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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5780574" data-attributes="member: 42582">I believe that this is true of AD&D and of 3E. It is not true of 4e as I run it, although there are other 4e players who post on these forums (at least [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]) for whom it is true.One well-known example - many 4e players take the view that the very same creature can be statted as a minion, a standard or a solo monster, depending which level you are statting it at. Which would, in turn, be influenced by the level of the party form whom you as GM are preparing that encounter/scenario.Now I assume that 5E is going to go back to the more classic assumptions, because that would fit with the general retro vibe that is circulating in respect of it. But that is a design choice. It is not a conceit that is a given of playing D&D.I agree with your last sentence, although with two caveats that for me are minor but I assume for you are not.The first is this: I am quite happy with the minion/standard/solo equivalence. In fact, to give a smooth play experience 4e almost depends on it. This equivalence then requires treating defences, attack bonuses, damage etc as non-particular elements of an overall gestalt of combat ability. In the case of a solo, it also requires treating the action economy in that fashion. This doesn't bother me (in fact, I find this an essential way to treat the action economy in order to avoid the sense of a stop-motion world), but I imagine it would bother you.The second is this: if the backstory of a creature - say, a demon lord - is that it is "powerful" and only epic heroes could hope to challenge it, I will cheerfully hold off on statting it up until the PCs are about to fight it, in order to cash out "powerful" at the right degree of difficulty. (Of course, other narrative considerations could also figure in here. If the demon lord is known to have bested Yeenoghu in hand-to-hand combat, for example, and I have Yeenoghu's stats already and have based things in the game on them, then that is going to set some minimum parameters for my new demon lord.)I would be surprised if the second caveat is as bothersome to you as the first. And to bring in another comparitor - the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner is strongly against my first caveat - a monster's stats are a monster's stats, simulationist-style - but actively encourages my second caveat - keep your powder dry and don't stat too early, in order to minimise the risk of a dramatic misfire.And a further comment about the twin with the armour, which is probably a minority approach in 4e GMing although supported by the DMG (in its discussion of monster building) - if the demon lord puts on the breastplate, raising its AC by 1 is fine. But if the magical armour is a heap better than that, then I am probably going to look at adjusting the demon lord's level, in order to keep my maths, XP etc all in sync. Like the minion/standard/solo progression, this relies upon treating the individual numerical components as flexible elements of a gestalt whole. (The actual narration is fairly easy - "Wearing a new starmetal breastplate, the demon lord casts defensive manoeuvres to the wind and starts belting everything within reach with a redoubled fury!")I agree with this as a starting point: different build rules for PCs and monsters/NPCs, but ending up with the same sorts of numbers that interact with the action resolution mechanics in the same way.This is what Runequest has, and what AD&D, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls and other games from that era lack.But 4e is actually contradictory in this respect, or at least evinces a degree of tension, because for non-combat action resolution the standard approach is the skill challenge, in which the players roll all the dice and the stats of the monsters/NPCs dont' factor in in detail, but only influence the setting of DCs from the DCs by level chart.I'm one of the few who quite likes the skill challenge mechanics, but I do sometimes wonder what exactly I am meant to be doing with those Bluff, Diplmacy etc scores on my NPC and monster stat blocks.Whichever way it goes, I would like 5E to avoid this incoherence and be more upfront about how it thinks action resolution in social interactions (and similar non-combat conflicts) is meant to work.What is the evidence for this claim? I find conflicts pretty easy to resolve in 4e, and as I've just noted the default mechanic - the skill challenges - uses a "players roll all the dice" approach.Conversely, in Rolemaster everyone uses the same rules - both PCs and NPCs roll skill checks in social conflict, for example - but such conflicts are actually hard to resolve, beause there is no mechanical system to tell you when the conflict is over and the position that has been arrived at is the settled position from which the game then moves forward.In D&D a first level NPC can be king, with thousands of gp worth of treasure and items, but a first level PC cannot be. The rules put fairly strict caps on first level starting money, and any adventure that resulted in a starting PC becoming king would be guaranteed in nearly any iteration of D&D that I can think of to result in the PC becoming at least second level.Is this unfair? Or is it a constraint that we all live with for the obvious metagame reasons?NPCs with access to powers and abilities to which the PCs also lack access is much the same thing. The problem I see with your example illusive mage isn't that s/he had abilities that the PCs didn't and couldn't. It's that one of those abilities - namely, the ability to ignore the initiative sequence (in 3E or 4e terms, the ability to perform unlimited and powerful free/immediate/opportunity actions) - was broken.</blockquote>

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