Anatomy of Failed Design: 3E NPC/Monster creation

[Emerald]

And that's generally the main problem with partial construction. Unless your system subdivides combat and noncombat, you can't effectively handle that stuff, because where you stop making your partial NPC is entirely arbitrary. And at that point your NPC abilities are in fact different from your PC abiltiies.

Your NPC wizard for instance only gets 2 spell slots instead of 4 (that you're using for combat spells anyway). So in fact what you're doing is writing out a whole new table to define NPC combat abilities anyway.

Just because the wizard isn't using all his slots for combat spells doesn't mean he's somehow different from a PC; when was the last time you played a wizard and prepared all combat spells with no buffs, divinations, teleports, etc.? It's not always a 50-50 split, but if you don't choose a given number of spells it just means those are ones he won't be using in the encounter, not ones he doesn't have--Username17 said you'd fill them all out if he starts recurring.

[RandomCasualty2]

Just because the wizard isn't using all his slots for combat spells doesn't mean he's somehow different from a PC; when was the last time you played a wizard and prepared all combat spells with no buffs, divinations, teleports, etc.? It's not always a 50-50 split, but if you don't choose a given number of spells it just means those are ones he won't be using in the encounter, not ones he doesn't have--Username17 said you'd fill them all out if he starts recurring.

The problem is that now you're dealing with something that has new restrictions on how it can spend its spells, so now you need a separate "NPC wizard" table that says how many combat spells the wizard has. And then you have to go and define a combat spell.

Does invisibility count as combat? How about fly?

There's plenty of utility magic that works well in combat.

In the end, you've now created a more complicated system for creating an NPC that even a PC has to deal with. Since it's like making a PC, only you have an arbitrary split to how you place your slots. Then you need to look up each individual spell to see whether it has the [combat] spell tag, or whatever means you used to separate them.

Lets go back to the first part of this post, where I said an NPC creation system should be fast. I wasn't kidding. The idea that you're adding more steps to it is a really bad idea, given it's already slow as shit.

The idea is to remove steps, this is a step in the wrong direction.

It's really easy to make someone feel like a wizard without actualyl being a wizard. Remember this is 3-fucking-5. People don't last many rounds of combat, so you're not going to even notice how many low level slots someone has. And you have enough such that you aren't going to run out.

You could model NPC casting like.
1/Encounter: fireball, web, glitterdust
At will: any 1st level spell.

That's going to feel exactly like a 5th level wizard in play.

[ubernoob]

Steps for creating an NPC wizard:
1: Calculate INT (18+1/2 HD) and thus DCs (Add 1 or 2 to a specific school if it's themed that way)
2) Calculate HP (HD*(5+1/6 HD))
3) Calculate Saves (glance at table for base saves, add 1/3 levels magic and appropriate stats (+2 will, +2 dex, -1 wis)
4) Pick active spell effects (flight, mindblank, etc you know what's level appropriate)
5) Pick a spell two chuck each round. Add in quickened spells or Imbue Familiar with Spell Ability spells if it's a big bad.

That's pretty much all you have to do. Skills and feats don't really matter.

[violence in the media]

The problem is that now you're dealing with something that has new restrictions on how it can spend its spells, so now you need a separate "NPC wizard" table that says how many combat spells the wizard has. And then you have to go and define a combat spell.

Does invisibility count as combat? How about fly?

There's plenty of utility magic that works well in combat.

In the end, you've now created a more complicated system for creating an NPC that even a PC has to deal with. Since it's like making a PC, only you have an arbitrary split to how you place your slots. Then you need to look up each individual spell to see whether it has the [combat] spell tag, or whatever means you used to separate them.

Lets go back to the first part of this post, where I said an NPC creation system should be fast. I wasn't kidding. The idea that you're adding more steps to it is a really bad idea, given it's already slow as shit.

For fuck's sake, RC, a new system with separate [combat] tags is not what anyone was advocating and you know it.

What people are recommending is that it isn't an unreasonable assumption to think that the Necromancer busy making an army of the dead has expended some of his spells for the day doing exactly that. Then, when the players encouter him, maybe he only has a handful of pertinent spells left. If he survives the encounter, you can stat out the rest of his spells for other situations the party might encounter him in.

You could model NPC casting like.
1/Encounter: fireball, web, glitterdust
At will: any 1st level spell.

That's going to feel exactly like a 5th level wizard in game.

And this is different from picking 3rd and 2nd level spells how?

[Emerald]

The problem is that now you're dealing with something that has new restrictions on how it can spend its spells, so now you need a separate "NPC wizard" table that says how many combat spells the wizard has. And then you have to go and define a combat spell.

Does invisibility count as combat? How about fly?

There's plenty of utility magic that works well in combat.

As violence said, it's not a matter of damage vs. control vs. utility spells, it's "He has buffs X and Y up, I want him to get off 3 battlefield control spells and maybe a blasting spell, and that's all that's important." You don't need any fancy tables because everyone's going to be different--your PC wizard is going to have different capabilities at different points in the day, much less on different days.

You could model NPC casting like.
1/Encounter: fireball, web, glitterdust
At will: any 1st level spell.

That's going to feel exactly like a 5th level wizard in play.

So you're essentially picking the most important spells and ignoring the rest...which is exactly what has been suggested thus far? Glad we agree.

[Red_Rob]

As violence said, it's not a matter of damage vs. control vs. utility spells, it's "He has buffs X and Y up, I want him to get off 3 battlefield control spells and maybe a blasting spell, and that's all that's important." You don't need any fancy tables because everyone's going to be different--your PC wizard is going to have different capabilities at different points in the day, much less on different days.

The problem is, how do you assign this a CR?

[Kaelik]

As violence said, it's not a matter of damage vs. control vs. utility spells, it's "He has buffs X and Y up, I want him to get off 3 battlefield control spells and maybe a blasting spell, and that's all that's important." You don't need any fancy tables because everyone's going to be different--your PC wizard is going to have different capabilities at different points in the day, much less on different days.

The problem is, how do you assign this a CR?

By giving it the same CR as any other level X Wizard.

I mean, why is a level 10 Wizard who spent a bunch of spells on buffs and permanent effects a different CR than one you statted out all the spells for and then had cast those spells on different buffs and permanent effects?

[RandomCasualty2]

For fuck's sake, RC, a new system with separate [combat] tags is not what anyone was advocating and you know it.

Yeah it is. It's just people dont' want to admit that.

I mean look, you have a wizard of level X with some spells filled out and some spells not, presumably the spells you don't fill out were noncombat stuff. If we wanted a totally fleshed out NPC, we'd do that noncombat too. Okay, so we know how much a wizard of level X has in terms of slots. But how many aren't filled out? Is the number entirely arbitrary? I mean where do we get that number of how many an NPC wizard has at each level? We either need some kind of formula like "half PC slots, round down" or we need a separate table. In any case, finding out the number of slots now takes as much time if not more than a PC wizard.

And what happens if we wanted to totally flesh out the NPC with the noncombat spells too? I mean, now we start needing some kind of tag system to say what's okay to hand him as a noncombat spell and what isn't.

I mean if you want a codified system, this shit needs to be handled in some fashion. I know initially you guys just wanted to eyeball it, but if you're eyeballing it, then it's not really much of a system.

What people are recommending is that it isn't an unreasonable assumption to think that the Necromancer busy making an army of the dead has expended some of his spells for the day doing exactly that. Then, when the players encouter him, maybe he only has a handful of pertinent spells left. If he survives the encounter, you can stat out the rest of his spells for other situations the party might encounter him in.

But that leads to more unbelievable situations than just using a different system, because now you had a wizard who supposedly had the perfect spell for last encounter only he didn't use it (because it hadn't been chosen yet). But since he didn't use it before, you kinda don't expect him to have it. Since your PCs will be saying "Well he'd have used gaseous form to get under the cracks if he had it." and making all kind of assumptions, only to be surprised when the NPC picks up new tricks without the time to reprepare spells.

And this is different from picking 3rd and 2nd level spells how?

It's different simply because you can get it from a table. For instance a CR 5 caster monster possible ability table might be something like.

1/Encounter: Choose 1 3rd level spell and 2 2nd level spells.
At Will: Any 1st level spell.

A CR 15 might be.
1/encounter: Choose 1 8th level spell and 2 7th level spells.
At will: Any spell of 6th level or lower.

Notice this is a much more compact and easy to manage form than trying to stat out each slot, and it doesn't get more complex as a monster's levels go up. In fact, the size of the statblock always stays about the same, which is what we're aiming for in a good system.

[Murtak]

And this is different from picking 3rd and 2nd level spells how?

It's different simply because you can get it from a table. For instance a CR 5 caster monster possible ability table might be something like.

1/Encounter: Choose 1 3rd level spell and 2 2nd level spells.
At Will: Any 1st level spell.

A CR 15 might be.
1/encounter: Choose 1 8th level spell and 2 7th level spells.
At will: Any spell of 6th level or lower.

Notice this is a much more compact and easy to manage form than trying to stat out each slot, and it doesn't get more complex as a monster's levels go up. In fact, the size of the statblock always stays about the same, which is what we're aiming for in a good system.

Bullshit. You are either left with something that does not remotely represent a player or you just replicated the wizard's spells per day table. More importantly your system does nothing that simply leaving some of the spells blank doesn't. Except of course for picking at will spells (which is problematic at best).

Seriously, why the fuck to you propose to model an NPC spellcaster on 4 spells at level 15? If you want to make generating NPCs faster pick a system like Frank's spheres, but don't cripple the NPC into a meaningless one-trick pony. Even with 3rd editions notoriously fast fights you are going ot run out of things to do. And heavens forbid if that NPC accidentally finds himself out of combat he will have nothing he can do. Of course if you had simply left spell slots blank you could fill those out now and it would work out just fine.

By the way, what do you mean when you say "It's different simply because you can get it from a table."? I can see no difference between picking a 3rd and two 2nd level spells and picking a 3rd and two 2nd level spells. The only thing you add is the option of casting Charm Person a gazillion times per day. Oh, and of course you add an extra table.

[RandomCasualty2]

Bullshit. You are either left with something that does not remotely represent a player or you just replicated the wizard's spells per day table. More importantly your system does nothing that simply leaving some of the spells blank doesn't. Except of course for picking at will spells (which is problematic at best).

Sure he does. I mean wizards get so many slots for spells of lower levels that they might as well just be infinite for the PCs purposes. Remember that your mage is probably going to be tossing his high level spells first, and then resorting to weaker stuff.

I mean shit, this is 3.5, he's not gonna survive for 15 rounds to the point that the PCs could have counted his spell slots and see that there's no way he could have cast 12 lightning bolts.

Seriously, why the fuck to you propose to model an NPC spellcaster on 4 spells at level 15? If you want to make generating NPCs faster pick a system like Frank's spheres, but don't cripple the NPC into a meaningless one-trick pony.

He's hardly a one trick pony. Honestly, the guy can cast any spell of 6th level or lower at will. That's a lot of fucking options if his main gimmicks don't work.

By the way, what do you mean when you say "It's different simply because you can get it from a table."? I can see no difference between picking a 3rd and two 2nd level spells and picking a 3rd and two 2nd level spells.

Because by the default method, you're seriously supposed to pick out 1st level spells, 2nd level spells and 3rd level spells and fill all of them. And to make matters worse it produces a broken NPC, because he has full nova capability.

Now, you guys are proposing basically just cutting corners, which is nothing more than a permutation of the Oberoni fallacy. You are saying the system is okay because you don't use the entire system and make up your own house rules and custom corner cutting to avoid it. I'm trying to create a system here that people can use without the need for Oberoni.

The main difference is that my system is going to be codified to give you consistent NPCs and isn't just a matter of corner cutting within a bullshit system that's so complex nobody ever really uses it.

I mean the very fact that everyone seems to have their own method of cutting corners should be enough alone to show that the default system is total trash. I want to make a system that people can actually use.

Yes, it's not going to create perfect NPC/PC crossovers, but so the fuck what?

A wizard with my aforementioned system is still going to feel like a wizard to any PC who comes against him in combat.

[Murtak]

He's hardly a one trick pony. Honestly, the guy can cast any spell of 6th level or lower at will. That's a lot of fucking options if his main gimmicks don't work.

Oh, I misunderstood that to mean "pick one at-will spell". Casting anything at will is worse though. That means you spend less time building your NPC but you will spend tons more time at the table, in mid-combat.

Because by the default method, you're seriously supposed to pick out 1st level spells, 2nd level spells and 3rd level spells and fill all of them. And to make matters worse it produces a broken NPC, because he has full nova capability.

Now, you guys are proposing basically just cutting corners, which is nothing more than a permutation of the Oberoni fallacy. You are saying the system is okay because you don't use the entire system and make up your own house rules and custom corner cutting to avoid it. I'm trying to create a system here that people can use without the need for Oberoni.

Bullshit. You are making stuff up. What others have been saying is: Yes, picking all combat spells and walking into every combat with all your spells available is bad. So here is how to solve this problem: only fill insert-percentage-here of the spell slots.

The problem was acknowledged, deemed small and reparable and a fix was proposed. You then proceeded to dislike the fix, cried "Oberoni, Oberoni" and made up your own system which is more work, creates less realistic NPCs and requires some new tables.


In other words: Your fix stinks. It is worse than original problem and runs counter to what you stated you want. Try again.

[RandomCasualty2]

Oh, I misunderstood that to mean "pick one at-will spell". Casting anything at will is worse though. That means you spend less time building your NPC but you will spend tons more time at the table, in mid-combat.

Well, not if you know the spells, which you kinda have to anyway to play a caster.

I mean the beguiler works well, and this is basically a variant of that.

Bullshit. You are making stuff up. What others have been saying is: Yes, picking all combat spells and walking into every combat with all your spells available is bad. So here is how to solve this problem: only fill insert-percentage-here of the spell slots.

The problem was acknowledged, deemed small and reparable and a fix was proposed. You then proceeded to dislike the fix, cried "Oberoni, Oberoni" and made up your own system which is more work, creates less realistic NPCs and requires some new tables.

But that doesn't even fix the main problem with NPC creation... That it's fucking slow. I mean even if you add some weird percentage system to it, it's still slow as hell making an NPC wizard. Choosing all those feats, magic items and spells. And you still by the rules have to decide what's in his spellbook.

I mean I listed a huge amount of problems with the existing system, the fact that you think you've fixed one of them with a house rule just means you've fixed one of a multitude of problems. Big deal.

In other words: Your fix stinks. It is worse than original problem and runs counter to what you stated you want. Try again.

How so?

It's fast to create an NPC, The table of abilities could be potentially balanced to CR, and the NPC feels like a wizard in combat, and the table could fit on a DM screen.

I'm just not seeing how it doens't do the things I want it to do.

[Murtak]

Oh, I misunderstood that to mean "pick one at-will spell". Casting anything at will is worse though. That means you spend less time building your NPC but you will spend tons more time at the table, in mid-combat.

Well, not if you know the spells, which you kinda have to anyway to play a caster.

I mean the beguiler works well, and this is basically a variant of that.

The Beguiler has a fixed spell list. The wizard list includes many many more spell. Many of them specialized "what-if"-spells - exactly what you would want to dumpster dive for.

But that doesn't even fix the main problem with NPC creation... That it's fucking slow. I mean even if you add some weird percentage system to it, it's still slow as hell making an NPC wizard. Choosing all those feats, magic items and spells. And you still by the rules have to decide what's in his spellbook.

And the only thing you even touch is spell selection - you leave the rest of the system as-is. How is your fix more encompassing than simply assigning half of the spells slots?

It's fast to create an NPC, The table of abilities could be potentially balanced to CR, and the NPC feels like a wizard in combat, and the table could fit on a DM screen.

I'm just not seeing how it doens't do the things I want it to do.

You just ensured every NPC wizard of yours will start to dumpster dive in the middle of combat. That makes the original problem look tame in comparison. It is fast only because you delay assigning spells to mid-combat. And honestly you can do exactly that by leaving all spell slots blank and then assigning them as you cast them.

[RandomCasualty2]

The Beguiler has a fixed spell list. The wizard list includes many many more spell. Many of them specialized "what-if"-spells - exactly what you would want to dumpster dive for.

But your shortcut of not picking his lower level spells runs into the same problem. If it works okay for you, then it'll work okay for this.

In any game with complex rules you need a bit of rules mastery to run a combat fast. So that'll require you know the spells. But whatever, this is 3.5, so if you want to have spell pointers as ability blocks, you better know what they do.

And the only thing you even touch is spell selection - you leave the rest of the system as-is. How is your fix more encompassing than simply assigning half of the spells slots?

Because it's more than just a single fix. It's a totally new system. Look, the existing system is ass. It takes forever and it doesn't even help you get an accurate CR. Reread the first post, which is just a total rant about why it sucks, and how it has no redeeming characteristics. Seriously, I showed why having no system at all is superior to the 3E system.

As far as my system, it's going to simplify things. It breaks down to this.

• It's CR first. You start with a CR as the very first thing you pick, then you're assigning a monster role (similar to 4E).
• A lot of the unnecessary statblock is trimmed. It's back to 2E style where there aren't ability scores, or skills for monsters, and we just have final numbers. There are no sub calculation stats. A monster simply gets an attack bonus based on its CR.
• NPCs and Monsters abilities are now centralized. No more dumpster diving for prestige classes or monster feats.
• Monster have special abilities which replaces feats, class abilities and arbitrary racial powers. These are sorted by CR and include stuff like wizard spellcasting, natural attacks, improved grab and petrifying gazes.
• Monsters have traits which replace skills and ability scores. A monster might have "Strong" or "Clumsy" as its traits. Other things may include "Animal intelligence" and similar things that may identify a monster's potential tactics. Granted we lose some granularity here, but I really don't think it'll be a problem.
• This whole table setup fits on a DM screen.

So the process of creating an NPC might be this.

I want to make a warrior NPC. FIrst I want him to be CR 8, so I choose that. Now I can choose for him either a role of tank or brute. A tank is obviously more heavily armored, but brutes deal bigger damage. I want this guy to be some kind of barbarian berserker, so I choose the brute. The brute stat table says that a brute gets AC of 12+CR, attack bonus of 5+CR, will save of CR, fort save of CR+4 and reflex save of CR. He also gets a base save DC of 14+CR. It also says that brutes receive 2+ CR/3 special abilities and two traits.

So off I go to choose 3 special abilities.

Going to the special abilities table (also on my DM screen). I now look under the CR 8 section for brute abilities. I choose "bludgeoning melee weapon attack" for my brute, and it says this attack gets a damage rating of 2d6+15, with an x3 crit multiplier. I decide that the power attack trait is also pretty thematic and take that, which lets him take a -1 penalty to attack rolls for every +2 damage bonus he gets. For his last ability, I choose Dazing strike. Which grants him the ability to try to daze a foe once a round on a successful melee attack (fort negates). We use his base DC of 14+CR, to get a fort DC of 22 for this ability.

Ok special abilities are done. Now onto traits.

This guy is a bruiser, so I take the "Strong" trait. This basically means that his strength checks get a bonus, and he's considered trained in strength based skills. Note that it does nothing to his actual damage. I also give him darkvision, since he's supposed to be an orc. I wanted another trait for this guy to take "Alertness" so I choose a negative trait to compensate, choosing weak willed, which gives him a -3 to will saves. I lower his will saves and assign alertness, which is the trait that acts as a good spotting skill.

My orc bruiser is now done.

You just ensured every NPC wizard of yours will start to dumpster dive in the middle of combat. That makes the original problem look tame in comparison. It is fast only because you delay assigning spells to mid-combat. And honestly you can do exactly that by leaving all spell slots blank and then assigning them as you cast them.

Honestly I've had my NPCs dumpster dive like that for a long time... I don't have any problem with it and the slowdown is minimal. You stick to PHB spells only, and pretty much your choices are right there.

People like to think that 3.5 has all these exciting choices, but in reality it doesn't. If it's a 2nd level spell, it's honestly probably going to be web or glitterdust, that's just the way it goes. And I only have to start looking for spells after his original assortment is exhausted.

[Murtak]

So you are telling me that picking spells before combat takes too much time, picking them in mid-combat is fine, you show me parts of a supposed system which you reveal incrementally and your solution to pretty much everything seems to be to leave it out entirely or replace it with something identical with a different name. How can you complain about feats taking too long to pick and then introduce traits and abilities (which apparently you get on top of feats).

At the very least, post your entire system. From what I've seen so far I doubt it is an improvement, but maybe I'm wrong. Until you do though this discussion is silly.

[RandomCasualty2]

So you are telling me that picking spells before combat takes too much time, picking them in mid-combat is fine,

Yeah.. pretty much, because picking spells in combat requires no forethought. You need a spell, you pick it. You're not thinking "well I might want gaseous form in case i get grappled" or "What if X happesn, better be planned for Y". It also solves the problem of you having to actually write that stuff down. I mean even people with tons of system mastery of 3.5 actually will tell you the longest part of making NPCs is actually writing the shit down. Even if you know exactly what you want to do. So yeah, figuring out spells on the fly is a nice time saver.

It's a lot easier to create a beguiler than to create wizard, even if they actually use the same spells.

you show me parts of a supposed system which you reveal incrementally and your solution to pretty much everything seems to be to leave it out entirely or replace it with something identical with a different name. How can you complain about feats taking too long to pick and then introduce traits and abilities (which apparently you get on top of feats).

No, actually they replace feats. Monsters don't get feats. In fact, the abilities you get from special abilities are sometimes feat abilities, how I listed power attack above. The difference is mainly that special abilities are going to be somewhat simplified, and aren't going to be a bunch of minor incremental bonuses with prereqs.

A special ability is simply you choose something off a table that fits on your DM screen.

At the very least, post your entire system. From what I've seen so far I doubt it is an improvement, but maybe I'm wrong. Until you do though this discussion is silly.

The example I posted there pretty much is the system. The only part that has to be done is writing out the various tables and charts, but the procedure you'd follow is right there. If people want, I can write out a sample special ability table for a given CR, so you can see how you might make a variety of monsters instead of just the sample. But really the steps go like this.

1. Pick a CR.
2. Pick a monster role.
3. Look up the monster's numeric stats by role and CR. This includes HP, AC, saves and attack bonus, and it tells you how many SAs and Traits a monster gets.
4. Choose SAs by CR. (off a table)
5. Choose traits. (off a table)

And that's it. Seriously.

Really, the only problem right now that I can fathom with it is that the SA table may not fit on a DM screen.

[Emerald]

I want to make a warrior NPC. FIrst I want him to be CR 8, so I choose that. Now I can choose for him either a role of tank or brute. A tank is obviously more heavily armored, but brutes deal bigger damage. I want this guy to be some kind of barbarian berserker, so I choose the brute.

Here's one of the main problems I have with role-based systems. Your choice of melee guy boils down to Brute (high damage) or Tank (high defense). What if you want someone fast/sneaky? You need to make a Skirmisher role and include SA/skirmish analogs to go with the Brute's PA analog. What if you want a ranged combatant? Well, you could put ranged abilities under the other three roles, but D&D ranged tends to come down to lots of attacks from behind cover, so you'd need an Artillery role...except of course you want a Sniper role for slow, high-damage ranged attackers as well. And that's just the martial types--the number of kinds of casters you can have is much larger.

Either you have far too few roles and try to clump all possibilities together under too few umbrellas, in which case you might as well just pull a classless 4e ("All Defenders can take Defender abilities, all Martial characters can take Martial abilities...") or you have too many and at that point you might as well replace Brute with Barbarian, Tank with Fighter, Skirmisher with Rogue, Sniper with Ranger, etc. and you're left right back where you started.

[RandomCasualty2]

Here's one of the main problems I have with role-based systems. Your choice of melee guy boils down to Brute (high damage) or Tank (high defense). What if you want someone fast/sneaky? You need to make a Skirmisher role and include SA/skirmish analogs to go with the Brute's PA analog. What if you want a ranged combatant? Well, you could put ranged abilities under the other three roles, but D&D ranged tends to come down to lots of attacks from behind cover, so you'd need an Artillery role...except of course you want a Sniper role for slow, high-damage ranged attackers as well. And that's just the martial types--the number of kinds of casters you can have is much larger.

Well, caster roles are basically just gonna be considered either "spellcaster" (for most arcanes) or "gish" (for clerics or eldritch knights). As part of the ability set for these, they'll have various types of casting they are going to take. Casting is actually pretty easy given that you'd just need a couple of special abilities to handle that.

The aforementioned arcane casting CR 5 that grants you 1 spell of 3rd level,2 spells of 2nd level, and at will casting for 1st level or lower, would be all you'd really need for any type of wizard. Depending on what spells you choose, it could be a beguiler analog or it could be an evoker.

Either you have far too few roles and try to clump all possibilities together under too few umbrellas, in which case you might as well just pull a classless 4e ("All Defenders can take Defender abilities, all Martial characters can take Martial abilities...") or you have too many and at that point you might as well replace Brute with Barbarian, Tank with Fighter, Skirmisher with Rogue, Sniper with Ranger, etc. and you're left right back where you started.

Yeah, you're certainly right that the choice of how many roles to have is a big one. And I haven't exactly cemented how many I really want. I don't want to get into the role as exactly defining the creature's real type, so much as his stats. An evasive swashbuckler may be every bit a tank role as a guy in full plate. The swashbuckler would just have some mobility related special abilities. But he's basically going to have high AC and low damage.

A rogue could use the brute class, since he's going to be a rather fragile damage machine.

Thinking of that, I may actually want to go with good defenses and bad defenses, instead of having fixed fort, ref, will by class. So for instance a brute might get 1 good defense, and a tank might get two. Or something like that. Since these roles are basically just numeric shells to be filled with special abilities, it might be best to go that route.

But "how many roles" is definitely a big question in this system. One I haven't fully answered yet.

I probably don't want to have too many special ability tables. I'm thinking of possibly just having warrior, caster and gimmick as special ability categories, so there aren't too many tables. And each role actually just points you towards a special ability category that that monster uses. Some roles, like the gish, may allow you to choose from two categories.

Alternately maybe just reduce the number of roles, and just have traits and SAs cover the bonuses to saves, AC and attack. So if you took the accurate trait, you'd get a +3 to attack rolls, take heavily armored and it increases your AC by +3, or something like that. There are a number of ways to do it, and I'm not sure yet which would be simplest.

[Emerald]

I probably don't want to have too many special ability tables. I'm thinking of possibly just having warrior, caster and gimmick as special ability categories, so there aren't too many tables. And each role actually just points you towards a special ability category that that monster uses. Some roles, like the gish, may allow you to choose from two categories.

Alternately maybe just reduce the number of roles, and just have traits and SAs cover the bonuses to saves, AC and attack. So if you took the accurate trait, you'd get a +3 to attack rolls, take heavily armored and it increases your AC by +3, or something like that. There are a number of ways to do it, and I'm not sure yet which would be simplest.

So you'd basically be doing the monster equivalent of a fighter/rogue/wizard split (plus maybe cleric for a support type), and all the abilities are just flat mechanics with flavor added depending on the role? I suppose that could work, though that does skirt uncomfortably close to the "If you want to make something new, reflavor existing mechanics and it's totally different!" concept that most of the 4e forums have latched onto.

Really, the special abilities are going to make or break this. If you're only going to be able to choose from skills, spells, and class features, I don't see the point; if you're going to be able to make stuff up for abilities, well, that's the hardest part of monster creation as-is so you wouldn't be gaining all that much benefit. I'm not sure how a hybrid system would work for that, but if you can make it work, more power to you.[/i]

[Murtak]

Sounds to me like you want to have an alternate but better character creation system and only use it for team monster. I applaud the former (though I still want to see the system, even if its only an example for a single CR) but I think you will either wind up with a very small pool of concepts or a system that is just as large as player character generation.

[RandomCasualty2]

Sounds to me like you want to have an alternate but better character creation system and only use it for team monster. I applaud the former (though I still want to see the system, even if its only an example for a single CR) but I think you will either wind up with a very small pool of concepts or a system that is just as large as player character generation.

Yeah, pretty much. It's a separate method of creating team monster in a faster fashion. You effectively lose the ability to hand a PC the character sheet of an NPC and expect him to play it, but we don't do that anyway.

As far as being a small pool, well lets remember that the 3.5 ability pool is already pretty small.

I mean, most existing brute monsters really don't do anything you care about. A hill giant or stone giant is a collection of crap basically. There are only a few feats that actually matter in terms of real options.

The spell system I think remains just as robust using a few chosen spells, then a bunch of lower level spells at will.

Really most of the difficulty isn't so much replicating NPCs as it happens to be replicating a lot of actual monster abilities. But I'm pretty sure we can accommodate most of the NPC stuff.