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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5189678" data-attributes="member: 55271">There are additional problems in this thread that I'll address in a minute, but this will be the post that just got Beginning of the End suspended. Folks, please pay attention to what he does here -- and then don't do that. Our simple "don't be a jerk" rules is being completely ignored, and we don't have a lot of patience for that. ~ PCatFirst, I find your assertions about how D&D "had" to be played extremely questionable. Starting campaigns above 1st level was as easy as saying "roll up 5th level characters". And I've run plenty of campaigns beyond 10th level with great success and minimal balance problems. (With proactive instead of reactive dungeon mastering, the casters only start skewing out of balance once they can truly start dictating the pace of encounters. And that doesn't happen until 15th level or thereabouts.)But more importantly, pre-4E D&D supported multiple styles of play at every level. Fighters, wizards, rogues, and clerics all featured widely divergent mechanical styles of play. All 4E classes, on the other hand, are variations on a single mechanical theme.And going all the way back to the 1974 White Box, we find rules for multiple styles of campaign. The rules for dungeon crawling and combat actually took up a minority of both the rulebooks and the class descriptions in 1974.Nice try at moving the goalposts. You get an E for Effort, but an F for intellectual dishonesty.What is probably true is that 4E melee attackers at 1st level generally have more options than 3E melee attackers. But, OTOH, 1st level in 4E was explicitly designed to look more like 3rd level in previous editions.I'm going to arbitrarily look at ten CR 5 non-casters in the MM for both games. I'm going to ignore options coming from skill use or from basic functionality of the combat system. For 3rd Edition, I'm taking the first 10 monsters in the CR 5 listing and not listing any monsters with spells or spell-like abilities. (And I only did one elemental.) For 4th Edition I'm taking the top two creatures listed in each category for Level 5 creatures, except for controllers. (I also skipped the one Level 5 minion listed.)3rd EditionAchaeri (3): Claw/Bite, Black Cloud, Spring AttackAnimated Object, Huge (4): Slam, Blind, Constrict, TrampleArrowhawk, Adult (3): Bite, Electricity Ray, Flyby AttackBasilisk (2): Bite, Petrifying GazeCloaker (4): Tail Slap, Moan, Engulf, Shadow ShiftDevil, Bearded (7): Claw, Infernal Wound, Beard, Battle Frenzy, Summon Baatezu, Telepathy, Power AttackDire Lion (3): Claw, Pounce, RakeElemental, Large Air (3): Slam, Whirlwind, Flyby AttackGibbering Mouther (7): Bite, Spittle, Gibbering, Improved Grab, Blood Drain, Engulf, Ground ManipulationAverage: 3.6 options4th EditionBlazing Skeleton (2): Blazing Claw, Flame OrbGnoll Huntmaster (3): Handaxe, Longbow, Pack AttackBoneshard Skeleton (3): Scimitar, Boneshard, Boneshard BurstBugbear Warrior (Goblin) (3): Morningstar, Skullthumper, Predatory EyeGreenscale Darter (Lizardfolk) (3): Club, Blowgun, SniperSlaad Tadpole (2): Bite, Chaos ShiftDire Wolf (3): Bite, Combat Advantage, Pack HunterFire Bat (2): Fiery Touch, Fiery SwoopDragonborn Soldier (4): Dragon Breath, Dragonborn Fury, Impetuous Spirit, Martial RecoveryDwarf Hammerer (5): Warhammer, Shield Bash, Throwing Hammer, Stubborn, Stand Your GroundAverage: 3.0 optionsThis spot check would seem to confirm your suspicion, Imaro.I think there are actually two divisions in play style being clumped together here:(1) "<a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/fetishizing-balance.html" target="_blank">All encounters should be perfectly balanced</a>" vs. "<a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/misc/encounter-design.html" target="_blank">a wide range of encounter difficulties makes for a dynamic play experience</a>"(2) "The DM is primarily responsible for the balance of play" vs. "The players control the balance of play"These two styles interact with each in several ways (for example, when players are allowed to choose what difficulty of challenge they want to deal with a dynamic range of encounter difficulties is generally part of that parcel).I think this is the crux of our disagreement. I read: "We wanted our presentation of monsters to reflect how       they’re  actually used in D&D  gameplay." And I read that to mean "this is how monsters are used in D&D". You, on the other hand, are apparently choosing to simply ignore that statement for your own convenience.(Or you're choosing to interpret "D&D gameplay" to mean "combat and nothing but combat". Which just brings us back to my point again.)... and no matter how many time I explicitly say that isn't a claim I'm making, you keep repeating it so that you can beat the strawman a little more.Why do you keep doing that, exactly?Because that statement is irrelevant to what I'm saying. If you kept saying, "Apples are red." I would similarly ignore that. I have nothing to say to it. Yes, apples are red. So what? WotC's designers are still espousing a design philosophy that NPCs only exist in the context of combat; and that design philosophy still has an impact on how their modules are being written.(It also has an impact on how their stat blocks are written, which has a much smaller impact on how their adventure modules are written. But that's an almost entirely tangential issue.)Let's see if this can make it clearer: Even in a world where 4th Edition had never been designed or published, the design philosophy espoused by Noonan would still produce combat-happy grind-fest modules. It doesn't matter what edition you're designing for: If your attitude is that NPCs only exist in combat, then you're going to be designing combat-happy grind-fest modules.Actually, no. What he said is that we don't need mechanics detailing how they interact with other NPCs off-screen while the PCs aren't there to see it.This part of Noonan's claim is, BTW, essentially true. (The only exception is that it may be important insofar as the PCs are capable of finding out that information without being there to see it. But that's nothing more than a quibble.)Unfortunately, the rest of Noonan's statement goes on to say that we don't need mechanics detailing how NPCs interact with PCs outside of combat. Which is, of course, complete poppycock.It doesn't really matter how many times you claim I said that. I never actually said that.How can you argue so stridently that you don't have a bias for combat  and then just blatantly post that in your campaigns NPCs never appear  outside of combat?C'mon!Beat that strawman! Beat it until it bleeds!Lemme know when you want to talk about something that I actually said....yeah. Not so much. ~ PCat</blockquote>

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