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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4188182" data-attributes="member: 5143">So, congrats.  You don't like the 4e philosophy, which is pretty much "make better tools for DMs, make the math work, make life easier for the DM, make the game easy to leave for new players."Monsters are a LOT more uniform.  PCs are a LOT more uniform.  The game is much easier to plan for as a DM.  It requires almost 0 prep time because of how easy it is.  Even if you don't plan in advance, players almost never throw you a complete curveball and ruin your adventure.And that's the point.  The CR guidelines ARE simplified.  And yet, most people I know barely understand them or DON'T understand them.Then again.  What guidelines could you possibly right that worked well in a game where two monsters of approximately the same difficulty in general either die in one round without hitting or kill the entire party without taking damage based purely on the character creation choices of the PC?Which is also why monster design is part of the problem.  Without CR, is a creature with 100 hitpoints with a Reflex Save of 7, an AC of 45, a touch AC of 8, with +35 to hit for 4d6+35, with 4 attacks per round a good challenge for a 15th level party?  Or is it better as a 10th level encounter?I'll give you a hint.  Against a well made 10th level party with a couple of sorcerers, warmages, or wizards, it is dead in first round before it attacks.  Against a party of 15th level fighters, they will lose badly.There is no way to predict how well it will do against any given party unless you know the members of that party in advance.  Which works well for home game adventures with DMs that have lots of time to prepare.  It sucks for those with no time to prepare or those writing convention adventures.The mindset is pretty simple.  I'm in the midst of helping to plan 2 3rd Ed adventures, 2 4th Ed adventures, plus adventures for my 2 homes games.  I'm preparing a adventure to run for a convention in a month.  I have deadlines for adventures that I need to turn in.On top of that I have work, and non-D&D stuff to do.So, if I have an hour to come up with my adventure(and that's rather optimistic) for my next week session(and that's an hour total to think of things, read through books for ideas, and write it all down)then I want to spend most of that coming up with the storyline for the adventure.Say I come up with a plot like: "Goblins attack the town the PCs are in.  The PCs fight some goblins then they discover that a farmer has been kidnapped by some other goblins on the other side of town.  The PCs will likely chase after them.  They will reach the cave the goblins live in.  There are traps in the cave and the PCs eventually get to the chief and they kill him right before he sacrifices the farmer to his dark gods."Then I want to be able to open up the Monster Manual, look to the goblin section and be able to say "I want to have a battle with goblins.  What goblins work well together and would be fun to fight without killing my PCs off?"  And I can.  I just point at 5 goblins and run the encounter.  Directly out of the MM with no changes.I don't have to pull out the PHB, look up a class, add the abilities of a class to the stats in the MM, then do the same thing again for a second creature, then a third one, and so on.</blockquote>

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