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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mkill" data-source="post: 5776104" data-attributes="member: 55985">Ok, I agree on that one. If I had to write a barbarian, I'd give them two "emotional states", Rage and Calm. Depending on what state they are in, they'd have different bonuses / abilities.I see what you mean. Intelligent creatures (I'd add dragons to your list) are often viable NPCs, not just combat adversaries. 4th edition had the attitude of "give them combat stats, the rest will sort itself out", which created the problem that some monsters have powers relevant to social encounters (charms, shapechange, teleport...), which don't show up in their stats. It also created the impression that many of these creatures were only good for killing, not for storytelling (and the bland and boring modules were no help).On of my major gripes with D&D (any edition) is the prevalence of stupid monsters that don't serve better plot purposes as "it showed up and now you need to kill it". The Terrasque is the epitome of this. Give us more intelligent monsters with their own culture and motivation! And for low levels, more stats of "normal" enemies like town guards.In 4th edition, you can knock someone unconscious instead of killing them when you bring them below 0 hp, just by declaring it. It's right there in the book, but few people are aware of that rule.Sorry, but if 4th edition combat felt like "boring whittling away hit points", you or your group didn't play it as intended.We're not talking about "trained experts", we're talking about 20th-level characters. Like Sauron in the first minutes of the first LOTR movie. One swing of the sword, send half an army flying.... or call them Heroic, Paragon and Epic tier and give them 10 levels each.</blockquote>

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