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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9316804" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I agree that trolls, traps, and werewolves have kind of cursed design in this regard.&nbsp; How much of a threat they pose is really tied to what you're allowed to know about them.&nbsp; In games with monster knowledge rules, you can really easily find that the difficult of many encounters boils down to &quot;roll a die, success cuts the challenge in half&quot;.And I like having dedicated monster knowledge rules, but so many classic monsters (and many new ones) seem to be designed with issue.&nbsp; Players walk into encounters predisposed to be wary of statues, beautiful women, and unassuming treasure chests- to the point that many a GM grumbles annoyed that the players are &quot;metagaming&quot;, but the situations where the players are right to be cautious keep coming up!5e claims to be a game where you can run it just like the old school games of old, but the options it gives to players fight against that notion every step of the way.&nbsp; Or alternately, there's too many &quot;old school&quot; challenges cluttering up a game that is designed for a different paradigm.&nbsp; It comes to about the same thing.I remember my brain exploding when someone dug up that developer post about monsters being designed around simple hit point vs. expected damage and not things like accuracy vs. AC.&nbsp; I've yet to see a PC Wizard with less than 15 AC, but there's tons of monsters running around with +3 to hit at low levels, when a 1st level Cleric could have an AC of 18 (or more!).(As an aside, I'm about to start DMing again, and I decided to convert some old 2e modules.&nbsp; Every time I get to an encounter with some classic monsters in it, my head hurts.&nbsp; I have medium encounters that look like meat grinders and hard encounters that seem like they'll be a speed bump.&nbsp; It really makes me wonder who exactly, WotC thinks is playing this game and how they're doing it!).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9316804, member: 6877472"] I agree that trolls, traps, and werewolves have kind of cursed design in this regard. How much of a threat they pose is really tied to what you're allowed to know about them. In games with monster knowledge rules, you can really easily find that the difficult of many encounters boils down to "roll a die, success cuts the challenge in half". And I like having dedicated monster knowledge rules, but so many classic monsters (and many new ones) seem to be designed with issue. Players walk into encounters predisposed to be wary of statues, beautiful women, and unassuming treasure chests- to the point that many a GM grumbles annoyed that the players are "metagaming", but the situations where the players are right to be cautious keep coming up! 5e claims to be a game where you can run it just like the old school games of old, but the options it gives to players fight against that notion every step of the way. Or alternately, there's too many "old school" challenges cluttering up a game that is designed for a different paradigm. It comes to about the same thing. I remember my brain exploding when someone dug up that developer post about monsters being designed around simple hit point vs. expected damage and not things like accuracy vs. AC. I've yet to see a PC Wizard with less than 15 AC, but there's tons of monsters running around with +3 to hit at low levels, when a 1st level Cleric could have an AC of 18 (or more!). (As an aside, I'm about to start DMing again, and I decided to convert some old 2e modules. Every time I get to an encounter with some classic monsters in it, my head hurts. I have medium encounters that look like meat grinders and hard encounters that seem like they'll be a speed bump. It really makes me wonder who exactly, WotC thinks is playing this game and how they're doing it!). [/QUOTE]

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