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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 5906932" data-attributes="member: 6688937">hmm....Should DM's be able to customize their NPCs/Monsters/campaigns?...yes.Should this take a single calorie more than necessary, just so they feel the "onus to take some time and make them their own."...no. No. and still No.Should a DM be able to take a lot of time to make a truly detailed "delicate snowflake" of an NPC/monster that will be a feature of the campaign for many sessions?...yes.This should be a game (i.e. pleasurable experience) for the DM, too. While there may be artistic and creative elements to the DM job, the effort necessary should be minimal. There is no virtue in a system that puts unnecessary effort in the DM's way. Monsters and NPCs that follow all those rules, and require all that work, just to die in a few rounds, are unnecessary.Now, that said. I think the system should be set up so that a DM could make a custom NPC/monster of whatever level in multiple ways. That is, do a 4e-style super-simple npc, or detail out every bit of that NPC a la 3.x. If they are both level x, they should be able to pose a similar amount of threat. So, frex. Two DMs want to have a level 5 goblin necromancer running around causing havoc:DM-A picks up the MM and discovers that, while there is a goblin shaman, there is no goblin necromancer. He takes 5 minutes to trade for some necromantic powers and spells from other monsters and ups the level to 5 by adding some hp. He's good to go.DM-B picks up the DMG and PHB, picks appropriate race (possibly an MM appendix), class, theme, background, makes all the choices for each level up to 5, including a complete spell list and magic items. 20 minutes later, he's good to go. You need to give me one.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Honestly, why would the DM want to spend more than a few seconds on developing an "Orc Beserker"? They aren't going to live long enough to make it worth the effort. If you've got some big special NPC, maybe, but only if he's going to feature in more than one session, IMO. I can live with the basic concept as an option, but it needs (for me, anyway) to be a super fast implementation. I mean way less than 5 min. If I can't whip open an MM page and find or generate 5 types of goblin to make an encounter in 10 minutes, then my goblin encounters are going to get really boring. However, I don't see a need for identical mechanics between PCs and NPCs monsters. There's just too many monsters (and even categories of monster) for which that's just not a relevant thing.</blockquote>

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