QuoteWe are not going back to a 1st or 2nd edition means of creating monsters. Those editions had no standards for monster design. Everyone just eyeballed it and hoped it was fair and fun (often it wasn't).

Third edition gives the illusion of fairness by giving you formulas to rely on, but you can use all the formulas perfectly and easily end up with an unfair or unfun monster. Advancing monsters by hit dice is a great example. Depending on its type and ability scores, the CR raise you give it according to the formulas might work out okay, but just as often the monster ends up too tough for its CR or too weak.

CR is often just a shot in the dark. We usually get it right, but I'm betting you can think of some critters that are way out of their weight class.

For each level of play we're devising a range of numbers for monsters that provide fairness and fun. Those numbers are based on what the PCs bring to the fight in terms of their potency and defenses, and upon the general role in the fight a monster is likely to be in.

Thus, the ogre, who is most likely to be the tough brute in melee, uses the "brute" range of numbers for its level. The numbers in that range and their distribution are designed to be fair and fun in a fight while at the same time allowing the artillery monster (like maybe a gnoll archer) of the same level to feel different but still be fair and fun. Of course, an ogre can chuck spears and that gnoll archer can charge up and hit you, but the numbers are devised in a fashion to produce great results when the monsters are used how people normally would use them. The ogre that's in your face has more hit points than the gnoll archer that is using the ogre as a shield.

Changing a monster will be easier and more fair that ever. Rather than jumping through hoops and doing a lot of math with uncertain results, you can just look at the numbers for where you want to be and put the monster there. You might get there by adding a class, by "advancing" a monster, by adding a template, or some combination. The key is that you'll know where you need to get to in order to make the monster work right.

Thank GOD DMs won't have to exercise judgment any more!!!!!!

Quote from: CalithenaThank GOD DMs won't have to exercise judgment any more!!!!!!

Well, yeah. But encounter design was always sort of a black art under 3+. And it was worse under earlier editions...

(Don't get me wrong-- I love encounter design under 3.0. It's something I really work hard at. )

 If it's an accurate formula for setting the right number of foes for an encounter, I'm all on board with that.

I'm not sure the help 3e gave was actually very useful, but we don't need to queue up that argument again.

What I'm more concerned about is

(a) the art of giving people 'thinking man's' insurmountable encounters - where you have to run, talk, or do something really clever to get by them, not just fight your way through, and

(b) the nonlinearity of environmental factors even in 'balanced' encounters - it's very important to me to have use of the environment, equipment, crowd control, etc. be able to exert a significant influence on the outcome of the battle for both sides. 3e did less well than earlier editions with equipment here (IMO) but the best of any edition with environmental factors.

If you're focused on a series of balanced, interesting fights (which really sounds like what a lot of their design parameters are aiming at) you potentially lose these broader-scale issues.

From talking to mearls on that great thread about dungeon strategy and tactics I'm pretty confident he's going to get the part of (b) that manifests in individual encounters down with some good stuff. I'm far less confident that these guys care much at all about broader strategizing, the whole environment, 'thinking out of the box', and all that stuff which IMO is the main thing D&D-type games have over their MMO competitors, the place where player imagination really leaps up and lets you go beyond what you can accomplish with what the rules say the stuff on your character sheet can do.

D&D is going to be a hammer for individual encounters, and while a great hammer is a good thing to use, there's that problem where everything starts looking like a nail.

Here's an encounter that took place in a (unnamed because someone might still play it) RPGA module:

You and your non-evil adventuring mercenary group are sent by your neutral, non-evil bosses on a secret mission to a remote, secret area. There's no time to arrange transport so they hire a commercial vessel. You are given standing orders to destroy/sink the hired ship when you reach the destination leaving no survivors, because the secret nature of this place is very very vital to the well-being of an entire continent.

You get on board the commercial ship and find out a little after taking off that  the captain is actually a nice guy and he's brought along his teenaged daughter who thinks adventurers are really cool.

How does that encounter stat out?  Oh, and this is just the first encounter of many. There's still the mission. Oh yeah, and the whole thing is timed. And scored.

I played this adventure once and ran it once, and different choices were made both times. I talked about it with friends who aslo played it, and they all had different things happen.

Encounter design sometimes goes beyond the rules.

Narrativist RPGA modules. Fun stuff.

I guess I'm lost as to what you're trying to get at.

I got it.

 If you're supposedly playing "good" characters - Do you kill the father and daughter because that was what your orders said?  (no survivors and all that stuff)

 Or do you figure out a way for them to survive?


- Ed C.

Quote from: Calithena(b) the nonlinearity of environmental factors even in 'balanced' encounters - it's very important to me to have use of the environment, equipment, crowd control, etc. be able to exert a significant influence on the outcome of the battle for both sides. 3e did less well than earlier editions with equipment here (IMO) but the best of any edition with environmental factors.

Quote from: CalithenaFrom talking to mearls on that great thread about dungeon strategy and tactics I'm pretty confident he's going to get the part of (b) that manifests in individual encounters down with some good stuff. I'm far less confident that these guys care much at all about broader strategizing, the whole environment, 'thinking out of the box', and all that stuff which IMO is the main thing D&D-type games have over their MMO competitors, the place where player imagination really leaps up and lets you go beyond what you can accomplish with what the rules say the stuff on your character sheet can do.

I thought they had mentioned something about environment in encounters being factored in 4e.  Like if you are fighting on a lava pit, this would somehow be reflected in the numbers.  It was very vague, but the stated goal of this was to address exactly your concern (which I share and why I find 3.5 combat so unsatisfying) and encourage the use of environmental factors and situational creativity in their design and in the options of the players.

IF what they're talking about is a good Monster Design toolkit, I'm all in favour of that; something where GMs have a clear set of guidelines of how to design a monster and determine its power level.  I put something like that into FtA!, and anything that makes it easier for a GM to be creative on his own and do so in a way that he feels capable of it, without having to rely on whatever monsters Wizards decides to release or just "winging it", is probably a good thing.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CalithenaThank GOD DMs won't have to exercise judgment any more!!!!!!

Word.  

I'm really interested in the terminology "fair and fun."  

What's "unfair and unfun?"  A GM that doesn't take into account his or her characters and whoops ass because they can't stop the madness once they unleash their unholy beasts?

And why can't a GM solve for that?

Bah! Who wants all their encounters meticulously calibrated to be balanced and 'fair' (whatever the fuck that means). I thought they were supposed to be fun. And running from deadly monsters is fun. Sometimes getting your ass kicked is fun too. And sometimes mowing down a bunch of cannon-fodder is fun too.

I play what the kids these days call a 'sandbox' game. That means the setting exist as it is exists. No scaled risks. This isn't a fucking computer game. There's lots of nasty shit around that will kill you outright. It's not the DMs job to spoonfeed you 'just so' porridge. It's your job as a player through rumours, intelligence, research, and scouting, to figure out what kind of encounters you can likely survive and what you'll have to avoid or flee from. Or sometimes you'll just die. Tough shit, roll a new PC.

Man, if 4E is just to be more safety-scissors D&D, then it's a non-starter for me.

I believe they call 'em "untiered" encounters in Living Greyhawk - that is, encounters that aren't scaled to be "fair" to the level of characters, or APL, playing the mod.

And if you are stupid and run headlong into one of those - you might just end up toast. So you do have to step lightly sometimes, the trick of course being able to recognize when those times come up.

What are they talking about, 1st and 2nd ed had no standards for monster design? I have my DMG here, it has a random demon table! Here, I'll roll one up.

DEMONNE RANDOMME
FREQUENCY: Common
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: -1
MOVE: 6"
HIT DICE: 8
% IN LAIR: (circumstances must dictate)
TREASURE TYPE: low value if any (circumstances must dictate)
NO. OF ATTACKS: 6
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-6/special/1-2/1-2/1-2/1-2
SPECIAL ATTACKS: save vs poison or go insane 1-4 rounds
SPECIAL DEFENSES: metal immunity
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 30%
INTELLIGENCE: low
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil

APPEARANCE:
Head: bat-like
Head Adornment: antlers
Overall Visage: twitching-moving
Ears: trumpet-like, huge
Eye Colour: metallic
Eyes (1): stalked
Nose: snouted
Mouth: sucker-like (poisoned, causes insanity for 1-4 rounds)
Bipedal torso, pig-like
long and rubbery torso
no tail
sweaty body odour
leathery/leprous skin of reddish colour
a "normal" back with insect-like wings
4 human-like arms, with tentacle-like fingers
2 suctioned feet

Strength 18(51-75) +2 to hit, +4 damage

Okay, now if you can even imagine that beast... well, there you go.

And if you don't like that, just open the Monster Manual, begin with 1x kobold, and throw nastier monsters at the party until you get a TPK.

Really, I don't know why this should be so difficult that stupid old Wizards has got to figure it out for you.

QuoteWe are not going back to a 1st or 2nd edition means of creating monsters. Those editions had no standards for monster design. Everyone just eyeballed it and hoped it was fair and fun (often it wasn't).

This... I mean... How far wide of the point can someone possibly be?

AD&D didn't do that very well, because it was the Advanced game. Basic D&D (Mentzer edition especially) was dripping with advice on balancing encounters. And it was very simple advice too.

Of course, at higher level some of that advice fell down, so we had the TPL/Balancing encounters system in the Companion rules.

What pisses me off about this is that 3rd ed is not a continuation of Dungeons and Dragons, its a continuation of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and as such it took for granted a lot of what you should have cut your teeth on in Basic. You remove that context and then start criticising the game for what it and its predecessors don't have and you're criticising without the contextual information you need to make an intelligent point.

Honestly... The future of Dungeons and Dragons would be more secure in the hands of someone who has experience of Dungeons and Dragons, rather than just various versions of Advanced.

Frank Mentzer also has the RC balancing formula redone for 2e on the web somewhere.

Quote from: SettembriniFrank Mentzer also has the RC balancing formula redone for 2e on the web somewhere.

Has he? I should think it works well in 2nd ed.

I can't remember whether that balancing thingy made it into the RC. I know its in the Companion rules... It made it into the RC? Good!