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

[pawsplay]

I would argue that Pun-Pun is basically the result of not systematizing monster design and making it more PC-ish. No sane designer should give players the chance to give other players any ability ever, and to do this insane feat so over and over again.

I agree. The ability does not make sense even for the monster, it simply is not as immediately apparent. Like the efreet's wish, its power is immeasurable, and the designers simply did not apply enough thought into deciding how a power fit into the game world. The ability in question functions within "plot device" parameters (to take a page from Mutants and Masterminds) but clearly functions at a quantifiable level. In other words, the lid popped off. Something was introduced that had no reasonable in-game or out-of-game limitation, and inevitibly, a problem was discovered.

 

[Creamsteak]

I'm curious where 4e is drawing the line in the sand. All this speculation (9 pages worth at this point) is still speculation. Good or bad. There are just so many different possible implementations of the differences between the two sides. There are a lot of compromises that will keep some portion of people happy from both sides. And mearls statement leeds me to believe that he made this decision "for this system." And he said that he understand the desire to have some portability.

Dnd is somewhere other than the cthulhu example given though. The idea of a drow, half-dragon, or minotaur pc falls in line with a lot of dndisms that I've seen. All of these options still "play" like a PC, just 'different.' That's right in line with what the goals are by making distinctions between the dwarf fighter and the elf fighter. By allowing multiple options to play the same classes (or in this case roles) in completely different ways. But a half-(insert cthulhu monster number 7 here) is a completely different game than a regular investigator in CoC.

Some monsters are, I feel, intended to fight on the level of a whole party at once. The dragon or the beholder are the two common examples here. There's a whole lot of examples in between the dragon and the town guardsman. There's going to be some kind of "line" of seperation somewhere.

This brings a totally stray wandering thought to me. What if classes are the base, rather than the race? As it stands in 3e, the race is a set of statistics that are base, and then the class kind of gets "applied" to the racial modifiers. Obviously you "could" build the character around the class first then tack on the racials, there's nothing stopping it, but I mean intuitively.

It's also possible though that the approach could be reversed in design, which would "imply" some rather significant differences with how monsters and other creatures work.

 

[hong]

I would argue that Pun-Pun is basically the result of not systematizing monster design and making it more PC-ish.

No, it was the result of the 3E philosophy that all creatures are supposed to be built using the same rules, even though they have different purposes.

No sane designer should give players the chance to give other players any ability ever, and to do this insane feat so over and over again. Yet somehow, one designer DID. It was obvious he was thinking "Oh, this is just a monster. It won't hurt anything..." which is where I think the problem lies. You let monsters follow different rules, and suddenly PCs start trying to abuse the corner cases for their own benefit.

That's the abuser's problem. The solution is not to do it. And in fact, nobody does.

Does Pun-Pun appear in any actual game, anywhere in the world? I doubt it very much. A ruleset that attempts to head off problems that don't exist except as thought experiments is wasting its time.

Give me rules that work the same for everybody, and a set of rules that don't and I'm sure I can show you that it's a lot harder to accidentally create Pun-Puns in the first system, assuming reasonably intelligent design.

Pun-Pun was not an accident. Pun-Pun was a deliberate exercise in breaking the ruleset.

 

[BryonD]

Boring and uninspiring... too much freedom is bad? It's better to want rules for monsters than to actually have them? Am I reading that right?

I thought they clearly said that you can still do make any type of PC character and use that as a monster. It is just the reverse that does not apply. So that would definately not be a restriction.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let's use the beholder as an example. How can you possibly make it equivalent to a character of a level equal to its HD or CR? In 3.5, a beholder is CR 13. Its huge array of offensive abilities makes it far more dangerous than any 13th-level character. Heck, it's possibly more dangerous than a single 20th-level character. But if we call it a CR 20 creature, it doesn't have nearly enough HP or HD. But if we raise the HP or HD, it becomes even more dangerous...

See the problem? The notion of level = HD = CR is an appealing one on the surface. But it only works if monsters are limited to the same sorts of abilities as PCs. Once you start adding wonky abilities, like the beholder's eye rays or the mind flayer's blast, you wind up in a position where you once again have a creature whose CR cannot equal its HD.

There is an amazingly, astonishingly simple solution to this that only a 4e could provide:

Don't link increased HP to necessarily increased combat ninja effectiveness.

In this case, it would be great to "design for it's use." HP is a measure of character toughness, the resource the game is always spending, and a measure of how long a creature can stay in combat.

A giant brontosaurus shouldn't need a +12 Reflex save from high HD just because it'd have a whole bucketload of hit points.

The same logic dictates that a 20th level Expert blacksmith doesn't need the bucketload of hit points just because he needs a +umpteen Craft (Blacksmith) check.

In other words, make it possible to add hit points (for instance) without adding a whole truckload of unrelated abilities. Which, actually, makes advancing monsters simpler, faster, and more elegant, which is what a lot of 4e is going for.

 

[BryonD]

There is an amazingly, astonishingly simple solution to this that only a 4e could provide:

Don't link increased HP to necessarily increased combat ninja effectiveness.

...

In other words, make it possible to add hit points (for instance) without adding a whole truckload of unrelated abilities. Which, actually, makes advancing monsters simpler, faster, and more elegant, which is what a lot of 4e is going for.

I vote for this.

 

[Thurbane]

IMHO, the "transparency" between monsters and player characters was one of the best things that 3E introduced to D&D.

It would be a real backward step, again IMHO, if it went back to more of an "us and them" mentality in 4E...

 

[BryonD]

IMHO, the "transparency" between monsters and player characters was one of the best things that 3E introduced to D&D.

It would be a real backward step, again IMHO, if it went back to more of an "us and them" mentality in 4E...

You mean the transparency that was constantly slammed for never working? (ECLs that were way off, near-standard races that were near unplayable)

I will completely agree with a goal of being able to play as PCs as many "monsters" as possible. But to try to have it all is just setting yourself up for failure.

Rather than a step backward, this concept (and the implemenation remains to be seen) is aimed at the best of both worlds.

Seriously, can someone offer a concrete example of what you had in 3X that will be flat out unavailable in what we know of 4E?

 

[Klaus]

In other words, make it possible to add hit points (for instance) without adding a whole truckload of unrelated abilities. Which, actually, makes advancing monsters simpler, faster, and more elegant, which is what a lot of 4e is going for.

By, I dunno, increasing the Constitution score?

I mean, if the brontosaurus is a CR8 creature and has 8HD, give it a Constitution of, say, 30 and soak up its +10 modifier. That's +80hp without increasing saves or BAB.

The more I read this thread and the Design diaries, the less I can see the difference between what is being proposed for 4e and the way it is already being done in 3.x.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

I'm still not convinced. Even a 20th-level PC can't fire off 10 different offensive spells in a single round. (Or even three, if you only want to count a singe "arc" of fire.) Without being completely reconceptualized, beholders simply can't have the same CR and HD.

Time Stop. One delayed blast fireball per round, plus one quickened and metamagically delayed other spell per round. It's not 10 guaranteed effects in a single round but they are on the other hand much more powerful than a beholder's eye rays. Well within reason for a level 20 wizard.