NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steven Winter" data-source="post: 6350276" data-attributes="member: 6686829">XP and CR values aren't listed in the sample because they haven't been assigned yet. Those will be the last things attached to the stat blocks, after most of the other work is done. I see many of the folk online who are analyzing 5E stat blocks assuming that CR is the first number laid down and everything else derives from it. You can do things that way, but you wind up with many monsters looking like clones. Despite all the positive advances that 4E made with monster stat blocks, the clone issue was inescapable. For the sake of variety and creativity, it's better to design interesting monsters and then work out their CRs based on their overall threat. When formatting this creature for the preview, we waffled back and forth between leaving CR and XP off entirely, or including "XP ? (CR ?)." Finally we decided to leave it off; I think we would have caused equal amounts of confusion either way. The HP listing is a straight-up typo; it should be "38 (7d8 + 7)." Where the spells are concerned, stat blocks need to deal with two different spellcasting abilities. Some creatures cast spells like PC spellcasters, with spell slots that can be used up as the creature chooses by casting from a list of prepped spells. Other creatures can cast specific spells and nothing more. Typically those are innate spell-like abilities rather than spells as a wizard would cast them. The aaztor-ghola sort of straddles the line between those two, but because its spell list is so limited and it doesn't bother with components, we decided to treat it like an innate spellcaster. A true spellcaster's spell list will look a bit different, and it should be clear from the list and description which type of caster you're looking at.That said, if this arrangement is causing confusion, then we absolutely want to hear that feedback. Nothing is set in stone yet. We'll be doing many more previews before the Kickstarter runs its course, and we're eager to hear any reactions people have, positive or negative. You can post reactions here or contact me directly as sjcwinter at gmail.com.Steve</blockquote>

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