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<blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3713154" data-attributes="member: 32740">Given what's been stated about the game (which it must be reiterated constantly is still in development and many months away from release) what I envision is this:The core rules will posit 4 (or 5?) ROLES to be filled in an adventuring party.&nbsp; Those ROLES may be filled by more than one class of character and there will be a certain amount of crossover.&nbsp; In any case you have, say, melee damage, spell OFFENSE, spell DEFENSE, ranged damage, or what-have-you.&nbsp; These same sorts of roles will be assigned to monsters in an encounter.&nbsp; One type of monster is intended to fill a melee damage roll, another the spell offense, another performs ranged damage, etc.&nbsp; So, that is how encounters will be built.&nbsp; Pick monsters according the roles you want/need filled for an encounter, THEN the actual capabilities of the monsters are determined according to the level of challenge desired.&nbsp; Hit dice, skills, spells and abilities are determined AFTER you decide how powerful an encounter you want and what critters are in it.Thus, encounters can be tailored to either exploit a party's weaknesses such as perhaps not having a character filling a spell defense role, or the DM can play only to the party's strengths and then be able to safely, reliably increase the strength of the monsters for even bigger, better fights.&nbsp; Also, terrain will be figuring in much more prominently right from the outset of encounter design by a &quot;battlefield&quot; for each encounter being assembled with a collection of standardized &quot;terrains&quot;.&nbsp; For example, an encounters terrain might be composed of two sections of rock, one of water, one of mud, three of tall plants and three more open.&nbsp; This terrain can then be drawn by the DM on a Battlemat, or particularly if using miniatures can be simply thrown down with terrain tilesets that have been created or bought.&nbsp; Each tile has movement, cover, and other bonuses directly associated with it.&nbsp; The intent being to jar DM's out of doldrums of just dredging up yet another roster of uninteresting stat blocks and throwing them at the PC's and MAYBE drawing a few trees and rocks on a blank battlemat.&nbsp; Instead, each encounter is intended to immediately evoke a sense of place and of interest for being varied in terrain - something much more cinematic by design.Now I have NO idea how close I am to what's planned, but again that's the vision they've lodged in my mind with the isolated little tidbits we have read.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Man in the Funny Hat, post: 3713154, member: 32740"] Given what's been stated about the game (which it must be reiterated constantly is still in development and many months away from release) what I envision is this: The core rules will posit 4 (or 5?) ROLES to be filled in an adventuring party. Those ROLES may be filled by more than one class of character and there will be a certain amount of crossover. In any case you have, say, melee damage, spell OFFENSE, spell DEFENSE, ranged damage, or what-have-you. These same sorts of roles will be assigned to monsters in an encounter. One type of monster is intended to fill a melee damage roll, another the spell offense, another performs ranged damage, etc. So, that is how encounters will be built. Pick monsters according the roles you want/need filled for an encounter, THEN the actual capabilities of the monsters are determined according to the level of challenge desired. Hit dice, skills, spells and abilities are determined AFTER you decide how powerful an encounter you want and what critters are in it. Thus, encounters can be tailored to either exploit a party's weaknesses such as perhaps not having a character filling a spell defense role, or the DM can play only to the party's strengths and then be able to safely, reliably increase the strength of the monsters for even bigger, better fights. Also, terrain will be figuring in much more prominently right from the outset of encounter design by a "battlefield" for each encounter being assembled with a collection of standardized "terrains". For example, an encounters terrain might be composed of two sections of rock, one of water, one of mud, three of tall plants and three more open. This terrain can then be drawn by the DM on a Battlemat, or particularly if using miniatures can be simply thrown down with terrain tilesets that have been created or bought. Each tile has movement, cover, and other bonuses directly associated with it. The intent being to jar DM's out of doldrums of just dredging up yet another roster of uninteresting stat blocks and throwing them at the PC's and MAYBE drawing a few trees and rocks on a blank battlemat. Instead, each encounter is intended to immediately evoke a sense of place and of interest for being varied in terrain - something much more cinematic by design. Now I have NO idea how close I am to what's planned, but again that's the vision they've lodged in my mind with the isolated little tidbits we have read. [/QUOTE]

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