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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 5192740" data-attributes="member: 48965">Is it really obvious? How do you determine whether a power should have a "recharge" value, a "save ends", or "until end of your next turn" effect? If you decide on a recharge... how do you determine what that power should recharge on? Is a burst power that does less damage equal to a single attack that does the same damage but inflicts a condition? If so, what conditions are balanced and which aren't? In designing a monster how does one determine how many recharge, save ends, encounter, at-will, minor action...etc. powers to give it? Should this be influenced by it's role? And so on... I think it's often stated as "simple" because many people (though not all) give little to no thought to many of these things when designing freeform monsters and powers (or else we would have concrete rules for them.). I don't know if that necessarily makes it simple or they are simplifying what goes into designing new monsters and powers themselves and claiming 4e did it.  I don't have my MM with me right now, but I think it would be interesting to see what type of disparity exists in things like number of powers for monsters of the same level as well as monsters of the same role. What's the disparity in effects available (types, number of, type of action, etc.)... is there a low level monster that can stun and damage? How much damage does he do? Is it less, more or equal to a monster of the same level that can't?  Emphasis mine... and I think you are vastly underestimating the paralysis and uncertainty that can arise from such freeform design for monsters and NPC's... especially when one has chosen a generally non-freeform rpg to play.  In 3.5 once I got comfortable with the system and had used it's rules (brokenness and all)... it was easy enough for me to start shaping the game outside of the guidelines provided by the rules because I understood them. I'm not so sure "make it up without guidelines"... or even "make it up without complete guidelines" is the best approach. I like 4e and wish they would provide some more guidelines and rules for constructing monsters NPC's and powers.  Well I can respect that you felt like that... it just irks me that the whole 4e encourages/ 3e discourages thing is often stated by fans of 4e as if it were an objective truth... and it's not.    I didn't imply that "it takes forever to create a new power and quickly compare it to existing ones of that level." especially since you have added a qualifier of "quickly compare". What I did argue is that some people may not find this freeform method as simple and easy to use. They may in fact find it confusing and</blockquote>

Verification