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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ipissimus" data-source="post: 4040324" data-attributes="member: 41514">Hardest thing about DMing 3.x? Challenging competant players. This is where all my complaints about 3.x flow from.I never really found 3.0 or 3.5 complex, more convoluted. Skills for example, are easy to assign. But then, to do it properly, you have to take into account synergies, magic, equipment, special class abilities, etc. Then you have to check whether they stack or not. Now, this is easy as pie if you're only doing it for one character as players do, but as a DM you've gotta worry about a cast of thousands.Ok, so, you don't have to detail skills, really, unless it's for a recurring character the players will interact with for more than 3 rounds. How about AC, then? Dodge bonuses, equipment bonuses, magic bonuses, spells and how many rounds they last (particularly if they're from a magic item), and whether THEY stack, then you have to calculate flat-footed AC, touch AC and, if you're not sick of it already, touch AC while flat-footed.Now, you might think you don't have to do all that. But if your party's compentant, it will come up. If the rogue, for example, isn't ignoring armour with a surprise sneak attack at high level then he's not really trying very hard.So, you might start thinking, as I did, 'bugger this, i'll steal stat blocks from Dungeon with the appropriate CR'. Then you'll quickly find out that the CR system is horrible. Example, at 18th level, I ran my party through Bastion of Borken Souls. At a certain point, they meet an 18th level Half-Dragon Kobald Fighter (CR 20) with some friends. He becomes a grease-stain in 1 round. In the next room, they encounter a Half-Dragon Dire Bear that almost inflicts a TPK alone due mainly to it's massive hit point quota. And that's a CR 17 monster. Not only did the toughest and most memorable monster fight that session give them less Exp, they got more gear off the Kobald! Purely because, as someone alluded above, 486hp are better than 161.Most of the time we've only had properly tense hard-fought battles with proper rewards for victory has been with villains I've created from scratch. And to do that I've had to do what the PCs do: build an effective character around a theme. Like the Gnoll Cleric lich who focussed on touch attack spells and paralyzation. Getting the monster to do that effectively takes alot of work picking feats, spells, making sure he has enough hit points to last the distance, etc.Of course, there's no guarentee that 4E will be different, but I'm hopeful since they acknowledge the problem.</blockquote>

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