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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5188025" data-attributes="member: 87792">Piratecat here. While I understand what inspired this post, please report problematic posts instead of responding to them. You can report a post using the small triangular "!" at the bottom left of every post. No.  The real problem seems to be your inability to accept that the WoTC approach has huge advantages as well as disadvantages.  No.  I'm saying I don't have a cough at all.  I have a stuffy nose, you have the cough.  But you are trying to claim I have one and then trying to diagnose my hayfever as flu.  This is a mixture of a misunderstanding and a deception.The misunderstanding is that the relevant skills are anything other than the protagonist ones in the way you run 4e.  If it's opposed, the PCs roll at a target number based on the monster's approach and abilities.  Saves time and a dice roll and is mathematically the same.  If it's unopposed, it's DM fiat.  And did you seriously make every monster interact with every other monster when the PCs weren't on the screen? The deception is that except in rare cases (spellcasting monsters), 4e isn't a hell of a long way ahead of 3e in terms of options for the monsters.  For one thing it has actually different options for different monsters.  It's not that I'm ill.  It's that you're trying to transfer the illnesses you have onto me.  Um.  You are talking about 4e here rather than 3.X/Pathfinder?  A non-caster in 3.X can ... attack.  Or possibly sunder or trip.  Same as every other damn 3.X monster in the game. There is more difference between a generic 4e goblin and kobold than a 3e kobold and orc (and arguably a 3e kobold and ettin).  Yet you mysteriously aren't saying that you can't re-use 3e goblins.  Except they do and this isn't a problem.  Yet mysteriously there isn't a problem using multiple 3e Chain Devils in an encounter, let alone multiple ogres.  Nothing the monsters do when offstage needs rolling for.  Um...  Anything you say.  Me, I find that if every monster does a completely different action every time you aren't fighting monsters so much as random grab bags of abilities with no coherence.  (And high level 3e spellcasting monsters are Wizards in a Skin Suit - the part that matters is that they can cast the same skills as other wizards).  Ogres should move like ogres.  And that means they should repeatedly bash people over the head with clubs.  But they do do different things in different situations and the situation changes over the rounds and based on their positioning. The statblock for a 3e goblin fills up precisely one round of actions.  So you only ever use one goblin once?  Bland?  There's more fluff in the difference between Shifty and Goblin Tactics is than between the entire Goblin and Ettin statblocks in 3e. Inflexible?  It's a hell of a lot easier IME to customise monsters in 4e than 3.X (the Monster Builder helps, admittedly).Shallow?  Compared to 3e?  Where all the monsters move the same? No, grind's not to do with the statblocks on those counts.  It's to do with the MMI giving far too little damage to many critters, DMs going outside competence, and a lack of focus.  The quest for every encounter to be balanced does, I agree.  On the other hand, the quest for every encounter to provide the DM with sufficient information to know what will work simply provides the DM and module writer with much better tools and knowledge to be able to know what will work.  And to then throw the unbalanced ones at the PC.  They are in narrative stasis.  No dice are being rolled for them.  And success or failure is a matter of DM fiat.  The big question is what happens to characters when the actors aren't on stage - and it is a pretty open one.  Watch Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are dead.  The answer 4e has taken is that they are at that point in the mind of the DM and players and don't need rolling for.  And the statblock contains the things you roll for.  Physical Stasis != Narrative Stasis.  (Or do you seriously roll for all your monsters when DMing when they aren't interacting with PCs?  For that matter do you DM?)  No.  We're pointing out that you are talking out of your hat.  And the stat blocks demonstrate this.</blockquote>

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