects of their being,
or we could give them [Baatezu, Evil, Extraplanar, Lawful, Outsider] descriptors.
Matter of taste, I suspect
Anyway: So how would things such as hit die size and skill point allocation get decided?
Well, ideally, parallel to the class system, though that presents another few interesting complications:
As it is now, creature type gives something with which to contrast class levels; they don't work the same.
Unlike the fighter class, they don't measure what you do, they measure what you are.
Unfortunately, players will always want to play as monsters, and the sorcerer muddles the issue anyway: is assigning hit dice a good measure of what you are?
I would argue that it isn't a very good method, both because it makes multiclassing as a monster very difficult to work out [non-level-based-HD! Eeek!] but can also be nonsensical, because it says that all animals fight approximately as well as a cleric;
even those that are herbivores versus those that are predators.
Finally, it makes polymorph difficult, since there's all this junk associated with hit dice, and all this junk associated with type; drawing a distinction between them (and building the distinction into the core books!) would be fantastic.
So, again, what would monsters use instead? I'd argue for a modified class system, with individual monsters being templates slapped on top of this system.
It means that playing as a monster is easier; you still need to stagger the monster template, thus levels without hit dice, but now it's being built explicitly for this purpose, which makes everything better somehow (automagically!)
Note that I'm cheating, since I can't think of a decent class system here, but I'll keep thinking about it, honest.
In the same breath, I'd ask for the monsters to be presented as, in general, with fewer hit dice.
Now that we're okay with monsters taking class levels & players taking monster levels, I think it is the time for, say, Hill giants to only have 5 or 6 or 8 hit dice-- exactly enough to balance out their incredible stats with wimpy NPC classes, however many you'd need--
and for the rest of their bonuses to come from embedded fighter or barbarian levels, since that's what they do/are, in my opinion.
To be clear: I'd like the gaint entry to present me with the Base Giant, with no class levels at all, just racial hit dice, and then the Giant Warrior, what the players are *expected* to fight, with a few levels of fighter.
This has the advantage that the wizard of the tribe, their shaman, isn't automatically tougher than the rest of the roving band, because the DM would just substitute wizard levels for fighter levels.
It's very hard to do this, otherwise, because you have to either regress the giant to a point where you can give it a few levels of wizard (the Base Giant), make the encounter very difficult, or explain why they have a captive spellcaster of another race.
Anyway. I think I ended this post in a different state than when I started it, and I'll come back later & edit for legibility (edit: Done, I hope!), but basically:
1) Some monsters are a little too powerful to add class levels to, and they're generally the "we bash stuff" monsters--
it would be nice if "bashers" had and explicit number of levels of fighter factored into them, and we were told how many that was, so we could replace those with different classes.
2) In general, monster type (Giant, Fey, Undead, Outsider) is too broad while at the same time too general.
I would prefer that all of the types be descriptors and a rough class system replace the current type system.
Thanks for bearing with me!
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