Obergnom
First Post
Hi,
I'm currently thinking about what I do not like about DMing D&D 3.5, and I came to the conlusion, its the feeling of not being able to "wing it" easily. See, I played 4 great sessions of Castles&Crusades, using a high level D&D Adventure (The Harrowing by Monte Cook, Dungeon Mag) and had to create nearly every single monster and NPC myself, because the monsters were not to be found in the C&C Monster Book. Well, after some training (2 Creatures) I was able to create Vrocks, Slaadi etc. within 5 minutes. If you would ask me now to create any monster from the MM for C&C, I doubt it would take me more than that. Of course I was not allway 100% correct about the powers etc. but the system is so simple I was able to create a reasonable and "correct feeling" creature in very short time. My players did not feel like I made everything up... they thought those creatures were the real deal, and the challenge was just right to. (Because in C&C Creature HD = CR works as a good base line)
In D&D I recently encountered just the opposit. It is very hard to play AD&D modules because the creatures are nowhere to be found, or their CR is just very different to their HD, making them to hard or to weak etc. I had to wing half a session because my players did something I was not expecting, and alltough I had some cool encounter ideas, I just did not know enough about creatures of the correct level to be able to create a good encounter in short time. (It endet with 2 bullets, those I knew)
What I am looking for is some kind of quick monster creation guide line. You know something like this:
Outsider: CR = 3/4 HD, Bab and Saves good, ad 1 to the CR for every 2 Abilies usable in Combat, add 1 if more than 3 Attacks per round or single attack able to deal more than X damage
Construct: CR = 1/3 HD, Bab like Cleric, all bad saves, ad 1 to the CR for every 2 Abilies usable in Combat, add 1 if more than 3 Attacks per round or single attack able to deal more than X damage
etc.
I would like to be able to create creatures without worring for their ability scores (I know, this will make cerain debuffs problematic, but you can still go down the -1 to attack and damage for every 2 points of strenght, as much strenght as I think reasonable), the best would be to just make like 4 decisions (#HD, #Attacks, Damage of Attacks - Compare to Weapons, and you have a good starting point, AC) and look the rest up in some tables (Attack Bonus, Saves)
Has anybody created such a system or nows about a comercial product that provides something along those lines?
I ask this, because my regular group is a differnt one than the one I played C&C with, and they just prefere D&D.
I'm currently thinking about what I do not like about DMing D&D 3.5, and I came to the conlusion, its the feeling of not being able to "wing it" easily. See, I played 4 great sessions of Castles&Crusades, using a high level D&D Adventure (The Harrowing by Monte Cook, Dungeon Mag) and had to create nearly every single monster and NPC myself, because the monsters were not to be found in the C&C Monster Book. Well, after some training (2 Creatures) I was able to create Vrocks, Slaadi etc. within 5 minutes. If you would ask me now to create any monster from the MM for C&C, I doubt it would take me more than that. Of course I was not allway 100% correct about the powers etc. but the system is so simple I was able to create a reasonable and "correct feeling" creature in very short time. My players did not feel like I made everything up... they thought those creatures were the real deal, and the challenge was just right to. (Because in C&C Creature HD = CR works as a good base line)
In D&D I recently encountered just the opposit. It is very hard to play AD&D modules because the creatures are nowhere to be found, or their CR is just very different to their HD, making them to hard or to weak etc. I had to wing half a session because my players did something I was not expecting, and alltough I had some cool encounter ideas, I just did not know enough about creatures of the correct level to be able to create a good encounter in short time. (It endet with 2 bullets, those I knew)
What I am looking for is some kind of quick monster creation guide line. You know something like this:
Outsider: CR = 3/4 HD, Bab and Saves good, ad 1 to the CR for every 2 Abilies usable in Combat, add 1 if more than 3 Attacks per round or single attack able to deal more than X damage
Construct: CR = 1/3 HD, Bab like Cleric, all bad saves, ad 1 to the CR for every 2 Abilies usable in Combat, add 1 if more than 3 Attacks per round or single attack able to deal more than X damage
etc.
I would like to be able to create creatures without worring for their ability scores (I know, this will make cerain debuffs problematic, but you can still go down the -1 to attack and damage for every 2 points of strenght, as much strenght as I think reasonable), the best would be to just make like 4 decisions (#HD, #Attacks, Damage of Attacks - Compare to Weapons, and you have a good starting point, AC) and look the rest up in some tables (Attack Bonus, Saves)
Has anybody created such a system or nows about a comercial product that provides something along those lines?
I ask this, because my regular group is a differnt one than the one I played C&C with, and they just prefere D&D.
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