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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 5918262" data-attributes="member: 83293">It's more than that.  if you take a look at the monster math, a 1st level monster has 15 AC.  Based on what?  The armour it's wearing?  The dexterity bonus it has?  A half level bonus to defenses? What if I have one soldier with a dex of 10 in chain and another in plate & shield?  They both have 17.But I guess I've probably harped on about the design method being divorced from the fictional characteristics of the monster enough.  4E monster design is about producing results that fit into the whole encounter design/tactical combat system.  It doesn't prioritize representing the fictional characteristics of the monsters.That sounds like a great declaration to make after invoking an aspect of the fireball. That'll cost me a Fate point though, won't it? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />With everything being so improv based in my campaigns, I did my best to come up with cool battlefields on the fly, but I probably didn't do anything truly innovative.I found the players cared about the combats because they only happened when they tried to go after their goals and got violent (or met violent opposition).  The times that bored me to tears was when I played and it was either a module or a set of tactical encounters loosely connected with other game modes that was only really designed to justify the next tactical encounter.  But that can happen in any RPG.All of the players I played with are also miniature wargamers and quickly found the best tactics to dispatch foes quickly (like concentrating fire).  I had to level up encounters quite a bit from the recommended distribution around their level.We always wanted different content for player buy in.  If a player had a human cleric of some civilization/order based god, they'd often have goals like "start a central bank" or "take down the organized crime boss/thieves guild" or "drive the orc horde away in a lasting manner."  We never played in the implied setting/Nentir Vale, so the default setting elements got chucked pretty fast.From going from a 4E game where the players initiate all goals and quests to a exploratory playing of Keep On The Borderlands in Mentzer basic D&D, I know what you mean.  Though I've started to appreciate "filler encounters" as being part of the process of being in a dangerous environment.  And given that a combat can be over in five minutes rather than the length of a 4E encounter, it's not the same was wasting a big part of a session on a 4E filler encounter.  Encounter length is another area where appealing both to 4E and pre-3.x style play with D&DN will be difficult.I think the worst case would be a mishmash hybrid that doesn't do either the scene framing friendly approach or the exploratory approach particularly well.Despite 4E's strengths, something about it as a product isn't working for WotC.  So I think it's probably a fair bet that things that are iconic 4E elements might have a higher chance of not being around than staying.  So my guess is that they'll start with the exploration focus and add more 4E style combat rules and refresh mechanics as modules than go the other way around.</blockquote>

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