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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4881119" data-attributes="member: 82106">In general what the monster class templates accomplish is to give you an opponent with the hit points and damage output values of monsters along with a limited set of features from a class. There are a few reasons why it is a good way to go.Monsters are balanced a lot differently than PCs. They generally do a fair amount less damage, at least at the higher levels, and have considerably more hit points. They also generally have a lot less individual powers than equivalent level PCs. Following that pattern will definitely make combat less swingy. It will also simplify the life of the DM when running them in combat. PCs are expected to face a wide variety of situations and need a variety of powers in order to do that. Monsters generally fight a specific battle in a specific location against one particular set of opponents and thus giving them a dozen different powers really isn't necessary. It just tends to slow the DM down when running them. Likewise giving them PC level damage output means it is quite possible to fell a PC in the first round of combat, possibly before they even get to act at all. Giving monsters a good number of hit points insures they won't go down instantly themselves in most cases plus it relieves the DM from having to deal with having a leader to provide healing, etc. So that would be my suggestion, base your opponents on monsters with class or functional templates where needed. Lesser opponents can simply use reskinned monster stat blocks with perhaps a bit of power tweaking. You can get a lot of milage out of simply using an interesting stat block and changing the fluff associated with it. It is possible to use DMG NPCs as well, but they do tend to have some of the same issues as full PCs, being rather low on the hit point scale and usually doing more damage than most monsters. Its not as extreme as a true PC and may work fine though.</blockquote>

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