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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3986498" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yeah, in 3e, generating NPC's was a waste of time (which is why my games tended to have big monster fights over big NPC fights). They kind of fixed this by the end with the Exemplars of Evil and Elder Evils supplements, which I ADORE, but those came out next to or after the 4e announcement, making them slightly less than useful. The reason I need this "useless" information is so I can link the fun parts together in a cogent narrative on the fly. I come to the table bare, and I run a game right from the hip, in an ideal circumstance. This means that I need to be able to draw connections between world elements and monsters very quickly. Noncombat information helps me to do this, because it suggests trappings and world elements around the monster that I can find a place for. +20 Blacksmithing doesn't just mean that the guy can make a really nice horseshoe. It means, perhaps, an epic battle in a massive forge, where he's bristling with black armor he created himself. It means, perhaps, an intelligent evil sword dropped into the party's take of loot in order to sow dissent amongst them. It means, perhaps, a turncoat dwarf who trained him as a youth, who is truly the mastermind behind this forge-orc.If that information is no longer there, the idea doesn't build itself. It just falls flat.Think about the shoe being on the other food. We know that beholders can shoot eye beams. Does the typical beholder need 10 different specific spell-like beams that it can shoot? Or can we just say "Beholders often have eye-beams, including a hold, a disintegrate, and an telekinesis beam."The specificity helps on-the-fly play because I don't need to guess about how well they control an unruly X, or how well they can domesticate a wild Y, or even if they meet an A, B, or C, if they can use their training to calm it in some way. I don't need to make this up. I'll have rules for it.If it's called out in a notation, I'll also be able to draw my eye to it while I scan the entry, rather than having to read an entire block of text to get the information.The faster that info gets from the page to my brain, the faster my PC's will be on to finding the Hobgoblin Beastmaster who can perhaps tame the wild nightmare that's ravaging the countryside, because his +10 Handle Animal skill is better than any of their +2's. Or perhaps fighting him if they do have a better HA score.</blockquote>

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