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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4034448" data-attributes="member: 1054">I just have trouble with the whole idea of bugbears (or anyone else) having this kind of categorization scheme based on some sort of innate power. Did little Bobby Bugbear go to Crippler School? Was he born with the special Crippling Gene? Did a Bugbear Shaman go to his grib and annoint him the Tribe Crippler?If I want a bugbear who's good at hand to hand, I give him high dex, high str, and improved grapple, and maybe add a level of monk. I can call him a Crippler, but, mechanically, he's built like everyone else. "Crippler" just becomes a term bugbears use for their nasty unarmed warriors, something which makes sense in the context of the game world. It's never bothered me. I find it one of the most fun parts of game prep, buidling Interesting Monsters using the rich set of tools available to me. 4e is going to give me different tools, I get that, but I hope they aren't so simple that they're no fun to play with. I don't mind if there's a quick-n-dirty way for those who like it or need it, but I want depth.See, to my mind, the purpose of having a monster is because the PCs are somewhere where the monsters are, or the monsters have come to where the PCs are. Fight them, talk to them, run away from them...that's the PCs choice. The monsters are there, doing their own monstery thing, and didn't appear from the void when the PCs walked by and will still be around when the PCs aren't paying attention to them anymore. The Bugbear Gods didn't make bugbears to fight PCs, and if the only reason for a bugbear, in game context, to have a power is "Because it's cool for use on PCs", then, it seriously grates on me. You can have interesting monsters without designing them as if they have no existence beyond the battlemat. For example, you could say "Bugbear tribes are dominated by the greatest fighters, but duels to the death leave a lot of powerful warriors dead, and the tribe is weakened. Thus, for battles between warriors of the same tribe, bugbears have developed a wide range of brutal hand-to-hand fighting styles, mastering techniques few others have learned. This harsh, painful, style is rarely taught outside the bugbear tribes; only a rare few exiled or enslaved bugbears might be able to teach it to outsiders."This is more interesting, to me, than "Bugbears strangle you because the developers thought a strangling monster was fun." It provides a story hook for how an interested PCs can learn the Bugbear Fighting Arts, without it being available to anyone. And if they meet an NPC elf who knows Bugbear Judo, they automatically know the elf has an interesting tale to tell...Damn. Now I have to go write up Bugbear martial arts. Well, maybe I'll make it Gnoll, since Bugbears already have a 'niche' in my world and I don't want to double-dip them...</blockquote>

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