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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4776155" data-attributes="member: 47776">So, what's the complaint?  Sometimes they're the bog-standard skeletons that cause peasants and ignorant barbarians to quake in fear (you, of course, have a cleric handy who can tell you about them in detail, and a wizard who can make some if he so chose).Sometimes they're skeletons that the necromancer has enhanced (with the existing rules to do so), and they can chill your blood with a touch, outrun your steeds and never tire, and explode in a cloud of necrotic energy (and revitalize their companions) as they die.And there are rules for all of that.  In 3.5E, there are the Corpsecrafter line of feats, the half-troll template for your giant-troll hybrid...hell, there are even rules for estimating new special abilities.But throw enough random abilities out there, and the decision to run or fight stops being meaningful.  If you literally can't tell if running or fighting is more likely to be a better option ("can this monster hunt me down and murder me in my sleep? Shoot me in the back as I flee? What about my slower companions?"), you eliminate meaningful tactical choice.The ideal, of course, is to have a system in which many different knowable parts can be put together, but the sum outcome can be something both comprehensible and initially unexpected.  (I have a personal fondness for turning giants of various types into were-dinosaurs.)Also, flip side of the question: if you get XP for loot, do you need to worry about incentivizing hanging around in town and commiting burglaries rather than going to hunt monsters?  I mean, Conan and Co. did quite a lot of that, as well, but that's because authors can declare "No, you don't murder Plot McHook, loot his house, and frame a passerby." much more easily than GMs can.  Also, there's the problem with players consistently choosing to spend a month slowly besieging and clearing dungeons rather than blitzing through them.You could give full XP for encountering then evading or escaping monsters, though.</blockquote>

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