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<blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5193506" data-attributes="member: 46713">Ah, I've already been waiting for someone to play the GURPS card! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I agree with your conclusion. Another example is the spell design rules in Ars Magica. It's quite beautiful and works very well for most purposes. It's still easy to abuse for someone who is looking for ways to abuse it. If there was a CO board for Ars Magica it would probably be full of insanely broken spells respecting all of the rules.And you brought up the second important part: It's a lot of work. And I believe that investing that amount of work is only worthwhile if it improves a central, integral part of the system. And that's simply not the case with 4e monster customization.If D&amp;D was a system centered on a party of monster-breeders competing to design the most terrifying creature imaginable and pitting them against each other in arena-style combat scenarios I'd expect something a lot more elaborate.Speaking of elaborate systems that I personally could do without: For me the hybrid rules in PHB3 were a waste of precious paper space. I'd rather have seen another two well-designed classes.I know that many have been clamouring for an improved multiclassing system but the result didn't convince me at all. It's clunky, especially if you're adding psionic classes to the mix. It's also interesting that the designers felt they had to include a disclaimer 'use at your own risk'.If a sufficiently large number of people were showing interest, they could decide to do something similar for monster customization. Maybe DMG3 will have more to say on that topic. We'll see.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jhaelen, post: 5193506, member: 46713"] Ah, I've already been waiting for someone to play the GURPS card! :) I agree with your conclusion. Another example is the spell design rules in Ars Magica. It's quite beautiful and works very well for most purposes. It's still easy to abuse for someone who is looking for ways to abuse it. If there was a CO board for Ars Magica it would probably be full of insanely broken spells respecting all of the rules. And you brought up the second important part: It's a lot of work. And I believe that investing that amount of work is only worthwhile if it improves a central, integral part of the system. And that's simply not the case with 4e monster customization. If D&D was a system centered on a party of monster-breeders competing to design the most terrifying creature imaginable and pitting them against each other in arena-style combat scenarios I'd expect something a lot more elaborate. Speaking of elaborate systems that I personally could do without: For me the hybrid rules in PHB3 were a waste of precious paper space. I'd rather have seen another two well-designed classes. I know that many have been clamouring for an improved multiclassing system but the result didn't convince me at all. It's clunky, especially if you're adding psionic classes to the mix. It's also interesting that the designers felt they had to include a disclaimer 'use at your own risk'. If a sufficiently large number of people were showing interest, they could decide to do something similar for monster customization. Maybe DMG3 will have more to say on that topic. We'll see. [/QUOTE]

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