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<blockquote data-quote="Kraydak" data-source="post: 4094632" data-attributes="member: 12306">The hard part of monster design is the special abilities.&nbsp; Any half-competent designer (should) be able to come up with basic underlying stats that work and determine the power level of those stats.&nbsp; That is the easy part.&nbsp; The huge variability comes from the specials.&nbsp; That is obvious.&nbsp; 4e needs tighter tolerances (again, as you note below, simple enough).&nbsp; The tighter tolerances then get passed onto the only thing that is hard: the specials.I'm confused, we are saying the same thing here.&nbsp; In 3e, if you throw a massive encounter at a party they can adapt by throwing the kitchensink back.&nbsp; In 4e, they just die.&nbsp; You trade off the ability of parties to have a 15 minute adventuring day with the need to measure encounter difficulty very strictly.&nbsp; I rather like per-encounter abilities, but going that route means you need narrower tolerances elsewhere.&nbsp; Like monster design.Again, I'm not saying 4e's decision was wrong, but it does have major implications.&nbsp; If you give players a very narrow list of abilities available in an encounter, then the difficulty range of the encounter has to be tailored to that narrow power range.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Kraydak, post: 4094632, member: 12306"] The hard part of monster design is the special abilities. Any half-competent designer (should) be able to come up with basic underlying stats that work and determine the power level of those stats. That is the easy part. The huge variability comes from the specials. That is obvious. 4e needs tighter tolerances (again, as you note below, simple enough). The tighter tolerances then get passed onto the only thing that is hard: the specials. I'm confused, we are saying the same thing here. In 3e, if you throw a massive encounter at a party they can adapt by throwing the kitchensink back. In 4e, they just die. You trade off the ability of parties to have a 15 minute adventuring day with the need to measure encounter difficulty very strictly. I rather like per-encounter abilities, but going that route means you need narrower tolerances elsewhere. Like monster design. Again, I'm not saying 4e's decision was wrong, but it does have major implications. If you give players a very narrow list of abilities available in an encounter, then the difficulty range of the encounter has to be tailored to that narrow power range. [/QUOTE]

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