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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7523712" data-attributes="member: 6873517">Sure. I'm not arguing for <a href="http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html" target="_blank">Gygaxian naturalism</a> over all things. Nor am I arguing for 3E style stat blocks, where the monsters were built in the system and had as much detail as a PC. Tiers of play is very, very much a 4E concept. It was hinted at in BECMI due to the way those books were published but not really part of the game otherwise. Not quite sure what you're arguing here, but that's not the point I was trying to make. In 1E and 2E, monster stat blocks were decidedly thinner than monster stat blocks were in 3E, which was the pinnacle of the complete stat block. The issue is that, in the 4E framework and unlike essentially any other edition, an ogre has grossly different stats. According to @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a>, fiction says the ogre is the same ogre but the representation of the ogre shifts. I'm not saying that's wrong. From a game-mechanical standpoint it might be useful. If you like it, knock yourself out, but it's one of those aspects of 4E that often rubbed people the wrong way. Other people found the 4E design very liberating. As I've said before, I thought 4E had some good ideas but overall disliked it and hated DMing it. Gygaxian naturalism (as defined in the link I provided) is NOT realistic. It doesn't pretend to be. The reason I used "secondary reality" is because there's an internal consistency to it. Keep on the Borderlands is probably one of the best illustrations of that. It really doesn't make sense in a larger scheme of things. I mean, where to those monsters get food from? But it does in terms of how Gygaxian dungeon areas work, with the Great Chain of Being of monsters living in caverns, raiding the road, and causing problems sufficient to draw in adventurers.</blockquote>

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