The reason the books feel incomplete

[Argyuile]

The reason the books feel incompleate

Some are saying that the books feel incomplete some are saying duh, its the first 3 books not years of them.

I have to say that in my opinion these are the most "incomplete" for 2 reasons.

#1 Every class has its own huge spell list now. Go look at your old PHB see how many pages where dedicated to spells for priests and mages. Its a huge section. Now you effectively need the section for each and every class.

This cuts down on a lot of new stuff, namely, other classes, feats ect.

#2 The basic level spread went from 20 to 30 I think its most noticeable in the MM where there are a ton of monsters but they are spread the hell out. Making 10 different level 1 combat encounters with just the MM requires you to make a lot of adjustments (de-leveling monsters) unless you want every encounter to involve Kobolds or beetles.

It effects the PHB also, now instead of your huge magic section for levels 1-20 you have to throw in 10 levels of abilities for each and every class. This chews up an enormous amount of space.

Personally I wish they would have left it 1-20 and added 20-30 in another epic level style book.

 

[Duelpersonality]

#2 The basic level spread went from 20 to 30 I think its most noticeable in the MM where there are a ton of monsters but they are spread the hell out. Making 10 different level 1 combat encounters with just the MM requires you to make a lot of adjustments (de-leveling monsters) unless you want every encounter to involve Kobolds or beetles.

While I do agree that powers are eating up a large portion of the PHB, I've got to disagree with you here. I have more than 10 encounters ready to go (in case my well laid plans go awry) for my group at level 1 and not a single one involves a kobold or a beetle and only one encounter involves a de-leveled monster. Everything else is straight out of the MM.

Edit: And one encounter includes a trap straight out of the DMG.

 

[helium3]

While I do agree that powers are eating up a large portion of the PHB, I've got to disagree with you here. I have more than 10 encounters ready to go (in case my well laid plans go awry) for my group at level 1 and not a single one involves a kobold or a beetle and only one encounter involves a de-leveled monster. Everything else is straight out of the MM.

Edit: And one encounter includes a trap straight out of the DMG.

Well no, I think the OP is correct. There's just a crucial caveat that got left off, it being "if you want the mix of monsters in the encounter to make sense."

I've only put together four encounters at 10th level and I can already see this. It's not hard to figure out why.

Let's say I have an encounter of level n. That immediately means I shouldn't use monsters of Level<n-2 and Level>n+7. I want there to be three different monster roles covered in the encounter and I have 7 to choose from. Once you select the first role, it automatically knocks out all other monsters within the level range that have the same role. That still leaves a pretty big list of monsters, but that does mean there can be some variance in the number of monsters in the encounter. It stops being the standard one monster per character.

The real "problem" occurs when you try to start imposing thematic constraints on the monsters you can select from. Suddenly, all sorts of monsters start dropping out. To get the roles filled you have to start using monsters that are at the bottom and top end of the allowable range. This is typically where you start adding or subtracting a couple of levels to pare down the number of creatures to something that isn't headache inducing just thinking about.

It is kind of fun though when you have to use an odd combination to cover the bases that you want without changing levels. You have to start asking yourself questions like, "why are two vine horrors, a marut and three ice archons working together to kill the PC's?"

 

[Vaeron]

All the MM does is show you what different roles of the same monster might look like at different levels. You're able to take those roles and make opponents of any level using the simple formulate for hp/dmg/etc in the back of the DMG. If you want to add a level to a kobold skirmisher just make those changes.

The MM isn't supposed to be representative only of what monsters are available - it shows the baseline for what the different monsters are and for the different roles availble to them. Then all the other features of that monster are hardcoded based on its level.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

According to the DMG (if I remember correctly) you can impose -1 attacks/damage/defenses/AC to adjust a monster's level down by 1 or the reverse to increase it by one.
But doing so more than 5 times can cause the system to break down.

If this is true then it is very easy to level up/down monsters.

Still doesn't fix the problem but it helps.

 

[Evenglare]

its +1 to atk, def, and ac. Then its +1 every 2 levels for damage.

Also i dont think the system :breaks down: its just easier to find another similar monster already statted out.

 

[divinenathanica]

Also, because you're buying monsters from an XP pool, all of the monsters in the encounter don't have to be of the same level. Maybe have a (Leader) monster be a few levels higher, and have a more XP in lower level monsters.

I've been playing around with this because my group will probably have either three or four people playing, so I've had to think a lot about encounter design. To run a standard difficulty encounter at first level, it's 100 xp per monster. Using the n-5< >n+5 sweet spot, using higher level monsters is kind easy. Because my party is smaller, throwing Solos (balanced against 5 pcs) is going to be a no-go unless it's of lower level. Instead, I'm thinking of using standard higher level monsters. If my party has 3 characters, giving me a 300 xp pool, I can throw something of level 5 at them (200) and then some minions, or lvl 1 monsters.

It's a very interesting system, though it takes some getting used to that Monster level doesn't mean that the PCS need to be of equal level to stand against it.

I could be wrong though -- I haven't had a lot of play testing, but this is what the wizards articles on xp seem to suggest is doable.

 

[Rechan]

With regards to things feeling "incomplete", at least to me it's the feat section. Also, the epic destinies. COME ON.

I too am scratching my head for some things, regarding monsters. If you're not using goblins or kobolds, it kinda takes a few things out of the running. The low levels, a little too many 'humanoid x'.

 

[Benimoto]

I too am scratching my head for some things, regarding monsters. If you're not using goblins or kobolds, it kinda takes a few things out of the running. The low levels, a little too many 'humanoid x'.

To a degree, I'm glad they did this. I just finished DMing my first and only 1-20 3rd edition campaign, and I can say that the last few levels involved a punishing amount of prep time. Looking in the 3.5 Monster Manual, it's easy to see why. Something like 50% of the monsters cover the first few levels, 1-5. Then 40% cover the next few levels, 6-12. Only perhaps 10% of the monsters cover levels 13-20, over a third of the campaign. For most of the encounters those levels, I was stuck using overwhelmingly my own leveled, advanced, or created monsters.

Looking at the index of the 4e Monster Manual, I am quite pleased to see that the monsters cover a much more even spread. The epic section is a little thinner, but in general, the monsters are spread out across the levels a lot more. This, more than anything, I think will really help out 4e DMs who want to take their campaign across the full level range.

 

[Aldarc]

With regards to things feeling "incomplete", at least to me it's the feat section. Also, the epic destinies. COME ON.

I too am scratching my head for some things, regarding monsters. If you're not using goblins or kobolds, it kinda takes a few things out of the running. The low levels, a little too many 'humanoid x'.

Yes, the feats seem to be drastically lacking and the number of epic destinies are lackluster. While demigod sounds cool, it still is relatively bland compared to the write-up and imagery of the archmage.