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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primal" data-source="post: 4109780" data-attributes="member: 30678">It's pretty evident that our DMing styles differ greatly, and you're probably correct about 4E giving more tools to DM who like to make judgement calls case-by-case and tinker freely with monsters and NPCs without being "tied down" by the rules. I personally feel it's too much work in D&D, especially as I've become pretty adept with how things work in 3E and I've had to do my share of judgement calls and houseruling when we were playing AD&D. I've had no trouble creating, running or adjusting encounters in 3E and I think I intuitively know how to do that by now.I disagree -- it's possible to remove GM and GM judgement from the equation, but not just in gamist systems. Polaris, Universalis and Breaking the Ice serve as good examples of narrativist games that do not have GMs. It's just that thematically and mechanically they're so very different from D&D and other gamist RPGs.I think that what I've seen of 4E so far, it reminds me in some ways of how Dragonlance SAGA was written -- a lot of options and skills and guidelines how to apply them in various situations. I liked the system, but sometimes felt overloaded and intimidated by the sheer amount of judgement calls I had to make during a session. And therefore I prefer more "rigid" and consistent mechanics when running D&D or other games that employ a similar mindset. I feel that it makes DMing a lot easier if the rules cover most situations you might run across or if the mechanics are so well-designed that it's easy to adapt them into any situation that the rules don't cover. Don't get me wrong -- I really like rules-light games, but I just don't think all this exception-based stuff works well in D&D. If we were talking about some of the indie RPGs instead of D&D, I would agree with you. Don't you think you're contradicting yourself when you say that "you no longer have to parse out 'like x but not in y specific ways' passages"? Because isn't that just what the exception-based monster design is about? You have your Kobold Slingers who might share an ability ('Shifty') with the other Kobolds, but the rest of their powers are completely unique and very different from, say, Kobold Pigriders. Also, the different "variations" of the same power, such as the Pack Tactics, would make me constantly refer between the stat blocks to see how it works for each Gnoll variant. And in my opinion that makes it all the harder to run an encounter than using classes for those Gnolls in 3E (because their powers and feats are pretty easy to remember after running the game for years). So far I haven't seen any indication that MM would have any 'classes of exceptions' but rather it seems that almost every variant will have pretty much unique abilities. I hope that I'm wrong, though, because it makes the game so much harder to run for DMs like me.I don't know -- I would hate to make such a judgement call about a stunt/power without any proper mechanical reference, and I consider myself to be a pretty experienced DM. An unexperienced DM would probably see this as a major call, in my opinion. Note that it takes time to get comfortable and confident with a new rules set, and I'd hate to make such calls during my first session -- no matter how good the tool set or guidelines are. But maybe that's just me?In 3E every being (except some monsters) was mechanically treated exactly in the same way and pretty much had the access to the same pool of resources and abilities. In 4E this isn't so, and I'm very well aware that the PCs are supposed to be "special" while the monsters and NPCs are apparently supposed to live in "freeze frame" until they're triggered to "life" by the proximity of the PCs (i.e. they get their "5 rounds of fame"). Sarcasm aside, perhaps you misunderstood my point, because I definitely dislike this division of beings into two different "categories", and absolutely loved how everyone played by the same rules in 3E. And that's how I'd want it to be in 4E, too -- whether I'm creating a PC or statting an NPC or a monster, the process and options would work exactly the same way for everyone.    You misread the sentence. I actually said that "supernatural abilities of *some* monsters" -- *not* "all supernatural abilities".  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Of course wizards, too, should be able to research new spells or pick feats/talents they've witnessed in action.</blockquote>

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