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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3740785" data-attributes="member: 42582">It is very clear that monster stats in 4E will read the same as PC stats, in that they will consist of numbers allocated to the same categories, and having the same meaning within those categories. The difference will be in the way those numbers are worked out (and I don’t mean "worked out in the gameworld" – which comes from magic, which from natural armour etc; I mean "worked out at the metagame level", by application of the game rules): PCs will be built level-by-level, following rules for feat and talent selection and magic item acquisition, while monsters will be built according to a system of allocating a given set of numbers to fill a particular role at a particular challenge level.Therefore, there will be no reason at all why the Mind Flayer can’t joint the party. But the way its stats have been built will mean that there will be no completely straightforward way of comparing it to a PC build to work out what level of PC it is.In fact it will be the opposite: monsters and PCs will be built with the same blocks (6 attributes, BAB, hit points, skill bonuses etc), but the build process will be very different.There are at least two questions here. First, should the system tell you what effect a given Rope Use bonus has on challenge level? Yes it should, and it is clear that the aim of the 4e designers is to produce a system that gives these answers (admittedly they seem to be focusing most on combat challenges, but they have also talked about social challenges, and I’m sure the rules will say something about the sorts of “survival” challenges that might bring Rope Use into play).Second, will the centaur stats in the Monster Manual enable you to derive a rope use bonus? Well, the centaur will have a Dex bonus and skill bonuses, so you’ll be able to look and see. But if the centaur is being presented as filling the role of brute or archer (as seems likely), then the absence of any Rope Use skill can easily be seen as metagame information economy – there is no need to include a Rope Use skill bonus to enable the centaur to play either of those roles – and would not, as far as I can see, preclude the GM from attributing such a bonus to the centaur should the issue come up and need to be resolved.What considerations would guide the GM in making that decision? The same ones, presumably, as would guide the GM in deciding whether the NPC wizard should have access to 2nd or 3rd level spells – in particular, How competent do I want to make this centaur as an antagonist for my players to have to deal with?If what you want is a system that models the in-game growth of a creature, so you can look at a centaur’s stats, from them read off its degree of in-game experience, and therefore work out how many skill points it has free to assign to Rope Use, 4e will not give you what you want. It is becoming very clear that the only game element whose stats will be derived in this fashion is the PC. For NPCs and monsters, it is the GM who decides (not the rules) how experienced or capable they are, and then (following the challenge-building guidelines) assigns stats that are appropriate.I don’t know BESM or M&M, but the difference between D&D on the one hand, and Hero and GURPS on the other, is that D&D is not a points-buy system. It is a highly focused class-level system, where every level gives increases in combat ability, hit points, skill bonuses etc. Therefore, if monsters are to be built the same as PCs they must be stuck with the same correlations. This makes it hard to build (for example) large but unskilled monsters (which 3e allows, by giving the creature a high Constitution rather than many hit dice), because their many hit points mean that their hit points and skill bonuses are out of whack compared to the appropriate ratio for PC classes.Points buy systems introduce more flexibility in this respect, but at the price of losing the focus that is part and parcel of D&D.They are poorly designed only if you think that keeping attack and defence closely correlated is a design goal. It is for PCs. I don’t see why it is for monsters. NPC wizards in 1st ed essentially fit this description, and they don’t make for poor opponents.I agree with Moogle on this point. I think there are good arguments for going the 4e route on monster design, but Cthulhu-esque flavour is not really one of them.Exactly right. And this goes to the issue of balance. Balance for monsters is different from balance for PCs.In D&D PCs are balanced by being built according to the same logic of purchasing stats, then earning class levels which confer talents, feats, hp, BAB and skills. The balance in PC design, therefore, is in making sure all these options produce (approximately) equally playable characters in a D&D game (where combat capability is a big part of playability).The balance for monsters is in having proper rules for measuring challenge, so that the allocation of XPs for overcoming challenges is fair.It is possible, therefore, to have a balanced monster (in the sense of a monster whose challenge level, and thus XPs granted, is fair given its abilities) which would not be a balanced PC (because it can’t be generated out of a balanced system of purchasing stats, then gaining levels and thereby acquiring feats etc).Exactly right. Balanced monster building rules will correct this. This is what 4e seems to be aiming at.Agreed. If the goal of the game is PC vs PC, then monsters need to be build as PCs. But if the goal of the game is PC vs challenges, then the monster rules need to very accurately assign challenge levels to a given set of monster stats, but do not need to enable those stats to be generated by way of a PC build process.It only breaks the “social compact” if the social compact is that the game is to play as PC vs PC (where the GM controls one party of PCs). But the goal of 4e will be PC vs challenges. So monster-only or NPC-only abilities will not be abusive, provided that the XP rewards for overcoming them are commensurate to the challenge they pose.</blockquote>

Verification