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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 5786680" data-attributes="member: 1465">Good points.I'm not exactly in the same position. Personally (but I suppose this is just my own way of DMing) I have no need for creating PCs and monsters quickly, but I do have need for creating NPCs and monsters with classes quickly.------For PC, normally each player design and play one at a time, so the character creation doesn't strictly need to be fast for me. 30 minutes to create a character which is then supposed to be played for months is acceptable (or even 1 hour, if you need to start at high level).NPCs however... I always make plenty of them, and in almost all cases they don't need to be designed as detailed as the PCs. The 3ed character creation rules are slow for NPCs, there has to be guidelines on how to make simplified NPCs (especially at high levels) that are on par with the PC level for combat purposes. Everything non-combat doesn't need to be balanced with the PC, and only whatever is needed for the player's POW needs to be fleshed out. For example, if the villain is a renowed thieves' guildmaster... do we really need to know how good in rules terms he is at finding/disarming/crafting traps? He's never going to to those things in practice even if that's what he's famous for!It would then be nice however if the game made it easy to create "one night" adventures, quick to setup for both the DM and the players: in such case the PCs did not need to be designed to last past this adventure, and could use the NPC simplified rules, or alternatively use a lot of standard values and default static abilities.------Monsters... could be my personal style, but I never design "new" monsters. There is no reason for me why I would prefer my own design over the ready design from a MMx book. Anyway there are thousands of monsters available...OTOH, sometimes you want to make a "chief" monster to lead the tribe or something like a monster trained to be an assassin or even a spellcaster. Actually now that I think about it, this to me mostly still happens only with humanoids or with similar monsters, so this may still fall under the NPC creation task after all.------My bottom line is that as a DM quick NPC design is a very much needed feature of the game. Quick monster creation is not, and quick PC creation is needed only to a point and certainly not at the price of sacrificing PC depth.</blockquote>

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