Complete Disagreement With Mike on Monsters (see post #205)

[Kraydak]

It's possible to put that kind of thing in a wand, but not one that would be affordable by players until decently high level. Plus, it isn't INFINITE. And most players I know prefer permanent magic items over charged ones so they won't buy one give the choice. Even then, all the problem spells are above 4th level, the max level for wands.

Everytime we've had a wand that could do something cool like that, we only used it when ABSOLUTELY necessary. If we had an inkling there was another way, we wouldn't want to use charges. Plus its a balancing act, if they spend money on a wand they aren't spending it on a belt of giant strength +4.

Give them infinite ability to do it for free on the other hand, and it's over powered.

If you want to have a wand of dim door (wands are doable for dim door) at lvl 7, you will need an artificer, or pool party resources. It is *very* doable. Many people have a block against abusing charged items, but if you are willing to operate 1 "+" down, you can afford a *massive* array of charged items that more than compensates, and you can afford to renew the items when they get used up. Note that that wand is only really expensive around lvl 7, and will last till (probably) about lvl 9 or 10. By then, its replacement will be cheap. 1 wand of dim door, 1 wand of summon monster (checks SRD) III or NA II along with Speak Language (Terran) nets you virtually unlimited uses of walking through walls.

I hold that, if the ability is replicable by PCs under core rules (without abusing poly/shapechange), you really cannot argue that the ability would be broken for PCs.

(charged items are, by far, the easiest way to make your DM cry. Fireball, CL 5 is only 375 gp... almost affordably by a just created lvl 1 party thats pooling its funds, easily affordable by a lvl 1 wizard after the first adventure. Yes, you can blow the activation roll, but you can afford extras)

 

[Vigilance]

The difference is that the rule set has the information for you should you need it and doesn't rely on hand waving and designers saying, "Don't look behind the curtain!"

I have no problem with some monsters working like PCs.

But what about a Beholder? An ooze?

Designers should have the freedom to make the monster the best it can be, even if that means it has to work differently from PCs.

 

[Kraydak]

This is actually something we talked about at the office on Friday. In some games, it makes tons of sense for monsters/opponents to use the same exact rules as PCs.

In Mutants & Masterminds or Champions, the only difference between a hero and a villain is that the villain is a bad guy. Otherwise, both sides can have super speed, shapeshifting, mind control, or whatever. Consistency makes sense.

In D&D, the two sides aren't equivalent. Monsters are supposed to be scary, weird, and unknown. It's more like Call of Cthulhu than Champions, and I doubt anyone would claim that CoC monsters should be built in the exact same way as characters.

As others have said, what DnD have you been playing?? DnD is about meeting new, unknown and interesting monsters, killing them and taking their stuff. Consistancy makes a huge amount of sense. It makes HD based mechanics (see Holy Word, 3ed Turn Undead) work. It makes monsters as characters doable. It makes polymorph and summoning easier.

If anything, the 4ed bent towards rapidly recharging abilities makes such consistancy easier and more valuable. In 3ed, most "at will" abilities that cause LA (note that I find most LA listed as being, frankly, laughable) cause the LA because they are "at will". As more abilities are becoming close to "at will", this is less important (although wands and staves have always been a very, very potent arguement against the actual importance of "at will"). I'm disappointed with this apparent bent for monsters in part because of your redesign of Ogre Magi. Monsters well balanced between offense and defense (still a huge amount of parameter space available), in a system balanced towards per encounter and at will abilities would, inherently, have a low if not 0 LA.

Why throw away the huge opportunities the 4ed hints have suggested at by designing monsters differently from PCs?

 

[Korgoth]

In D&D, the two sides aren't equivalent. Monsters are supposed to be scary, weird, and unknown. It's more like Call of Cthulhu than Champions, and I doubt anyone would claim that CoC monsters should be built in the exact same way as characters.

Excellent point. Said opponents are, after all, "monsters".

Anything that re-introduces the unknown, the mysterious, the wonderful, and most of all the non-standard, into D&D is a good thing.

 

[Samnell]

In D&D, the two sides aren't equivalent. Monsters are supposed to be scary, weird, and unknown. It's more like Call of Cthulhu than Champions, and I doubt anyone would claim that CoC monsters should be built in the exact same way as characters.

This presupposes a world where monsters are exceptionally rare, or they would not remain unknowns. This is a world where Knowledge (X) can't tell you anything about monsters, since precious few people have ever been in a position to study them. I don't think I've ever seen WotC world where that was the case. I don't know that I'd want to play in one either.

Or, alternatively, it presupposes a world where the average NPC has some sort of serious mental problem that renders then unable to process experiences with monsters or analyze accounts given by those who have. Therefore tales do not spread and the PCs would have no way to know about monsters.

D&D monsters do not, by and large, strike me as anything like CoC monsters. The vast majority of them are not alien beings from other dimensions, or the product thereof. The vast majority of them live in the same world the PCs grew up in. They've been there about as long as humans have, or anyway long enough that it doesn't make a big difference. Monsters are more like animals, or different cultures for the more humanlike sorts, in our world. Some of them live far away or are less known, but they are not fundamentally weird or unknowable to sane minds.

Furthermore, the notion that the best way to encourage a subjective sense of mystery is to create classes of NPC-only (That is, the DM's tools are way cooler than the player tools and the player can never play with the DM tools.) or monster-only (same thing) is a step backwards. It's like a return to the days when players were notionally forbidden to read the DMG.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

In D&D, the two sides aren't equivalent. Monsters are supposed to be scary, weird, and unknown. It's more like Call of Cthulhu than Champions, and I doubt anyone would claim that CoC monsters should be built in the exact same way as characters.

Mike,

What I would like to know is this: From a DM's perspective, will a DM be able to take a given monster and add PC class levels to it fairly easily in 4th Edition? If I have a dragon, a beholder, an ettin, or an umber hulk... Will it be easy enough for the DM to add levels of fighter or wizard or cleric to it?

I don't so much care about making Savage Species style racial classes out of such creatures as I do care about having the ability to advance them.

P.S. I'm glad that you're working on 4th Edition.

 

[d20Dwarf]

The way monsters are being handled is, at first glance, one of the bright spots for me in the analysis of what we know about 4e. It says to me that the designers have wisely recognized that all this interchangability between monsters and PCs was a part of what made the 3.x game boring and uninspiring. I'm not going to go into too much detail here as I'm about to write a blog entry with my thoughts on 4e, but I'll just chime in with a general agreement with Ari and Mike on this particular issue. Monsters should not be built like PCs with horns (oh wait, in 4e the PCs can have horns. )

 

[JoeGKushner]

Excellent point. Said opponents are, after all, "monsters".

Anything that re-introduces the unknown, the mysterious, the wonderful, and most of all the non-standard, into D&D is a good thing.

Regardless of the rules system, that will NEVER happen with older players. Players may experience that with the rules themselves, but the likely hood of an orc, kobold, goblin, etc... being 'unknown' is slim to nil unless the GM is retrofitting everything.

Once you've gone through the door, as I did in 84', while the mechanics may change, the 'wonder' is pretty gone I think.

Others experiences may differ.

Heck, for all the talk of wonderment, isn't Mike the one who HATED with a super capitol H the old Keep on the Borderlands? For new players, that was your wonderment.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I have no problem with some monsters working like PCs.

But what about a Beholder? An ooze?

Designers should have the freedom to make the monster the best it can be, even if that means it has to work differently from PCs.

And who decides that? In today's game, are oozes a 'playable' race?

And as Mike's own design journal show cases, beholders are a bit of an odd beast.

In my vision of the rules, a beholder would have to be rebuilt from the gorund up. In a point based system, that thing, in a fantasy campaign, would probably costs hundreds of points to create. A very powerful entity not appropriate for most campaigns (pretty much as it stands now... something like ELC 10+ no?)

Having rules that work would eliminate the need to make things work differently.

 

[Aeolius]

...the designers have wisely recognized that all this interchangability between monsters and PCs was a part of what made the 3.x game boring and uninspiring.

Blurring the line between monster and PC is what brought me back to D&D, having skipped from 1e to 3e. Looks like another leapfrog may be in order.