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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 4028774" data-attributes="member: 957">What evidence is there that the quick npcs in 4E will achieve this standard?I can crank out decent npcs in 15 minutes.  But is I make an Athux for my game I'm going to want him to be just as unique as you have described.  The stack of 3E books I sometimes flip through increase my ability to achieve that desire.  I can make great npcs with only the PH and DMG, but I can do even better with all my splats at hand.  I'd expect the same must be true for 4E.  It would certainly be vastly unfair to compare the range of characters avaialble in core 4E to everything WotC has published for 3X to date.  But it is equally unfair to compare build times on the same standards.I certainly think that "looking through books" is a completely unfair standard.  Right now 4E comments are being based on the PH and maybe a little use of the DMG.  Wait five years and there will be a stack of 4e books available.If 4E npcs are quicker to build, but the trade-off is less freedom to build any unique challenge you can dream up, then  that will be a very raw deal to me.I'm am very willing to concede that for the bulk of npcs that are used, there are avenues that could be used to significantly speed up generation.  But these are not the unique types that you are talking about.  To me the ideal world would be shortcuts in place for standard npcs.  Not just mooks, but anything you want.  If you are fine with the master boss of the campaign being standard, then cool, here he is in 15 minutes.  That would be a very good thing.  But if I want to build an Athux and I want to put every bit of my imagination into making him unique and memorable, then the tools better be there for me to filter through options and spend the time modeling exactly what I want.I don't believe for a second that any system out there allows for building the top tier npcs that I like to use in my game in under 30 minutes.  But if 4E lets me dive in and spend an hour building Athux (at least 5 years from now when there is a stack of books <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  ) and also gives me the ability to crank out any number of individual commanders, servants, warriors, etc... all serving Athus in 5 min each, then that would be an improvement.</blockquote>

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