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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5961670" data-attributes="member: 386">I debated the fact that 4E's monster creation system has strong ties to monster colour or fiction with BryonD a while back.It's easy enough to make a tough dragon who can breathe fire: make it high-level and give it a breath weapon.  Making it a solo monster is another way to make it even tougher.  But when you want to say, "It should be as easy to tag the dragon with a beam of light as it is to hit the side of a barn," 4E will let you down.  Reflex is going to be high; I'm not sure what happens to player agency if you reduce a 27 Reflex Defence to 10 or 8, but I think it could cause problems.3E does the same thing in places, with high saves and skills tied to HD, but there's not as much of it.I think this has to do with the relationship between colour and the reward system in 4E.  How the imagined content in the game changes in 4E as the characters gain levels isn't quite the same as it is in 3E.  I am not going to pretend to have a good grasp of how this works in either system, but my gut says: in 4E the group defines the colour of their campaign as they play it; in 3E it's established when the campaign begins.That's kind of confusing... let me see if I can clarify as I work this idea out for myself.  In 3E, climbing a hewn rock wall is DC 25.  That doesn't change as the game is played (that is, as fiction is created, the game world is explored, and characters grow).  Just because it's DC 120 to balance on a cloud doesn't mean that characters can't attempt it at 1st level; they'll just always fail.  The relationship between colour and the reward system doesn't change over time: you know that, if you can score a DC 120 balance check, you can balance on clouds; a +1 to your Balance check brings you that much closer to success.In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check.  Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud.  I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.*There's another aspect to the difference between 3E and 4E: how you played the game.  For groups who had the standard Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard party, and used Wands of Cure Light Wounds, and didn't let the Cleric and Wizard's abilities completely change the game (e.g. don't let them cast Geas/Quest on the adult red dragon), I think there wasn't much of a shift in game play.  For others the difference is more pronounced.</blockquote>

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