Please no monster class levels

[Janaxstrus]

But how is that relevant in a comparison between a 3rd level orc with 2 more points of STR than a 4th level PC fighter? There are no iterative attacks in play. Even supposing either or both has Power Attack or Combat Expertise, it's going to be an extreme corner case in which (i) the PC puts more than 3 points of BAB into defence or damage, and (ii) this makes a difference that reveals some ingame, fictional state of affairs about the comparative finesse of the two characters.

It's not relevant, I'm just pointing out that BAB means BASE attack bonus. While the final number is the same, it's not BAB you are talking about.
Some people don't/haven't played 3e, so I was merely correcting your term usage.

The Orc, with his +1 str advantage has an attack bonus the same as the fighter. However the fighter has 1 more BAB.

I thought we discussing what makes for a good rule. What is the point of a rule that says, for an NPC to be able to attack all adjacent foes with a single action, it must have at least 4 HD? What is that adding to the game?

As the discussion of the orc reveals, it doesn't add anything to the coherence of the fiction - there is no discernible ingame difference between a 3 HD orc and a 4th level fighter.

And what does it add at the metagame level? How does it make the play experience better?

And if it's ok for the NPCs to use against the PCs, it should be ok for the PCs to use against NPCs. The rules exist for a reason and if it's too powerful for the PCs it shouldn't be allowed to the NPCs.
In my campaign the rules of the world make sense. If I want an orc to be able to hit all of the PCs, I make him high enough level to have whirlwind.

In my opinion, it makes the play experience better, because the players can actually understand how the world works. It has rules they can grasp. They know anything the NPCs can do, they could take the time to learn if they really wanted to. To me, that makes the world more alive, and I can become more immersed.

How does following consistent rules make the game worse? I would maintain it doesn't. It might make your job as a DM harder, but it doesn't make it WORSE.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'd like to question needing monsters with levels at all. Why not make monsters be effective challenges in multiple tiers of PC ability in the core? Strapping on a PC-ability list on top of monsters DOES NOT belong in a core game.

 

[Derren]

I'd like to question needing monsters with levels at all. Why not make monsters be effective challenges in multiple tiers of PC ability in the core? Strapping on a PC-ability list on top of monsters DOES NOT belong in a core game.

"Monsters" also often include hostile members of PC races as well as humanoid non-pc races without any racial power. And they certainly need class levels as otherwise they would be the mentioned arbitrary piles of powers who break immersion and consistency.

 

[CM]

My players never hound me, because I use the rules of the gaming system and make everything transparent.

"Because I said so" is a copout.

This 2008 post from RPGnet sums up my feelings pretty well.

Basicaly, D&D has always been exception-based. However 3e was made in a time when it was called "chaos factor" - measuring the amount of mini-rules, exceptions and subsystems. Back then some people considered it a bad thing and tried to turn D&D around by making it into a solid, working system, with as little exceptions as possible. When that didn't work(depending on your views, it may be because it was a fool's errand, or because they didn't go far enough, or because it was such a Herculean task no single edition could do it alone, or some combination of these, or whatever).
If one was to disregard the subtle differences between fashionable exception based design and old-school chaos factor, one could say D&D was going back to its roots with 4e.

Give a monster (NPC) the tools it needs to accomplish its schtick and be done with it. Requiring it to have enough hit dice to have all the feats or minimum attack bonus or what-have-you in order to satisfy some desire for rigorous adherence to player-character rules is IMO so much mental masturbation. 4e monsters don't even have feats and the game is much better for it.

 

[Umbran]

Class levels on monsters sounds like a bad idea to me. I'm the sort of DM who likes fast prep time. Anybody else with me on those points?

I want both. Allow me to make monsters with class levels, but don't make that the only way to make a monster tougher. Let me choose which I, the GM, want to use.

 

[Janaxstrus]

This 2008 post from RPGnet sums up my feelings pretty well.



Give a monster (NPC) the tools it needs to accomplish its schtick and be done with it. Requiring it to have enough hit dice to have all the feats or minimum attack bonus or what-have-you in order to satisfy some desire for rigorous adherence to player-character rules is IMO so much mental masturbation. 4e monsters don't even have feats and the game is much better for it.

The game is better? That is a matter of opinion.

 

[pemerton]

And if it's ok for the NPCs to use against the PCs, it should be ok for the PCs to use against NPCs. The rules exist for a reason and if it's too powerful for the PCs it shouldn't be allowed to the NPCs.

What is the basis for this statement? Fly at will is, I think, obviously too powerful for a 1st level PC. It will break any typical 1st level game. (Look at how the flight of pixie PCs in 4e is circumscribed to work around this.)

But flight for 1 HD stirges, or bats, or birds does not break the game.

The balance constraints on PCs and NPCs are wildly different. And almost self-evidently so, it seems to me.

In my campaign the rules of the world make sense. If I want an orc to be able to hit all of the PCs, I make him high enough level to have whirlwind.

<snip>

the players can actually understand how the world works. It has rules they can grasp. They know anything the NPCs can do, they could take the time to learn if they really wanted to. To me, that makes the world more alive, and I can become more immersed.

No one is denying that PCs can learn what NPCs can do. 4e has a whole mechanical subsystem (the monster knowledge check) devoted to this. (Maybe 3.5 has it as well - I don't think it is in the original core 3E books, though.)

But monster level/HD is not part of this. It is no part of the PCs learning about an orc's ability to whirlwind attack that they learn that s/he is a 3HD or 4HD monster - because levels and hit dice are not part of the fiction. They're just a mechanical device.

 

[Sunseeker]

I like being able to build monsters from scratch in 4e and know they're gonna work.

But I also would like to be able to take "generic lvl7 orc fighter" and run them against my party as well. Some monsters should/can have class levels, some shouldn't. I don't want to see Wizard 3/Fighter 2 Gelatinous Cubes, but I wouldn't mind seeing Shaman 2/Cleric 5 Orcs.

 

[Janaxstrus]

What is the basis for this statement? Fly at will is, I think, obviously too powerful for a 1st level PC. It will break any typical 1st level game. (Look at how the flight of pixie PCs in 4e is circumscribed to work around this.)

But flight for 1 HD stirges, or bats, or birds does not break the game.

The balance constraints on PCs and NPCs are wildly different. And almost self-evidently so, it seems to me.

Again, those are RACIAL abilities. I don't expect PCs to have access to RACIAL abilities unless they are that race. What I am discussing is more akin to allowing players to be Stirges, but saying they can't fly.

If an Orc is a fighter, there is nothing it should be able to do that a fighter of the same level can't do
If a human npc is a necromancer (wizard) then any player using a human necromancer should be able to access the same power and skill set at the same times.

 

[am181d]

Again, those are RACIAL abilities. I don't expect PCs to have access to RACIAL abilities unless they are that race. What I am discussing is more akin to allowing players to be Stirges, but saying they can't fly.

If an Orc is a fighter, there is nothing it should be able to do that a fighter of the same level can't do
If a human npc is a necromancer (wizard) then any player using a human necromancer should be able to access the same power and skill set at the same times.

I don't agree with this at all. But more importantly, I don't think it's a meaningful position. It's OK if monster X gets a feat as a racial ability but not as a class ability? What if their racial ability is "can qualify for feat early"? It's not OK for NPC necromancers to get access to powers PC necromancers can't get? What if there's a Prestige Class with pre-req "must join secret cult."

What I'm saying is that even within the context of super rigid 3e, exception based rules were all over the place. And at the point that you have rigid exceptions, you might as well arm waive it. (Well, he could be using a variant prestige class, but there's no point in statting out the entire class. I'm just going to give him XYZ.)

Even at the end of 3e, WotC was starting to figure this out. In Eberron, there were a lot of NPCs who had class levels "just because". There was a 7 year old somewhere who was a 7th level cleric -- not because he'd been adventuring for 7 years -- but because that's how powerful he was. The advancement rules were explicitly for PCs only, because "PCs are special."

I know some folks don't like that. They want rules to equal physics. But if you hold to that, all that's going to happen is that people are going to make much more complicated rules to do exactly the same thing.