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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 3884546" data-attributes="member: 8461">That's a pretty subjective statement, though. The level of work that went into giving PC levels to NPCs (who weren't a core race) was less in 3E than it ever had been in the game's previous twenty-five year history, and likewise made the return (monstrous NPCs with class levels) that much easier to attain. The same could be said for monstrous PCs. 2E's The Complete Book of Humanoids was a much more complex affair than Savage Species.I'll admit that a lot of players don't seem to care about monsters as PCs (but then, most don't seem to care for epic level gameplay much either), but having the option there was nice for those who did. I didn't like a lot about 3E's whole dynamic, but the credo of "options, not restrictions," was one that I never begrudged it, and 4E seems to be indicating that it's instead going to bring back restrictions for the sake of ease of playability. Honestly, I think that's a step backwards, since it's easier to have rules and mechanics that you can just ignore, rather than need them and not have them published.And of course, I think this will be much more notable in regards to classed NPCs. There'll be at least one extra element of work involved now when you want to lay wizard levels on your mind flayer, because questions like "well, monsters don't get feats, but the wizard gets bonus feats after so many levels, so what do I do?" need to be answered (that's a general example, the wizard may not give bonus feats anymore, but it's indicative of how those things will come up).I don't necessarily agree with this; people seem to remember the Tarrasque a lot more for its reflective carapace and regeneration than the fact that it has Awesome Blow and Blind-Fight. You seem to be indicating that monsters (in 3E) suffer from something similar to the race problem; does it matter much that the monster is a mind flayer when it has 20 wizard levels? And to a degree I can sympathize with that - 3E could have done better in that regard (monster powers should, I think, scale with class levels; e.g. caster level for spell-like abilities increases, save DCs increase, etc.), but when enough levels are taken, any degree of static powers will eventually be overshadowed. I don't think the answer is to place roadblocks in the path of giving class levels to monsters.No doubt 4E monsters will be scalable. There'll be templates, and there'll probably be rules on natural Hit Dice advancement. Maybe, there'll even be rules on adding class levels also (hopefully in a way that doesn't make their monstrous abilities obselete), but by making PCs and NPCs use fundamentally different rules, the crossover between the two will be more difficult, and take more work for the same results we're getting now.</blockquote>

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