NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 6256389" data-attributes="member: 11821">(1) This assumes I already know Lightning Bolt. (For real fun, make it an unusual spell like "chaos hammer.")(2) This assumes the system gives no advice on how to properly balance monster abilities.(3) This assumes there's a "risk" behind having an appropriately-powered Lightning ability for your monster just because it differs from the PC spell lightning bolt.(4) "Reinventing the wheel" in this case is as easy as saying, "Range 10, Level+3 vs Reflex, 2d6+Level lightning damage."As for the rest? I don't even know where you're coming from, since my experience re: prep time is the polar opposite. There's not a single time where I've looked at a 4e stat block and said, "Gee, this would be so much easier if they just said 'chaos hammer' and made me look up the spell!"WhatYou can pretty much distill any spell that's simple enough to reasonably include into a monster's combat stat block down to "damage and/or an effect." Putting it into functional and precise language makes it just that much easier during play.Yes, there are spells which break the mold (and, for that matter, monster abilities which do). Mirror Image, for example. These can be used as appropriate, but "ease in play" is a biggie for me. If you can't explain it with a few numbers and a sentence or three, leave it out of the stat block, please.Which means I need to spend time looking up the PC powers in order to give them to a monster and make sure I'm not accidentally duplicating one.</blockquote>

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