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="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 3834093" data-attributes="member: 5143">I believe what he is trying to say is that when someone who isn't really into D&D, who plays it very rarely or who plays it for the first time is running an adventure they purchased from the store and the PCs open up a door and there is a monster behind it.  The DM looks at the monster, they see a big long sheet of information about it.And that sheet of information says "disguise self at will" and "25% chance of summoning another demon" and "Charm Person 1/day".  And that DM is left wondering "Can disguising himself be useful in combat somehow?  How does the spell work?" and "What type of action does it take to summon a creature?  Does he want to risk a 25% chance to do something this round?" and "Can charming someone be useful in a combat?  How does the mechanics for it work?  What can someone do while charmed?"Experienced people know that the above abilities are just plot hooks written into the monster's description.  They know that the reason that a monster would disguise himself isn't for a combat advantage but as a reason to allow the monster to infiltrate the military.  They know that the demon summoning power is short hand for "this creature may have demon allies who owe them a favor and will come to their aid."  They know that charming is a lot like disguising in that it sets up adventure hooks and plots, but isn't so good for combat.I believe that's what he means by "story things have been masquerading as combat rules".  Whether you are a DM that looks up the monster on the fly or preps in advance, you need to look up all of the abilities of the creature if you don't know what they are.  So, you spend valuable prep time trying to figure out how Charm Person works since you don't know or haven't used it in a while only to find out that you planned on using this monster in 4 rounds of combat and it was never going to use it.</blockquote>

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