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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9545786" data-attributes="member: 7737">Yes, exactly. I'm fine with the admission that this is a blend of art and science, but at least tell me how hard you, the designer, were trying to make the monster / encounter / trap / whatever. Is this a routine speedbump encounter that the PCs roll over expending few resources? Is this a tough encounter that requires significant expenditure to defeat, but is intended to be beatable? Or is this an encounter of the type "you must be this tall to fight the dragon and you're not tall enough" where the PCs are expected to flee or die?Then, depending upon what happens at my table, I can calibrate my expectations.Of course we're not. We don't need reductio ad absurdum to realize that all Monster Creation Rules are inherently flawed, arbitrary (at least somewhat), highly prone to error, and strongly dependent upon table variation.However. If a game abandons any attempt at rules / guidelines / guardrails / whatever -- that irks me. Because I pay for games so that I don't have to do as much work. Of course I expect to do some work, but equally I expect the designer to have laid enough groundwork and put in enough trial and error that I am not a beta tester. That said...... as they always do once the beta test begins in earnest. And by "beta test", of course I mean, "Thousands of players buy the game and play it." That said, if a game comes out of the gate with clearly ill considered monster / encounter rules, that's (to me) a failure in today's day and age. It's a failure because, (A) we have decades of TTRPG experience and published rules to draw upon, and (B) it's never been easier to get feedback on your monsters than it is now.100% agreed.It strikes me as telling that over four decades of RPG-ing, the most fun and most success I ever had making monsters was in 4e D&D and 13th Age (1e) where the rules were relatively minimal and easy to apply (and even the secret sauce of special abilities was easy, particularly with 4e's digital tools that allowed me to drag-and-drop from another monster), and the least fun and least success I ever had was in 3e D&D where the rules were not easy to apply despite being very extensive.No surprise that for games with even simpler systems, monster creation becomes that much easier (Fate Accelerated monsters are what, 3 numbers?), until you get to the point that the monster doesn't have any stats at but is some game-rule level of punishment the PCs try to mitigate (Blades in the Dark "monsters" are some amount of Harm / positional disadvantage, and that's it).Yes. I'd also like the designer to break down the examples and show their work: how was Generic Humanoid Enemy built via the system, vs. Terrifying Flying Lizard, vs. Lovecraftian Ancient Evil, vs. etc?And even if part of the answer is, "I [the game designer] deliberate deviated from my own rules because it seemed cool" -- then SAY THAT!</blockquote>

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