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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4294906" data-attributes="member: 2067">I don't know. I need the rules or pre-prep to tell me how long he should take, so that I don't have to decide this when I'm worried about how we're going to make it to the Black Dragon by the end of the night when we're barely halfway there and Fargas is being a bit of a spotlight-hog. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I want that decision to be made for me already so I don't have to waste brain-space pondering it. And I don't really want to spend time having to develop the rules on the fly or doing extensive pre-prep for something that, lets' face it, I would have no idea would be coming up.If the game just tells me how long it takes without putting the ball back in my court, I can worry about more important things, and nudge it if I have to.All I'm seeing is that encounters should take the ally into account. But how much oomph does a 1st level minion add when he's tagging along with a 4th level party? How about a 24th level party? And if I make him a full creature so that he can stand a bit longer, does that add more oomph? And what of the Solo Dragon that they've somehow managed to convince to help them wage war on their eneies with, how many more monsters should I add in the encounter to counteract THAT guy? It's good advice, but its incomplete, and it doesn't address the scenarios I need it to.In the heat of the moment, I don't know if I want someone to be able to pick up the apron and use it as armor. I just know 1st-level commoners don't usually have armor, and if the PC rolls low and misses, they're going to want to know how this Blacksmith from podunk can dodge their superior ninja skills even though they hit an AC of 11, even WITH the low roll.What I WANT, is for them to get to the black dragon, deal with it, and collect their treasure and XP, and to have fun getting there. If Fargas wants to mess with the townsfolk, I'm game, but I don't want to have to analyze how his failed attempt to sleep with some blacksmith's wife is going to later affect the treasure level of this black dragon. I have bigger fish to fry, so I want to already have these little fish fried up so all I have to do is serve them to keep the customers happy while I'm working on the main course. So I'm looking for a way to quickly automate the process of deciding "do I want?" I don't care. I'm not very demanding. Tell me what would make sense to most people without me having to do any work, and just let me get on with it without raining on my parade or making me stop the game for 15 minutes. It's kind of an essential component of me running a game. Yes, that's exactly it. If I have to do prep work, I'm unhappy. Any good ways to automate the prep work I'd have to do for 4e so that I can have more fun playing it?Maybe I'm missing it. I'm not seeing where the PHB and the DMG allow me to differentiate how much Bill knows about cheeses from how much he knows about blacksmithing to how much he knows about high elven glamour? Or where it would make sense for him to have a 1st level kobold skirmisher's mob attack?Because I don't want to have to make that stuff up just based on how I feel, and I have no way of knowing Bill even exists before right after Fargas starts hitting on his wife. I need....something that will scale well to different silos. Or a way to scale something else into different silos in a way that can cover my bases adequately enough for me to improv around. So you're me. Your five players walk into town looking for horses after theirs got eaten up. Fargas surprises you by cruising for chicks. You have nothing prepared. How would you handle it?I handle it by, ideally, having some way to scale up to the full complexity that I would need (if Bill or his wife or both of them become some sort of recurring characters, or even eventual PC's when Fargas's womanizer dies horribly of Fantasy Herpes just as he had always wanted to) that I didn't need to spend time generating before or during the game so that I don't have to make decisions by fiat. "Prepared," he says. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />No, those notes I whipped up while the rest of the party was doing more mundane things. I didn't have them before the session began. Just little phrases that can be used to describe the characters they're likely to meet.A lot of the time, that's all my NPC design is, because I know when I write it down that they might have a conversation. Before I knew that, I didn't even know I needed NPC's! When I prepared the adventure, I just thought they were going to stop at the town, begrudgingly pay to have their horses replaced, maybe stay the night, and head out to my hobgoblin encounter in the morning. But Fargus got into it, and I had to adapt.And I'm going to have problems adapting if the rules are only designed to work in one situation, and not in a more unusual situation (which, for me, crops up all the freakin' time). I won't know until I need it and when I need it I need it right away. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> If the whole party gets involved in Fargas's escapade, I'll need a full level 1 encounter with everyone. If Fargas is just eating up time, I might not need anything more than a simple d20 roll and the ability to handle it off-screen. It will vary based on the moment, and I'm going to need the rules to respond to whatever the game needs at that moment. Kind of my main issue with the intro to the Cast of Characters section telling me what to do with NPCs: it assumes I'll know what roles they're going to play and what ends they're going to serve before I introduce them. I have no idea. I need to know how to react to what they need, not pro-act and tell them what they need (or what I want).</blockquote>

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