Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 6008915" data-attributes="member: 13107">Ah ... I'm hearing that as a difference of taste, and perhaps of conditional utility.&nbsp; Which is cool.I myself prefer to see lots of background detail.&nbsp; For example, see the Monsternomicon, the Iron Kingdoms monster book, which has at least two pages for each monster.&nbsp; The additional writing rather helps to enrich the monsters and place them in the Iron Kingdom's setting -- and makes the book very readable.&nbsp; As a very different example, see the 4E Monster Manual I, which is quite sparse, and rather a terrible read, *but*, has more simple utility and quite a few more monsters packed into the same space.Focusing on the amount of detail provides a way of splitting the issue: Is there a problem because the mechanic is tersely described, but has a sensible explanation, or because the mechanic is tersely described, and is hard to map to a sensible explanation?Looking at Horrifying Visage, I think the example suffers from the 4E overuse of &quot;Push&quot;, along with the missing &quot;Psychic&quot; keyword.&nbsp; Those, plus a simple sentence, &quot;The target reacts in abject terror, springing back from the wight.&quot;&nbsp; That, along with a new tone of &quot;hey, these are 90% abilities; according to your players tastes, you will want to adjust these to adapt to particular circumstances&quot; would remove the disassociation from Horrifying Visage.There are other examples, e.g., Come and Get It, which seem harder to remedy.Thx!TomB</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tomBitonti, post: 6008915, member: 13107"] Ah ... I'm hearing that as a difference of taste, and perhaps of conditional utility. Which is cool. I myself prefer to see lots of background detail. For example, see the Monsternomicon, the Iron Kingdoms monster book, which has at least two pages for each monster. The additional writing rather helps to enrich the monsters and place them in the Iron Kingdom's setting -- and makes the book very readable. As a very different example, see the 4E Monster Manual I, which is quite sparse, and rather a terrible read, *but*, has more simple utility and quite a few more monsters packed into the same space. Focusing on the amount of detail provides a way of splitting the issue: Is there a problem because the mechanic is tersely described, but has a sensible explanation, or because the mechanic is tersely described, and is hard to map to a sensible explanation? Looking at Horrifying Visage, I think the example suffers from the 4E overuse of "Push", along with the missing "Psychic" keyword. Those, plus a simple sentence, "The target reacts in abject terror, springing back from the wight." That, along with a new tone of "hey, these are 90% abilities; according to your players tastes, you will want to adjust these to adapt to particular circumstances" would remove the disassociation from Horrifying Visage. There are other examples, e.g., Come and Get It, which seem harder to remedy. Thx! TomB [/QUOTE]

Verification