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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4296248" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, its more that I want that troll to be able to respond to what the PC's throw at him by having rules for telling me what that troll is like as a baseline. What the DMG and MM are telling me is that the stats for the critter in the MM aren't what the creature is like, they are what a fight with the creature is like (they're not meant to simulate anything aside from the fight). But when I take those stats and I use them in something that's not a fight, I'm going to need a robust system for handling that transition.Take the blacksmith. He was never meant to be fought, so I don't have a quick way to turn him from three-word descriptions into a combat encounter if I need to. Similarly, I don't have a quick way to turn an orc in the MM into a recurring mentor character, or to advance a kobold that the PC's have recruited as an ally and who has persevered for 10 levels (or turn that kobold into a PC when one of the other characters dies and a player wants to take him over). By giving me a lot of rules, 3e could handle a lot of that solid baseline. By only giving me things that address a specific type of encounter, 4e leaves me kind of floundering when it turns into a different kind of encounter halfway through. I want to stop floundering, but I don't want to spend time with intricate rules systems or making stuff up.I can't say "You will fight hobgoblins." I can only say "There are hobgoblins." 4e tells me what hobgoblins are like in a fight, but it doesn't tell me what hobgoblins are, period, in a fight or in a dance contest or when mutating animals. When I ask 4e "What's a hobgoblin?" it tells me "It depends on what you want to use it for." I say "I don't know," it says "Neither do I, then, until you do."That's a hang-up for me. I can see what hobgoblins do when beating up PC's, but its harder for me to see what hobgoblins do when those PC's ask to join the hobgoblin army in its march on the kingdom (and thus what hobgoblins do when beating up NPC's, or when on the march, or...)Hm...maybe I'll have to work out a "NONCOMBAT" section for every MM group that can help me prepare for these things ahead of time...but that's a lot of work, and I'm lazy, so I was looking to avoid that. <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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