Design Player Vs. First, then Monsters

[Thymos]

When reading through the how many monsters should DnD have thread I saw it get side tracked by monster then system, or system then monster for a while.

I thought that a new thread would be appropriate, and here's my solution.

Design player classes. Then make it so that it's balanced around player parties fighting each other.

After that's done use the player classes as the basis for monster stats and what monsters should be designed around. Basically make player parties vs. each other conform to your expectations, then use the player parties as the numeric and ability basis for monsters.

Here we get the monsters first, but they are based around a system used for players.

Of course this is completely whacked if your players can't swing swords at each other like in 4e... but I don't know anyone who actually wants that.

[OgreBattle]

When reading through the how many monsters should DnD have thread I saw it get side tracked by monster then system, or system then monster for a while.

I thought that a new thread would be appropriate, and here's my solution...

A while back we had a thread on this, but it was in the belief of "Monsters first"
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53456&view=next

Here's the relevant passage:

It seems to me that much of the failing of D&D3e was in PC's not having the capability of handling many level appropriate encounters.

Much of the failings of D&D4e was in PC's having to grind round after round against level appropriate threats that had little power to actually hurt the PC's in turn.



As for fixing 3e's problems (or exposing them), the Same Game Challenge is a good measure. That revolves around pitting PC's/Parties against level appropriate encounters to gauge of useful they are to the party. It seems that The Den's Tomes and Frank's Races of War were built around creating characters who can overcome a Same Game Challenge.


But with that said, it seems that the majority of "this is my RPG project, check it" always begin with PC classes, with monsters coming up last, if they even do appear. So with that being said, wouldn't it be good practice to first get down what an Orc does, what a Giant Scorpion can do, and the toughness of a Dragon, then create PC's which can overcome such challenges together?

Pretty much you begin with the Same Game Challenge tiered by level, then you create the PC's to overcome them.

Well first you need an action resolution system, then you need challenges, and then you need PCs. I'd say it's roughly that order. Sections of the PCs may be part of your writeup for action resolution (resource management, skills, action declaration, etc.), so there are definitely parts of the PC end that you can be productively working on before you get into the monsters. And many of the monster abilities are going to be PC abilities as well, which means you can get a two-for-one there.

But yeah, I think the constant consideration about whether a Barbarian should have +3 attack or +4 in the absence of minotaurs for them to be attacking is rather pointless and leads to poor decisions. This sort of methodology is what leads us to 20 level Monk classes that give all kinds of weird abilities every level but never actually get the ability to contribute meaningfully in a single level appropriate challenge at any level at all.

-Username17

So it goes

1- The action resolution system for playing your game
2- Expected challenges that players will face
3- The characters players use to face those challenges

Having PC's and Monsters not be too different is good to aim for, but you still have things like giant scorpions and rocs that don't function well as PC's (lack of thumbs and sapience), but are fun for PC's to fight against.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Terrible idea. Balancing classes against each other first and then writing monsters later is what 4E D&D did.

Classes are tools made to solve problems defined by the gamespace and genre concerns. If you make the tools before you've defined the problem set, then you end up with a distorted game in which monsters aren't allowed to shoot arrows on horseback because most of your classes don't fly.

But PVP comparisons don't tell you anything at all. The fact that a wizard can put up a temporary defense buff and grind the fighter to bits isn't interesting in the slightest. It tells you nothing at all about how the classes are actually balanced. When two PCs go at it in the arena, one of them has the advantage. That advantage may be very large, and it still means jack fucking shit.

The Bard gives group bonuses and loses a one-on-one sword fight against the Fighter in your PVP demo. Quick: which character is underpowered? The answer, obviously, is that you can't tell. It could be either or neither or both. You wouldn't really expect a character with a bunch of buffs expected to slather onto three allies to outfight a character who was simply personally very bad ass.

If the Assassin can reliably win initiative against the Wizard and drop him with burst damage, that doesn't tell you very much either. It certainly doesn't tell you that the Wizard needs to be so good at scouting and initiative tests that they can deal with Assassin first strikes.

The fact that one of the other player classes has an ability that would make them win in an arena against one of the other classes doesn't mean that the other class needs something to deal with it. They may need something that deals with that kind of thing, but losing in PVP arena doesn't show that at all.

The player characters ultimately need to triumph in moderately interesting ways against challenges in the Same Game Test. They don't need to win or even put up a good showing in specific one on one fights against other player characters or even monsters out of the book. It's OK for there to be one on one fights that your character is expected to lose. It is not OK for your character to be unable to contribute to the adventure. You literally cannot answer that question if you start from the PC side. And that is why the 3e Monk was unable to even hurt the vast majority of level appropriate enemies.

-Username17

[ishy]

Terrible idea. Balancing classes against each other first and then writing monsters later is what 4E D&D did.

Classes are tools made to solve problems defined by the gamespace and genre concerns. If you make the tools before you've defined the problem set, then you end up with a distorted game in which monsters aren't allowed to shoot arrows on horseback because most of your classes don't fly.

Just because 4e did something doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad.

And even if you do monsters first, you can end up with no class being allowed to have a ranged option, because none of your monsters can deal with that. Shitty design will be shitty, no matter if you do monsters first or not.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Just because 4e did something doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad.

I'm just doing a TGD Godwin there. I'm positive that 1E and 4E D&D did that and I am pretty sure that 3E D&D did, too.

And even if you do monsters first, you can end up with no class being allowed to have a ranged option, because none of your monsters can deal with that.

I probably should have said 'challenges', not 'monsters'.

Regardless, though, even if you do derp out and forget to include monsters with ranged attacks or flight or decent saves, you can always go back and either throw it onto some existing monsters or write some new ones.

Monsters don't have to be balanced against each other and regardless can be fairly easily shifted up and down the challenge ladder. No one really cares if orcs become more hardcore than bugbears or the stone giant becomes more dangerous than the cloud giant or if the wyvern becomes a CR2 filler monster in the shuffle. People will care if after you give all of the classes ranged attacks the wizard becomes weaker relative to all of the classes.

[zugschef]

PvP is such a trivially obviously stupid balance-point, most people miss it.

Take one of the simplest games ever: Rock-paper-scissors.

Rock can't beat paper, paper can't beat scissors and scissors can't beat rock. You don't hit rock with a nerf-bat because it always wins against scissors and you sure won't give it a boost because it always loses to paper.

The same issue becomes a huge problem in mmorpgs. You just can't have perfect balance between all classes in pvp and guarantee that all classes are perfectly balanced versus environment, unless you basically have almost identical classes or have different rules for pvp and pve.

It's the same with tabletop rpgs. It's a cooperative game and unless you want every character to do the same shit, some characters will wipe the floor with others, but against team monster both characters may have their places.

[violence in the media]

PvP is such a trivially obviously stupid balance-point, most people miss it.

It's the same with tabletop rpgs. It's a cooperative game and unless you want every character to do the same shit, some characters will wipe the floor with others, but against team monster both characters may have their places.

If the classes are balanced against each other, you can run an entire campaign against nothing but classed humanoid opponents if you choose. You won't have to worry (as much) whether a coven of witches will auto-win or auto-lose an encounter depending on the opponent composition.

Also, the "it's a cooperative game!" argument presumes a level of harmonious cooperation I've not personally witnessed consistently. It also ignores a lot of situations that aren't the result of players deliberately antagonizing each other--like compulsions and mind controls. I don't really want the winner of a PvP fight to be determined simply by who wrote the correct class name down at the top of their sheet.

edit to add: I realize perfect balance is impossible and probably not even desirable, but I feel that you should amend things if you discover that one or two classes will absolutely dominate in PC vs PC fights, especially if your classed NPCs use the PC rules.

[shadzar]

Design player classes. Then make it so that it's balanced around player parties fighting each other.

NO, because they are not supposed to. the majority of things will be "monsters", not players or NPCs. the toughest will be NPCs, but you need to design around the common factor, which is you will be fighting mosnters.

design classes first, yes.
design monsters next.

If at any point you design around or account for PvP, you have left cooperative gaming.

does it happen inter-party conflicts and fights? yes. should the game be built around them? no!

[Username17]

If the classes are balanced against each other, you can run an entire campaign against nothing but classed humanoid opponents if you choose.

No you can't. If the classes are balanced against each other in PvP bullshit, but one of those classes is a 4e Wizard (who specializes in attacking more than one enemy at a time) or a 4e Warlord (who specializes in giving attack boosters to the whole party), then the game goes wildly out of whack as soon as there are four people on a side.

Any methodology that would give you stupid and unhelpful answers even with a game system as simple as 4e D&D is simply a stupid and unhelpful methodology.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Just because 4e did something doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad.

I'm just doing a TGD Godwin there. I'm positive that 1E and 4E D&D did that and I am pretty sure that 2E D&D did, too.

Then you are an idiot. pre-WotC didn't try to balance classes at all on any power scale, against each other. 4th was the retarded step-child that tried to make PvP fair, and failed the rest of the game.

[OgreBattle]

But 4e is the edition where an orc barbarian and drow wizard are built separate from PC barbarians and wizards, and folks got really mad about that.

While 3e has orc babarian 1 and drow wizard 5 as things you're expected to encounter. A lot of 3e imbalance discussions are about things like when the NPC badguy wizard black tentacles the PC fighter and so on.

And Shadowrun, the majority of your opposition will be other dudes using the same guns and magic as you.

So it does seem that PC vs PC is a balancing point to be considered, and possibly built around.

[wotmaniac]

Design player classes. Then make it so that it's balanced around player parties fighting each other.

NO, because they are not supposed to. the majority of things will be "monsters", not players or NPCs. the toughest will be NPCs, but you need to design around the common factor, which is you will be fighting mosnters.

design classes first, yes.
design monsters next.

If at any point you design around or account for PvP, you have left cooperative gaming.

does it happen inter-party conflicts and fights? yes. should the game be built around them? no!

So which is it: the bolded part, or the non-bolded part? The 2 cannot exist simultaneously in the same design paradigm.

So it does seem that PC vs PC is a balancing point to be considered, and possibly built around.

Considered? Yes.
Built around? I think only if your game doesn't have other creatures to fight.

[Foxwarrior]

You can design for PvP without designing for 1v1.

[schpeelah]

You can design for PvP without designing for 1v1.

Designing for entire squads of classed characters gets even more retarded. Are we talking 5 wizards vs. 5 bards? A healer in a mixed party vs. an assassin in the same mixed party? Claric in an angel party vs. necromancer in an undead party or each in the same undead party?

[RobbyPants]

NO, because they are not supposed to. the majority of things will be "monsters", not players or NPCs. the toughest will be NPCs, but you need to design around the common factor, which is you will be fighting mosnters.

...

If at any point you design around or account for PvP, you have left cooperative gaming.

does it happen inter-party conflicts and fights? yes. should the game be built around them? no!

Well, like it or not, evil wizards and black knights are a staple of the genre, which leaves you two options:

1) Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

2) Go full 4E and have evil "wizards" and "fighters" not actually be wizards or fighters. This gets extremely unsatisfying, and does weird things if they fight each other.


So, if your game is even remotely sane, you will have the PCs fighting other characters with PC classes, even if the PCs aren't fighting each other. It does need to be addressed.

[sabs]

One of my most fun D&D style games, was a Faerun overrun by Evil campaign. Everything had class levels.

Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Drow. A Kobold may not seem like much of a challenge, but if you stack rogue, and then assassin PRC on him. He's kind of scary.

[shadzar]

NO, because they are not supposed to. the majority of things will be "monsters", not players or NPCs. the toughest will be NPCs, but you need to design around the common factor, which is you will be fighting mosnters.

...

If at any point you design around or account for PvP, you have left cooperative gaming.

does it happen inter-party conflicts and fights? yes. should the game be built around them? no!

Well, like it or not, evil wizards and black knights are a staple of the genre, which leaves you two options:

1) Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

2) Go full 4E and have evil "wizards" and "fighters" not actually be wizards or fighters. This gets extremely unsatisfying, and does weird things if they fight each other.


So, if your game is even remotely sane, you will have the PCs fighting other characters with PC classes, even if the PCs aren't fighting each other. It does need to be addressed.

except NPCs that you speak of don't follow PC rules for creation. They have really only one design goal, "to fight the PCs in a climactic battle". so you really don't need to design based on PC rules as the single opponent is against all or a mix of the PC classes.

this is in fact where min-maxxing comes from, the metagame knowledge that a player will need to be able to fight the "end boss" so they "optimize" for that fight throughout the game by twinking their character with this or that.

the problem is, there is only an "end boss" when you decide to quit playing. if you continue, you don't know what comes next, and the stronger the PCs try to get quicker, then either you reach the limits of the game and must do like the Immortal set and 4th edition sid, and throw your character away and start a new one to fight god-like creatures in a new set of game rules unlike all the levels that built up to where you are now.

there is then only 2 cases in which you need to design for PvP in the cooperative game:
1. all human PC, or human-centric game world. nobody likes this
2. all monster races are PCs. this is what people have been trying to do and what is causing the problem.

not everything needs to be a race the players can choose ALL the time. leave the Player's Options books and CBoHumanoids in the trash where they belong.

you design the class as to what it should be able to do so you have it a role. sad depraved ones like 4th edition had, or archetypes like pre-WotC had. then you design the mosnters around those classes. the classes need not have a unified XP table, and the monsters don't need upgrades ala Brute/Solo/etc to keep them current for higher levels.

sometimes monsters just drop off because D&D isnt Final Fantasy Vii where you go level-grinding by killing slimes for the next plot point to open up when you get Y XP points. the DM can adjust the story at any time to make things level appropriate, or the players delving into kobold warrens, might should choose a different area of the world to adventure in if all there is is kobolds and they want to play the level gaining game instead of D&D.

you know there are weekly BD&D games that are still going on weekly since it came out that have not reacher the highest level yet right? so ther is more than just gaining levels, and many people accustomed to video games since FF and its level grinds, jsut forget about that.

not sure which edition says this but one says along the lines of "give full XP if the encounter was threatening to the PC party, otherwise give less to no XP if it wasn't"

so the game should be designed for the way it was created to be played, not for some new age game theory. if you want to use new theories, then jsut make a new game, else D&D can never be fixed and will always be the bastard step-child of gaming, that has now spawned other and better games in the view of the gaming populace.

i hope you dont think your black knight NPC has its stats rolled for or treasure randomly generate that it can use like magical armor or weapons, and understand that the DM assigns these things based on his function in the adventure?


BBEGs violate every character generation concept for PCs, and can NOT be equated to them directly. they are like Ultimate in Final Fantasy, or Sephiroth, Genova, Edna, etc....

this is where the player comes into play, not just the PC, because in every story like D&D can create, the protagonists pull some deus ex machina to win the day in the end. they just happen to have the McGuffin to beat the BBEG even though he is too powerful for them to logically and mathematically, AND statistically defeat.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

I agree. However:

Depending on your encounter assumptions, a level 5 bard villain might be more or less threatening than a level 5 wizard or fighter. A one-on-one fight with a glass cannon class tends to be a joke while they become relatively more threatening in large groups. Similarly, the threat value of a class like a barbarian is linear.

It's seriously okay for a game to have level 7 NPC Wizards have the same CR as a Level 5 monk assuming standard encounter assumptions -- level 7 monks versus level 5 wizards. What matters is that the CRs are consistent.

Of course, this makes PvP balancing almost automatically a lost cause unless the majority of encounters in your game are Psycho Ranger mirror matches.

[Thymos]

Somehow everyone missed me saying Parties vs. Parties, not 1v1.

Also I assumed it would there would be unbalanced parties. Maybe 4 lvl 5's against 8 lvl 3's, or 2 lvl 7's. Whatever you desire to be your balance point make sure that player classes can handle the discrepancies you desire much like how DnD 3.x said that 2 CR 5 creatures is a CR 7 encounter.

This would give us some internal balance among classes (hopefully) which is something most games desperately lack.

Also how in the world is this like 4e? In 4e two players can't even swing their goddamn swords at each other.

If your game cannot even have this as a basic balance point there are so many stories you cannot tell it's not even funny. Having players be able to face off against the evil wizard and his body guard is mandatory so why not start here for balancing?

[Voss]

Somehow everyone missed me saying Parties vs. Parties, not 1v1.

Actually, not many people did- the basic problems are there regardless of whether it is 1v1 or team v team, but team on team actually magnifies the problems. Which why they were pointing out that it means fuck all:

No you can't. If the classes are balanced against each other in PvP bullshit, but one of those classes is a 4e Wizard (who specializes in attacking more than one enemy at a time) or a 4e Warlord (who specializes in giving attack boosters to the whole party), then the game goes wildly out of whack as soon as there are four people on a side.

except NPCs that you speak of don't follow PC rules for creation. They have really only one design goal, "to fight the PCs in a climactic battle". so you really don't need to design based on PC rules as the single opponent is against all or a mix of the PC classes.

shadzar, closet 4e supporter.

this is where the player comes into play, not just the PC, because in every story like D&D can create, the protagonists pull some deus ex machina to win the day in the end. they just happen to have the McGuffin to beat the BBEG even though he is too powerful for them to logically and mathematically, AND statistically defeat.

Anyone else confused by this? Not just the complete lack of understanding of what deus ex machina means (or how it works), but how many games has anyone played where the end fight was decided by a McGuffin or involved an opponent that wasn't beatable? Because I've only ever seen it in the worst sort of Gygaxian bullshit (like Tomb of Horrors) and would have honestly lost my shit if someone pulled this sort of crap at a table at any point in the last 20 years.

[zugschef]

A McGuffin is per definition not something which lets the PCs do anything. It's per definition something which the plot evolves around but never actually has any kind of real meaning like the briefcase in Ronin. Nobody ever knows what's in the damn thing and actually nobody cares.

So please shut up.

[K]

Well, like it or not, evil wizards and black knights are a staple of the genre, which leaves you two options:

1) Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

2) Go full 4E and have evil "wizards" and "fighters" not actually be wizards or fighters. This gets extremely unsatisfying, and does weird things if they fight each other.


So, if your game is even remotely sane, you will have the PCs fighting other characters with PC classes, even if the PCs aren't fighting each other. It does need to be addressed.

The consequences of option 1 is that you realize that PCs should probably be a lot less fiddly. Both 3e and 4e PCs are filled to the brim with useless feats and little modifiers as distraction from the fact that having a few well-designed character-specific abilities and good rules for general abilities would have taken a lot more design time than pretending that a +1 vs Fire magic is a real ability.

In short, the instant that you've decided to use Liches with real spellcasting at all, you've decided that PC Wizards/Sorcerers need to be as easy to run and make as monsters.

[TheFlatline]

Well, like it or not, evil wizards and black knights are a staple of the genre, which leaves you two options:

1) Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

2) Go full 4E and have evil "wizards" and "fighters" not actually be wizards or fighters. This gets extremely unsatisfying, and does weird things if they fight each other.


So, if your game is even remotely sane, you will have the PCs fighting other characters with PC classes, even if the PCs aren't fighting each other. It does need to be addressed.

The consequences of option 1 is that you realize that PCs should probably be a lot less fiddly. Both 3e and 4e PCs are filled to the brim with useless feats and little modifiers as distraction from the fact that having a few well-designed character-specific abilities and good rules for general abilities would have taken a lot more design time than pretending that a +1 vs Fire magic is a real ability.

In short, the instant that you've decided to use Liches with real spellcasting at all, you've decided that PC Wizards/Sorcerers need to be as easy to run and make as monsters.

Exactly. While I enjoy throwing NPCs with PC levels as a combat challenge, it's one of the least efficient uses of my time as MC. It could take an hour or two to gen up characters that stand a chance of putting up a good fight against highly tuned and kitted PCs. For one combat. In the same amount of time I could pick up the MM and gen a whole session using monsters.

No, balancing the game for PvP with monsters as an afterthought is one of those player-centric points of view that completely ignores the logistics of what they're implying because all that shit happens before they sit down with their dice and expect a session to be ready.. Yeah, it's great for the player potentially, but fuck me running I would have a hard time generating interesting, level appropriate, frequent combat in D&D using just PC generation rules.

Also, the idea of achieving "balance" in a PvP environment is fucking absurd and impossible. Case in point: They're STILL tweaking balance in World of Warcraft 10 years later. That's basically a PvP engine that gets monthly, and for a while *weekly* errata with more datapoints to base that errata on by several orders of magnitude than you'd ever get designing a TTRPG, and they STILL can't get it to a point of stability. At best, they shuffle things around a bit so that tracking all the power levels of classes relative to each other creates sort of a valence cloud of "balance", where actual balance may be out of whack at any given time, but given time the highs and lows balance out in the patches.

And that is for a relatively rigid talent tree progress for classes that have more or less optimized builds. D&D is so much more nebulous by such a huge degree the idea of balancing party vs party is insane.

[RobbyPants]

except NPCs that you speak of don't follow PC rules for creation. They have really only one design goal, "to fight the PCs in a climactic battle". so you really don't need to design based on PC rules as the single opponent is against all or a mix of the PC classes.

Sounds like you want to use option 2 then, so, I got ya covered.

this is in fact where min-maxxing comes from, the metagame knowledge that a player will need to be able to fight the "end boss" so they "optimize" for that fight throughout the game by twinking their character with this or that.

the problem is, there is only an "end boss" when you decide to quit playing. if you continue, you don't know what comes next, and the stronger the PCs try to get quicker, then either you reach the limits of the game and must do like the Immortal set and 4th edition sid, and throw your character away and start a new one to fight god-like creatures in a new set of game rules unlike all the levels that built up to where you are now.

there is then only 2 cases in which you need to design for PvP in the cooperative game:
1. all human PC, or human-centric game world. nobody likes this
2. all monster races are PCs. this is what people have been trying to do and what is causing the problem.

not everything needs to be a race the players can choose ALL the time. leave the Player's Options books and CBoHumanoids in the trash where they belong.

you design the class as to what it should be able to do so you have it a role. sad depraved ones like 4th edition had, or archetypes like pre-WotC had. then you design the mosnters around those classes. the classes need not have a unified XP table, and the monsters don't need upgrades ala Brute/Solo/etc to keep them current for higher levels.

sometimes monsters just drop off because D&D isnt Final Fantasy Vii where you go level-grinding by killing slimes for the next plot point to open up when you get Y XP points. the DM can adjust the story at any time to make things level appropriate, or the players delving into kobold warrens, might should choose a different area of the world to adventure in if all there is is kobolds and they want to play the level gaining game instead of D&D.

you know there are weekly BD&D games that are still going on weekly since it came out that have not reacher the highest level yet right? so ther is more than just gaining levels, and many people accustomed to video games since FF and its level grinds, jsut forget about that.

not sure which edition says this but one says along the lines of "give full XP if the encounter was threatening to the PC party, otherwise give less to no XP if it wasn't"

Holy shit. As far as I can tell, this entire quoted post is basically you listing your own personal preferences for old games, and saying that new games need to conform to these. Wasn't your One Perfect Edition already released 24 years ago? Stop worrying about what new games should look like. They're not being designed for you.

so the game should be designed for the way it was created to be played, not for some new age game theory. if you want to use new theories, then jsut make a new game, else D&D can never be fixed and will always be the bastard step-child of gaming, that has now spawned other and better games in the view of the gaming populace.

i hope you dont think your black knight NPC has its stats rolled for or treasure randomly generate that it can use like magical armor or weapons, and understand that the DM assigns these things based on his function in the adventure?


BBEGs violate every character generation concept for PCs, and can NOT be equated to them directly. they are like Ultimate in Final Fantasy, or Sephiroth, Genova, Edna, etc....

this is where the player comes into play, not just the PC, because in every story like D&D can create, the protagonists pull some deus ex machina to win the day in the end. they just happen to have the McGuffin to beat the BBEG even though he is too powerful for them to logically and mathematically, AND statistically defeat.

Are you advocating the DM doing whatever he wants for BBEG stats, handing out mandatory pity items so the PCs can defeat him, and then crediting the victory to the players?

If not, I literally have no idea what you're saying there. Hell, even if so, I'm still pretty confused.

---

Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).

I agree. However:

Depending on your encounter assumptions, a level 5 bard villain might be more or less threatening than a level 5 wizard or fighter. A one-on-one fight with a glass cannon class tends to be a joke while they become relatively more threatening in large groups. Similarly, the threat value of a class like a barbarian is linear

Well, I agree that circumstances can make PC X more or less affective than his/her nominal level would suggest. I think that's a good thing, otherwise they have to be so similar to the point that it obviates having separate classes in the first place.

---

...
1) Use PC rules to generate PC-classed villains. If you do, you need to have a way to equate a level X wizard with a monster/challenge of a certain level (hopefully X).
...

The consequences of option 1 is that you realize that PCs should probably be a lot less fiddly. Both 3e and 4e PCs are filled to the brim with useless feats and little modifiers as distraction from the fact that having a few well-designed character-specific abilities and good rules for general abilities would have taken a lot more design time than pretending that a +1 vs Fire magic is a real ability.

In short, the instant that you've decided to use Liches with real spellcasting at all, you've decided that PC Wizards/Sorcerers need to be as easy to run and make as monsters.

Yes, if you build an NPC exactly as you build a PC, the sheer number of options would likely make it difficult.

For this reason, I'd suggest having some default thematic builds created ahead of time. So, if Wizard is a class, there might be a fire mage build, a mind-screwing build, and a summoner, just to get started. These builds would have all the obvious stuff plotted out (such as feat and spell selections). It would make sense to put these in the DMG, although I suppose they might be handy for Trevor players (or whatever the fuck that guy's name is who wants to play but doesn't really know how).

Now, I think it'd be impossible (or at least impractical) to post an exhaustive number of these builds, but it would hopefully be enough to be a useful time-saver for the DM. He might be able to whip up a lich during session planning by applying the lich template to the mind-screw wizard build, and have it fully statted in 10 - 15 minutes.

[sabs]

I'm going to regret this but.

Did Shadzar really just say:

so the game should be designed for the way it was created to be played, not for some new age game theory.

That is by far the most non-sensical sentence I've ever heard. The game should be designed the way it was created. What? WHat came first, the game or the design for the game. WTF.