My take on it all. (A Rant of sorts, feel free to ignore)

[BEAN THE CAT]

Drow were statted in the 1e Fiend Folio, pg. 33. They were Level "II and up". "Drow males are all at least 2nd level fighters -- some are as high as 7th level in fighting ability. Males can also be magic-users, some as high as 12th level. .." I think a single 2nd level drow fighter would not cause a TPK of a 1st-level party.

Ah the FF, I had even less use for that then the MMII....

And a single L2 causing a 1L party wipe? , Har!

 

[shadowguidex]

I think you're looking for the MM to provide you everything you need, and you want it to replace all the fun and work of adventure creation. In 3E, all the monsters shown were at their weakest point - unless you have your heroes fight a group of baseline monsters, the monsters needed further modification.

In 4E, the monster manual presents monsters not at their baseline, but at their optimal to present a fun challenge to the heroes. Nobody wants to fight Drow Elf villagers who suck at combat. IF you want to make weak drow elves, it it very easy to do so.

That brings us to the main difference between the two editions. The amount of time it takes to modify the monster manual entries to make them into a fun an exciting encounter. 3E required you to take the baseline monster and pile on templates, levels, or advanements to make them into more powerful versions. Weakening them was basically impossible, and strengthening them often made them too difficult in comparison to the baseline monsters.

In 4E, you have a core mechanic to build any type of monster from scratch with easy. It takes about 3 minutes to build the core of any monster, and however much extra time to make exciting and cool powers for the monster. If you need a really weak drow, just build it, and give it the standard racials that all drow get scaled for level. If you need a super powerful Kobold, likewise it's easy to build, and again just give it the normal racials. I think this is the prime difference in editions...in both you need to do work to make your adventure exciting, but in 4E it's just so much easier to craft the monsters exactly how you want them.

In both editions, if you take the majority of your monsters as is, straight from the MM, your adventure probably sucks. Spend some time and effort, no matter what edition you play, and the benefits will pay off - with 4E paying off a bit more because the time requirement to do the above is much less strenuous.

 

[The Little Raven]

Drow weren't really in the 1e MM - they were mentioned along with grey elves (somethig about "dark as faeries are light" and "weak fighters, but strong magic-users" IIRC) - but no stats.

I knew there was something wrong when I typed that out. It was indeed the Fiend Folio.

But, it's not like monsters were formally designed to challenge a specific level in 1e or even 2e

That is not true. It's readily obvious that a good deal of monsters (Pit Fiends, for example) were not intended to be used against low-level parties, because they could not handle them. If you wanted a Pit Fiend suitable for 1st-level parties, you had to do a lot of work yourself... just like if you wanted a Dwarf opponent suitable for 11th level parties, you had to do a lot of work yourself. It's exactly the same in 4e. Kobolds are statted to be threats to 1st-2nd level characters, and if you want one that's a threat to higher level characters, you'd have to do the work yourself for it.

 

[BEAN THE CAT]

I think you're looking for the MM to provide you everything you need, and you want it to replace all the fun and work of adventure creation. .

Um, no......., I am asking it to be more then a "Menu of level approprite monsters, for a level X "challenge"

And thats why I question its over all utility.

 

[BEAN THE CAT]

I knew there was something wrong when I typed that out. It was indeed the Fiend Folio.



That is not true. It's readily obvious that a good deal of monsters (Pit Fiends, for example) were not intended to be used against low-level parties, because they could not handle them. If you wanted a Pit Fiend suitable for 1st-level parties, you had to do a lot of work yourself... just like if you wanted a Dwarf opponent suitable for 11th level parties, you had to do a lot of work yourself. It's exactly the same in 4e. Kobolds are statted to be threats to 1st-2nd level characters, and if you want one that's a threat to higher level characters, you'd have to do the work yourself for it.

Heh, I guess some one did bother with that stuff then , that sort of thing much like CRs in 3E was to much like a Formula, to me. Common sense usually guided what I hit my PC's with....

 

[shadowguidex]

Um, no......., I am asking it to be more then a "Menu of level approprite monsters, for a level X "challenge"

Dude, it takes all of 5 minutes to adjust any monster in that book to any level you want it to be. The book cant have every monster at every level in 288 pages. If you want something other than whats in there, just do it and stop crying about it.

Take ghosts for instance. The MM provides you with ghosts of level 4, 8, and 12. If yuo need a Ghost of any other level it'll take you a few minutes to make it up. The 3E MM gave you a template that you applied to any other appropriate monster, and had no ready to go ghosts. In the end, 4E wins out on prep time over 3E.

Take Hell Hounds as another example. The 3.5E MM gave you two ready to go hell hounds, level 4 and 11 IIRC. The 4E MM also has 2 hell hounds ready to go, levels 7 and 17. The 4E hell hounds are a hell of a lot easy to ajust up or down a few levels. The 3E Hell hounds needed to be modified with size alteration, add a template, or somehow add a level of character class. In the end, 4E is way better for this type of monster.

 

[BEAN THE CAT]

Dude, it takes all of 5 minutes to adjust any monster in that book to any level you want it to be. The book cant have every monster at every level in 288 pages. If you want something other than whats in there, just do it and stop crying about it.

Who's crying, JERK.

 

[The Little Raven]

And a single L2 causing a 1L party wipe? , Har!

Two orcs in 3E were considered appropriate for 4 level 1 PCs, at CR 1/2. Each one is capable of killing a 1st-level character in a single hit. Two rounds and the entire party can be corpses. I know, I've seen it happen.

Heh, I guess some one did bother with that stuff then , that sort of thing much like CRs in 3E was to much like a Formula, to me. Common sense usually guided what I hit my PC's with....

Common sense doesn't hold up as well as good game design when it comes to disparate tables and playstyles.

 

[MadMaligor]

"Evil hates pie." - Master Panda.


Seriously, though, I hear where you're coming from. 3e did move monsters towards being more PC-like. Having levels, having many abilities, having stats, for that matter, 1E monsters didn't have STR or DEX or CON (all that was just 'part of' thier dam/att, AC & hps) and had INT given in small ranges.

The cool thing about making monsters PC-like is that they follow the same rules as PCs (so you have a more unified system), and they're more customizeable - I suppose, there's also a gain in versimilitude, since it implies monsters having background and experiences of thier own, too.

The uncool thing is that they take longer to stat out, are more effort to run in combat, and occassionally either fold like paper tigers, or kick the holy crap out of the party when they shouldn't.

In 1E, generally, monsters had lower AC than PCs, poorer saves, hit a little better than most PCs, didn't do all that much damage (no STR bonus or magic weapons), and didn't have all that many hps (no CON bonus). The Heros are supposed to win, so that's as it should be. Of course, in 1E, monsters also had bizarre arbitrary abilities that just killed you character out of hand, or were subject to wild swings of interprestation.

In 3E, monsters generally were bigger than PCs, much better at grappling, hit more, did more damage, had lower ACs and more hps. But, they were supposed to challenge a whole party of thier 'level.' Bascially, all 3E monsters were like 4e Solos. A single monster of your level was a challenge, a group of them was brutal. (Two things many DMs never seemed to figure out, BTW: Improved Grab carried a -20 penalty, and it's OK to throw groups of 'lower level' monsters at your PCs instead of one big one.)

In 4E, AFAICT from my first readthrough of the monster manual, monsters have lower AC & Defenses than PCs, more hps (brutes, elites and solos have a /lot/ more), more at will powers, fewer encounter or daily powers, and the wierd/arbitrary powers now tend to just annoy you until you make your coint-toss save. I'm not sure how that's really supposed to work. Just looking at the stats, it seems like even a basic challenge is going to force a party to burn through all thier enocounter & daily powers, second winds, healing words, and what not, while they slowly wade through it's enourmous bag of hps. The exceptions being minions that pop like baloons on any successfull attacks.

I can imagine a DM engineering some fairly cinematic fight scenes from that. The PCs are attacked by a band of orcs, they quickly cut down some of them (minions) with style and flair, then settle in to a drawn-out 'dramatic' battle with the non-faceless leaders and elites, in which the heros get beaten down, only to rally, well, heroiocally, at the last minute and defeat thier foes. Works great on film. It seems obvious that's what 4e is going for, but I've never seen D&D actually pull that sort of thing off before. The game has really more definied it's own fantasy sub-genre and feel (ripped off by many other RPGs and MMOs) than simulated any existing ones.

Cinematic, kinda, but that really has more to do with roleplay during combat than anything else. Tactically challenging, oh yeah. "Bags" of HP...no, but if you mean they have a range thats appropriate to accomodate an actual battle feel rather than a one hit wonder fest in the first few levels, then yes. Minions are the one hit wonders for all encounters and in play it works out brilliantly.

Having used the system now a good bit it does take some getting used to and getting past what seems like drawn out combat at first. Now that the players are familair with what they can do, combat is very fast and alot of fun. Sure there are battles that are elongated and feel cinematic, but thats almost exclusively for the big end gaming session ones, as it should be.

 

[BEAN THE CAT]

Two orcs in 3E were considered appropriate for 4 level 1 PCs, at CR 1/2. Each one is capable of killing a 1st-level character in a single hit. Two rounds and the entire party can be corpses. I know, I've seen it happen.

Ya, Me to, But like I said I think the whole CR idea was wacky. I killed more players useing the CR guide lines then I did by ignoreing it in 3E

Common sense doesn't hold up as well as good game design when it comes to disparate tables and playstyles.

Maybe so, Maybe so- But, I'd wager that for every GM who ridigly stuck to the Encounter guide lines for for any editon , there is one who threw it out the window and did it his way....for better or worse.