GreyLord
Legend
One thing that sort of bothers me on 4e occasionally is the different rules governing Heroes from Monsters. Well...more exactly, heroes from NPC's, and even more exactly...HUMAN, ELF, DWARF, etc...player races PC's vs Player Races NPCs.
I can buy the idea that Monsters are monsters. They have limited abilities. They are...afterall...Monsters. IT isn't like your dog is suddenly going to develop the ability to become a Master Arch Sorcerer (well...unless you play 3.X in which case you may have your dog become an Arch Mage). Differences in how monsters have their abilities and hp figured are just fine...however then you come to the same types of species. Drizzt is a good example from what I've seen. He's an NPC with 700+ HP, and only a few powers. However...in truth he should be a Dark Elf Ranger that had the same stats as a PC in older editions.
So how does a PC type character get translated into something so vastly different.
This comes into play even moreso when PC's retire and become NPC's. Should they suddenly have a HUGE boost in power, gain a TON more HP...and keep their powers...and suddenly JUST ONE of them could threaten the ENTIRE GROUP from before...simply because they became an NPC?
No offense...but that's stupid. Taking Orcus as an example from MM1 and backtracking his stats...as a PC he should only have around 300 HP. OF course that isn't going to be the threat to a party of NPC's like an Orcus with 1500+ HP, but it seems that one could scale the power of solos MUCH better by decalculating their HP and abilities and then recalculating as if they were PC's.
In some ways, it's almost as if they take the PC class and multiply HP and abilities by not much at Heroic, by x3 at Paragon, and x6 at Epic. Or by the rules...5x HP with applicable powers (via the MM1 method) for Solo monsters etc.
As I said, I can buy this with monsters...but for others such as those NPC's that are supposedly built from the same cloth as the PC's...unless the NPC is that much higher a level than a PC...it should be that the NPC's are of equivalent power...aka...built from the same cloth instead of a different cloth.
Maybe that's just my old school thoughts reflected there...where monsters are monsters...and NPC's are NPC's...
It starts nagging more on me the higher the level the characters get (and the bigger the difference in HP).
Anyone else feel this way and how do you handle this...or don't. What happens when you get players that say...WTH...
For example...in epic play some players say...hey...this guy is a Ranger in the books, and WE KNOW how Rangers are built according to the rules...something wrong is going on with your Ranger Mr. DM...
I can buy the idea that Monsters are monsters. They have limited abilities. They are...afterall...Monsters. IT isn't like your dog is suddenly going to develop the ability to become a Master Arch Sorcerer (well...unless you play 3.X in which case you may have your dog become an Arch Mage). Differences in how monsters have their abilities and hp figured are just fine...however then you come to the same types of species. Drizzt is a good example from what I've seen. He's an NPC with 700+ HP, and only a few powers. However...in truth he should be a Dark Elf Ranger that had the same stats as a PC in older editions.
So how does a PC type character get translated into something so vastly different.
This comes into play even moreso when PC's retire and become NPC's. Should they suddenly have a HUGE boost in power, gain a TON more HP...and keep their powers...and suddenly JUST ONE of them could threaten the ENTIRE GROUP from before...simply because they became an NPC?
No offense...but that's stupid. Taking Orcus as an example from MM1 and backtracking his stats...as a PC he should only have around 300 HP. OF course that isn't going to be the threat to a party of NPC's like an Orcus with 1500+ HP, but it seems that one could scale the power of solos MUCH better by decalculating their HP and abilities and then recalculating as if they were PC's.
In some ways, it's almost as if they take the PC class and multiply HP and abilities by not much at Heroic, by x3 at Paragon, and x6 at Epic. Or by the rules...5x HP with applicable powers (via the MM1 method) for Solo monsters etc.
As I said, I can buy this with monsters...but for others such as those NPC's that are supposedly built from the same cloth as the PC's...unless the NPC is that much higher a level than a PC...it should be that the NPC's are of equivalent power...aka...built from the same cloth instead of a different cloth.
Maybe that's just my old school thoughts reflected there...where monsters are monsters...and NPC's are NPC's...
It starts nagging more on me the higher the level the characters get (and the bigger the difference in HP).
Anyone else feel this way and how do you handle this...or don't. What happens when you get players that say...WTH...
For example...in epic play some players say...hey...this guy is a Ranger in the books, and WE KNOW how Rangers are built according to the rules...something wrong is going on with your Ranger Mr. DM...