3.5 Stat Blocks Kill my creativity

[Arnwyn]

Take a deep breath...

Done!

The only inference that I was making is that we have a limited cross section of the D&D playing populace - one that has access to computers.

Okay. It didn't have anything to do with my post, but sure. My post was only looking at this limited cross section of the D&D playing populace.

I do not know about you, but since I have a computer that cost 'more than $500' (itself not true, but only barely, it cost me $475) I use it for many things, including statblocks.

Yep. Me too.

The software to create statblocks is free. Am I to assume that people do not download and use freely available software? If they have a computer, and are able to link to the messageboard then it is reasonable to assume that they have access to software that is freely available on the same messageboard. Whether or not they do so is their choice, but they do have access.

Yep, that makes sense. Again, though, it has little to do with my post.

Nor do you need specialized software to create statblocks, it simply means that you can do so without needing to create everything by hand. I have used wordprocessors and databases. A friend uses a C=64 and Paperclip Publisher (a computer that cost less than $200 new). Much of the software available will work on older PCs that are available for a lot less than $500.

Yep to that, too. Don't concentrate on my $500 number, though - it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

And, given that you are the person I was replying to, you are the first person that I should make comments to. You are the one who made the remark I was commenting on.

And, as seen from my responses, I can't figure out why you bothered to. The comments had little to do with my post, it seems.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Done!

Okay. It didn't have anything to do with my post, but sure. My post was only looking at this limited cross section of the D&D playing populace.

Yep. Me too.

Yep, that makes sense. Again, though, it has little to do with my post.

Yep to that, too. Don't concentrate on my $500 number, though - it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

And, as seen from my responses, I can't figure out why you bothered to. The comments had little to do with my post, it seems.

I may have misinterpreted your meaning. I was taking it to mean that you needed expensive equipment to create stat blocks. I have done plenty of statblocks without anything more than a notebook (or more often a fast food restaraunt placemat) and a pencil. Sometimes it seems that I use the computer more for making my notes legible than to create on in the first place... A computer is a convenience for the process, not a requirement. Just a convenience that I am passing fond of.

Then you reacted to my post in a way that I did not understand so I wrote a reply, and you replied to my post about your post about....

So taking a deep breath, what is it that you did mean, and why did you bring up $500 computers?

The Auld Grump

 

[Silverleaf]

Lastly, I've concluded that, because of this and other problems that get in way of the story, I don't like playing Dungeons & Dragons. So when my campaign ends in the next month, that's it! I'm done.

Lalala... no I don't know what this d20 fantasy you're talking about is. I disbelieve it.
Dungeons & Dragons has fairly small stat blocks. They never bothered me.
The '81 Basic D&D book manages to fit slightly over 100 monsters (including descriptions) in just 15 pages. That's over 6.5 monsters per page!
Well if that doesn't do it for you, there's always Tunnels & Trolls. The monsters only have one single stat.

 

[fanboy2000]

The Travller Book reduces some NPCs to a six digit hexadecimal number.

 

[Krypter]

I agree that proofing all the stat blocks to make sure they well-matched to the PC party is a long and tedious task, one for which I have very little time as an adult. As a college student I loved all the stats and could spend hours on them. Now I barely have time to review the plotline before the game.

Even some Dungeon authors have complained that it's quite tedious to create and double-check all the stat blocks.

Something to keep in mind in regards to this whole follow-rules/gloss-over-rules divide is that perhaps the complexity of accounting in D&D drives some people to throw out the rules because they just don't have the time or inclination for them.

Just my opinion, ratty and torn though it may be.

 

[gizmo33]

Or maybe it IS all or nothing. Maybe I'm either detailing every required stat block there could ever be, or else I'm a DM who doesn't even try to follow the rules. Maybe those are the only two choices.

But I'm not sure about that.

Ok, seems logical enough. But I don't think your clarification here addresses the issue. What I said above was like saying "As a DM, you either use music to set the tone of your game or you don't." If you want to have a discussion about the difficulties of incorporating music into a 3e game, I'm pretty sure you'd want to make a distinction between folks who consider it worth the effort and folks who don't. For all those who fall in the middle then, what I figured would be a logical assumption would be that you would identify with either "side" of the argument according to the degree to which you identified with either end of the spectrum.

So if you follow the rules, or follow the rules sometimes - what I'm saying is that it needs to be taken into account before you tell someone else of a different perspective what works and doesn't work in 3E/DnD. Refine the spectrum to suit your request for accuracy - but I think the point still stands.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

No, you're not the only one, though I rarely spend three hours detailing an NPC.

My own practice is to use complete stats as often as possible. I try to note class and level for NPCs that I don't need to stat up (ie. Keldas Griffonheart, the grandmaster of the Order of Saint Cuthbert in my game has this note beside his name (LG Ftr 2/Pal4/Rgr2/Knight of the Chalice 10)). And then there are NPCs who show up because the party went off course--for instance, the party decides to try and organize a defense for the threatened town rather than going off and fighting the orcs by themselves.

What are the mayor's stats again? At that point, I generally pull a cookie cutter NPC out of my butt. (Or, I grab a similar character's statblock that I do have prepped and use that, filing off serial numbers as I go).

The mayor? 4th level expert/1st level warrior. BAB +4, base saves +3/+1/+4. Modified +3/+0/+6. Skills maxed: Sense Motive, Diplomacy, Bluff, Knowledge: Local, Profession: Innkeeper, Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty, and a few odd skill points. Feats: all non-combat stuff except Rapid Reload. Skill Focus Sense Motive, and Negotiator. Equipment: Standard stuff: Studded Leather, heavy shield, masterwork longsword (or battle axe depending on the area), heavy crossbow, potion of cure light wounds.

Based on all that, he'd have an attack of +6 with the longsword (1d8+1) or +3 with the heavy crossbow (1d10) and 26 hit points.
Str 13, Dex 8, Con 12, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 16

The commoners? Commoner 2 str 13, dex 10, con 12, hp 10, ac 12 (leather armor), atk +2 (1d8+1 spear or longspear) or +1 (1d8 light crossbow). Saves: +1/+0/+0.
They've got profession skills, and social skills, toughness and one other feat that's not useful in combat. (Skill Focus Bluff or sense motive or profession or craft or Endurance).

The guards? War 2 Str 14, Dex 12, con 12, hp 15, AC 17 (heavy wood shield+scale mail), atk +5 melee (1d8+2 hand weapon (longsword, battle axe, warhammer, light flail, or morning star depending on the area), or +3 light crossbow/shortbow (depending on the area). Saves +4/+1/+0; standard feats: weapon focus: melee weapon and (pick one) alertness, iron will, power attack, quickdraw, improved initiative, skill focus sense motive. Skills: Spot and Listen (2 ranks each), profession: soldier 5 ranks, climb, jump, or swim, 2 ranks.

That takes me about the time it takes to write it down to pull out of my butt and once I do pull something (like "he power attacks) I try to write it down so that I know.

I try not to go into a game with nothing more than faith in my own improv abilities. But sometimes all I have is a set of standard NPC statblocks that I printed up when I came up with the general story that I wanted to tell and some notes about what elements I might put into the game.

Polarize disputes? Us?

Am I the only one who uses completely detailed stats when he has the time and the need, uses pretty detailed stats when he doesn't, and sometimes just completely pulls NPCs out of his posterior when the players go right off the rails or he pulls a blank the night before?

Am I the only one who spends three hours detailing NPCs whenever he feels like it, because somedays, doing up stat blocks is FUN? And somedays, drawing maps is fun, so he draws out every detail of the next encounter (and the surrounding areas besides)? And somedays, watching TV is fun so he goes into a game with nothing more than a cool idea and faith in his own improvisational abilities?

Or maybe it IS all or nothing. Maybe I'm either detailing every required stat block there could ever be, or else I'm a DM who doesn't even try to follow the rules. Maybe those are the only two choices.

But I'm not sure about that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I like using things totally statted out because it allows for interesting combos I wouldn't have thought of on my own, and allows me to more quickly adapt to my PC's. If I've got the rules of what Ed can and can't do laid out in front of me, I can more readily think like Ed and do things that Ed would do than thinking like a DM and thinking of things that Ed would like to be able to do, or that would be dramatic or interesting for Ed to be able to do. Ed might not just be that dramatic or interesting of a person.

Thus, it's more about having a firm grounding for role-playing the NPC than it is about running the story smoothly. I'm a flexible storyteller, I let my players lead when they take point. I present them with options and let them go where they will. Having an NPC statted out allows me to quickly adapt to whatever they do -- fight it, talk with it, invite it to tea, make it walk a tightrope, charm it, sneak up on it, put the halfling in a slingshot and fire her at it...whatever. I've got the tools, with a full stat block, to make a multifaceted reaction to the PC's crazy crazy planning.

I like to see them play by the rules pretty closely, so I like to do for them the same thing. I will make stuff up and invent stuff to add, but I will rarely fudge, and every tool available for the NPC's is available for the PCs. So maybe the NPC will have a new feat the PC's have never before seen or taken that makes them particularly effective, but that new feat will have prereqs and uses just like any other feat, and any PC who gets the training can take that feat.

Fudging that much kinda makes me feel that if I can do it, the PC's should be able to do it, too. If I fudge a spellbook, I shouldn't be able to demand that the wizard keep his meticulous. It also removes, for me, some verisimilitude. The sorcerer wouldn't just have learned everything appropriate for the encounter - they would learn spells as if they were an individual with their own hopes and goals, rather than just a story mechanic for the players to overcome.

This ends up being why I rarely use NPC's -- they're not statted up all nice and pretty like monsters are. I know what a monster's capable of. To figure out what a NPC is capable of requires a good few minutes of work that I just don't want to put in, normally.

 

[Henry]

...I'm pretty sure that a "miscalculation" in the amount of money I should have in Monopoly would not be looked upon favorably by the other players.

Here we may be coming into a philosophical difference. One poster here (LostWorldsMike) once said a while back, "Rules are for Players." By inference, a DM is not hard-bound to the rules as a player would be. It's a statement that I agree with totally - heck, I used to agree with NPC-only classes back in the days of 1st edition AD&D. From your statement, I'm gathering that you feel it's a "cheating the other players" issue if a DM does not follow the rules and make up completely statted NPCs for the game, and this paradox of "damned if you do and damned if you don't" because of the length and complexity of D&D stat blocks is what is causing the issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong about your feelings on the issue.

For me, one cannot compare D&D to other games because there's a difference in control; in most board games a la Monopoly, there's a hard set of rules that all players follow equally; no player is different than any other.

No problem. I wonder if people of that school should even use stats. Why only use them part of the time? Is it to maintain an illusion of some sort of conformity to a standard system that both the players and NPCs share in? Because if that's the case I wonder - of what use is the illusion? Does it rely on the gullibility of your players?

Because that's throwing the baby out with the bath water, to recall a phrase. The stats are how one interacts with the other players. The idea that a DM doesn't have to be completely internally consistent doesn't negate that - an opponent still has a set amount of hit points, ability points, spells, etc. that fall within its capable ranges - when they run out, they die or retreat same as anyone else.

Just this past weekend, I had a conversation with a friend in another group about a similar issue. He had a mass battle planned in a game, and used several d20 rolls each round to simulate the macro-tides of the battle, as the PCs were getting involved otherwise. He found it was taking him a good bit of time doing this, and was not completely comfortable with handling it this way anyway. One of his group asked him, "why don't you just decide WHAT HAPPENS, instead of rolling the dice?" When he expressed dislike of that idea, the fellow player reminded him that he already has the idea of the outcome decided anyway if the PCs didn't intervene, so why go through the extra steps of rolling each round and just decide the whole way - especially since the macro-outcomes were irrelevant to what the PCs were doing anyway? My friend said that the difference in giving up that die-rolling was kind of new to him, but made sense. He doesn't wing things quite as much as I do, but maybe I can get him to come in and give his input on it.

...So if I'm talking to a DM that's going to change the numbers on the fly in order to make sure that a climactic battle is exciting (and one wonders at the source of the excitement considering that the "closeness" of the battle is preordained and manipulated) then I agree, what is the point of worrying about stat blocks. Just continue to make things up like you have been. Done...and done. (Gizmo now dusts off hands and waits for everyone to start playing DnD the same way)

There may be a misconception here. I'm not talking about changing numbers on the fly - I'm talking about deciding the numbers either as or shortly before the battle is joined. They don't change (except to usually go DOWN from attrition. )

...And the fact that we DON'T play D&D the same way is what makes the game fun for me - it's how I learn from other DM's - their styles, their tricks, and their skills they use to make their games fun. I credit half the DM skill I have to interacting with people on these very forums.

 

[S'mon]

I obviously agree with Henry - rules are for players, they help adjudicate the PCs' interaction with the gameworld. Everything on the GM side is just guidelines. Because the GM is _not_ playing monopoly!