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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7341232" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Yeah, sometimes it seems like the primary design consideration for character classes in 5E was to avoid empty levels, at the expense of elegance or playability. (Or maybe they had convinced themselves that complexity was its own reward, by be-branding it as "engagement" or something.) In any case, the simplified NPC mechanics show that this complexity is unnecessary, and they could have designed the classes with fewer moving parts if they'd wanted to. That's a bit tangential to the topic at hand, though.The main point is just that the NPC versions are still clearly just streamlined versions of PC classes. There's never a case where you look at a 14 hit-die mage NPC and it's clearly capable of doing things that a level 14 Wizard could not. That's where Legendary Actions enter the equation: They are very clearly something that the PCs cannot do, and the only reason the NPC is allowed such a powerful ability is the meta-game reason that it's an NPC rather than a PC. That's simply not logic that's permitted in a role-playing game. Fans of 3E are not going to buy into that.My secondary point is that streamlined NPC mechanics are only useful if you haven't already memorized the PC mechanics. If I already know how the fireball spell works, then giving an NPC mage a similar ability with a different name (as in 4E) is counter-productive from a DMing standpoint; if you had just told me that it was a fireball, then I wouldn't need to read any further, but now I need to read the whole ability in order to determine whether it's actually just fireball or if you've changed any of the parameters. For all that 4E was supposedly easier to DM, it completely killed the transference of skill between being a player and being the DM.</blockquote>

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