Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5186524" data-attributes="member: 54846">Well, when I think about non-combat info found in the statblock... It's like this:There is no stat that represents how much wealth an NPC has. However, if the statblock doesn't tell me the NPC's wealth, then how can I reconcile the NPC being a noble, or being able to fund an army, or being able to bribe/hire assassins? There's no stat for Political Authority, so how can I account that this NPC is seated Senator or has the ear to the king? Nothing in the numbers can account for the NPC being a trust fund baby or being the childhood friend of the King.To me, that is identical to what rituals the NPC can cast and what the NPC is doing behind the scenes to other NPCs. It's all story. I shouldn't need to check the math to make sure that the NPC should be allowed to hire assassins; he just does. I don't need a mechanic to declare "A comet falls from the sky" or "It's raining", so I shouldn't need a mechanic to tell me if an NPC can do something off screen to another NPC that he can't do to the players. It doesn't matter how he brainwashed those NPCs; if he can't brainwash a PC, then what's the point of the rule? He just Does. And ultimately, here's the crux of the matter: I think the fewer rules, the better. Rules are simply there to answer the question: "does it succeed or not?" And since you can't have a rules light system AND a rules dense system, it has to be one or the other. As someone said earlier in the thread, if the 3e NPC just "lacks" the  ride skill, then those are skill points the NPC is missing, and  therefore the thing is wrong. That therefore builds an expectation that  the NPC must have everything accounted for, and that if it  doesn't, the DM is cheating or it's just not Right. So if the Rule exists, it's one step closer to rules heavy, one step closer to being the norm/expected that one SHOULD/MUST account for it, and a shift towards that sort of way of thinking in the design. The more accounting for something you need, the further you move away from what I want out of the game. Which is putting things at odds with those who want more accounting, more rules to account for possibilities.One thing that really grabbed me first in 4e was very little things. "This is a magic pool of cool water. If you dunk yourself in the pool, it gives you Resist fire 5 until you take a short rest". "These statues are touched by the power of Piety; standing next to them gives you a +1 to your will defense". If I tried to do this in 3e, I would feel the need to Account for where this stuff is coming from, and players would be more likely to go "really? Wow, I want to make one of those. How do I do that?" and now it's a balance issue. With 4e, just saying "it's magic" is good enough for the design philosophy and I can move on.</blockquote>

Verification