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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6050863" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>If you go to the WotC website and look under "What to buy?", the only monster book you'll see is MV. It's currently the default monster book for 4e. As far as mechanics are concerned, it's also the single <em>best</em> monster book for 4e. So I don't think it's unreasonable to point to it as the game's standard.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And here is where I enter my obligatory (if oft-ignored) plea in defence of the original MM, at least at Heroic tier. (I even used a Young Black Dragon - one of the most criticised of all MM solos - in an awesome encounter in a temple portico: the PCs plinked away with arrows from their defended position as it approached, and the wizard then channelled Arcane power through an idol of the Summer Queen that he had discovered - thus dispelling its darkness on his turn, with increasingly high Arcana DCs - while the other PCs gradually brought it down.)</p><p></p><p>There's no doubt that, mechanics wise, MV is better than MM - and mandatory if you are going out of Heroic tier. But I think flavour-wise the MM is better - its terser style allows more info to be included, and its Lore DCs make adjudicating knowledge checks easier. And its goblin, devil and demon entries are (in my view) pretty much unparalleled in the annals of D&D monster books.</p><p></p><p>The main difficulty for the skill challenge rules is the extreme scaling that characterises 4e. Any complex resolution system is going to be hard to get right in any environment in which the bonuses brought to bear against a given DC can be so variable. The DCs have, by my count, taken 4 goes to get right (the original values, then the deletion of the "add 5 for skills" footnote at the bottom of the DMG table, then the DMG2 errata to the DMG table, then the Essentials errata to the DMG table). And Essentials, as well as errata-ing the DCs, also adopts a new mechanical device - the "Advantage" - to further smooth the bumps that scaling bonuses cause.</p><p></p><p>Advantages also have the effect of smoothing out the bumps that the move from "N before half-N" to "N before 3" - a change that itself was necessitated by scaling - introduce into the system.</p><p></p><p>If D&Dnext really implements Flat Maths, that will make a skill challenge mechanic much easier to design.</p><p></p><p>In my capacity as (limited) defender of the merits of core 4e, I feel olbiged to post that that's not really a fair paraphrase of the following passage (DMG, p 75:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Thinking players are engaged players. In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing to help the party survive in the uninhabited sandy wastes by using that skill. Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.</p><p></p><p>I actually think that that is pretty good advice, particularly when you're dealing with a play environment that is very used to having the "face", the "trap guy", the "nature guy" etc for dealing with out-of-combat challenges.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6050863, member: 42582"] If you go to the WotC website and look under "What to buy?", the only monster book you'll see is MV. It's currently the default monster book for 4e. As far as mechanics are concerned, it's also the single [I]best[/I] monster book for 4e. So I don't think it's unreasonable to point to it as the game's standard. And here is where I enter my obligatory (if oft-ignored) plea in defence of the original MM, at least at Heroic tier. (I even used a Young Black Dragon - one of the most criticised of all MM solos - in an awesome encounter in a temple portico: the PCs plinked away with arrows from their defended position as it approached, and the wizard then channelled Arcane power through an idol of the Summer Queen that he had discovered - thus dispelling its darkness on his turn, with increasingly high Arcana DCs - while the other PCs gradually brought it down.) There's no doubt that, mechanics wise, MV is better than MM - and mandatory if you are going out of Heroic tier. But I think flavour-wise the MM is better - its terser style allows more info to be included, and its Lore DCs make adjudicating knowledge checks easier. And its goblin, devil and demon entries are (in my view) pretty much unparalleled in the annals of D&D monster books. The main difficulty for the skill challenge rules is the extreme scaling that characterises 4e. Any complex resolution system is going to be hard to get right in any environment in which the bonuses brought to bear against a given DC can be so variable. The DCs have, by my count, taken 4 goes to get right (the original values, then the deletion of the "add 5 for skills" footnote at the bottom of the DMG table, then the DMG2 errata to the DMG table, then the Essentials errata to the DMG table). And Essentials, as well as errata-ing the DCs, also adopts a new mechanical device - the "Advantage" - to further smooth the bumps that scaling bonuses cause. Advantages also have the effect of smoothing out the bumps that the move from "N before half-N" to "N before 3" - a change that itself was necessitated by scaling - introduce into the system. If D&Dnext really implements Flat Maths, that will make a skill challenge mechanic much easier to design. In my capacity as (limited) defender of the merits of core 4e, I feel olbiged to post that that's not really a fair paraphrase of the following passage (DMG, p 75: [indent]Thinking players are engaged players. In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing to help the party survive in the uninhabited sandy wastes by using that skill. Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.[/indent] I actually think that that is pretty good advice, particularly when you're dealing with a play environment that is very used to having the "face", the "trap guy", the "nature guy" etc for dealing with out-of-combat challenges. [/QUOTE]
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