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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6002784" data-attributes="member: 87792">They aren't arbitary.  This is one of the places where 3.X players don't IME understand 4e or even prior editions of D&D.In 3.X the rules are intended to be a simulation of the world.  In other editions of D&D (and especially 4e) the rules are intended to be a reflection of the world.So in 3.X to create a dragon, you work out how big it is and what colour, and look up on a chart that a dragon of this size and this colour is about this old and has this many hit dice, casts as an Nth level magic user, etc.In 4e the process is more like this.  "I have a dragon.  It is a big, scary monster that should be able to threaten a few dozen people on its own and the adventurers will need to team up against.  Therefore it's a solo."  And then you base its level on how threatening you see it as being. "Now.  How does it like to fight?"  <ul style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it comes in on the wing, tearing through the enemy using size and speed to rush past and around them, it's a skirmisher.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> If it comes in swaggering, big, tough, and ignoring whatever the enemy does to it, and rending them into kibble it's a brute.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it comes in not so much intimidating as promising, the enemies weapons turning off its hide, it's a soldier</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it prefers to crisp the enemy with its breath weapon from afar it's artillery</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it ensorcels and/or chokes them with the breath weapon so they can't fight back it's a controller</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it hides, then reappears out of the heart of the swamp, chomping and dragging its prey away, it's a lurker</li> </ul> After establishing its general approach and how it thinks, your next question is "What does it do in detail?"  And those details are what make up its traits and powers. And if those powers are arbitrary it's because rather than visualising your dragon and giving it powers based on that visualisation you've just given it arbitrary powers.Speed.And this is where the simulationist/reflective divide comes in.  To me classes are not something visible in the game world.  The person is who they are, and their stats and classes are an approximation of that person.  "Gaining levels" is therefore about as meaningful a concept as it is in the real world; a black belt can beat up a blue belt but you wouldn't say the whole person has gained levels.  But as they grow stronger, their level increases because it needs to to be able to model them.You don't double his hit points just to make him an elite who survives longer and hits harder.  You make him an elite because he is someone able to survive longer and hit harder.Out of curiosity are you talking about MM1 solos.  They've cut solo hit points by 25% and lowered solo defences while raising the damage significantly since then.  And there were some real wastes of space in the MM1 solos, like the Purple Worm.If you're going in with flat math, I don't see much problem with this approach.3.X is the most rigid, inflexible edition of D&D in history.  Mostly because it's simulationist and in every other edition of D&D you work out the world then match the rules to it.  The rules follow the world.  In 3.X the world follows the rules.  It's therefore the only one where inflexibility is a problem.And here are some double standards.  You can ignore the CR in 3.X and do.  I can and do ignore the expected encounter levels  in 4e when I want to.  In both cases they are simply DM guidelines - but you are saying one can be ignored and the other must be followed.  Why?That's because flexible monster creation is not a property of 3.X.  As for "encounter based design is totally fun", you miss the purpose of balance.  It's "Encounter based design helps new DMs learn to DM easily and means that you always have something to fall back on."You also miss the second point about encounter based design.  It belongs to 3.X. There's far more game designer force in 3.X than there is in any other set of editions.  This is because 3.X is simulationist and is meant to model the world.  If you break from the rules you change the world.  In any other edition, the rules are meant to reflect the world - and where they don't reflect the world you override them.This is both double standards and untrue.  In any edition you can spend as much time as you want building monsters therefore it's double standards.  As for as little time as I want, there are times when I want to use a dragon straight out of the Monster Manual.  i.e. zero time on the mechanics.  And in 3.X I can't do this.  The dragons cast like spellcasters and I need to know what spells they have up.  In 4e I can flip straight to the page in the monster manual with a dragon and I'm good to go.  I believe I can do this in AD&D and oD&D as well.  But not in 3.XThis is again both double standards and untrue.  You can plan with maximum depth in any edition or just about any game - it's turtles all the way down.On the other hand it's harder to improvise in 3.X than in any other edition - and easier to improvise in 4e than any other edition.3.X was the edition that brought us the Use Rope skill, and the difficulty to swim up a waterfall.  You need to thoroughly know the rules of a rules heavy game to avoid tripping over.  In any other edition you can ask for a stat or skill roll and simply interpret without having all those difficulties presented to compare to.  3.X is therefore the single hardest version to improvise with.4e on the other hand brought us a scene framing tool (the Skill Challenge) that can help pace scenes, and deal with most plans PCs are going to come up with.  Now the Skill Challenge mechanic isn't perfect and the guidance is worse.  But unlike any other edition, 4e has actual tools to help you improvise.You can build monsters more flexibly than PCs in any other edition.  To take one canon example, the best baker in Sharn is a level 20 Commoner.  He needs to be a level 20 commoner in order to be such a good baker.  Which means to be a really good baker, he needs a BAB of +10/+5, and 50 hit points.  The best baker in Sharn therefore needs to be able to kick a third level fighter's arse just so he can be the best baker in Sharn. This is hardly making monsters do whatever you want.  And should explain the difference and just how inflexible forcing NPCs to use the same skill rules as PCs is.No plan survives first contact with the enemy - or the dice.  And I don't let the PCs know what's going on most of the time anyway.And now you're trying to claim that Tomb of Horrors isn't D&D.  Right.And now you're throwing most adventure paths from Dragonlance to the various Pathfinder paths out of D&D.  If you don't work on the assumption that PCs win then adventure paths don't work.   But as with any idea or story, how is more important than what.  And you know which edition has the most adventure paths written for it?  3.X/Pathfinder.  The edition you are praising.Or a prop in that they allow a new or tired DM to run a decent session without worrying about having to pull his punches or TPK the party.  At least when you have a system that actually works (as 4e does and 3.X doesn't).Right.  So you don't use any monster manuals as written and instead tear all the monsters apart.  That's fine. Now a question for you.  Why do you want to deny us the monster manuals we can use straight just because you are never going to use them?  Why do you want to make sure we don't get good toys?I believe it's somewhere in the order of 90% who've tried both, and I think I'm underestimating.  Also I've seldom heard of a 3.X D&D table with two regular DMs at it.  I've never been at a 4e D&D table with fewer than 3 regular DMs.This goes against what I've heard from almost all long term 3.X DMs who switched to 4e.But the rules can offer choices.  Like the choice to use monsters straight out of the monster manual.  As is easy for most people in 4e and close to impossible for any spellcaster in 3.X.  Or the choice to run in an improv style, which is helped by 4e's guidance and scene framing mechanics.And then there's the nervousness about accidently killing PCs.  4e has balanced encounter guidelines that work - so DMs who would agonise over killing PCs don't have to, but can push PCs to the wire anyway.  Then there's the lack of a stark power disparity - in 3.X groups you get games where you can either challenge the casters or the non-casters, and those are a hideous amount of work for some DMs - but 4e you don't have this problem.  Then there's the effective level cap - AD&D didn't really go above 10th level, 4e stops at somewhere around that power level - and 3.X goes to 20th.Or possibly an actual effect that is there for a whole lot of reasons as listed above. And facilitate many others - such as the narrativist style advocated by [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and @pmerton and others and that's close to mine.  3.X on the other hand runs on a narrow simulationist style and one that apparently suits you perfectly.And if I want to run the PCs as con-artists, distracting the monsters while the rogue sneaks out with the loot, and no combat unless they screw things up, this is actively aided and assisted by the 4e rules (it's a skill challenge).  If I want to run it in any other edition of D&D I am not assisted in the slightest.Any sort of skill based non combat scenario where the PCs come up with a plan can be assisted by 4e rules in a way it isn't in previous editions.That's more or less what the "solo" tag says.  Why do you actively object to monsters being tagged?On the other hand I see giving the goblin a few levels of rogue as almost meaningless metagaming and having to do things that way as actively constraining my options.   I'd rather just reflect the goblin I see in my imagination - and he almost certainly is not a solo.</blockquote>

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