Drifter Bob said:
But why isn't rule 0 (or other flexible rules) still viable when "money is involved"? Can't we give the DM / writer just a little credit to use their common sense? My point is this, of course you should adhere to the rules. In a large document though, you are going to inevitably have a number of gray areas. Maybe this bluff thing wasn't a good example. I cited it simply because it was one small case that I wasn't sure of a legal way to handle. A small one I could mention without giving away a huge amount of the campaign, but just one of many, many.
I'm not quite sure how you get "many, many" such gray areas. In the stuff I've written (which is admittedly not perfect), I only came across a couple of "gray areas" in the rules and those were really places where I hadn't looked up the rule in question.
Anyway, IMO, DM's can be forgiven for not knowing the rules because their job is to create a game that is fun for both them and the players. I am a lot less forgiving toward authors of published material--especially non-free material--because their job is not simply to create a story. Their job is to create a story and NPCs and challenges etc that fit within the framework of the rules set and setting for which they are writing. They look up the rules so that DMs don't have to. Not knowing what kind of things you think to be gray areas, I'm not sure what to use as an example but if, for instance, you put some non-standard environmental effects rules in a module, they'd better be called out as non-standard alternate rules. Otherwise, the players who end up playing the mod when I run it are going to say, "how come this cold weather is so different from the last cold weather that got the same (or perhaps a worse) description?" If the core rules have them saving every hour and your rules have them making saves every ten minutes, they will notice the difference.
My question is, why can't we give DM's and writers a bit more leeway so that they can make a FEW rational judgements within the spirit of the rules without getting pounced on. (If they violate the spirit of the rules, or if they really make gross violations of the letter of it, pounce away)
Well, see above for answers to that. To use the example of a violation of the letter of the rules (but perhaps not the spirit), let's take the mummy fighter I cited earlier. He had imp unarmed strike and the author maintained that this let him make iterative slam attacks. (It doesn't really work that way). All well and good. Now, that's a fairly obscure section of the rules so imagine a DM who takes his cue from that module interpreting the following situation:
"Cool, I cast polymorph on the monk and turn him into a troll. He's going to flurry and make some claw attacks--that should be +14(claw 1)/+14 (flurry)/+14(claw 2)/+9 (claw 1 iterative) with a bite at +9 right?" By the standard set by the mummy fighter (natural attacks=unarmed strikes) it would be.
To use another example, let's take a grayer area: do attack bonusses and penalties apply to grapple checks? If the PC doesn't get to apply bless to grapple checks, it's not a big deal. On the other hand, if the PC figures out that "attack penalties don't apply to grapple checks" means that he can power attack for full without reducing his grapple check (b/c attack penalties don't apply) but still get the bonus damage (b/c grapple damage=unarmed strike damage which is affected by power attack) then it does make a big difference.
It's quite easy for an incorrect interpretation that is minor in one instance to become massively significant in another. Thus, it's important for authors to get their rules right and to specifically call out new, optional, or variant rules they use in their adventures. (I would even encourage authors who use significant variant rules to include some kind of appendix: "Running this adventure by the core rules" to help DMs adapt the mod to whatever specific rules variation they happen to be using).
That is a big part of it. The other part has to do with time, and the fact that in my opinion, you can run into many, many cases where there are multiple possible interpretations on how to handle something, and you will get attacked no matter what decision you make. This is much more prevalent with crunchier projects like sourcebooks, when creating new monsters, classes, spells, items etc.
Well, some methods of handling things are better than others. For instance, I don't think anyone will dispute that the 3.5 grappling rules are FAR better than 1e's grappling and overbearing rules. Nor do I think people will debate that 3.x's Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, and Sense Motive rules are significantly better than 1/2e's reaction adjustment rules for charisma and are better than simply using charisma and wisdom checks under 3.x rules. It's a part of an author's job to choose the best mechanics to accomplish task resolution in the module. If you pick a poor task resolution system, you will justifiably be excoriated. If you create a new and innovative way to handle a situation that works well and is consistent with the core rules (for instance, creating a new use for the appraise skill or a complex skill check to accompany negotiating over the price of an item) then I would expect that reviewers would make that a point in favor of your writing.
Needless to say, there are dozens and dozens of higher level NPC's and monsters in the campaign in question. I think I mentioned there are 37 major NPC's in the town alone. There are two major dungeons and 3 large wilderness adventures full of monsters, and a couple of score of these little mini adventures such as with the imp, not to mention random encounters.
I thought that was clear.
It was clear. It's also clear that you were not complaining about the amount of time it takes to make a statblock for a high level spellcaster.
For NPCs I don't expect to have serious interaction with the PCs, something like:
"Ibalan Redsteel: LN Female Dwarf Exp 5"
would be sufficient.
If there's one relevant stat, I would be satisfied with
"Ibalan Redsteel: LN Female Dwarf Exp 5; Craft (Armorsmith) +13 (+15 metal), Craft (Weaponsmith) +13 (+15 metal)."
Only if the PCs will have significant interaction with the NPC (like they will likely have with the imp or might have with a merchant who is the center of the investigation, or with Col Mustard, Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, et al in Clue the d20 adventure, or will have with the orc chief in his 10x10 room) do the NPCs need full statblocks.
Full statblocks do take a fair amount of time but that's the price we pay for having a system that knows how long it will take each foe to get out of a Maze, how good they are at wrestling, how hard they can hit (and whether they hit harder when they sacrifice accuracy), and how easy they are to trip, that lets them cast spells, and determines which spells they can cast, that gives them different chances to save against Hold Person, Fireball, and Poison, and that affects them differently with Holy Smite depending upon how often they kick puppies. Personally, I think that time is well worth spending since it's a lot more fun DMing combat in 3.x than it was in 1e or 2e (and, on the opposite end of the scale, it seems a lot more fun than it would be to run Rolemaster).
Somebody else also mentioned spending time playtesting. This campaign was playtested, for a year. It went fantastically well, it was one of the most successful campaigns I have ever run, something of a legend now among my friends. In fact it was because it went so well that I decided it might be a good idea to try to share it with the d20 community.
FWIW, this is probably not the best method of playtesting. In my experience, it's very different running a module you've written yourself and having it run by someone else. When you run your own module, it's very easy to miss vital missing plot points that you know because you wrote the story and know what's going on but you never told anyone else. It's also easy to present a character somewhat differently than the way you've written him because you have a specific idea of the NPC but haven't communicated it as effectively as you might otherwise have done.
At least that's what I'm told. The one time I had someone else run a playtest of one of my modules, I was rather shocked at how he ran it and spent a lot of the time thinking "that's not what I wrote!" And it usually wasn't but sometimes it actually was what I'd written and I needed to write something else.
Here is some math:
I probably spent 60-80 hours writing the original adventure. I later spent another 40 hours or so fleshing it out with an eye toward selling it: double checking logic, cleaning up the prose, improving maps, writing more hand outs and some read aloud text.
A few months later, once that looked like I had a serious opportunity to sell it, I started working on it again to make sure it was rules compliant enough for the D20 market. That has so far taken me about four hours a day almost every day for a month, well over 100 hours, and I'm not even 1/3 of the way through.
My goodness, what was the original state of the mod then? I'm pretty sure that, if I were to put stuff from my home campaigns into a mod, making it rules compliant wouldn't be that much of an issue. Either the NPCs are already rules compliant (based upon the statblocks I made up for them when prepping for a session), or they just plain don't yet exist because I made them up on the fly. But I'd hardly call statting out Hallbjorn the innkeeper who turned out to be vitally important to the scenario but whom I'd never conceived of before the session and never statted out before writing for publication to be checking for rules compliance.
I would say this is a typical ratio for a D20 adventure, at least 60-70% of the time spent is on rules cross checking. For a sourcebook with more mechanics that would go up to as much as 90%. I always felt that was why the WOTC class sourcebooks I had bought like their druid ranger book or their rogue book seemed so dry.
Adventures I've written for some other modules require as little as 5-10% of the time working on rules compliance. The audience seems a lot more forgiving, of course most of the independent RPG's I've written for are rules lite so that does make sense, but I also wrote at least one very crunchy suppliment for a rules heavy system with the same result. That doesn't mean I don't like D&D!!!!! I'm just pointing out the effect that I was seeing.
I would also be interested to hear what other writers consider the ratio to be for them.
I find it somewhat difficult to pin down how much time I've spent crosschecking rules, but I would guess it's something like 5-10% of my writing time. The majority of writing time has been coming up with the story, writing it out, creating and editing statblocks, and then playtesting and negotiating with the editors.
I like to think I know the rules pretty well though. Maybe people who spend less time with the rules will have more spend more time looking them up.
P.S. I really like the template idea
I don't think I'd treat the template idea any better in a review than I'd treat just adding skillpoints arbitrarily. (Actually, I'd probably treat it worse because I'd notice a "+4 to bluff" template and I might well miss some added skillpoints--I wouldn't add them up unless I either used the imp as a base for some imp of my own and noticed it had too many skillpoints or noticed several other errors in the statblock and started reverse engineering it). Giving skill bonusses "legally" is not what templates are for. Templates are for representing monsters that are somehow different from the others. Fiendish, Celestial, Fire Elemental, Wood Elemental, Half-Fiend, Half-Dragon, Paragon, Corrupted, etc are templates. Monte Cook's Magical Construct is a template. They represent a specific effect, planar taint, or descent that could be applied to a creature. Monte Cook's template is a mechanic to create golems that function differently depending upon what they look like not just what they're made out of. The hypothetical "deceptive" template doesn't represent anything in game. It's just a method of avoiding switching skill points for bluff skill or switching a feat for skill focus: Bluff. Some mechanics are inappropriate for some goals. The template suggestion is an inappropriate mechanic even if it is "legal."
