Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3721392" data-attributes="member: 710">I love the D&D 3.x rule coherence, too. It was easy to understand how monsters work once you knew how characters work. [TANGENT ALERT] At least for me. It seems as if many designers (especially those of monster modules and/or 3rd parties) didn't quite get all the consequences of this. I remember 2 major incidents that will probably keep forever in my memory, but there have been a lot more...- Gargoyle like monsters that basically looked just like them, but were more powerful and had less CR.- A monster that had a Blasphemy (i think that was the spell) spell-like ability with a caster level equal to its HD, but a CR notably less than its HD. If you look at Blasphemy, you'll note that this can seriously change the effects of the spell, because a CR = PL+4 caster will most likely not kill you with that spell...I liked to say that the actual CR of monsters seems to be CR-1 + Monster Manual #, or CR -3+2d4 for custom monsters from adventures. [/TANGENT ALERT]That said, with more experience, people also noted some flaws. If you use a monster as a PC race, you can use neither the HD nor its CR to determine its effective level. To many abilities from monsters are to powerful in the hands of the PC. Fast Healing/Regeneration, Damage Reduction, At Will spell-like abilities, all these don't matter for a monster. Outside of combat, the balance of these abilities are rarely important (or at least easily overlooked- think about the Create Spawn ability of Undead). In combat, Fireball at will for a monster is mostly the same as 3/day. Beginning with Savage Species, the rule coherence began to change. The rules for the Savage Species "player monsters" already don't follow the usual rules. Level Adjustment is inherently something added later to the game with no real place in the original rules.On the other hand, may rules that apply for PCs don't really matter for monsters, either. If a monster casts spells like a sorceror, the effect is nearly the same as if it casts these spells as spell-like abilities. It definitely has the advantage that the DM knows how to advance the monsters spell casting abilities, but: It also means that the DM will need to use all the regular class and/or magic related rules for the monsters. If he stats up a unique exemplar, he is very likely to use the full PC-related rules for the monsters, since not doing it this way feels like cheating. A experienced DM will probably end up winging the most, and just use the rules as the base for his decisions, but this begs the question: Do we really benefit from the streamlined and coherent rules here?The answer is yes and no. It's better than having no rules or guidelines at all, because this would mean that no DM can really predict how his monsters and encounters will really fare. On the other hand, the work and drawbacks associated with it indicate that this might not be the best solution.It seems to me as if the D&D 4 approach will try to find a better solution (whether it succeeds, we'll see next year...) My prediction from the interviews, blogs and articles so far:There will still be some rule cohesion with monsters and player characters, it will just be different. Monsters still have Hit Points, Attack Bonus, Armor Class and Saves just as PCs (as long as they stay at all, but I think they will). This means they will interact using the same basic "interface". But how you get to this values will change. It's not something entirely arbitrary, there will be a system on how to generate monsters. It will be different from the rules for creating a PC, but in the end, both can still meaningful and predictably (in terms of rule interaction and game balance) interact. I might miss the ability to add class levels to monsters (if that is really gone), but maybe I won't. Recently I have began looking into the Iron Heroes Villain Classes, and I am pretty certain that I will use them exclusively for my next NPCs in my IH campaign (provided I'll still run it for some time...).EDIT: I think the primary goal is to change the preparation. Quick and easy monster (and NPC) generation and play, complex and rewarding PC generation and play.</blockquote>

Verification