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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7189797" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>I'm sure it's not just you, but 'more believable' can also mean 'less fantastic.' It helps for characters to have unique abilities, too, sometimes. And, a BBEG casting magic missile can be a tad anti-climactic. </p><p></p><p> Sure, fine idea. Simpler than building a full character, more interesting and evocative than a bland monster block. Would be a great thing to have.</p><p></p><p>[sblock="It's been done before"]Of course, 3e had NPC classes, which were less potent than PC classes, and made NPCs slightly less involved to build - but only slightly. And all sorts of templates you could put on an NPC to make a monster or on a monster to make it a ...whatever, though, again, not a lot of savings in effort relative to a full PC build.</p><p>And, of course, while I'm sure no one wants to hear it, 4e did exactly the PC-class Template thing: take a standard monster, up it to Elite, add a feature, at-will, & encounter (or encounter as a recharge or daily as an encounter), and you have a quick 'NPC' usable as an enemy with that class. Or, for an allied NPC, there were the Companion character guidelines, which produced with a standard-monster-like stat block with a few abilities emblematic of the class in question, and able to handle it's role in a basic way to fill in a gap in the party without challenging the PCs for the spotlight.[/sblock]</p><p></p><p> Sure, CR isn't all its cracked up to be.</p><p></p><p> True. I suppose it might be an extension of the fear that explicit choices stifle creativity, though applied to the DM. The DM can lift an ability from one monster and put it in another, or give a monster spells, or adapt a class feature to a monster block. That's a tremendous degree of freedom for customizing monsters, precisely because it's unstructured and un-guided. There could be a concern that to take a few such things out, and make them into 'monster feats,' would create an impression that monsters aren't supposed to have anything else available for customization?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7189797, member: 996"] I'm sure it's not just you, but 'more believable' can also mean 'less fantastic.' It helps for characters to have unique abilities, too, sometimes. And, a BBEG casting magic missile can be a tad anti-climactic. Sure, fine idea. Simpler than building a full character, more interesting and evocative than a bland monster block. Would be a great thing to have. [sblock="It's been done before"]Of course, 3e had NPC classes, which were less potent than PC classes, and made NPCs slightly less involved to build - but only slightly. And all sorts of templates you could put on an NPC to make a monster or on a monster to make it a ...whatever, though, again, not a lot of savings in effort relative to a full PC build. And, of course, while I'm sure no one wants to hear it, 4e did exactly the PC-class Template thing: take a standard monster, up it to Elite, add a feature, at-will, & encounter (or encounter as a recharge or daily as an encounter), and you have a quick 'NPC' usable as an enemy with that class. Or, for an allied NPC, there were the Companion character guidelines, which produced with a standard-monster-like stat block with a few abilities emblematic of the class in question, and able to handle it's role in a basic way to fill in a gap in the party without challenging the PCs for the spotlight.[/sblock] Sure, CR isn't all its cracked up to be. True. I suppose it might be an extension of the fear that explicit choices stifle creativity, though applied to the DM. The DM can lift an ability from one monster and put it in another, or give a monster spells, or adapt a class feature to a monster block. That's a tremendous degree of freedom for customizing monsters, precisely because it's unstructured and un-guided. There could be a concern that to take a few such things out, and make them into 'monster feats,' would create an impression that monsters aren't supposed to have anything else available for customization? [/QUOTE]
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