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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 4848981" data-attributes="member: 60075">And that's a good thing to do. No doubt the 4E rust monster (or the one we saw in the 2006 make over by WotC) is a good thing too - for people who want to avoid the 15 minute adventuring day at all costs. But it's controversial now as much as it was in 2006 whether this means that all monsters in the game need to conform to one and the same model. Basically, there are 300+ critters in D&D, discounting any follow-up MM IIs, IIIs, or what have you. Among these, yes there are some monsters which will seriously challenge the party to come up with new strategies. If one of that strategy is "he who flees today, lives to flee another day", so be it. If you as a DM, or your players, have serious issues with such a scenario, just avoid the two dozens of monsters in the game which bring up the issue in the first place. It's not like there's nothing ELSE in this game.I've never begrudged people who disliked the old rust monster for their gaming preferences. What I did begrudge was the need to enforce their preferences, already served by 280 critters in the game, on the remaining 20. That seemed incredibly selfish to me. See, what I don't get is their begrudging those people who like variety among the monsters so as to satisfy and encourage a variety of DMing skills and preferences - not to mention the players'. So the only setup within which I honest-to-heart can appreciate (as opposed to: begrudge) ruthlessly homogenized monster design is Organized Play - a format which, by definition, can't make many concessions to a variety in DMing preferences and player skills. Organized Play needs to reinforce standards of refereeing, and standardized design is a primary method to achieve that.See above. If my players were hired by a cleric to clear out a haunted tomb, and two of them suffered woefully at the claws err touch attacks of an allip, the party could, upon clearing the tomb, return to the cleric and ask him for aid over and above the original call. Is that hopeless? Not necessarily. Might the cleric decline to oblige, laughing instead at the characters' inaptitude for not finishing the allip with ranged attacks first? Possibly.But there you have it. Resource replenishment outside the box of "oooh, if my party meets monster X, then they MIGHT risk going beneath their expected gold per level ratio, in which case they can't afford the magic items they deserve to buy because (obviously) I, the DM, can't do anything about this by handling these issues in-game" is a good thing; I don't get DMs, or players, who are nervous about it. And I wasn't even particularly imaginative with my example of appealing to the cleric. Basically, finding ways to alleviate a sudden shortage in resources is up to the players' imagination, not the DMs. For some, that's a beautiful ingredient to the game which will sorely be missed, so I don't understand why designers wish to pre-empt it at every turn.Yes, that's exactly what the side bar says in the 4E MM 2 about the new rust monster. Not a single monster in the game should force the party to leave the dungeon. I don't get it why. There's a whole world there outside the dungeon. While 4E, as a game, doesn't bother much with that world, I would have never expected Pathfinder RPG to enter that camp too. Just to repeat myself like the broken record I am. There's only one set up where a game session goes irreparably wrong once players are forced to leave the dungeon, and that's the 4 hour convention game set up in Organized Play. And nope, I'm not making this up. Read <a href="http://nitessine.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/pathfinder-bonus-bestiary/" target="_blank">here why the former Allip was such a pain in the back for convention play.</a> To quote:And, to top it off:That basically closes my case. As I wrote elsewhere, the 4E rust monster is a codification of the RPGA's former ruling for sundered weapons where you get your item back at the end of the session. Sundering as written was a no-go for the RPGA, so they "fixed" it. Ever wanted to know why sundering in 4E is gone? Well there. Organized Play. Now, I hadn't followed up PFRPG's handling of the issue, but I'm glad to be informed about this now.</blockquote>

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