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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6004276" data-attributes="member: 42582">I hope I haven't come across as derisive - that's not been my intention, although obviously I take a different approach from you.I want to explore a little a bit these different approaches, if that's OK.I GMed Rolemaster as my main fantasy RPG for nearly 20 years. Rolemaster is very much a process-sim action resolution engine. But it has virtually no monster build rules. Because I had PCs with summoning spells based on levels, I worked out my ownlevel-based monster build tolerances for the relevant categories of creature (monstly animals and demons) in order to try to balance those spells, using some paradigmatic RM creatures as my baseline and tweaking other creatures around them. But this was purely metagame driven. As far as the fiction is concerned, monster build is like AD&amp;D - you slap on the numbers that seem right for a monster's original, size, general toughness etc. There is none of the 3E-style &quot;monster types as classes&quot;, feats, special traits etc to &quot;explain&quot; where all the numbers come from. The process simuation is confined to action resolution. So in RM, &quot;following the rules&quot; has a very definite meaning when it comes to action resolution, but really no meaning when it comes to monster building (other than the spell-balancing rules on animal and demon builds that I introduced into my own game).Whereas 3E seems to me to make monster build into something like an aspect of action resolution - where the action is, I guess, the emergence of creatures within the ecology of the gameworld. I think this is a very particular approach to monster building. The only other RPG I can think of that approaches monster building like this is Classic Traveller, with its random creature generation tables, which are one aspect of its world design mechanics, and which are meant to be a &quot;mechanics as physics&quot; model of planetary ecology.I'm curious if you think that this is a fair way to characterise 3E monster building rules - as really eliding the typical contrast between action resolution mechanics and build mechanics.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6004276, member: 42582"] I hope I haven't come across as derisive - that's not been my intention, although obviously I take a different approach from you. I want to explore a little a bit these different approaches, if that's OK. I GMed Rolemaster as my main fantasy RPG for nearly 20 years. Rolemaster is very much a process-sim action resolution engine. But it has virtually no monster build rules. Because I had PCs with summoning spells based on levels, I worked out my ownlevel-based monster build tolerances for the relevant categories of creature (monstly animals and demons) in order to try to balance those spells, using some paradigmatic RM creatures as my baseline and tweaking other creatures around them. But this was purely metagame driven. As far as the fiction is concerned, monster build is like AD&D - you slap on the numbers that seem right for a monster's original, size, general toughness etc. There is none of the 3E-style "monster types as classes", feats, special traits etc to "explain" where all the numbers come from. The process simuation is confined to action resolution. So in RM, "following the rules" has a very definite meaning when it comes to action resolution, but really no meaning when it comes to monster building (other than the spell-balancing rules on animal and demon builds that I introduced into my own game). Whereas 3E seems to me to make monster build into something like an aspect of action resolution - where the action is, I guess, the emergence of creatures within the ecology of the gameworld. I think this is a very particular approach to monster building. The only other RPG I can think of that approaches monster building like this is Classic Traveller, with its random creature generation tables, which are one aspect of its world design mechanics, and which are meant to be a "mechanics as physics" model of planetary ecology. I'm curious if you think that this is a fair way to characterise 3E monster building rules - as really eliding the typical contrast between action resolution mechanics and build mechanics. [/QUOTE]

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