Same rules or different Rules (PC vs NPC)

[Balesir]

4e Okay, I want his Will to suck, and his AC to be high. He's a demon lord, which means he's going to be, let's say, level 27. Okay, so as a default he'd be AC 40, Fort 37, Ref 37, Will 37. But eh, let's switch that to AC 44, Fort 41, Ref 37, Will 30. Or y'know what, screw that. Will 10. Done.

Right - all you need now is some sort of explanation how in all the hells he has survived thus far with a Will defence of 10.

Of course, that is every bit as much a mystery in 3.x, too - but it's less obvious that it's an issue. But 3.x is supposed to do 'mystery' better than 4E, so maybe this is what is meant by that?

 

[darkwing]

Different rules for PC vs NPC. The reason is this makes it faster and easier for the DM to set up "scenes".

The PC's are the regulars. The NPCs are the guest stars. The audience doesn't need to know about them more than what they see. But if for some reason the DM wants to use PC rules to generate a *special snowflake* NPC, there's nothing stopping them.

 

[BryonD]

4e Okay, I want his Will to suck, and his AC to be high. He's a demon lord, which means he's going to be, let's say, level 27. Okay, so as a default he'd be AC 40, Fort 37, Ref 37, Will 37. But eh, let's switch that to AC 44, Fort 41, Ref 37, Will 30.

Obviously you can ignore the system. But that isn't much of a justification for using that system.

Or y'know what, screw that. Will 10. Done.

Nor is throwing the system completely out the window.

Again, 4E is founded on "the math works". I'm not remotely claiming that changing the Will of one monster would throw the system spinning out of orbit or anything like that. But you are running completely against the grain on the system assumptions here. And I want to do that EVERYWHERE.
I can't imagine that anyone who wants to use 4E would want to do that over and over and I can't imagine why someone who wanted to do that over and over wouldn't just use a system that expects you to rather than one you are doing a work around for.

Some of the 3e monsters have just stupid natural armor bonuses, like +20, with no explanation where that comes from. It's just there to make them have the right AC for their level.

Eh, first let me be clear that I'm not remotely claiming 3E is immaculate. What I'm claiming is that the 3E approach supports more styles and a larger fan base than the 4E style.

That said, I would not say that it is true *to me* that their "stupid" bonuses make them right for their level. When I make monsters for my game I DO find my self forced to give them "stupid" bonuses sometimes. But that is because I need to change the totals from the default to something that better describes what the monster SHOULD be. As I've said a couple times now in this thread, 3E monsters are far too heavily tied to HD. But 4E took that, replaced HD with level, cranked it to 11 and then doubled that.....

When I do that in 3E is has no impact on the core system. The system doesn't expect "the math works". 4E does.

So why not just accept that 'power level setting' should be the first step?

Because I want to tell stories and I don't give a flip about power levels. I DO like to have a sense of power levels AFTER THE FACT for use in having some balance. But this is far and away a secondary consideration. The story is EVERYTHING, backfit balance on to that the best you can, with the rule that the story will not suffer for it in any way.

 

[BryonD]

No, because the real world does not work on DCs!

Exactly. And as far as the elf archer knows neither does HIS world.

I can see your issue, here - but the single word description would be just as much a 'slap' to immersion to me as the number apparently would to you.

Sorry. Poor clarity on my part. If I told the elf player this is an "easy" shot that would absolutely be every bit as much the same slap in the face.

I describe the situation to the player. If this is a new character for some reason I may offer a bit more insight. But in general I don't need anything but description. That player knows intuitively if it is easy/hard/whatever. Just as you do in real life.

And this works. It has worked awesome at my table for over ten years now. (and before 3E as well....)

 

[BryonD]

The tables give you a very good baseline. It is not holy. I throw modifiers around willy-nilly, depending on what makes common and narrative sense. But that solid baseline is sure nice to have.

So would you reject LostSoul's claim about the Starsteel Armor adding +2 or +3 to the demon?

 

[LostSoul]

I believe the answer is yes. And I hope my wall of reply helps.

Again, I'm not trying in any way to say that 4E isn't awesome for for a lot of people.

But there are things it completely FAILS at. And the fact that a lot of people don't care in the least about those things does nothing to make it any less of a failure for them.

So the question becomes, does it matter to the marketplace? I think it does.

Yep, that reply clarifies things for me! Thanks.

I should say that I'm not really talking about 4E, I'm talking about my game which has been hacked from the 4E base. I use the mechanics and "game economy" in a different way than I think is suggested in the books.

So what I'm talking about - the procedures used to determine mechanical values - isn't exactly 4E but instead my game. I hope that's not too frustrating for you, since what "my game" means is always changing; for example, this thread is making me think of writing up a different method of creating monster or NPC stats. I understand that could be annoying, and if so, let me know and I'll try to clarify.

No, that is not a quality answer. "Level 27 solo does not mean ANYTHING other than what level of challenge he presents from a purely game point of view. There is no narrative merit.

I used to play a lot of Star Wars d6 in the '90s. It was my main game. In that game characters were rated by a number of dice in a skill - Blaster 5D or Con 4D. In one of the GM books it told you what these "D" figures meant in terms of the narrative.

[sblock]Let's see how much I can remember:
1D - Aunt May (actually I think that's from the old Marvel game!)
2D - Normal untrained human
3D - Some training, experience, or high natural ability
4D - Professional level or great natural ability
5D - Skilled professional or superhuman natural ability
6D - The best in a city (100k)
7D - The best on a continent (10M)
8D - The best on a world (1B)
9D - The best in a system
10D - The best in a sector
11D - The best in a region
12D - The best in the galaxy

I think that's pretty close![/sblock]

When I ran the game I could make up stats on the fly because I had memorized that table. What level of blaster skill should the bounty hunter have? Well, if he's a normal bounty hunter, 4D. If he's a good one, 5D. If he's a kick-ass one, 6D.

I use Level in my game in the same way. What level is that sell-sword? Just started or little experience? 1-3. Veteran with a lot of experience? 4-6. Highly skilled elite (not "Elite!")? 7-9. The highest level a normal human can reach? 10. Getting above that is difficult. (PCs have to set a goal and reach it; a swordsman who wants to perfect his craft has to prove it somehow and spend thousands of GP training.)

So in my game at least, level describes a narrative, or game world, quality. I use the same method to determine other features of the game world, like how dangerous (in the sense that the Rockies aren't the Himalayas) those peaks are, how thick a forest is, etc.

I want to look at the archer and see what all makes him easy or hard to hit and look at the guy in armor and do the same and then figure out the same. This will tell me their AC. That and that ALONE.

I add skill into the equation. Which makes sense to me; a more highly-skilled combatant is going to be harder to hit. For beasts, I imagine that, instead of skill, level represents size and ferocity.

Your foundation is absolutely unrelated to their narrative value. You then use narrative to tweak that 100% game based value. The game math is not a factor, it is completely dominant. Narrative gets to have no more than "two or three points" after the math has laid down the law.

Two to three points is what happens in the Heroic Tier because the numbers are smaller.

Let's assume an archer with 16 DEX wearing leather vs. one wearing plate. Let's also assume he's just finished basic training and is a level 1 standard monster. (I do have rules that will advance minions to standard monsters through training. It takes about a month, I think.) The archer will have 15 AC in leather vs. 18 AC in plate. Three points difference.

It's important to me to make this distinction, too. This came up in a game where the PCs had access to a lot of looted armour; they wanted to upgrade the equipment of NPC allies they had protecting their town. Giving that guy who was wearing chain mail a suit of scale will increase his AC by 1 point.

To be 100% clear, I'm speaking entirely based on my own personal taste here. It isn't meant to reflect on the awesome fun of your game or anyone but me and me alone.

No problem! I am finding this dialogue very rewarding. I would XP you but I can't at the moment.

That is insanely WRONG! What armor the guy routinely wears is part of his fundamental concept. You are looking at a table that offers nothing remotely related to narrative and letting that dictate the narrative mertis of your characters.

What I mean is that, if the guy is 1st level, he shouldn't have access to plate armour. He should be wearing something like leather or hide.

So what I do is decide on his skill level in the game world; work out a level from that; use a table to determine appropriate equipment for a character of his level; and from that I'll get an AC value.

(Well, actually I don't do that, but I should in the future. I'm trying to put together a table that will allow me to do this.)

Since I run what I call a "post-apocalyptic science-fantasy western," good armour and organizations which make it are not at all common. However, I made rules for determining how Settlements (villages and towns) grow in response to the PC's actions. (Basically, spend GP in a town and at the end of the month it will gain a Level - and Level, in this case, represents the size of the town.) It's possible that the PCs will gather a large "warband" and start outfitting them in high-quality armour.

In that case I'd adjust their stats to reflect the upgrade in equipment. I do the same when I generate a magic item for an NPC.

(NPCs also do this. In a previous version of the rules for NPC organizations I had one warlord starting up an arms industry to outfit his troops. That version was too cumbersome to use, though.)

A guy with the same DEX, same armor and same shield has the same AC. Period. If that guy is L1 his AC is X. If that guy is level 17 his AC is STILL X.
Can you do THAT with a 4E style system?

No. 4E changes what AC means in a fundamental way. It's a combination of skill and (speed + protection or (protection). I guess that makes more sense to me. I have a player in my group who does the medieval combat recreation thing. If you gave us both plate and a sword, I'd have a much harder time hitting him. Or a buff coat and a sword.

Now if you took away his sword... but my system applies modifiers to deal with that. (I'd get modifiers to AC and to hit.)

In the absence of any other information this is a good presumption. But think about what you just said. You just said that EVERY demon lord has very similar stats. Yes, you have room to wiggle in "epic tier" but not all that much. Certainly not NEARLY enough to satisfy me. And before you get hung up trying to prove the size of the range, please keep in mind that the limits on the range on just icing on the cake. Looking it up in the first place is the cake.

What if I want a demon lord of really evil brick walls? And I want him to have triple the HP and 75% higher AC than a completely "typical" demon lord. And I want his Will save to suck. Not be -3, I want it to SUCK.

Now, clearly I can just kludge every bit of that on there. I can scratch off the numbers from your template and write in whatever the hell I want. But ignoring 4E is not a case for the goodness of 4E. ("for Bryon")

I agree with you here. I haven't written anything in my hack about creating monsters, but I'd say that the numbers are a suggestion; if you want to change them, go ahead.

Now this does get into the other differences that we have that you brought up in your reply to my first post in the thread - reward systems and player information in making decisions. In my game, a guy with a Will that sucks is going to be a push-over, because I use the Will defence to determine things like Morale and resistance to social pressure. Does that mean he's worth less XP? Hmmm... probably not. I don't have a problem with an NPC with a weak spot.

Nope, this is MY narrative. You don't get to trump me on MY story.

I want you to describe MY story. You have your L27 solo stated and ready to go. Now his twin brother walks in. The starmetal ain't steel. And it is vastly tougher than the demon's skin. He is THRILLED to have this protection.

Don't tell me how it works FOR YOU. You are selling 4E TO ME. Show me how your mechanics fit MY narrative demands. Or agree that they don't.

Cool, I like it. My assumption was - based on the fact that he's a demon lord - that his naked flesh was a resilient as starmetal. If not, that'd be like the case of the Epic Human guy I mentioned; his AC is going to be derived from DEX and skill alone. So that's around 23 + DEX, whatever that is.

Now that makes me wonder why his Ref is so high. Without magic it'd be the same value. (Using a 3.5 balor as a template, DEX is 25, so his Ref would be 30.) I don't think the way I use 4E works well for Epic Tier!

(edit: Or 23 + INT, I guess.)

That isn't what 4E says and that is not what you have been saying.

The just confined the narrative of my starsteel armor so that it would follow the orders of the 4E lookup table. You gave it +2 compared to the table. You painted the description on top of the same mechanic, but left the mechanic itself as sacrosanct.

Yeah, you know what, I think I did just that! I think that's why I have found this conversation so helpful; it gives me ideas that will keep me from doing that in the future. I can use your viewpoint to help me write up new procedures to make NPCs or monsters.

Hopefully that will allow the players to take a look at an NPC and gauge its level, which is the main point to all of this stuff! (For me; I recognize that's a fundamental difference we have, and one that I wanted to get to. I've found the conversation you're having with Balesir interesting, but I want to talk about this first.)

What does level 21 have to do with ANYTHING?

It determines the strength of the magic, and therefore how easily it can overwhelm someone's defences. In 3E it would be like the spell level or HD, which is used to determine saving throws. That level 21 item would have a supernatural ability (or maybe spell-like? I'm not sure what the difference is), so the Will Save DC would be 10 + 1/2 HD + the item's CHA mod.

 

[scruffygrognard]

In the name of all that is sacred... use for different rules between creating PC and NPCs. NPC creation in 3.x, especially at higher levels, was godawful.

A fast and easy way to approximate PC abilities for NPC characters is all that is needed.

 

[Gort]

In the name of all that is sacred... use for different rules between creating PC and NPCs. NPC creation in 3.x, especially at higher levels, was godawful.

A fast and easy way to approximate PC abilities for NPC characters is all that is needed.

I still think the best way is a three-tier system:

Monster - Throwaway baddie, 4e style.

NPC - Important character you want to put some time into. Bit more like 3e style, and definitely closer to PC than monster creation. Perhaps include a bunch of tables of "standard NPC stats" and "standard NPC powers" to get you started making them, but make it easier than PC generation by a long chalk.

PC - Very indepth with a million choices, but you as a DM probably won't want to make them all.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I want same generation where easy or necessary, different everywhere else. Of course, I'm well aware that "necessary" is going to have different criteria for everyone, and is thus a cop out, but you must start somewhere.

But mainly, what I want is ruthless exclusion of derived stats as much as possible, from PCs and other creatures alike. I think some details and complications and decisions on PC generation is wanted by lot of players, and must be supported by at least optional systems. But as far as I know, very few players really get a grand time out of the accounting that sometimes accompanies that generation. (Maybe some of the char op people do, as a necessary complication in finding every edge.)

One of the byproducts of such an effort would be that a lot of times it would be natural and easy to keep things the same, and in the places where you needed some differences for those that want quicker monster generation, the differences would not be as pronounced.

Ironically though, even though this would satisfy the stated desires of a lot of the views expressed in this topic thus far, I doubt many would go for it. For example, it means that you have to treat weapons as discrete things, and their properties are not necessarily the traditional damage, with perhaps magical adjustments to hit. Instead, you've got some fighter with his weapon skills determining entirely his chance to hit and damage, but perhaps the individual weapons providing separate benefits (an axe crits more in certain circumstances or whatever). So when the fighter gets disarmed, his axe goes flying, and an orc grabs it, the stats aren't recalculated at all. But now the orc can take advantage of the axe properties until someone takes it away from him. Or you might do it another way. But however you do it, "to hit" bonuses can't be on the axe and the creatures.

So maybe that is too extreme. But less accounting throughout! Then determine how to reconcile this issue.

 

[Knightfall]

I think that 4E monster design was good thing in many ways. Simpler stat blocks for "standard" monsters is a boon for any DM. The monsters presented in the MM as well as any "standard" monsters presented in adventures or sourcebooks should be designed so that everything you need to run the monster is right there in front of you.

However, it shouldn't be the only way to create NPCs and important monsters. I want an opt-in choice for making more complex characters.

And, the iconic characters of the D&D settings should use the same character stats as the PCs. Thus, Elminster should be a complex character with class levels. He's not just somebody you kill although some might disagree with that idea.

I would say that the DMG should have a section that details how to create "the quick & the dead" NPCs and monsters. Guidelines for coming up with random bad guys that can be used within minutes, not hours. You could also have a "quick PC replacement" section that allows a player to build a new character in a flash using the simple NPC generation method.

It would give the player an NPC style character to use in play if his or her PC bites the dust unexpectedly.

Creating complex characters and monsters would have its own section too. However, I'd prefer to see a product that acts as a NPC creation guidebook. It would take you through the entire process from start to finish in 10 to 20 minutes, and the result would be a complex character or monster that would use (almost) all the same rules as the PC.

If you wanted an NPC that had more than just combat stats, you'd focus on the tables that dealt with personality, skills, etc.

If you wanted a super-hard demon lord, you'd run through the tables for special attacks & defense, spells (or powers), armor & weapons, and magical enhancements or items.

Think of the sourcebook as a D&D^N Complete NPC Toolkit.