In 4th edition you have a lot less leeway when it comes to creating your own brand because the balance is close.
If you are trying to DM and you are actually down to counting the minutes with regards to prep time then DMing may not be for you. Freeing up a few minutes in the end isn't really nothing to celebrate about.
These two assertions are just so laughable that I don't even know if you actually believe this and are being serious, or if like usual, you're just goading.
For one second let's skip over actually creating your own monster. I would say that most people are not going to go there first. A brand new DM is probably going to go grab a monster from the monster manual and create an encounter.
With basic monsters that don't do much in the way of "effects" both systems are somewhat comparable. If I choose a goblin in 3.x and a goblin in 4e, preparing an encounter boils down to putting "goblins (4)" on the page, and running the monster directly from the book. You can get more elaborate and print their stats on the page, etc. But that is not very important at that level with those creatures.
Let's skip just a bit forward, how about a wraith? It has some additional powers, and it has a type, plus a plethora of other things that affect it's use in combat. For a brand new DM that is getting an encounter ready, that is going to be more time looking up stuff
to prepare. That is if he wants to "not fall from grace".
Let's look at what "mechanical" things a 3.x DM would have to know, or have to look up if he was running a wraith and wanted to be prepared. First it's an Undead Type, it has the incorporeal trait, it has a Fly Speed and Good maneuverability, it has turn resistance, it has feats. All these things are NOT defined in the creature's, already extensive, stat block.
I won't run through ALL of them but I'll just list the most common that might be relevant to a combat with this creature. I'd also like to point out that some of these definitions have nested effects (things that are mentioned but not defined in that definition) Notice the "No Constitution Score", and the immunity to charms, compulsions, etc., which would obviously have other mechanical effects.
Traits
An undead creature possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry).
- No Constitution score.
- Darkvision out to 60 feet.
- Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
- Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects.
- Not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain. Immune to damage to its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), as well as to fatigue and exhaustion effects.
- Cannot heal damage on its own if it has no Intelligence score, although it can be healed. Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal undead creatures. The fast healing special quality works regardless of the creature’s Intelligence score.
- Immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects or is harmless).
- Uses its Charisma modifier for Concentration checks.
- Not at risk of death from massive damage, but when reduced to 0 hit points or less, it is immediately destroyed.
- Not affected by raise dead and reincarnate spells or abilities. Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.
- Proficient with its natural weapons, all simple weapons, and any weapons mentioned in its entry.
- Proficient with whatever type of armor (light, medium, or heavy) it is described as wearing, as well as all lighter types. Undead not indicated as wearing armor are not proficient with armor. Undead are proficient with shields if they are proficient with any form of armor.
- Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep.
Incorporeal Subtype
- An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it has a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source (except for positive energy, negative energy, force effects such as magic missile, or attacks made with ghost touch weapons). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead, but a hit with holy water has a 50% chance of not affecting an incorporeal creature.
- An incorporeal creature has no natural armor bonus but has a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma bonus (always at least +1, even if the creature’s Charisma score does not normally provide a bonus).
- An incorporeal creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than its own. It can sense the presence of creatures or objects within a square adjacent to its current location, but enemies have total concealment (50% miss chance) from an incorporeal creature that is inside an object. In order to see farther from the object it is in and attack normally, the incorporeal creature must emerge. An incorporeal creature inside an object has total cover, but when it attacks a creature outside the object it only has cover, so a creature outside with a readied action could strike at it as it attacks. An incorporeal creature cannot pass through a force effect.
- An incorporeal creature’s attacks pass through (ignore) natural armor, armor, and shields, although deflection bonuses and force effects (such as mage armor) work normally against it. Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air. Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage. Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled. In fact, they cannot take any physical action that would move or manipulate an opponent or its equipment, nor are they subject to such actions. Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight.
- An incorporeal creature moves silently and cannot be heard with Listen checks if it doesn’t wish to be. It has no Strength score, so its Dexterity modifier applies to both its melee attacks and its ranged attacks. Nonvisual senses, such as scent and blindsight, are either ineffective or only partly effective with regard to incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures have an innate sense of direction and can move at full speed even when they cannot see.
Feats
- Alertness
- Blind-Fight
- Combat Reflexes
- Improved Initiative
Turn Resistance
- Some creatures (usually undead) are less easily affected by the turning ability of clerics or paladins.
- Turn resistance is an extraordinary ability.
- When resolving a turn, rebuke, command, or bolster attempt, added the appropriate bonus to the creature’s Hit Dice total.
So some of those things might be needed in combat and the DM will probably have to know what they "mean" to run the creature, somewhat effectively.
This problem gets progressively worse as you go up in level. Creatures are going to have spell and spell like abilities which are not even defined on the monster book, but on the Player's Handbook.
Try running a Balor, sometime, from the monster manual without looking anything up for it. It's a demon, what immunities does it have because of it's demon type? How about resistances? It can use Blasphemy, what are the effects of that? It can use Insanity, what are the effects of that? Oh wait, insanity is a continuous Confusion spell, what are the effects of that? Unholy Aura, what does that do?
So the fact that you can skip all of that, if you choose to, does not make the preparation time less intensive, it just means that you found out that it was too much work and decided to simply skip it. Something that can be done with any game if the DM chooses to. If you can remember all those traits then good for you, it's still mental gymnastics that create a problem when preparing for a game.
Preparation also involves having somewhat predictable levels of challenge for your party of PCs. Let's look at the tool provided. Behold the CR system. On second thought let's not. It's crap.
Let's run a dragon directly from the book... Oops, can't. The information for dragons is spread out over I can't even recall how many pages.
And in this case I'm even talking about just looking at the actual
books. There might be some electronic tools out there now, but when I was running 3.x there was PCGen, which was pretty good and customizable if you were into the challenge. There was another tool that used MS Excel as the engine, and a few others. But that was for PCs, what about monsters? Nothing.
I don't run at the table with a computer. So none of those tools would amount to a hill of beans if they could not make it easier for me to run a game, without the computer at the table.
