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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jaer" data-source="post: 4036976" data-attributes="member: 57861">The significant change to me is that of DM designed powers for NPCs/monsters.  No longer are powers pure HD- or level-based, or so it sounds.  From the talk, things are a bit more easily modifiable if the DM wants, and certain abilities can be added or taken away or adjusted to suite the NPC.  They keep talking about how NPCs are easier to create because you just give them what they need to fill the roll.If that becomes the standard opperating procedure, and it is very visible that that is how NPCs are done, that helps me as a DM in dealing with my players.As it stands, my players expect that any elf they meet is like them, and that the only progression the elf has is through classes with the same feat and skill selections they have (and the potential template).  They expect an elven wizard to have spells that they can have and an elven fighter to fight the same way their fighter does, because the game is set up that way, with very specific permeters as to how such a creature is advanced.My players know these rules, and therefore, when something happens that is not within the bounds of rules, they view me as cheating.  In their mind, an NPC elf should not be able to have a build/powers/feats that an PC elf could not also have (if they so chose).My players don't desert the game because I take libreries with such things...but it is a matter of expectations.  If Ogre A is slightly different than Ogre B and C, my players immediate expect a reason (different feats, a magic item, he took a class and therefore has more HD, BA, saves, etc).  They might never know the reason, but because of how 3e is set up, they expect there to be one.4e, rather, seems to say, if you want an ogre A to have a slightly different set of combat options then ogre B and C, just switch them out!  Once my players get in the habit of realizing things can just be different, then they stop trying to dissect everything (this guy must be be a rogue 3/ranger 3/assassin 2/ barbarian 1/fighter 1 to do all of this stuff!) or feel cheated when an NPC does something they never could.I like the idea that PCs != NPCs, but in 3e, my players did not buy into it.  In 4e, it sounds like the very basis of DM tools.</blockquote>

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