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<blockquote data-quote="Kerrick" data-source="post: 2969868" data-attributes="member: 4722">See, that's the problem - monsters are being balanced against a party of iconics, and that's the wrong way to do it. Does anyone play that party? No - they play a wide range of classes, stat-generation systems (I find it amusing that the iconics use arrays and point-buy, but the standard generation is 4d6, drop the low die), and variant rulesets. You can't possibly hope to balance a creature if you're working against that. Monsters should be balanced against themselves - their stats should be rated on their own merits, and a straight-up CR given. The DM can then adjust it on the fly for the difficulty of the encounter - a rust monster vs. a fighter in an arena is one thing, but a rust monster vs. a fighter in a 10 x 10 room with locked doors is another thing entirely.Which is...? (I'm not trying to be snarky here, just wondering what your opinion is).I think level loss was so feared partly because it was permenent, and partly because restoration was a 7th-level spell - nigh unto inaccessible to the average party, or, if it was, it cost a fortune to get an NPC to cast it. Now that you can restore levels with a L4 spell, they should keep the &quot;permanent level drain&quot; thing - instead of nerfing just one part of that problem, they nerfed two, and made it so no one fears level drain anymore.Exactly. This is my big gripe with the new design philosophy - it's become too PC-friendly. We can't endanger the PCs too much, or the players won't have fun. While I agree - somewhat (getting rid of save or die poisons was a good move) - you can't get rid of every threat to the PCs, or the game becomes little more than the players mowing over everything and moving on to the next challenge.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Kerrick, post: 2969868, member: 4722"] See, that's the problem - monsters are being balanced against a party of iconics, and that's the wrong way to do it. Does [i]anyone[/i] play that party? No - they play a wide range of classes, stat-generation systems (I find it amusing that the iconics use arrays and point-buy, but the standard generation is 4d6, drop the low die), and variant rulesets. You can't possibly hope to balance a creature if you're working against that. Monsters should be balanced against themselves - their stats should be rated on their own merits, and a straight-up CR given. The DM can then adjust it on the fly for the difficulty of the encounter - a rust monster vs. a fighter in an arena is one thing, but a rust monster vs. a fighter in a 10 x 10 room with locked doors is another thing entirely. Which is...? (I'm not trying to be snarky here, just wondering what your opinion is). I think level loss was so feared partly because it was permenent, and partly because restoration was a 7th-level spell - nigh unto inaccessible to the average party, or, if it was, it cost a fortune to get an NPC to cast it. Now that you can restore levels with a L4 spell, they should keep the "permanent level drain" thing - instead of nerfing just one part of that problem, they nerfed two, and made it so no one fears level drain anymore. Exactly. This is my big gripe with the new design philosophy - it's become too PC-friendly. We can't endanger the PCs too much, or the players won't have fun. While I agree - somewhat (getting rid of save or die poisons was a good move) - you can't get rid of every threat to the PCs, or the game becomes little more than the players mowing over everything and moving on to the next challenge. [/QUOTE]

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