Encounter Design: Speed & Ease of Use [3.5] [Archive]

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 08:57 AM

I'm creating a new thread for this, in the appropriate sub-forum, because while I really want to comment on this issue, continuing this discussion in a thread devoted to 5E is incredibly off-topic. Here's the relevant text:

3.X has the problem in that it gives me information I don't need, and doesn't give me information I do need, which is how to quickly make an encounter. I suppose I could rely on the CR in the DMG and Monster Manual (hey, this dragon is CR 12, he should be a good encounter for our 11th level party), but modded creatures or class-based characters are a pain to balance. I know, I tried, and eventually gave up.

Bottom line? 3.X isn't worth the work to make an opponent.

Great. Now for tonight's game, give me a Drow Fighter/Magic-User that would be a good challenge for a 10th level party. And oh yeah, you have fifteen minutes to do it in, because I have to do a couple other characters as well. And "well, if you check supplement XYZ..." can't be done. I don't have time to go out and buy something.

Now for Mutants and Masterminds, that single-session villain is easy.
OCV 12, DCV 12, All saves 10 except Will, which is 12.
Magic 12
Energy Blast 12
Energy Blast 8 Area,
Entangle
Invisibility

Sword: damage 8, Penetrating
Flight 3
Enhanced senses, darkvision.

Done, in three minutes. I can now do his pet dragon. I can pretty much do the same in Champions, Swashbucklers of the Seven Seas, Jaws of the Six Serpents, and any other game I would care to run. But not in 3.X, because that sucker was really badly designed. We're talking Rifts level of incompetence.

Drow Duskblade 11, elite array, appropriate standard equipment (a few potions, mithril breastplate with an enchantment, medium-strength magical weapon). Spell list is already done. Feats: Arcane Strike, Weapon Focus, Sudden Metamagic feats to fill up all slots, done.

Or with no supplements:

Drow Fighter 1/Sorcerer 5/Eldritch Knight 5, elite array, same equipment, fighter feats and quicken spell. Done.

Ten minutes? Perhaps a bit less, even?

It's really not bad at all. Dragons are a particularly easy choice, since they come in many different flavors of CR for each given type. There's pretty much always a dragon within a couple CR of the party. Slapping say, a level of barbarian on a melee monster and calling it +1 CR is strictly RAW, it's really easy, and it works pretty well.

How is it hard to balance?

Oh, it's a gish. So, drow with a bunch of levels in duskblade. Easy peasy. I'll have ten minutes left over. If, for some reason, core only is desired, Paladin(or fighter or w/e, depending on desired archtype)/sorc/Eldritch Knight. Should still have plenty of time to spare.

And yeah, using the example chars is a remarkably easy way to do things. Oddly enough, I didn't even see Eldan's response until after I'd typed all of the above, and we came out to the same conclusions. It can't be all THAT arcane.

Eric Tolle has a very legitimate complaint, I feel, about how long it takes to create a character or monster that is an appropriate challenge, to which Eldan and Tyndmyr reply dismissively with, in my opinion, ludicrous claims with no factual evidence to support themselves.

In fact, there is so many things wrong with their comments I scarcely know where to begin. Eldan, for example, suggests using example characters; however where in god's green earth do these example characters come from? There is generally only one example character given for any class or prestige class, it is usually horribly built, often rife with errors, and cannot possibly be considered a "good challenge" for a party of four adventurers of any level.

Simply filling out a character sheet or monster statblock can take several minutes by itself. Even mindlessly choosing feats without regard for a specific build or strategy can take a few minutes. Taking the time to coordinate effective feats with non-randomly chosen spells in order to produce a challenge appropriate to the story and to the players can take hours.

BooNL

2011-11-01, 09:26 AM

I disagree with your statement. Yes, creating a BBEG or other notable character takes as much time as creating a PC. On the other hand, they should, because these characters are meant to be memorable.

In the various monster manuals there are enough stat-blocks for various creatures, even monsters with PC classes. Just look at the various Hobgoblin encounters over the splatbooks. Similarly, most books introducing new mechanics have several encounters as well, even the Races Of books have encounters relative to the races they describe.

Creating mooks and monsters doesn't have to take a long time. You can do a lot with just Fighter, Rogue or Wizard classes for example. You don't have to find obscure splatbooks or write out every variable spell a wizard could use, just select a couple interesting ones.

On the subject of creating characters, there's enough handbooks and guides out there these days that creating a cookie-cutter is as simple as picking the first option in the respective handbook.

I do think the CR system is horribly convulted and eventually boils down to guesswork instead of science.

Gullintanni

2011-11-01, 09:28 AM

Eldan and Tyndmyr are speaking from a slightly different perspective, I think, than what you're used to. Drafting up effective NPCs is absurdly easy assuming a high level of System Mastery. That's the real catch in 3.5 D&D.

There's so much poor material out there that unless you've spent tons of time getting to know which feat combinations are good with which types of characters for which types of roles, then you'll spend hours reading feats, spells, equipment etc.

The fact is though, Eldan and Tyndmyr are giving you feat and character class combos that are well known to be very effective in their selected roles. The builds they suggested are well known and well documented in the 3.5 forum community. The big problem with 3.5 is that it takes that sort of documentation and sharing of information to produce accurate descriptions of character challenge. If anything, it's not that D&D isn't quick, it's that you need to master the system to be good at making predictions about it and to use it quickly.

...which can be a substantial investment in and of itself.

Tyndmyr

2011-11-01, 09:43 AM

Eric Tolle has a very legitimate complaint, I feel, about how long it takes to create a character or monster that is an appropriate challenge, to which Eldan and Tyndmyr reply dismissively with, in my opinion, ludicrous claims with no factual evidence to support themselves.

Adding a level or HD to an existing monster is remarkably easy.

This was a discussion about advancement. Advancement IS easy. Char creation is slightly more complicated, but still not terribly hard.

In fact, there is so many things wrong with their comments I scarcely know where to begin. Eldan, for example, suggests using example characters; however where in god's green earth do these example characters come from? There is generally only one example character given for any class or prestige class, it is usually horribly built, often rife with errors, and cannot possibly be considered a "good challenge" for a party of four adventurers of any level.

A few have errors. The majority do not. The builds are not terribly optimized, true...but optimization level of games vary. If you want hyper-optimization, you have to accept rather more difficulty in challenging your players. This is true of basically any system that allows optimization.

Plenty of the NPCs can be useful, and in the right context, a challenge. Not every NPC will be appropriate for every situation, but that's honestly pretty much expected.

Simply filling out a character sheet or monster statblock can take several minutes by itself. Even mindlessly choosing feats without regard for a specific build or strategy can take a few minutes. Taking the time to coordinate effective feats with non-randomly chosen spells in order to produce a challenge appropriate to the story and to the players can take hours.

Honestly, I, and most other people, don't fill out the entire sheet for every char build. I envision an image of what I want. Typically, this will be an archtype or class.

So, here's how I do it.

Assign stats. Typically, I use arrays. This is normal, and saves time over rolling. This takes...ten seconds perhaps to copy six numbers over.

Pick a race: Time taken, generally about five seconds. If you don't have a selection of plausible races in your head, you haven't played D&D much. They're quite literally right in the front of the phb. Human is a common choice in almost any setting, and are extremely easy to pick.

Level up. The slowest part is writing down class features, and honestly, this is only slow for certain classes. Warrior? Scratch down bab and saves and hp, and rock on. Time is somewhat variable, but d20srd.org makes selecting spells known pretty easy.

Feats. Slap in any prereqs for PrCs. If optimization is desired, select a feat or two that boosts his primary schtick. If you're at about the desired power level, grab general feats, like improved init, iron will or improved toughness. These are nice, easy, flat bonuses you can slap on in seconds. If it takes you more than a minute to pick feats, you're wasting time. Only do this if it's a notable char that'll appear repeatedly.

Skills. Seriously, don't waste time optimizing this unless it's relevant. I usually just select x skills to max where x = skill points a level + int bonus. Sometimes, I don't bother to hit that many. Detailing bits that will not arise is wasted time. This should also take less than a minute. Probably much less.

Items. Don't mess about with every irrelevant mundane item. Cover the major bases, toss a potion or two if appropriate(seriously, carrying healing potions is just common sense in most worlds), call it a day. If it's not relevant to his appearance(s), don't mess with it. Usually, you can get by with tossing his npc wealth into a magic weapon and calling it a day. Also, not every NPC should even HAVE wealth. Poverty is occasionally appropriate, and is fast and fine.

You don't need a char sheet for the above. Many of my hastily written NPCs consist of a small statblock. Vital stats like hp and ac need to be there...but size category? Nah. You know the race, you know the size.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 09:53 AM

Creating mooks and monsters doesn't have to take a long time. You can do a lot with just Fighter, Rogue or Wizard classes for example. You don't have to find obscure splatbooks or write out every variable spell a wizard could use, just select a couple interesting ones.

I'm not talking about creating mooks, and from Eric's request for, "a good challenge, I don't think he's talking about creating mooks either.

On the subject of creating characters, there's enough handbooks and guides out there these days that creating a cookie-cutter is as simple as picking the first option in the respective handbook.

And I'm saying that simply reading some character handbook, filling out the respective character sheet, and familiarizing yourself with the rules associated with the feats, spells, and classes used in the handbook can take an exorbitant amount of time in and of itself.

Eldan and Tyndmyr are speaking from a slightly different perspective, I think, than what you're used to. Drafting up effective NPCs is absurdly easy assuming a high level of System Mastery. That's the real catch in 3.5 D&D.

I think what you're calling "system mastery" is more akin to system familiarity. I know the rules for how the system operates better than most people. The difference between "mastery" and "familiarity" is that I don't have memorized what every single feat and spell in the game does. Nor do I have any interest in doing so.

The fact is though, Eldan and Tyndmyr are giving you feat and character class combos that are well known to be very effective in their selected roles. The builds they suggested are well known and well documented in the 3.5 forum community.

Sure, sure, except they throw out a concept or two, but nothing remotely resembling a build and then they call it done in 10 minutes or less. It's NOT that simple. Like I said earlier, even just using something simple like Duskblade 11 (which really isn't that much of a challenge for a level 10 party), its spell list is not already done as Eldan suggests, nor is its equipment magically laid out for you. If you want the encounter to be challenging, rather than free treasure with a name, you need to spend more time on it than 10 minutes.

Gullintanni

2011-11-01, 10:03 AM

Sure, sure, except they throw out a concept or two, but nothing remotely resembling a build and then they call it done in 10 minutes or less. It's NOT that simple. Like I said earlier, even just using something simple like Duskblade 11 (which really isn't that much of a challenge for a level 10 party), its spell list is not already done as Eldan suggests, nor is its equipment magically laid out for you. If you want the encounter to be challenging, rather than free treasure with a name, you need to spend more time on it than 10 minutes.

This really depends on how much time you want to spend on your NPC. Unless you're building your BBEG, this character IS just treasure with a name. Remember, the NPC is supposed to last for one encounter. If the character has WBL, gear is:

Appropriate Armor + Appropriate Enhancement Bonus for level
Appropriate Weapon + Appropriate Enhancement Bonus for level (or mundane for Greater Magic Weapon)
Cloak of Resistance Appropriate for Level
Stat Boosting Item - Depending on whether or not you want higher save DCs on your Gishy spellcaster

Potion to taste. You're done.

Spells are fairly easy. Battlefield control, Buffs and Dispel Magic. Pick a few of the best known spells for each and you're done. Unless you're designing a BBEG, like I said, this NPC is going to last for all of one level appropriate encounter. This guy should be a speed bump on the way to your BBEG. Treasure with a name.

If you want a BBEG, yes you spend more time on the character. But everyone else? Just throw something together. And the character given above will be challenging to a level appropriate party if you follow the one rule of designing challenging encounters in D&D: Provide Mooks. It's much more difficult to design a challenging 4 on 1 encounter than it is to design a 4 on 2 or 4 on 4 encounter. Meatshields allow your NPC to compensate for the action economy bonus the player party receives for having four players to your one.

EDIT: On the subject of System Familiarity vs. System Mastery, they are nearly identical save for one caveat. System Familiarity requires knowing your content. System Mastery is knowing which components of that content fit together to form a challenging whole.

You need both, to some degree, to use 3.5 quickly.

Eldan

2011-11-01, 10:08 AM

In fact, there is so many things wrong with their comments I scarcely know where to begin. Eldan, for example, suggests using example characters; however where in god's green earth do these example characters come from? There is generally only one example character given for any class or prestige class, it is usually horribly built, often rife with errors, and cannot possibly be considered a "good challenge" for a party of four adventurers of any level.

The DMG, of course. Pages 110-127 has basic core builds for all core classes. Sure, they aren't very good, but I'd say they work well enough as a basis, and you can look them up in three minutes.

Tyndmyr

2011-11-01, 10:14 AM

I'm not talking about creating mooks, and from Eric's request for, "a good challenge, I don't think he's talking about creating mooks either.

There are two types of chars. The plot centric ones what are encountered repeatedly, and which are heavily woven into the story, and whom the players encounter frequently enough to deduce details of their build. By the very nature of this type, their number will be extremely few. Any extra time should be spent fleshing out these, and their personality is still more important than their stats.

Then, we have the rest. The guys you meet once, kill them, loot the bodies, high five, and move on. Spending significant time on these is a waste. Reuse these stat blocks whenever appropriate. When appropriate, just grab a monster of the correct CR out of the monster manual. If neither works for the plot, do a quickie advancement of whatever is relevant. Adding a few levels or HD to something takes very, very little time.

And I'm saying that simply reading some character handbook, filling out the respective character sheet, and familiarizing yourself with the rules associated with the feats, spells, and classes used in the handbook can take an exorbitant amount of time in and of itself.

Familiarizing yourself with the phb might take a notable amount of time, yes. You pretty much have to do that anyway, in essentially any game. If it's rules heavy, you gotta read the phb and have a decent understanding of it.

I think what you're calling "system mastery" is more akin to system familiarity. I know the rules for how the system operates better than most people. The difference between "mastery" and "familiarity" is that I don't have memorized what every single feat and spell in the game does. Nor do I have any interest in doing so.

I don't have every single feat and spell in the game memorized either. I don't need to do so to create an effective character, either PC or NPC. Is Improved Init exactly the best feat for the char? Probably not. But it's easy to remember, easy to add, and it'll work quite well.

Sure, sure, except they throw out a concept or two, but nothing remotely resembling a build and then they call it done in 10 minutes or less. It's NOT that simple. Like I said earlier, even just using something simple like Duskblade 11 (which really isn't that much of a challenge for a level 10 party), its spell list is not already done as Eldan suggests, nor is its equipment magically laid out for you. If you want the encounter to be challenging, rather than free treasure with a name, you need to spend more time on it than 10 minutes.

*googles*

*Finds NPC WBL, duskblade handbook, srd*

*picks elite array* 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Level up bonuses go to int.

Str 15
Dex 8
Con 13
Int 16
Wis 12
Cha 10

Lets do human. That's 5 feats to pick, 5 skills to max.

Feats: Insightful Reflexes, Improved Init(fixing our dump stat), Lightning Reflexes, Inhuman Reach and it's prereq(or, willing deformity tall and it's prereq, if you prefer. Whichever).

Skills: Concentration, Know Arcana, Jump, Climb, Know Nature.

WBL: +1 Flaming, Whirling, Human Bane, Vicious Guisarme, Belt of Battle, 2x pots of CMW.

Time elapsed: Seven minutes. Would have been faster, but I had to type out the post instead of using my usual shorthand. There is no need to write out the spell list, as it's in the book. Just keep the book next to you when you use him.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 10:34 AM

Familiarizing yourself with the phb might take a notable amount of time, yes. You pretty much have to do that anyway, in essentially any game. If it's rules heavy, you gotta read the phb and have a decent understanding of it.

Insightful. I'd have never thought to read the PHB. Of course, since we're talking about designing challenging encounters to use against the players, that makes us the DM meaning we'll need to read the DMG and the MM. This will take days, even weeks perhaps, to acquire the system mastery/familiarity required to put together encounters in the time you're suggesting is trivially easy. And even after all that time invested simply picking a random monster out of the MM of a CR equal to average party level is incredibly unlikely to be a challenging encounter for your party.

*googles*

*Finds NPC WBL, duskblade handbook, srd*

*picks elite array* 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Level up bonuses go to int.

Str 15
Dex 8
Con 13
Int 16
Wis 12
Cha 10

Lets do human. That's 5 feats to pick, 5 skills to max.

Feats: Insightful Reflexes, Improved Init(fixing our dump stat), Lightning Reflexes, Inhuman Reach and it's prereq(or, willing deformity tall and it's prereq, if you prefer. Whichever).

Skills: Concentration, Know Arcana, Jump, Climb, Know Nature.

WBL: +1 Flaming, Whirling, Human Bane, Vicious Guisarme, Belt of Battle, 2x pots of CMW.

Time elapsed: Seven minutes. Would have been faster, but I had to type out the post instead of using my usual shorthand. There is no need to write out the spell list, as it's in the book. Just keep the book next to you when you use him.

Congrats, you've spent seven minutes on an encounter that will be trivial to a party of four characters and hands them a magic weapon that is by itself beyond any PCs total wealth by level and will be significantly better than any weapon they own. And I don't even know what Whirling does or where it comes from.

Here's the thing. If it's a mook that should be trivial for the party to defeat, then it shouldn't take seven minutes to create and it shouldn't be giving the party a magic item more powerful than everything else they own. The problem is, for a lot of people, creating even mooks requires longer than seven minutes, and creating properly challenging encounters requires a significantly longer investment of time.

Eldan

2011-11-01, 10:47 AM

If it's a mook, I'm not taking seven minutes. For a mook, I take something like an Ogre, slap four warrior levels and the elite array on him and call it a day. Three minutes, top. Or, as said, I open the DMG and use one of the examples provided already therein.

It depends on your group of course, but mine's regularly challenged by completely ordinary example NPCs or monsters straight from the books.

gkathellar

2011-11-01, 11:04 AM

I think the source of the debate here is that encounter design is essentially problematic, but it is not problematic for experienced DMs who have explored the 10 years of metagame examination devoted to 3.X. If you have system mastery, encounter design in 3.X is easy-peazy —*but if you're lacking in that and still need to check tables and lists and various options, than it becomes much more difficult.

In essence, Eldan and Tyndmyr are speaking from their own experience, because encounter and enemy design is this easy for them. There's no reason to doubt that. But it's not easy for a lot of other people, and a game should not require such a high level of understanding to approach that level of ease in running its mechanics.

Balor01

2011-11-01, 11:32 AM

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 11:37 AM

Higher level the party, greater the horror, is my experience.

I strongly disagree with encounters being "loot on legs" or how someone had put it. If you want some not tastes-like-cardboard encounters and campaign, you need to invest some serious time into NPC creation. I try to bidge this by giving NPCs some unfair advantages, for them to be about on-par with PCs. I prefer monsters, because PC classess ... holy heck. To make something EFFECTIVE (Not that +2 armor, +2 longsword, +1 ring of prot. and potion of CMW) it takes some serious planning.

But then again ... If I wanted it easy (and IMO dumb) I'd just go 4E. I guess I enjoy the pain. :smallbiggrin:

Well, that kind of sums up the whole argument - easy, faceless minions are easy to roll up. Carefully tailored enemies take a lot of time. But, carefully tailored enemies are only an option when the system allows for a great deal of freedom in creation.

If there's a system out there that allows for carefully custom tailored NPCs on the fly, I would love to see it.

stainboy

2011-11-01, 12:31 PM

Seerow

2011-11-01, 01:19 PM

*googles*

*Finds NPC WBL, duskblade handbook, srd*

*picks elite array* 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Level up bonuses go to int.

Str 15
Dex 8
Con 13
Int 16
Wis 12
Cha 10

Lets do human. That's 5 feats to pick, 5 skills to max.

Feats: Insightful Reflexes, Improved Init(fixing our dump stat), Lightning Reflexes, Inhuman Reach and it's prereq(or, willing deformity tall and it's prereq, if you prefer. Whichever).

Skills: Concentration, Know Arcana, Jump, Climb, Know Nature.

WBL: +1 Flaming, Whirling, Human Bane, Vicious Guisarme, Belt of Battle, 2x pots of CMW.

Time elapsed: Seven minutes. Would have been faster, but I had to type out the post instead of using my usual shorthand. There is no need to write out the spell list, as it's in the book. Just keep the book next to you when you use him.

I'm missing the statblock indicating the Duskblade's init, AC, HP, saves, etc. Also you can't say you just open up the book and have your spell list, because the Duskblade has limited spells known, the fact that you have to pick out those individual spells is part of the Duskblade's weakness.

So your duskblade has 4 cantrips, 5 1st level spells, 4 2nd level spells, and 3 3rd level spells. It actually took me about 5 minutes just to look up how many spells known the duskblade has because it doesn't have a table telling you, just a note in the text saying you get one spell known per level, with a few bonus cantrips and 2 base 0th/first level spells. So after figuring out how many spells you have, you now have to sort through the spell list to pick out which spells you actually want for the encounter, which will likely be another few minutes.

15 minutes was actually a pretty generous estimate for statting up a full mid-high level 3.5 character. If you're looking for an actual challenging encounter rather than a speed bump, you also end up looking at what long term buffs he keeps up, a better assortment of feats, perhaps a more involved class build and checking to make sure you meet all prereqs for any other classes, picking/designing any minions gained via class features that don't count towards CR (Animal Companion, familiar, bound allies, created allies, etc).

And of course while doing all of this you need to keep in mind your PCs and their capabilities, to determine if you're going overboard, or making it too weak. 3.5 is an especially fiddly system in that regard, and if you're a better or worse optimizer than your players, you could easily either bore them to tears or accidentally TPK them. Adjusting the spell lists, feats, and class choices to measure up to what the PCs are capable of isn't an easy task, and the CR system is particularly ill-suited to adjucating what is an appropriate difficulty encounter against any party.

Basically you handwave away half the easy stuff, and blatantly ignore the biggest time suckers, and insist that it's fast and easy. 3.5 encounter design was a hot mess, and one of the worst aspects of the edition. 4e encounter design may have had some problems in terms of monsters having a bit too much HP, or not doing quite enough damage, but those are far easier problems to fix than the issues the CR system, and creating NPCs with PC rules presents.

Edit: Worth noting, I just checked: An 11th level NPC WBL is 21,000 GP.

600 GP (2 potions)+ 50,000 GP (+5 weapon, assuming whirling is only +1, I have no idea what Whirling is except it's not in the SRD and google can't seem to find anything) + 12,000 GP (Belt of Battle), means yo just spend 63.6k GP, 3 times as much as the alloted wealth by level. Seems you were giving him a full PC gp amount, which isn't allotted for any NPC. Even if it was, I'm pretty sure there's a rule or guideline against spending more than half your wealth on a single item, with this one encounter you'd be dropping a sword worth as much as everything a given character has encountered thus far in their careers.

MukkTB

2011-11-01, 01:25 PM

As a bad DM without a great amount of the material memorized.

Its fairly easy to make encounters for the players. If its a bunch of mooks then you just pull up book stats. If its supposed to be a more challenging encounter there are a ton of variations to choose from.

But lets talk about a single NPC who is supposed to last one encounter. First off he needs a little bit of personality. Otherwise you might as well use a generic template. Once that's settled go look up the class at that level and copy the bonuses over. Then it takes a minute or two to roll and assign stats. (my personal preference although I'll cheat on the rolls if they wouldn't allow the character to do what hes supposed to.) Then I pick an obvious line of feats based on how our group rolls.

I don't have to worry about optimization because all I have to do is optimize as much as the party is optimized. Since I've been watching them go for a while I know whats up. If I was totally outclassed by some other player in terms of ability to optimize I could always at least copy what hes doing if I don't just stand down and let him DM.

Also Players don't regularly check DM notes. You can fudge it a bit in the interest of making play faster. For the most part they won't notice know or mind. They'd much rather that the NPC was just functional interesting and fun to fight. Half of that is just roleplaying/story aspects.

EDIT - If its appropriate I'd give the NPC some mooks just to even out the action economy. If its not appropriate I'd look to some other way of evening the odds. A favored environment for the enemy night be appropriate.

The Boz

2011-11-01, 01:45 PM

How about the DMs here share some secrets?
What's the best way to organize and develop your NPCs, especially those with combat interactions in mind?

In the PF game I'm currently running, I normally use the bestiary for monsters, which is nice and simple, but the campaign has a lot of allies and foes with class levels, which I find I have to develop quickly from the ground up. I get through the random mooks quickly enough, especially since after one is statted up, its easy to use the stat block to develop similarly CRed mooks with minor adjustments. I take my time on any spellcaster or memorable character and develop their stuff with a lot of detail, but I keep that detail in a separate file. I use my laptop a lot, and on it I have multiple text files with NPCs, quests, events, PC cheat sheets, items and fluff.

An NPC from a quest might have the following blurb in the part where all the other NPCs and enemies are statted up for ease of access:

Robbett
(40hp, AC 20, +7/+7/+3, I+1, LE, 20ft, A+7 1d8+3 C19x2)
[Masterwork Longsword, Masterwork Heavy Shield, Masterwork Banded Mail, letter, 260 gold]
Will engage confidently, but will try and withdraw if any of his friends is killed.

In the quest description, however, there is a more detailed text about that same guy:

Robbett
A portly human of some fourty years, with balding and greying hair. He stands completely relaxed not out of confidence, but out of laziness. The tunic of the Felton Guard that he wears is messy, showing obvious signs of neglect. His shield is old but sturdy, and it doesn't have a single battle dent or scratch on it, and the same is true for his armor. The banded mail he wears was obviously made for someone taller, thinner, likely several years ago when Felton's economy was booming. He talks slowly, but not because he's stupid; he just doesn't give a ****.

How does everyone else do it?

MukkTB

2011-11-01, 01:55 PM

Here lets try this.
I'll start designing an encounter for my group as soon as I post this up, and I'll edit it with the information when I'm done, see how long it takes.

EDIT-1:20

We’ll call the NPC Kerry.
He will be a travelling merchant from the northern town who is working for an agent of a hostile nation.
(The PCs are a part of an expedition for another nation. The agent has been supplying monsters in the area the PCs are exploring with weapons and supplies to fight the expedition.)

He will be a gruff sort of guy with a low charisma and be fairly annoyed with people in general. Hes angry at having to smuggle stuff into the wilderness although the pay is good enough he’s willing to do it.

If he encounters the PCs and recognizes them as agents of the expedition he will do his best to control his gruffness and invite them to look at his wares. He’ll make some small talk with them while his guards position themselves around the PCs and let them start the combat by stabbing them in the back.

If he encounters the PCs and doesn’t recognize them he will tell them that he’s moving spices south to trade for silk and to screw off. It’s a DC 20 spot check to see through the disguise, and a DC15 search check to see through if the PCs get into his stuff.

4 Human Guards
Lvl 1 Warriors +3 atk melee, +2 atk range, 13 AC, leather armor, rifles, longswords, 5 HP
Power Attack - Cleave

Kerry Lvl 5 Rogue
Str 14 Dex 12 Con 16 Int 13 Wis 12 Cha 7
Sneak Attack 3d6
+5 atk melee, +4 atk range, 16 AC, 35 HP
Poisoned Dagger (Centipede Poison 3 doses)
+1 chain shirt
Pistol
Resiliency
Improved Unarmed Strike – Improved Grapple – Quick Draw – Step Up - Deceitful

Would've been a bit faster without having to write everything down

Eldan

2011-11-01, 02:00 PM

Another factor is that I, usually, have between 0 (quite common) and 2 (rarely) combat encounters per session. So, I can take a lot of time for it, if I want. I use standard creatures from the manuals for about half of those and custom-built NPCs only rarely.

Tyndmyr

2011-11-01, 02:05 PM

Insightful. I'd have never thought to read the PHB. Of course, since we're talking about designing challenging encounters to use against the players, that makes us the DM meaning we'll need to read the DMG and the MM. This will take days, even weeks perhaps, to acquire the system mastery/familiarity required to put together encounters in the time you're suggesting is trivially easy. And even after all that time invested simply picking a random monster out of the MM of a CR equal to average party level is incredibly unlikely to be a challenging encounter for your party.

Yes, the DM also needs to read the DMG. I didn't think this was worthy of saying. The MM also needs to be flipped through, but you need not memorize it.

Congrats, you've spent seven minutes on an encounter that will be trivial to a party of four characters and hands them a magic weapon that is by itself beyond any PCs total wealth by level and will be significantly better than any weapon they own. And I don't even know what Whirling does or where it comes from.

I did grab the PC WBL chart instead of NPC. Meh...away from books at the moment. It is not beyond PC WBL, though. It's a lot of gold, but given how unlikely it is for any melee chars to be Guisarme specialized, this is not a notable deal.

Whirling = Whirlwind attack. I listed my sources, you could have easily found it with a quick google.

Note that you can't really evaluate him as a trivial challenge when you don't even know what he does. In this case, he's a caster that deals a non trivial amount of melee damage, and who can easily threaten to flatten a party. Oh, he'll die due to action advantage imbalance, but note that the belt of battle partially negates that. Dude can charge in, hit, and then whirlwind to hit everyone. Also, there'll be buffs up.

It's not a particularly obscure combo, nor a particularly high op one. However, it's one that is situationally quite effective, and should lead to a fun little encounter.

Here's the thing. If it's a mook that should be trivial for the party to defeat, then it shouldn't take seven minutes to create and it shouldn't be giving the party a magic item more powerful than everything else they own. The problem is, for a lot of people, creating even mooks requires longer than seven minutes, and creating properly challenging encounters requires a significantly longer investment of time.

He is not a mook. You would not use a group of these, as it would result in a pile of dead party members.

His weapon is well within a single PC's WBL. In fact, all his gear is within PC WBL with a couple thousand left over. If this is more wealth than the entire party has, you've been screwing them over on wealth badly.

And exact wealth in this fight is very, very easy to modify. If you want to give less wealth, then simply drop on a couple less +1 equivalents. Done deal. Creation time is actually shorter.

I'm missing the statblock indicating the Duskblade's init, AC, HP, saves, etc. Also you can't say you just open up the book and have your spell list, because the Duskblade has limited spells known, the fact that you have to pick out those individual spells is part of the Duskblade's weakness.

I didn't bother with armor, because it'll be irrelevant against my group. Dumping dex and a lack of desire to use heavy armor for a number of reasons means that his AC will be in the gutter. For the PCs attacking him, the important thing is "don't roll a 1". You need not compare beyond that.

Init is easy. It need not be written down. Modifier or modifier +4 is useable on the fly. You will only need to use it once. You have already written down the stats. There is little to be gained in copying things around a char sheet for a one time use char.

Saves? Come on, he's single classed. See init. Only bother to calc them on the fly if they get targetted AND the roll is such that it's worth looking at. The guy has two strong saves, and his weak save is buffed to hell by feats. You are most likely not going to need to look at this over his lifespan. Why expend even minimal effort for no payoff?

I will need his hp. I take average, with maxed on first hit die, normally. It's not written down because doing this is pretty easy, it's very basic addition. It does not noticeably impact creation time.

Picking his spells is trivial. He doesn't have much to pick from, and they're pretty much all in a single list in the same book. So, ignore the splatbooks, since it's more work than it's worth, and use a simple rule like "the top ones from each spell level". No writing necessary. He'll have some good ones, some bad, and it'll work itself out.

In any case, it's a really short list.

So your duskblade has 4 cantrips, 5 1st level spells, 4 2nd level spells, and 3 3rd level spells. It actually took me about 5 minutes just to look up how many spells known the duskblade has because it doesn't have a table telling you, just a note in the text saying you get one spell known per level, with a few bonus cantrips and 2 base 0th/first level spells. So after figuring out how many spells you have, you now have to sort through the spell list to pick out which spells you actually want for the encounter, which will likely be another few minutes.

Dude...spontaneous spellcasting. There's no spells prepared. You just use what's handy in the situation.

15 minutes was actually a pretty generous estimate for statting up a full mid-high level 3.5 character. If you're looking for an actual challenging encounter rather than a speed bump, you also end up looking at what long term buffs he keeps up, a better assortment of feats, perhaps a more involved class build and checking to make sure you meet all prereqs for any other classes, picking/designing any minions gained via class features that don't count towards CR (Animal Companion, familiar, bound allies, created allies, etc).

That's playable as a PC. Yes, he'll die to the party, because it's 1 vs 4. That is...standard and expected. He's not the archvillain, he's a moderate encounter. Nice, normal, and created in seven minutes. It will be a quick, but dangerous fight, as he's nova based.

Familiars and such are best ignored. They are usually irrelevant. If you're designing an elaborate build, it had better be for some campaign relevant purpose(or entertainment, but in such a case, you can't really complain about the time). Those builds are very limited in number.

And of course while doing all of this you need to keep in mind your PCs and their capabilities, to determine if you're going overboard, or making it too weak. 3.5 is an especially fiddly system in that regard, and if you're a better or worse optimizer than your players, you could easily either bore them to tears or accidentally TPK them. Adjusting the spell lists, feats, and class choices to measure up to what the PCs are capable of isn't an easy task, and the CR system is particularly ill-suited to adjucating what is an appropriate difficulty encounter against any party.

It's a very easy task unless your party has substantially more system mastery than you. That's a problem in most systems.

Basically you handwave away half the easy stuff, and blatantly ignore the biggest time suckers, and insist that it's fast and easy. 3.5 encounter design was a hot mess, and one of the worst aspects of the edition. 4e encounter design may have had some problems in terms of monsters having a bit too much HP, or not doing quite enough damage, but those are far easier problems to fix than the issues the CR system, and creating NPCs with PC rules presents.

4e is not analogous.

Edit: Worth noting, I just checked: An 11th level NPC WBL is 21,000 GP.

600 GP (2 potions)+ 50,000 GP (+5 weapon, assuming whirling is only +1, I have no idea what Whirling is except it's not in the SRD and google can't seem to find anything) + 12,000 GP (Belt of Battle), means yo just spend 63.6k GP, 3 times as much as the alloted wealth by level. Seems you were giving him a full PC gp amount, which isn't allotted for any NPC. Even if it was, I'm pretty sure there's a rule or guideline against spending more than half your wealth on a single item, with this one encounter you'd be dropping a sword worth as much as everything a given character has encountered thus far in their careers.

WBL is in the books, grabbing the wrong chart by mistake isn't a problem when I have access to them.

Whirling is in fact a +1.

Using only his NPC WBL would have made it faster, not slower. Selecting which properties to take would have been shorter.

WBL is a guideline to begin with. The guideline about items taking more than half of WBL is a guideline(not rule) under "creating PCs higher than first level". It pretty clearly is not a problem here.

Note that even the adjusted WBL isn't a big deal for some parties. If they're below wealth, tossing a high wealth fight at them is fine, and vice versa. The guisarme, which accounts for the lions share of the wealth, is not likely a weapon anyone in the party will wish to use, and thus, will be sold for half wealth.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 02:57 PM

10th level PCs have a wealth by level of 49,000gp, so, yes, handing the PCs a 50,000gp guisarme in a routine encounter is clearly bad DMing. And no amount of, "well the PCs aren't going to want to use this amazing 50,000gp weapon because it isn't a greatsword" is going to change that.

Tyndmyr, I just want an honest answer to the following question:

Is it your position that in 3.5 it is easy to craft routine encounters in 10 minutes or less after spending years studying the game, reading every manual, and investing time on message boards reading up on class handbooks?

Because that's what it sounds like. If that's your position, then I agree with it. I also don't exactly see that as a perk of the system.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 03:38 PM

I didn't bother with armor, because it'll be irrelevant against my group. Dumping dex and a lack of desire to use heavy armor for a number of reasons means that his AC will be in the gutter. For the PCs attacking him, the important thing is "don't roll a 1". You need not compare beyond that.
*snip*

So basically handwave away all of the calculation involved, say you'll do it on the fly mid encounter, and call it fine. No, really, that's stupid.

Not to mention, not including all of these things because it's an NPC is using different rules for making a NPC than a PC... which was the core of what this argument started about, was it not?

Dude...spontaneous spellcasting. There's no spells prepared. You just use what's handy in the situation.

Spontaneous Casting != Having everything you ever want available at any given time. Spontaneous Casting involves having a limited spells known list. If you, as you suggest, just take the top few from the book, you're going to end up with a retarded character.

Even if you want to make the argument that Duskblade selection lists are limited enough you can get away with that, how do you handle a Cleric, Wizard, or even a Sorcerer? Are you still going to handwave it away and say you just take a few at random, or are you going to actually invest some time picking spells that makes sense?

That's playable as a PC. Yes, he'll die to the party, because it's 1 vs 4. That is...standard and expected. He's not the archvillain, he's a moderate encounter. Nice, normal, and created in seven minutes. It will be a quick, but dangerous fight, as he's nova based.

Familiars and such are best ignored. They are usually irrelevant. If you're designing an elaborate build, it had better be for some campaign relevant purpose(or entertainment, but in such a case, you can't really complain about the time). Those builds are very limited in number.

Even 1v1 he'll likely die, because you have created a character with such crap for AC you didn't even bother figuring it out, crap for saves, no gold invested in shoring up either of those weaknesses, and a pretty meh initiative even with imp init, so he's likely to be killed before he ever gets an action.

And no, you cannot ignore familiars and animal companions, those are frequently very powerful class features, saying that NPCs don't have them because it's not worth the time to stat them up is once again using different rules for making NPCs than PCs.

It's a very easy task unless your party has substantially more system mastery than you. That's a problem in most systems.

Except that's not true. I know that most players spend hours on their PCs. Figuring out strategies, eliminating weaknesses, tweaking their character to be just what they want. Slapping something together in 5 minutes, even if you have a much higher level of system mastery is almost certainly going to come out weaker in the end. Look at your duskblade example, your encounter is going to result in him being dead before he ever gets an action, then the PCs doubling their wealth by picking up the glaive he was using.

Using only his NPC WBL would have made it faster, not slower. Selecting which properties to take would have been shorter.

Here you're missing the point that in your rush to do something quicker to prove a point, you missed a key balancing factor, resulting in your write up being incorrect and potentially unbalancing to party dynamics. The fact that you NEED the book on hand to know that the gear you gave him is unbalancing is a strike against the system, not that having the book would have made it slightly easier.

WBL is a guideline to begin with. The guideline about items taking more than half of WBL is a guideline(not rule) under "creating PCs higher than first level". It pretty clearly is not a problem here.

Note that even the adjusted WBL isn't a big deal for some parties. If they're below wealth, tossing a high wealth fight at them is fine, and vice versa. The guisarme, which accounts for the lions share of the wealth, is not likely a weapon anyone in the party will wish to use, and thus, will be sold for half wealth.

Uh, no. Throwing a 50,000 gp +5 equivalent weapon at a level 11 party is the sort of thing that makes characters throw away their level appropriate weapons for the shiny new toy that just dropped. You're once again trying to handwave away huge gaps in the character you created in 5 minutes.

Yes, if the party had been low on wealth, throwing a high wealth encounter at them would be okay. But even then you wouldn't throw the encounter with the vast majority of that wealth in a single item, as that unbalances the party further. No, you'd instead have something like a +2 sword, a +3 cloak of resistance, a +4 headband of intellect, a +2 str/con item, etc. Throwing in a lot of little items that could be divied up among the party to bring everyone up to par.

If you threw your 60kgp Duskblade at the party who is low on wealth, they kill the Duskblade, DMF takes the Glaive, and now he is at or above his WBL, while everyone else is still below. Which isn't a way to balance out anything.

TL;DR: Your slapdash throwing together of a PC results in a lot of holes in the character, and what is honestly a terrible encounter. On top of that, in your rush to get it done in as quick a time as possible, you gave the party a weapon that isn't actually appropriate for another several levels. On top of that, your intent to fill out details on the fly as needed and put 0 effort into picking spells or dealing with companions granted by class features shows that even you have a tendency towards handling NPCs differently from PCs, despite your arguments that they should follow the same rules, and doing so makes for a better game.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 03:43 PM

Seerow

2011-11-01, 03:49 PM

Specific example disproved or not, it is still trivially easy for an experienced DM to put together an appropriate encounter. Yes, there's system mastery involved. No, it doesn't take years to master.

Point is the specific example was an experienced DM trying to say he can put together a PC-style encounter in a few minutes. His encounter was full of holes, as one would expect when trying to rush a process that would normally take much longer than that.

It DOES take a while to make an encounter that is appropriate to challenge the party. You can slap stuff together, but you have to realize cutting corners is going to lead to a less than satisfying encounter, and as demonstrated so wonderfully by Tyn can also provide lasting effects that negatively impact the party for a significant time to come.

Mikeavelli

2011-11-01, 03:58 PM

D&D really does require a bit more planning than normal, none of this 15 minutes and you're done.

But Stat blocks aren't married to personalities, you can use the same set of stats with completely different fluff for whatever you feel like doing.

You want well-built PC-classed characters? Go through the Finding Players forum here on Giantitp (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51) and look for a game requesting characters of the right level for your game.

If not that, then I'll go use the stats for one of the dozens of characters I've statted up over the years, and have saved either on Myth-weavers, or as a character.

If THAT doesn't work, then why am I coming up with it in the middle of the session? Something more specific than that is going to be a plot-centric character, or it's going to be a waste of my time to build it!

OP's criticism is accurate about the 3.5 D&D system because it's an intentional design choice of the system! Speed + Ease of use is what the Monstrous Manual is designed for, that's the optimal solution for the the problem of encounters.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 04:06 PM

Point is the specific example was an experienced DM trying to say he can put together a PC-style encounter in a few minutes. His encounter was full of holes, as one would expect when trying to rush a process that would normally take much longer than that.

It DOES take a while to make an encounter that is appropriate to challenge the party. You can slap stuff together, but you have to realize cutting corners is going to lead to a less than satisfying encounter, and as demonstrated so wonderfully by Tyn can also provide lasting effects that negatively impact the party for a significant time to come.

I may have missed it, since I didn't read the parent thread, but was there a party given that this NPC was supposed to go up against? My method of NPC generation takes me ~30 minutes per session, with at least half of that going into the major baddie.

Just keep a list of the parties highest and lowest:
AC
to hit (and caster's highest spell DC)
each save

and the NPCs practically build themselves. The SRD makes summons/undead minions/companions one copy/paste away. And yes, I do cheat a bit - spells known does tend to be "whatever will mess with the players provide a significant challenge to the players", but I consider that a fair trade for not using divination against my players.

Granted, at this point there are very few classes/races that I have to look up any more, and treasure per encounter is basically second nature, but that has been true for a long time.

I don't really have a horse in this argument; the relative difficultly is irrelevant to my needs, but I am curious to hear an example of a system that allows both in-depth NPC customization and is doable in minutes.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 04:09 PM

Speed + Ease of use is what the Monstrous Manual is designed for, that's the optimal solution for the the problem of encounters.

You're absolutely right here, that's what the MM was designed for; however, it's important to note that the Monster Manual is arguably the worst designed, most unbalanced book in 3.5.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 04:13 PM

You're absolutely right here, that's what the MM was designed for; however, it's important to note that the Monster Manual is arguably the worst designed, most unbalanced book in 3.5.

It is if you blindly follow CR - ignore that, and pay attention to what actually works and it's a fine resource. Write in your adjusted CRs and it stays useful for years.

Mikeavelli

2011-11-01, 04:21 PM

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 04:33 PM

Seriously? Is this whole thread about how much of a job DMing is?

Guess what?

It's a job. And, like all jobs, it requires work.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 04:33 PM

It is if you blindly follow CR - ignore that, and pay attention to what actually works and it's a fine resource. Write in your adjusted CRs and it stays useful for years.

CR is only part of the problem. But, yes, with TONS of additional work and time and research put into adjusting the default and broken MM it can eventually become quick and easy to use. Again, this is NOT a perk of the system.

MM Is mostly balanced for an unoptimized party of Meat Shield / Blaster /Healbot / Skillmonkey.

This however is VERY much untrue, and highlights the other major problem with the MM. An unoptimized party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue will get stomped by run of the mill MM encounters. Hard. If the party level is 10, for example, then a routine encounter is supposed to be EL 10. But running EL 10 encounters from the monster manual will TPK an unoptimized party as often as not. These are supposed to be routine. Worse, the party is supposed to be faced with roughly four of these encounters every day. That's guaranteed party death on any average day as set up by the math and rules as written given to us by the DMG and the MM (at least as far as an unoptimized party is concerned).

Seriously? Is this whole thread about how much of a job DMing is?

Guess what?

It's a job. And, like all jobs, it requires work.

Really?

This is a thread about a person having a legitimate complaint being dismissed out of hand by a couple guys and me wanting to call them on it without going off-topic in the thread where the issue arose. And now you're being even more dismissive about it.

Here's something for ya, DMing is part of playing a ****ing game. It's NOT a job, it most certainly shouldn't feel like a job, and it doesn't pay like a job. Get over yourself. I play 3.5. I enjoy playing 3.5. That doesn't excuse the fact that DMing 3.5 really sucks for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being the issues being discussed in this thread.

Kenneth

2011-11-01, 04:35 PM

I have to agree with elda and tyndmyr. creating a combat encounter is easily done. barring the need to optimize it to the nth level.

case in point for me as peopel seem to need random examples

I started typing this at 5:31 PM EST

Bugbear Champion (warrior 8th{the stardnard 3.5 fighter is the npc warrior in my games) CR7
AC 28
HP 90
Att: +11/+5\\+11?5
Damage 2-16+11
Feats:weapon focus(dire flail) Weapon Specilization(dire flail), Power attack, CLeave, Improved initiaive, exotic weapon proficiency (dire flail) Dodge, Keen dodge
DR 6/-
Initiatrive+7
Stats str 22 DEX 16 CON 16 INT 13 WIS 13 CHA 8
Saves FORT +11 REF+9 WILL+5
equip Dire flail +1/+1 +1 plate mail, Potion of Cure moderate wounds, smoke pelletX2

Tactics:
uses keen dodge at the beginning of his turn making his AC 29. tries to get to teh back of the party where he can fully power attack teh armor less memebers for serious hurt, failing that will go toe to toe with the melees. if seriously inured will take 5 foot step and toss a smoke pellet drinking is potion before going back into the fray

its now 5:35 PM EST. so all fo that only took me 4 minutes typign.. even less consideirng i can hand write much faster than type. maybe its just the pure amount of experience i have that enables me to creatue such an NPC?

and to counter zeig 10 cr monster vs lvl 10 playest party 9 the whole healbot blaster skill monkey, meats hield thing that sorryt o say is completely true in rgards as to what 3rd ed makers were doing when creating 3rd ed)

I present to you a cr 10 monster the good old (well evil old..) Beblith.
vs levle 10 healing cleric, level 10 blaster wizard, elvle 10 rogue, and level 10 barbarian. core only nont fancy Optimization tricks.

wizard cone of colds the bebelith for avergae of 70 dmg, almost half teh belbeith 150 HP. the barb chagres geting an AoO againt him power atatckf or tehf ull 5 bigning his attack down to +23 so he only misses on a one but manage to do 2d6+2d6 holy+1magic+9str+15power attack for an avg of 39 HP the rouge comes around tog e flanking bonus and though cannot sneak attack teh demon manages to hit for 1d4+2d6 holy+1magic for an average of 10.5 dmg. now the cleric manage to cast prayer.

so in 1 round the CR 10 has lost halfs it HP wel withing the 2-4 rounds that an CR approptiate fight is supposed to take place

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 04:48 PM

CR is only part of the problem. But, yes, with TONS of additional work and time and research put into adjusting the default and broken MM it can eventually become quick and easy to use. Again, this is NOT a perk of the system.

No, but it is an inevitable consequence of a system that has a varied optimization level. I like my games to reward system mastery; granted, the classes could be better balanced, but that's a different argument.

If you want varied and custom tailored NPCs to challenge your PCs with, you'll need to spend time making them; and that's true no matter what system you're in. (Unless the PCs are unable to custom tailor their classes)

edit: I have no desire to wade into the mire of the first thread, but what exactly is the complaint here? That there are a ton of options for optimization?

Runestar

2011-11-01, 05:01 PM

To me, statting npcs is something that will get harder before it becomes easier. The first few times will indeed entail a lot of time, referencing of splatbooks and trial and error. As you become more familiar with the rules, you will eventually be able to literally stat them up in your head.

Along the way, you may also want to use quirks to make statting them easier, such as taking passive-bonus feats, concentrating on maxing out a small set of skills, equipping it with a few powerful magic items rather than several cheaper ones (MIC is great for this), not multiclassing (or at least not too aggressively), or simply reskinning existing monsters.

For instance, if I wanted a cr10 gish, I could consider just using a raksasha instead. To advance him, add lvs in abjurant champion or swiftblade (or in a pinch, eldritch knight). To, the biggest challenge is not statting it out, but deciding on how I want to build it in the first place! :smalltongue:

To the OP's question, the reason why other game systems let you create npcs with ease is because they standardise the entire process. The drawback, as far as I can see, if that all your npcs end up looking pretty much the same! :smallannoyed:

Seerow

2011-11-01, 05:01 PM

MM Is mostly balanced for an unoptimized party of Meat Shield / Blaster /Healbot / Skillmonkey.

By the time your group has enough system mastery to break the balance of the MM, the DM should have enough system mastery to adjust monsters on the fly to successfully challenge the party, ignore badly balanced monsters (Most of MM2!), and refluff monsters so that the party doesn't automatically know the strengths and weaknesses of what they're fighting from the description alone.

So in the time it takes for players to move beyond meat shield/blaster/healbot/skill monkey, the DM has had time to play test every monster in all the MMs, knows which ones will be broken and why, can eyeball appropriate CRs better than the developers, and refluff everything.

First, at this point why are you even buying the books since you're more or less making up all of the monster's everything as you go, and second you either severely underestimate player learning curve, or overestimate the GM's. Seriously, players tend to move past the core roles pretty quickly, I've seen completely new players do it with their first characters.

On the other hand, what you expect the GM to do is something I still can't do to my satisfaction after playing D&D for most of my life, and 3.5 specifically since it first came out. Seriously, the **** that is the 3.5 CR system is a large part of why I won't GM a 3.5 game.

Complex character building rules is fine for a PC, even okay for a BBEG. But for average encounters, or even lieutenants the work involved in making something dwarfs any other system I've played with. But even when you throw away the time spent to build, the act of actually judging what enemies are actually balanced against your PCs is a headache of its own.

The CR system doesn't work at all. The metric given for an on level encounter is that it's supposed to drain 20-25% of a party's resources, and I have NEVER seen an equal CR encounter do that past very low levels. Hell at high levels you don't even see higher CR fights do that, as 25% of the group resources is simply too much to eat through. The danger instead of chewing through resources needs to come from being incapacitated or killed, which means making encounters deadlier or having them just get mowed down.

Also, advancement rules are wonky at best, and following the guidelines can end up with a creature far tougher or weaker than you'd expect at a given level. I mean, at level 20, you can take a CR 10 brute monster(typically has 2*CR in hd), slap on 20 unassociated class levels, and call it a CR20 encounter, despite the fact said monster has twice the HD of any player, and full class features equal to them. Yet at the same time, this monster is according to the CR system, completely equal in CR to a standard human with the same class levels. That alone should indicate how badly broken the system is.

Similar things crop up all over the place outside of just adding classes (though it is most easily demonstrable there), where some monsters advance at twice the rate of others, or when looking at how fights of many weaker creatures are supposed to challenge the players (yeah those 8 level 5 creatures who can't even hit the level 11 party are a real threat).

It's not just any one thing, it's the amalgamation of them. You have monsters that aren't balanced to their CR to begin with, advancement rules that provide CR changes that are inconsistent and unbalanced, you have the fact that a CR in the first place, even when you do find an appropriately balanced monster is not going to do what the book claims it should. The system as a whole doesn't work, and it relies entirely on DMs making stuff up on the fly to fudge it into working. Some people enjoy fudging things together to make things work, but that is not the hallmark of a good system, because under a good system you should not be expected to do that kind of work. The rules presented for making an encounter should work right out of the box, and creating new encounters should be something simple and easy, taking a few minutes with nothing but the book's guidelines at hand you should be able to make something that will work reasonably well regardless of your experience, or your players experience. If you cannot do this, the system has failed.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 05:03 PM

Seriously? Is this whole thread about how much of a job DMing is?

Guess what?

It's a job. And, like all jobs, it requires work.

If you're looking at playing a game like it's a job, you should probably be looking for a new hobby. Just sayin'

Mikeavelli

2011-11-01, 05:07 PM

This however is VERY much untrue, and highlights the other major problem with the MM. An unoptimized party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue will get stomped by run of the mill MM encounters. Hard. If the party level is 10, for example, then a routine encounter is supposed to be EL 10. But running EL 10 encounters from the monster manual will TPK your players as often as not. These are supposed to be routine. Worse, the party is supposed to be faced with roughly four of these encounters every day. That's guaranteed party death on any average day as set up by the math and rules as written given to us by the DMG and the MM (at least as far as an unoptimized party is concerned).

I guess the main problem I've encountered is players being too good at killing stuff from the DMG. Throwing a single equal CR monster at most any party I DM for tends to result in it dying in one round, with the PCs barely injured.

Even in a recent game I was in, the party was a VoP Warmage, Half-Dragon (the LA +4 version) Fighter/ Anointed Knight, Archer Ranger, healbot cleric, and VoP Monk.

You can ignore the VoP monk, by the way. He was about as effective as you're thinking.

CR-appropriate monsters fell before this party pretty easily. There were a few near-TPK's, but mostly those were CR+2 or CR+3 instances. "Boss Fights" where they're supposed to be heavily challenged.

The only one I can remember clearly is back before they wrapped their heads around how important it is to be able to fly, and they encountered a dragon.

EDIT:

So in the time it takes for players to move beyond meat shield/blaster/healbot/skill monkey, the DM has had time to play test every monster in all the MMs, knows which ones will be broken and why, can eyeball appropriate CRs better than the developers, and refluff everything.

First, at this point why are you even buying the books since you're more or less making up all of the monster's everything as you go, and second you either severely underestimate player learning curve, or overestimate the GM's. Seriously, players tend to move past the core roles pretty quickly, I've seen completely new players do it with their first characters.

MM is quite reference for a ton of moderately balanced stat blocks. That's a lot of work done for you right there, that's why you buy the books.

I'm getting two completely opposite criticisms here. One person thinks equal CR encounters will result in TPKs, another thinks the players won't be challenged at all after a short time.

you have to know your players, and adjust the game to them.

Complex character building rules is fine for a PC, even okay for a BBEG. But for average encounters, or even lieutenants the work involved in making something dwarfs any other system I've played with. But even when you throw away the time spent to build, the act of actually judging what enemies are actually balanced against your PCs is a headache of its own.

The CR system doesn't work at all. The metric given for an on level encounter is that it's supposed to drain 20-25% of a party's resources, and I have NEVER seen an equal CR encounter do that past very low levels. Hell at high levels you don't even see higher CR fights do that, as 25% of the group resources is simply too much to eat through. The danger instead of chewing through resources needs to come from being incapacitated or killed, which means making encounters deadlier or having them just get mowed down.

Yes, it's hard to balance encounters. I actually enjoy doing this, and that's why I end up DM'ing more often than the rest of my group.

Also, advancement rules are wonky at best, and following the guidelines can end up with a creature far tougher or weaker than you'd expect at a given level. I mean, at level 20, you can take a CR 10 brute monster(typically has 2*CR in hd), slap on 20 unassociated class levels, and call it a CR20 encounter, despite the fact said monster has twice the HD of any player, and full class features equal to them. Yet at the same time, this monster is according to the CR system, completely equal in CR to a standard human with the same class levels. That alone should indicate how badly broken the system is.

Honestly, I don't even use the Advancement rules. I just pick a similarly-themed monster, and tell the PC's it's an advanced whatever it is they're fighting. So that Ogre Chieftain has the stats of a Hill Giant. Is anyone else going to know? Is anyone else going to care? No.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 05:08 PM

The rules presented for making an encounter should work right out of the box, and creating new encounters should be something simple and easy, taking a few minutes with nothing but the book's guidelines at hand you should be able to make something that will work reasonably well regardless of your experience, or your players experience. If you cannot do this, the system has failed.

For my curiosity's sake: what system does this that also allows for varied PC levels of power?

Runestar

2011-11-01, 05:08 PM

The CR system doesn't work at all. The metric given for an on level encounter is that it's supposed to drain 20-25% of a party's resources, and I have NEVER seen an equal CR encounter do that past very low levels.

That's when you start taking notes of how easily your party is overcoming them, or compare their stats against monsters of equivalent cr, and adjust accordingly.

For instance, against a moderately optimised party, I ended up ruling that a classed npc's cr to be ~2/3 of their classed lvs (roughly in line with a bearded devil advanced to 18HD). So against a lv12 party, I would stat up a half-orc barbarian18, equip him with gear appropriate for a cr12 npc, and declare him to be cr12. Used power attack to lower his attack rating to the point where the fighter's armour still served some purpose. Worked out pretty well. :smallsmile:

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 05:15 PM

If you're looking at playing a game like it's a job, you should probably be looking for a new hobby. Just sayin'

Some jobs are fun. But pretending that because DMing takes work (or too much work), it is Doubleplus Wrongbad is farcical.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 05:17 PM

For my curiosity's sake: what system does this that also allows for varied PC levels of power?

This depends entirely on what you define as varied levels of PC power. If you want 3.5 level variability where a character can be as ineffective as a monk with bad feat choices or as awesome as pun-pun, no system does. If you want something where there's a bit more moderation in power differences, then most other games can pull it off.

Several examples were given in the other thread, if you care to go back through and read them.

That's when you start taking notes of how easily your party is overcoming them, or compare their stats against monsters of equivalent cr, and adjust accordingly.

Of course, if you're adjusting monster attributes such as saves or AC so they're appropriate to the PCs without figuring out where these bonuses come from, we're back to using different rules for monsters and players. Which is what started the argument in the first place. (That is, Tyn arguing that PC generation rules should be used for NPCs for consistency rather than having a separate set of rules to come up with reasonably balanced NPCs easily)

edit:

Some jobs are fun. But pretending that because DMing takes work (or too much work), it is Doubleplus Wrongbad is farcical.

Actually, when a game is taking up too much time, or takes too much work, it ceases to be fun. I don't relish the prospect of trying to hash together something that works against my party then assign a CR to it retroactively, because that is me doing work that the system should have already done for me. The DM has enough to worry about with setting up scenarios, balancing what the different players want to do, etc, without also having to rewrite 5 books worth of monsters plus several chapters of the DMG. To imply that you need to do so is acceptable and what any DM should expect going in is being pretty obtuse.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 05:27 PM

I see, so the OP doesn't spell out the actual arguments; got it.

I'm out then.

Mikeavelli

2011-11-01, 05:30 PM

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 05:39 PM

The DM has enough to worry about with setting up scenarios, balancing what the different players want to do, etc, without also having to rewrite 5 books worth of monsters plus several chapters of the DMG. To imply that you need to do so is acceptable and what any DM should expect going in is being pretty obtuse.

The DM has the option of running premade modules, of templating creatures (ie: this template is 5 levels of fighter focused on archer, it's effects are as follows; something that can be quickly applied to a creature for a fixed amount of CR), and of restricting themselves to sources they are familiar with and/or have readily accessible. Being a DM takes some work: some people enjoy it; others do not. The ones that do tend to make better DMs than the ones that don't. However, the DM is required to challenge his opponents--the players--and as such needs to be able to compete with the player's level of op-fu. If he can't the players will not be challenged, and as a result won't have fun.

brujon

2011-11-01, 05:44 PM

For me i think a DM needs to be someone that likes to stat up characters... just for the sake of statting them up. I mean, most DM's have 1 week before the next session. If you stat up a character per day, then you'll have 7 possible encounters before the next session. The problem is people think the DM needs to come up with things on the fly. For meaningless encounters, that's true... That kind of stuff that happens when one of the PC's want to set the tavern on fire. But a challenging encounter? Something the PC's will talk about later? Then you need to take as much time statting up the encounter as you would statting up a PC you're going to play. Doesn't matter if it's a Drow Necromancer who has a lieutenant Undead Beholder, or if it's Fighter McFighter and his cousin Barb McBarbarian... If you want to challenge your players, you're gonna need to tailor the encounter, and fine tune it, and then some, to achieve the level of success you want. Some monsters provide a challenge lke this in a few minutes... And you can use them when appropriate.

Things like Hydra's, with their up to 12 attacks per round, or Aboleths, or Beholders, or most Outsiders. These monsters provide accurate and memorable challenges and are CR appropriate (for optimized partys). Dragons provide for even more challenging encounters, because they're ridiculously under CR'd, if played properly (And they should, as they're very intelligent). Of course, if you plan even a little bit ahead, you can have various of these encounters statted up in a sketchbook you keep along with the d20 books.

That's part of the fun in 3.5, at least for me. The insane levels of customization and options are a plus for me, not a minus. I like to take my time statting up meaningless NPC's which i'll probably never use and op'ing them to PC levels. Sometimes i even make progressions, 1-20, so i can use the char in any game, or in a way he stays meaningful for a long period.

gkathellar

2011-11-01, 05:44 PM

For my curiosity's sake: what system does this that also allows for varied PC levels of power?

Fantasy Craft and Spy Craft do it. They have their own flaws.

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 05:46 PM

Fantasy Craft and Spy Craft do it. They have their own flaws.

So does World of Darkness.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 05:46 PM

The DM has the option of running premade modules, of templating creatures (ie: this template is 5 levels of fighter focused on archer, it's effects are as follows; something that can be quickly applied to a creature for a fixed amount of CR), and of restricting themselves to sources they are familiar with and/or have readily accessible. Being a DM takes some work: some people enjoy it; others do not. The ones that do tend to make better DMs than the ones that don't. However, the DM is required to challenge his opponents--the players--and as such needs to be able to compete with the player's level of op-fu. If he can't the players will not be challenged, and as a result won't have fun.

The problem is, templating a creature won't result in a balanced encounter. The rules like to pretend that it will, but ultimately it boils down to if you follow the rules as written, you end up with terrible encounters. So the DM has to not only be able to keep up with the players in optimization, but also be able to eyeball how the party will compete with the challenges presented.

Like I said in the big wall of text above, it is a myriad of factors that result in the CR system not working in any capacity. Time to build an encounter is one complaint, but not the only one. Encounters of an equal CR do not do what the book says they should. The rules for modifying NPCs to a different CR don't work either. So it all comes down to the DM having to be an expert at game balance, and being able to make balanced material on the fly.

Pretending these issues don't exist is asinine, and pretending that one out of every 5-6 people who plays D&D is going to be both capable and willing to do this is also pretty stupid. Encounter building is the one area where 4th edition stepped up and improved the most. It has its own problems, but the problems there are much easier to fix than the fundamental flaws inherent in the 3.5 system.

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 05:49 PM

CR is a crutch.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 05:52 PM

It has its own problems, but the problems there are much easier to fix than the fundamental flaws inherent in the 3.5 system.

This is simply untrue for at least a significant percentage of people who play 3.X still - the lack of options in 4.0, and the lack of rewards for system mastery require writing completely new material, and changing the rules on a fundamental level.

I'll take having to adjust the little CR number on the MM entry, or using existing rules to make up my own over that any day.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 05:53 PM

CR is a crutch.

Um, CR is what the DMG tells you encounters are supposed to be balanced by, and how experience is awarded. The minute you throw that out the window, you're ignoring the basic fundamental of how the game is expected to be played.

If you're admitting CR is useless and you run without it, that's fine. But the fact that you are willing and able to play without using it is a huge strike against 3.5, not a benefit in favor of it. People buy the books because they expect the rules in them to work. If they have to rewrite those rules anyway, what the **** is the point of paying money for them?

This is simply untrue for at least a significant percentage of people who play 3.X still - the lack of options in 4.0, and the lack of rewards for system mastery require writing completely new material, and changing the rules on a fundamental level.

I'll take having to adjust the little CR number on the MM entry, or using existing rules to make up my own over that any day.

You're confusing two different issues here. The lack of options/rewards for system mastery are issues on the player side. They're debatable problems, but ones I'll acknowledge because I agree that the system is too stringent in that regard.

But 4e has MUCH better streamlined encounter building rules than 3.5, and designing a new monster is literally as easy as picking a role and level, assigning defenses/basic attacks based on that role, and then either picking out or creating one or two encounter/recharge powers that the monster can use. And you can be pretty much 90% sure that the creature will be balanced within the encounter. It takes about 30 seconds to make a new monster completely from scratch. Modifying an existing monster goes even faster.

4e DOES have the problem that past a point, monsters have too much HP and/or too little damage, but fixing that is far easier than remaking the CR system.

Runestar

2011-11-01, 05:54 PM

Of course, if you're adjusting monster attributes such as saves or AC so they're appropriate to the PCs without figuring out where these bonuses come from, we're back to using different rules for monsters and players. Which is what started the argument in the first place. (That is, Tyn arguing that PC generation rules should be used for NPCs for consistency rather than having a separate set of rules to come up with reasonably balanced NPCs easily)

I didn't mean "adjust" in "arbitrarily changing its stats to whatever you deem fit" but rather, changing them within the confines of the rules, typically by adding on additional monster HD, class lvs or templates, changing feats and outfitting them with appropriate magic gear. Most of the time, these would suffice in achieving the desired results. If I still need additional buffs, they can come in the form of spells from npc caster support.

The only one thing I have changed is a monster's cr, if I felt that its stats suggested that it was stronger or weaker than its original cr let on. Otherwise, they would still follow PC creation rules, just that DMs have a tad more wriggle room in the form of npc-only rules such as non-associated class lvs, and cr increases generally being smaller than LA increases. :smallbiggrin:

Want to run a beholder but find it too fragile? For a modest +1cr, it gets 4 additional HD and 2 feats, which can go to endurance and die-hard, effectively improving its hp by almost 50%. I can then go one step further by slapping on the dungeonbred template, which makes it small (small increase to AC and attack rolls) in addition to granting endurance for free, freeing up an additional feat slot for say, improved toughness?

All this is by the book. No handwaving or houseruling needed. :smallsmile:

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 05:57 PM

Seerow

2011-11-01, 06:04 PM

CR is itself admitted to not be 100% accurate, and is only a guideline from which your party may or may not deviate. Depending upon CR as infallible is ludicrous, since it explicitly says to adjust it as needed.

Now please explain how this is a strength of the system.

Because frankly I'm fed up with arguing when the response is just "The rules don't matter because I can fix it" and "I don't care if it's a lot of work, that's what you get when you sign up to be DM". That kind of attitude is why people avoid DMing in the first place, and probably a large part of why our hobby has remained such a small niche market.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 06:07 PM

They are the same point to me - designing encounters for a system that lacks options and has a fairly stringent set of restrictions on power levels is, of course, easier to do.

As Fax points out, the DMG frankly states that CR is a broad guideline and encourages deviation - the one number that may (admittedly often) be wrong doesn't make the 100's of ready made stat blocks suddenly unusable.

Now please explain how this is a strength of the system.

Because frankly I'm fed up with arguing when the response is just "The rules don't matter because I can fix it" and "I don't care if it's a lot of work, that's what you get when you sign up to be DM". That kind of attitude is why people avoid DMing in the first place, and probably a large part of why our hobby has remained such a small niche market.

Versatility is absolutely the strength of the hobby - if I want balanced, always the same classes, with strict limitations on what I can do, I can go play a MMO far more easily.

Basket Burner

2011-11-01, 06:11 PM

The amount of time I put into creating something is proportional to two things.

Importance. Mooks get little effort put into them. More important characters get better things and more thought.
Default power. The better something is, the less effort I will put into making it better. Conversely, something that really sucks I will invest a great deal of effort into compensating for that.

Even so, I've found that it really doesn't take that long to make something. Monsters take a minute or two at most, mostly to reselect feats and to copy the entry but possibly to advance the creature if I determined that's necessary.

Humanoids take longer, but still not that long. Unless there's a specific theme you have in mind, just going for generically useful stuff saves a lot of time. So the level 3 Wizard will mainly cast Glitterdust and Color Spray with a Mirror Image or something for defense, unless you had a specific other idea in mind.

Same with items. Unless you have a specific idea in mind throwing their limited wealth at stat boosters and some scrolls and potions to compensate for the lower wealth with the rest as gold is generally sufficient.

I'll grant you it does take longer if you're unfamiliar with the material, but that's true of anything. And the very process gets you familiar with it.

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 06:12 PM

Now please explain how this is a strength of the system.
I've said no such thing, and I won't either. CR is a guideline, and you're trying to use it as a rule. Of COURSE it's not going to do what you want it to. It's a tool designed to make your job easier. Even if it isn't 100% accurate, you can quickly tell from looking at the CR whether or not a creature is going to one-shot your entire party. Without CR, I would expect this forum would be filled with stories of "My DM sent the 1st level party against a [balor/ancient wyrm gold dragon/remorhaz]."

My point is, CR works if you use it the way it is intended.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 06:20 PM

Versatility is absolutely the strength of the hobby - if I want balanced, always the same classes, with strict limitations on what I can do, I can go play a MMO far more easily.

Versatility for players is a strength. Versatility in monsters is stupid. You are once again confusing a problem that 4th edition has that pisses off players, with a problem in this specific sub-system.

The average enemy has a lifespan of about 15-20 minutes in game. A recurring villain being statted up using PC rules that are more complex is fine. If the DM is bored, he doesn't need a new character or different resource system, he can pull out different monster types, use more monsters at once, etc. Enemy's don't need the same level of versatility that players do. Any given monster only actually needs a handful of powers to last it its entire lifespan.

Look at it this way: In Tyn's example he didn't even bother selecting the spell list for his Duskblade, and the feats he took were mostly passive feats. He did this indicating it was because he wouldn't actually need that level of detail in game.

This is part of the point I'm making-that level of detail isn't needed. Why not just select 2-3 of the duskblade's favorite spells, and include those on the NPC, and ignore feats, just giving him appropriate attack bonus and defense values for his level? You don't actually need the detail that an actual player character would, and the NPC design process should reflect that.

The other half of the equation is that 4e's encounter system is much easier than 3.5's CRs. With CRs, the system doesn't work. The book apparently comes out and says it doesn't work, and is a waste of paper. In 4e, you have an experience range that is appropriate for the party's level, and as long as the encounter you build adds up to roughly that range, you're pretty much set. I don't see how you can compare the two and objectively say 3.5's system is superior in this regard. 3.5's system boils down to the DM looking at something and deciding if it will be good, or if he needs to change things, or if he just needs to revalue the CR. 4e's system you follow what the book says, you get something that works. If you want, you can choose to ignore the book and make stuff up just like with 3.5, but you aren't required to.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 06:20 PM

My point is, CR works if you use it the way it is intended.

It's not a bad relative measure, though obviously exceptions exist (hey, wizard and monk are equal CR!).

Keep a cheat sheet of your party's major stats, compare them against the monster's and you can usually ballpark an answer to how that encounter will turn out, even with very little experience.

The other half of the equation is that 4e's encounter system is much easier than 3.5's CRs. With CRs, the system doesn't work. The book apparently comes out and says it doesn't work, and is a waste of paper. In 4e, you have an experience range that is appropriate for the party's level, and as long as the encounter you build adds up to roughly that range, you're pretty much set. I don't see how you can compare the two and objectively say 3.5's system is superior in this regard. 3.5's system boils down to the DM looking at something and deciding if it will be good, or if he needs to change things, or if he just needs to revalue the CR. 4e's system you follow what the book says, you get something that works. If you want, you can choose to ignore the book and make stuff up just like with 3.5, but you aren't required to.

edit: well, that was why I bowed out of the argument about ease of making encounters earlier; I agree that it's stupid to bother making PC level of detail about each NPC if that's not something you enjoy doing (I do, for instance).

But, you cannot do this:

have an experience range that is appropriate for the party's level, and as long as the encounter you build adds up to roughly that range, you're pretty much set.
in 3.5, period. Not if you want to challenge your PCs. There's simply too much variation in possible power levels. That is absolutely a strength in my eyes.

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 06:24 PM

The other half of the equation is that 4e's encounter system is much easier than 3.5's CRs. With CRs, the system doesn't work. The book apparently comes out and says it doesn't work, and is a waste of paper. In 4e, you have an experience range that is appropriate for the party's level, and as long as the encounter you build adds up to roughly that range, you're pretty much set. I don't see how you can compare the two and objectively say 3.5's system is superior in this regard. 3.5's system boils down to the DM looking at something and deciding if it will be good, or if he needs to change things, or if he just needs to revalue the CR. 4e's system you follow what the book says, you get something that works. If you want, you can choose to ignore the book and make stuff up just like with 3.5, but you aren't required to.

I don't think anyone's said that CR is perfect, or even good. We're just trying to point out to you that CR does not do what you are asking it to do. Yes, you can beat nails into wood with a crescent wrench, but it is not really intended for that and as such isn't going to work very well.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 06:36 PM

I don't think anyone's said that CR is perfect, or even good. We're just trying to point out to you that CR does not do what you are asking it to do. Yes, you can beat nails into wood with a crescent wrench, but it is not really intended for that and as such isn't going to work very well.

Well point is, nothing in 3.5 does what I expect. 4e does. CR is the closest thing in 3.5, because literally everything relating to NPCs or challenges refers back to CR. Awarding experience refers back to CR. Just about anything the DM does is going to boil down to a CR eventually. Expecting CRs to be moderately balanced I don't think is a totally unreasonable demand, but it is one that fails to be met by the system.

Basically going by what you say, CR is only there to make sure DMs don't try to throw out encounters significantly higher or lower level than the characters their players have. To me, that screams waste of paper, because the DM is expected to be balancing NPCs to the PC's anyway. If the DM couldn't tell without CR that he shouldn't be using the Great Wyrm Dragon against level 1 PCs, he also wouldn't be able to make the distinctions that you say every DM ever should be able to make, to know that say advancing that griffin to 11 HD to make it huge, and giving it 11 levels of disassociated cleric casting is an encounter that is going to not just challenge, but likely totally trample his level 9 party. Because he'll look at those guidelines and think "Okay guidelines say this is good, just like it says that the big dragon is bad!"

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 06:46 PM

Well point is, nothing in 3.5 does what I expect. 4e does. CR is the closest thing in 3.5, because literally everything relating to NPCs or challenges refers back to CR.

That's not the case at all. CR adjusts two things: first, it determines how much NPC wealth the creature has; and second, it determines how much XP the party is awarded if they defeat it. Literally everything else is determined by Hit Dice. And, as you can see from these two examples, Hit Dice and CR have almost no correlation:

Gray Render Zombie
Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 20d12+3 (133 hp)
Initiative: -1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares; can’t run)
Armor Class: 16 (-1 size, -1 Dex, +8 natural), touch 8, flat-footed 16
Base Attack/Grapple: +10/+21
Attack: Bite +16 melee (2d6+7) or slam +16 melee (1d8+10)
Full Attack: Bite +16 melee (2d6+7) or slam +16 melee (1d8+10)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: —
Special Qualities: Single actions only, damage reduction 5/slashing, darkvision 60 ft., undead traits
Saves: Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +12
Abilities: Str 25, Dex 8, Con Ø, Int Ø, Wis 10, Cha 1
Skills: —
Feats: Toughness
Environment: Temperate marshes
Organization: Any
Challenge Rating: 6
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral evil
Advancement: None
Level Adjustment: —

Titan
Size/Type: Huge Outsider (Chaotic, Extraplanar)
Hit Dice: 20d8+280 (370 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 40 ft. in half-plate armor (8 squares); base speed 60 ft.
Armor Class: 38 (-2 size, +19 natural, +11 +4 half-plate armor), touch 8, flat-footed 38
Base Attack/Grapple: +20/+44
Attack: Gargantuan +3 adamantine warhammer +37 melee (4d6+27/×3) or +3 javelin +22 ranged (2d6+19) or slam +34 melee (1d8+16)
Full Attack: Gargantuan +3 adamantine warhammer +37/+32/+27/+22 melee (4d6+27/×3) or +3 javelin +22 ranged (2d6+19) or 2 slams +34 melee (1d8+16)
Space/Reach: 15 ft./15 ft.
Special Attacks: Oversized weapon, spell-like abilities
Special Qualities: Change shape, damage reduction 15/lawful, darkvision 60 ft., spell resistance 32
Saves: Fort +26, Ref +13, Will +21
Abilities: Str 43, Dex 12, Con 39, Int 21, Wis 28, Cha 24
Skills: Balance +7, Bluff +19, Climb +22, Concentration +37, Craft (any one) +28, Diplomacy +11, Disguise +7 (+9 acting), Heal +20, Intimidate +32, Jump +38, Knowledge (any one) +28, Listen +32, Perform (oratory) +30, Sense Motive +32, Search +28, Spellcraft +17, Spot +32, Survival +9 (+11 following tracks), Swim +16
Feats: Awesome Blow, Blind-Fight, Cleave, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (chain lightning)
Environment: A chaotic good-aligned plane
Organization: Solitary or pair
Challenge Rating: 21
Treasure: Double standard plus +4 half-plate armor and Gargantuan +3 adamantine warhammer
Alignment: Always chaotic (any)
Advancement: 21-30 HD (Huge); 31-60 HD (Gargantuan)
Level Adjustment: —

Seerow

2011-11-01, 06:52 PM

But, you cannot do this:

in 3.5, period. Not if you want to challenge your PCs. There's simply too much variation in possible power levels. That is absolutely a strength in my eyes.

I disagree. Versatility in concept and ability is good. This is where 4e failed, by pushing everyone into a niche where they had a small handful of options. On the other hand, huge variations in power levels is bad. If you want huge difference in power levels, play a game where some people are higher level than others. If you want to be better because the other guy took Monk while you took Wizard, or where you're better because you took the 'good' spells while the other guy wanted to be a blaster, then **** that.

Different concepts should be close enough to equally viable that you can have an encounter be relatively challenging to the part regardless of its composition. System mastery rewards should come in the form of allowing you to better represent the concept you choose, and be better able to respond to various situations.

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 07:14 PM

I disagree. Versatility in concept and ability is good. This is where 4e failed, by pushing everyone into a niche where they had a small handful of options. On the other hand, huge variations in power levels is bad. If you want huge difference in power levels, play a game where some people are higher level than others. If you want to be better because the other guy took Monk while you took Wizard, or where you're better because you took the 'good' spells while the other guy wanted to be a blaster, then **** that.

Different concepts should be close enough to equally viable that you can have an encounter be relatively challenging to the part regardless of its composition. System mastery rewards should come in the form of allowing you to better represent the concept you choose, and be better able to respond to various situations.

I'm not really talking about variance within the party itself - that, I agree, is one of the weaknesses of 3.5; the level of reward for system mastery is grossly imbalanced between the classes.

I'll use my group to illustrate my point though: we really like to vary the power level between games; sometimes we want a low powered, gritty campaign where we all play melee and magic classes are limited, and sometimes we want a planes-walking, god-slaying campaign, where from the beginning, we're taking the most powerful ability combos and classes we can get.

Now, there's no way to have one scale that will adequately challenge both parties. Yes, we could play two different games, but that requires everyone learning yet another system; doable, but time consuming. 4e cannot handle both power levels; 3.5 can.

Hopefully that made sense?

Seerow

2011-11-01, 07:33 PM

I'm not really talking about variance within the party itself - that, I agree, is one of the weaknesses of 3.5; the level of reward for system mastery is grossly imbalanced between the classes.

I'll use my group to illustrate my point though: we really like to vary the power level between games; sometimes we want a low powered, gritty campaign where we all play melee and magic classes are limited, and sometimes we want a planes-walking, god-slaying campaign, where from the beginning, we're taking the most powerful ability combos and classes we can get.

Now, there's no way to have one scale that will adequately challenge both parties. Yes, we could play two different games, but that requires everyone learning yet another system; doable, but time consuming. 4e cannot handle both power levels; 3.5 can.

Hopefully that made sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. But to me, what you want says play different levels, not different levels of system mastery.

It's another thing 4e tried to do but failed in implementation: The tiers of play. Heroic tier would ideally be that low level gritty style game, while the god slaying planes walking campaign would be one taking place in the epic tier. The problem with 4e is that the epic tier doesn't feel any different or more epic than heroic tier, but it's not hard to imagine a game that does have the difference in power level you describe coming from tiers of play, or even just reaching higher levels, rather than being based on your class.

The idea that a class is inherently weaker than another of the same level, and that optimizing vs not optimizing is how you get a power level difference is poisonous to the game. A group that prefers grittier games should stick to lower level games, if you don't enjoy plane hopping god slaying adventure, you shouldn't be adventuring in the levels where plane hopping and god slaying is what you do. This means in the levels where plane hopping and god slaying is what you do, all classes should be contributing to that, so picking a Fighter or a Barbarian probably won't be playing anything like something with a basis in reality, because if you want to play something with a basis in reality, you play at the levels where reality isn't being rewritten by your very existence.

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 08:00 PM

The idea that a class is inherently weaker than another of the same level, and that optimizing vs not optimizing is how you get a power level difference is poisonous to the game. A group that prefers grittier games should stick to lower level games, if you don't enjoy plane hopping god slaying adventure, you shouldn't be adventuring in the levels where plane hopping and god slaying is what you do. This means in the levels where plane hopping and god slaying is what you do, all classes should be contributing to that, so picking a Fighter or a Barbarian probably won't be playing anything like something with a basis in reality, because if you want to play something with a basis in reality, you play at the levels where reality isn't being rewritten by your very existence.

This is a failure of 3.5, sure, but it is also of many other systems. Homogenizing the classes, however, makes things...well, boring.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 08:13 PM

This is a failure of 3.5, sure, but it is also of many other systems. Homogenizing the classes, however, makes things...well, boring.

There is a distinction between homogenizing the classes, and homogenizing power levels. I mean, the Warblade, Factotum, and Beguiler are all completely different classes, but they're close enough in power level that one won't grossly overshadow the others.

The problem with 4e was that it saw the only way to homogenize power levels was to homogenize classes, to the point where class features were basically nonexistent and everyone had the same resource system, which made things pretty boring from the player perspective.

MukkTB

2011-11-01, 09:58 PM

Edit Removed Rage

Fax Celestis

2011-11-01, 10:02 PM

There is a distinction between homogenizing the classes, and homogenizing power levels. I mean, the Warblade, Factotum, and Beguiler are all completely different classes, but they're close enough in power level that one won't grossly overshadow the others.

...and how long did it take to come up with classes that sat at such a point? I don't think 3.5 was designed with tiers in mind before, say, PHB-II, rather late in its lifetime.

Seerow

2011-11-01, 10:25 PM

...and how long did it take to come up with classes that sat at such a point? I don't think 3.5 was designed with tiers in mind before, say, PHB-II, rather late in its lifetime.

The point is that the developers should have learned from their successful 3.5 designs, and drawn from the classes that had a semblance of balance, rather than throwing out everything for a vanilla system. You act like because it took years for 3.5 to come up with a diverse array of classes that are relatively balanced against each otheer that it would take years for any game to do it, this isn't so. Balance of power level between classes is a strength that CAN be replicated without the vanilla feeling that 4e leaves.

The other point is that people confuse the deficiency of variety, with a deficiency of the 4e system as a whole, taking their anger at the blandness of the classes, and making the leap to assuming the entire system is terrible because of it. The ease of monster creation and encounter design is a huge strength of 4e.

I am not arguing and have never argued that 4e is a perfect system, but 3.5's encounter building methods are among the worst out of any gaming system on the market, and that's saying a lot. Part of this comes from character imbalances, but a lot comes from NPC creation/modification rules themselves being unbalanced.

Kenneth

2011-11-01, 10:30 PM

for me this comes down to one of 2 DMs

DM type 1

the 'i need a table NOW!!!' DM. is either not skilled enough, and i am not talking about 'system mastery' in the mention of skill but of skill as being able to make something that should only take 10 minutes top only take 10 minutes tops. as even self proposed masters of the universe err masters of the sysem (DAMN YOU HE-MAN!!!) are unabvel to do this. Unless everything is laid out infornt of them and all need to self thought and free control are taken away from them and they only have to cross reference X and Y to get Z. they think that A is too hard and that B does not do it right to the point of boredom. they feel that everything that could possible happen in the game world HAS to have a ruling, chart, or numerical value attached to it in order for them ot use it in their game. They are often very logical minded and have a rigid thought pattern, you know the guy who makes teh plans for the night out and 'assign's everybody their job. he might seem to be the most in control of teh situation but as soon as something he does not plan for happens well.. he is probably going to need a striaght jacket

then theres DM type 2

Is more of a think on your feet kind of person able to see that a 4th level barbarian ogre is not anywhere close to a CR 7 encoutner and makes a random adjustment to CR 5 not havignt o spend hours having to do the math or what ever to be pricsely.. and undertand that the CR rating for things are a guidleine and not a live or die ruling that MUST be followed. and is able to come up with things on the fly. this DM understand that humans will be human and that they will alway do the unpredictable. these guys are typicall teh ones who a spontaneous and are whimsical but not overly so. these are the guys who STARt the night out ont eh town, getting everybody ready and excited he tosses teh assigned role from type 1 away and say ' this is fun fool not a work!" while the planner is going crazy because he never expect to see Kevin Bacon mr spontaneous is like ' HOLY CRAP DO THE FOOTLOSSE DANCE WITH ME!!!"

type 1 has been at least to my own inferrance of their post have Seerow and zeigander in theri numbers. just replace Seerow's 3.5 ed vs 4th ed argument with my own A v B example and Zeigander's they don't have a table for that' statemtns with well my own no table for that vernacular

type 2 has Fax, mooncrow, and tyndmyr in there, they seem ready and able to make swift and easily adapted changes on the fly and more than bale to handle it if something goes 'off the chrats' so to speak.

I am not here to say whether 1 typeof DMing is better than another or even if one is worse than another. just that In my decades of playing these are the two types of DMs i have noticed ( id put gygax up at type 1 by the way, don't think so? look up the original rules of D&D and teh pentaly/bonus you get when grappling while sweating) and each player tends to play stronger to one of those types.

if you are a planned chart style player, the more hey lets have fun this 10 fighter troll is only CR 11 is probably going to anger you. if you are a free styl eplayer then in teh same example fighting a CR 15 10th fighter troll is probably not going to be much fun for you.

Ziegander

2011-11-01, 10:51 PM

Mooncrow

2011-11-01, 11:55 PM

To be perfectly honest, I don't consider myself a good DM, but I spend literally 0 minutes : 00 seconds preparing my encounters. I make everything up on the spot. I don't even bother using published feats, spells, or statblocks (except the ones I do have memorized). I come up with what I want the monster to do and then I just have the monster do that. What I don't do is claim that this is how the game is meant to be played or that this is somehow a perk of 3.5. I know my method isn't how the game is meant to played. I also know that if I played the game the way it is meant to be played my players would almost certainly get murdered by everything (notoriously low-to-no optimization).

3.5's encounter building methods are among the worst out of any gaming system on the market

I won't claim that NPC building is inherently a strength of 3.5 either, but I do think it's a necessary consequence of something that is a strength - the vast number of options given to the players. And if the players have options, then so must the the NPCs. Yeah, it takes more time then say, Shadowrun, where the options basically come down to "how big is each dice pool", but to say it's one of the worst on the market is, well, simply wrong in my opinion.

Could there be improvements to the system? Of course; but even in a best case scenario there's going to be a need for the DM's judgement and adjusting the encounters to the actual players.

I'm not trying to strawman Seerow here, but it really sounds like his real complaint is that 3.5 can run at highly variable power levels, and would prefer if every class was balanced at a tier 3 level. That's a legitimate argument (one that I still disagree with, but that's for another thread) but it's really a separate issue. When power levels are within a narrow band, it's easy to design pre-made encounters that will still challenge the players.

Or to put it another way, my argument is:
X will always lead to Y. Where X = highly variable PC power levels, and Y = DM's judgement needed for NPC creation.

As I see it, the counter argument is:
Y is broken, because X should be Z instead. Where Z = relatively static PC power levels.

So the root issue really isn't Y, it's X. And that's an entirely different discussion.

As to the original complaint that NPC generation takes a massively long time; I can't say much else that I haven't said already. Honestly, when we were first starting to play 3.0, I was in college, and half my classes were spent stating up NPCs and designing encounters, so my judgement of how hard the learning curve was may be biased :p And these days, no, it doesn't take much time at all.

Seerow

2011-11-02, 12:23 AM

@Kenneth: I think your stereotype is pretty far off the mark. If anything I'm opposed to 3.5's system because it doesn't give me the freedom to make stuff up on the fly. A 4e NPC encounter is something I could have ready on the spot with no preparation at all. A 3.5 NPC encounter requires as has been demonstrated at least 3-5 minutes for a quick encounter, more for any encounter that's being thought out even so far as "What spells do I know?" and "Do I want any decent feats?"

Yes, I expect the rules of a game I pay money to buy to work out of the box. This isn't out of some autistic desire to have everything mechanically accounted for and work perfectly, it's due to expecting the game to function on the simplest level without modification, because if at least that much is true, then future modifications may be made more easily.

@Mooncrow: The problem with what you want that 3.5 has is that it is by definition a trap option. If you have power levels varying even half as much as 3.5 power levels do, then you have a large chunk of the classes and other options in your games that are traps. So the party will be filled with haves and have nots.

Now, if the rule book explicitly says that some classes are weaker than others, that's fine. Because then encounter building rules can be made to accommodate for those weaker classes (ie something like having a Wizard, a Cleric, and 2 Fighters counts as a 3 man party instead of 4 when calculating how much the party can handle). Alternatively, the encounter building rules can also be made to accommodate players of different levels (ie if you want a setting with powerful mages, then Mages start at Paragon tier, Martial types never get to go past heroic tier, so you have a level 4 Fighter and a level 11 Wizard running around together).

The problem comes into play when you provide a bunch of different classes, pretend that they are all effectively the same power level, then put out half-baked encounter building rules that don't actually balance the encounters against either side. This is the route 3.5 went and the results are pretty terrible, making balancing any encounter basically impossible without the DM just winging it as he goes along.

This isn't something that everyone wants to do, and it shouldn't be something all DMs are expected to do. Once again, if you go out and buy a game, you should reasonably expect the rules that you paid for to actually work. If you want to change the working rules to something more to your tastes, then that's fine, but that is something that is done with experience, new DMs don't have the experience to balance encounters in 3.5, giving getting into the game a pretty steep learning curve on the DM end.

gkathellar

2011-11-02, 04:46 AM

I am not here to say whether 1 typeof DMing is better than another or even if one is worse than another.

This is the most flagrantly mean, dishonest thing I've seen in this entire thread. You go out of your way to describe two labels, one of which is actively insulting, and then apply it to several other posters before claiming "you're not here to judge anyone?" Unless you've been in a game with any of the posters you've actively insulted, you're in no position to mock them.

But frankly, how either of them run their games isn't relevant to this discussion. Neither is how any of the posters, really. The point has been made that if you know your stuff, you can run 3.5 encounters with tremendous ease. That's an acceptable point, and I've played with at least one DM who managed it in real life — not because of system mastery, but because he was cool as a cucumber and highly adaptable. I don't think there's any room to question that skilled DMs can make this game work, even without a high degree of technical understanding.

What this doesn't anticipate is new players. What Seerow is asking for — a game that works out of the box as advertised — isn't necessarily desirable to us personally. As 3.5 veterans, we're used to optimization and role analysis and power levels, not just in a technical sense but also as ideas. New players aren't, though, and because this game requires an understanding of those concepts to work as advertised, it's fair to say that 3.5 actively discourages the acquisition of the knowledge required to be a skilled DM in the first place.

Not everyone is willing to fight with their system until it does what they want, or do research until they understand its flaws. I want a system that doesn't drive people away from gaming simply because they lack experience, and unfortunately for all its high points 3.5 takes that problem and magnifies it significantly for anyone taking on the role of the DM.