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<blockquote data-quote="Benimoto" data-source="post: 4524989" data-attributes="member: 40093">I saw it as a partial success.&nbsp; The system gave PCs class levels while monsters had hit dice, which were sort of like levels, but worse.&nbsp; Monsters made up for how bad their hit dice were by getting a lot of them, and by getting powerful racial modifiers to ability scores and AC.&nbsp; The systems interacted together in sometimes unintuitive and non-transparent ways, and when combined, produced unpredictable CR results.&nbsp; And then you added templates on top of it, which generally bypassed the whole hit dice/level system, and just added a bunch of bonuses and abilities instead of levels.It meant that while you could make almost any monster function like a PC, it was troublesome to have PCs who were monsters.&nbsp; Templates, similarly, worked okay on monsters, but were often terrible for PCs.&nbsp; It meant that to have powerful humanoid NPCs, you had to give them class levels, which meant equipping them like PCs.&nbsp; And since the whole concept of adding PC levels to monsters worked in with the multiclass system, improving monsters with levels meant that they started at the beginning of the level system, no matter how tough they were overall.&nbsp; So adding fighter levels worked well and adding spellcaster levels usually didn't.A 4th level fighter is a guy who's taken 4 levels of fighter.&nbsp; A minotaur 4th level fighter is a minotaur who's taken 4 levels of fighter.&nbsp; That worked.&nbsp; But in a lot of ways, the game tried to say that a minotaur was something (what exactly?) that's taken 6 (or 4 or 8, depending on if you look at HD, CR or EL) levels of minotaur.&nbsp; That didn't work.&nbsp; Can a fighter start taking levels of minotaur?&nbsp; Can an orc?So it wasn't a success.&nbsp; PCs and monsters were still very different things, despite their similarities.&nbsp; And, as people have mentioned, it made generating or improving monsters a big, overly-complicated mess.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Benimoto, post: 4524989, member: 40093"] I saw it as a partial success. The system gave PCs class levels while monsters had hit dice, which were sort of like levels, but worse. Monsters made up for how bad their hit dice were by getting a lot of them, and by getting powerful racial modifiers to ability scores and AC. The systems interacted together in sometimes unintuitive and non-transparent ways, and when combined, produced unpredictable CR results. And then you added templates on top of it, which generally bypassed the whole hit dice/level system, and just added a bunch of bonuses and abilities instead of levels. It meant that while you could make almost any monster function like a PC, it was troublesome to have PCs who were monsters. Templates, similarly, worked okay on monsters, but were often terrible for PCs. It meant that to have powerful humanoid NPCs, you had to give them class levels, which meant equipping them like PCs. And since the whole concept of adding PC levels to monsters worked in with the multiclass system, improving monsters with levels meant that they started at the beginning of the level system, no matter how tough they were overall. So adding fighter levels worked well and adding spellcaster levels usually didn't. A 4th level fighter is a guy who's taken 4 levels of fighter. A minotaur 4th level fighter is a minotaur who's taken 4 levels of fighter. That worked. But in a lot of ways, the game tried to say that a minotaur was something (what exactly?) that's taken 6 (or 4 or 8, depending on if you look at HD, CR or EL) levels of minotaur. That didn't work. Can a fighter start taking levels of minotaur? Can an orc? So it wasn't a success. PCs and monsters were still very different things, despite their similarities. And, as people have mentioned, it made generating or improving monsters a big, overly-complicated mess. [/QUOTE]

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