NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6074950" data-attributes="member: 2067">So, why would I kludge 4e when there are at least 3 other perfectly good editions sitting around that do what I want?Why slow down 4e's HP recovery, when I can just play 1e, and get the HP recovery I want better? For me, what 4e offers as an improvement from 1e (or 2e or 3e or OD&D or BEMCI) isn't enough of a value proposition. I COULD beat 4e into the approximate shape I wanted, but why bother? When I'm looking for particular solutions to 4e's problems for me, I find other e's generally looking like a better baseline. I can take what I like about 4e and back-port it into an edition that sucks more on that metric much more easily than I can take all the things that don't work about 4e for me out of 4e and move forward the stuff I liked about other e's that 4e lacks. I'm still a big fan of 4e (I play it more regularly than any other game!), but it's not the best baseline for me, because I'd have to do much more work to get 4e to play like the game I want to play than to get, say, 2e to play like the game I want to play.Aside from the Wis and Cha entries in the stat block, I usually put the following into my NPC's:Alignment (plus three quick one-word supporting descriptors)Attitude (Friendly, Hostile, etc.)Goal (the thing they want, with a one-word motive explaining why)Fear (the thing they want to avoid, with a one-word aversion explaining why)So, like:Alignment: Neutral Evil (selfish, sadistic, arrogant)Attitude: UnfriendlyGoal: Make an undead army (motive: vengeance)Fear: Losing control of her undead army (aversion: chaos)In play, this allows me to role-play the character well with just a glance. Mechanically, it also lets me key specific things to PC actions: if one of the characters talking to this NPC was to mention an item that could raise the dead faster than necromancy alone, she'd be interested, and they'd get a bonus to their checks to persuade her. If the party included a cleric who could wrest control of the army from this NPC, they'd be at a disadvantage: she'd hate that guy. If the party had a character obsessed with vengeance, she might feel a sympathy for that character, but if the party had a character who was some sort of wild mage or barbarian, she might really dislike that character.Aside from a simple quick scene, this block could also support an escalation to a more long-term challenge smoothly: given the Wis and Cha scores of the character, I could give the PC's DC's and make opposing checks, so that they could work on affecting her attitude while she resisted and shut down their attempts, until the encounter went on for long enough that I felt the party was significantly challenged for the goal they want to accomplish. 'tain't much, but it gives me a lot to work with on the fly at the table.</blockquote>

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