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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9707524" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I'm sorry to hear that, because that path is a lot harder to work with.  I played d20 (3e and Pathfinder) for two decades and encounter building was such a chore.  I basically had to stop using humanoid foes entirely because it was much more work to build them and gear them than it took my players to dismantle them, lol, at which point, their gear was now treasure I had to account for (many, many masterwork weapons dumped into the world as a result).Not to mention, that approach was just as bad from a world building scenario, like when my party started griping about "5th-level bandits", lol.  Even the old adage about "well, 20 guys should at least crit once every turn" gets turned on it's head when players can negate crits, force rerolls, have defensive actions, and of course, can use Whirlwind Attack or Fireball to obliterate those 20 guys!If I used characters closer to the players in level, the chances of a potential TPK became closer to a coin flip, and if I used stronger NPC's, then I couldn't use as many opponents, which meant I got burned due to action economy- I despise Legendary Actions on principle, but getting a single dragon to survive two combat rounds against a party of PC's is downright difficult!If games were more about exploration than slaying monsters and taking their stuff, these issues perhaps wouldn't be as prevalent, but since exploration has devolved to "roll an ability check that certain classes are built to trivialize" or "cast a spell that can be recovered with a nap", games inevitably boil down to combat.I've recently started running Tales of the Valiant, and I'm starting to find combat ever so tedious.  While I'm having to juggle multiple basic monsters who have, at best, a single trick, my players seem to have endless toys they can use to make me wonder what the heck I'm even doing- the Fighter can force disadvantage on the first attack each turn, on top of his 20 AC and I feel like I have to roll ten attacks against him just to inflict a paper cut, lol.I am so tired of rolling that many dice!  No wonder so many DM's opt to go digital.Anyways, enough of that tangent.  Again, I just feel like it's go abstract or go insane.  I find myself missing 4e, where I can select a monster, raise or lower it's level as needed, and drop it into play.  Sure, it's an abstract stat block that rarely explains how or why it does things, and it can be armed with a twig and still do appropriate damage, but it makes prepping and running the game so much easier than trying to figure out "ok, so maybe my party could survive a fight with one CR 5 and two CR 4's...".</blockquote>

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