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<blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 5439363" data-attributes="member: 5890">While eyeballing it in any edition has been possible, it takes a great deal of expertise to end up with something that's balanced and useable. Using the rules was supposed to be how you did it.In 3e, using the rules to make an NPC was complex, because the rules were for PCs, and a character was the focal point of one entire person (the player). As a DM having to do that for multiple NPCs was pretty nightmareish. Even reskinning wasn't all that easy (well, all I do is change humanoid to undead and... oh. I have to redo every stat it has!) unless you fell back on just eyeballing it.The key is that the comparison metric is time-to-create vs face time. If your face time is 3 rounds, you want the time-to-create to be about the same as any other no-name nothing in the campaign. If it's substantially higher, then it feels like you wasted your weekend planning it.Which is a little punitive, given that most monks can drop 20ft and charge without needing that check...But yeah, 3e definately has &quot;jazz up combat&quot; in it's advice, and the adventures show that. In fact, given that without doing those things, the monks options are &quot;well, you can stand still and punch things, move and punch things, or charge and punch things&quot; with variations depending on how trip or grab-optimized he is, players tended to do that sort of stuff more often. Which might be construed as good or bad.The key here is that 4e has a nice chart for the damage that such an attack should cause, and that only serves to make things easier. Because like we all know - if you can just ad-lib that sort of stuff, you can feel free to and you're not losing anything by having a nice guide.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Saeviomagy, post: 5439363, member: 5890"] While eyeballing it in any edition has been possible, it takes a great deal of expertise to end up with something that's balanced and useable. Using the rules was supposed to be how you did it. In 3e, using the rules to make an NPC was complex, because the rules were for PCs, and a character was the focal point of one entire person (the player). As a DM having to do that for multiple NPCs was pretty nightmareish. Even reskinning wasn't all that easy (well, all I do is change humanoid to undead and... oh. I have to redo every stat it has!) unless you fell back on just eyeballing it. The key is that the comparison metric is time-to-create vs face time. If your face time is 3 rounds, you want the time-to-create to be about the same as any other no-name nothing in the campaign. If it's substantially higher, then it feels like you wasted your weekend planning it. Which is a little punitive, given that most monks can drop 20ft and charge without needing that check... But yeah, 3e definately has "jazz up combat" in it's advice, and the adventures show that. In fact, given that without doing those things, the monks options are "well, you can stand still and punch things, move and punch things, or charge and punch things" with variations depending on how trip or grab-optimized he is, players tended to do that sort of stuff more often. Which might be construed as good or bad. The key here is that 4e has a nice chart for the damage that such an attack should cause, and that only serves to make things easier. Because like we all know - if you can just ad-lib that sort of stuff, you can feel free to and you're not losing anything by having a nice guide. [/QUOTE]

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