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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4177980" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think that's overly simplistic and absolutist. For some monsters (and the phane might be one of 'em), using other monsters with templates might make sense. The vampire and the lich are both typically BBEG's, but even then, the vampire spawn entry in the MM, I bet, references the vampire lord template in the DMG.If it makes a more interesting and rewarding game experience, why NOT pull in related rules that might not be absolutely contained within the statblock?Because the monster is loosing something in its 4e translation. Other peoples' games won't be quite as interesting as they could be because they'll never know that a phane could use the 'evil twin' idea to great effect. It diminishes, in some slight way, the overall quality of the published rules, if they're not attentive to the interesting things that they could do.At the moment, I don't really care HOW its done, I care THAT its done. The idea of 'evil twin' combats is something that pops up in more than just the phane (doppelgangers, shadow doubles, necromancers with magic jar). I think it's erroneous to assume that the wordy way you have in mind is the only possible approach that 4e could take. It's their JOB to come up with easy speedy ways for me to do this, and they're pretty good at their jobs. I'm pretty sure they could think of a better way than you or I could, if for no other reason than that they're paid to think about it more often than you or I are.This is almost approaching the mythical territory of the Idiot DM. Any DM who can't use a monster for what he wants to get out of the monster has bigger problems than any specific monster. Really? Where does the RAW reference time duplicates?Stealing time generally implies that the phane gets the time that it stole from you. Does the phane heal hp or become hasted? Where do the rules say that?Well, since he can move before he steals your time, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense...It is stated that such effects go away when the effect ends, so it really just seems cosmetic to me. I'm disappointed that several interesting opportunities have been lost in the shift between editions for the phane, and I don't see why they would have to be.</blockquote>

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