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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3118298" data-attributes="member: 22424">The two go together, and feed off one another. Fewer people play at high level, so fewer people buy, so fewer adventures and supplements are produced, so fewer people have an incentive to play at high level, so...Agreed... mostly. One of the problems I face is that I have limited time to prep a game, and would rather spend that on the tasks of designing worlds, adventures and encounters, and not on the purely mechanical tasks of generating endless stat blocks. And, as the levels go up, the options expand exponentially, the complexity increases at a similar rate, and the time required gets too much. Sure, each step is easy, but working with the whole... not so much.At this stage, the last thing I need are more new types of monsters, more new prestige classes and, in short, more new crunch. What I need is some way to make better use of what I do have. This could take the form of a "how to" guide giving effective tips and techniques for short-circuiting the decision-making and stat generation tasks or, better yet, a really good PC application for generating stats. Ideally, I want to be able to say, "start with a Succubus, add three levels of X, five levels of Y, and template Z", and have the machine spit out a stat block that is not only mechanically correct, but also not ridiculously weak compared with my PCs.What I would like to see:1) Extended "Advancement" entries in monster descriptions, describing the best use of the monster (brute, sneak), likely advancement options with suggested feats and skills, and suggestions for prestige classes, again with feat and skill suggestions, but also notes of the important prerequisites.2) Add a descriptive block in the write-up of every new class and prestige class giving much the same: suggestions for which types of monsters are best matched with the PrC, and perhaps other PrCs that combine well with it, guidance for skills and feats to add, and probably a quick guide to just adding levels of the class to a monster.3) A book with lots and lots of charts showing the interactions between the existing skills and feats, showing feat chains, skill synergies, and so forth, so that I can scrape together a bonus here and there for my monsters in the same way that some of my players do with their characters, but so I can do it more quickly.4) Flowcharts showing the quickest route for advancing monsters.5) Extensive essays on how the game can and should change as it moves to high-level play, removing it from the dungeon and adding extensive political elements/realm management/kingdom development. (Of course, it's entirely possible that this already exists - I think "Power of Faerun" might have covered it.)Because hundreds of DMs now have extensive experience with developing low-level adventures. Because those hundreds of adventures give lots of examples about how it's done. And because low-level play doesn't require the same range of personalised responses that high-level play does: you can generally find a pregen adventure for your low-level party without much difficulty; the same is not true for a high-level party.I really don't need new rules. I also don't need a "how to" guide. But whatever help I can get for high-level play would be a benefit.</blockquote>

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