Good design principles

[Murtak]

Inspired by the "Design philosophies that make you rage?" and "Worst WotC Mistake" threads.

What do you think are good design principles (good being defined as: will never make the game worse, will often make the game better)? I propose these:
- All players should have an equal impact on the story (or potential for it - using said potential is not mandatory).
- All players should have equal screen time.
- Whenever a player has to make a choice in his character build (feats, stat increases, levels, etc.) all available choices should be equally viable.

[Ice9]

I would alter that last one to "There should be a number of equally viable choices, and any less viable choices should be obviously less viable".

Not that perfectly viability is inherently bad, but excessive pursuit of it can cripple the flexibility of a system.

[Murtak]

That is true for any entry on the list though. Remember these are design principles/philosophies/goals. You should strive for them, but perfection will not ever be possible.

[PhoneLobster]

- All players should have an equal impact on the story (or potential for it - using said potential is not mandatory).
- All players should have equal screen time.
- Whenever a player has to make a choice in his character build (feats, stat increases, levels, etc.) all available choices should be equally viable.

Those aren't so much design principles as design goals.

To me when you say "design principle" I'm thinking more about basic underlying methodology rather than the specific use you set it too.

You know, best practice sort of stuff.

So for instance having a design methodology where you outline goals like those and then check your work against them at various stages, that is a design philosophy.

So concepts such as extensible design, intuitive design, goal based design, play testing, the dreaded toolkit, design level documentation, and just plain checking your math.

Those are design philosophies/principles/methodologies as distinct from goals. And most of them are indeed different from specific goals in that they are good practice across pretty much any and all projects.

[Murtak]

Aah, ok. So:

Goal: Whenever a player has to make a choice in his character build (feats, stat increases, levels, etc.) all available choices should be equally viable.
Best Practice: There should be a number of equally viable choices, and any less viable choices should be obviously less viable.

[PhoneLobster]

Aah, ok. So:

I guess, I'd be more inclined to go with...

Goal: Player selectable options in expenditure of long term player character resources should be of transparent value with warnings or removal of sub par options.

Design Principle: All aspects of a system should be as transparent as possible to the reader in the full nature of their function. As a result some aspects should have additional documentation to describe their context and less obvious effects. No aspects of the system should be obscured, mislabelled or misrepresented in any way.

[Thymos]

I disagree that we should comfortably have less viable choices.

The only time that a choice should be "less viable" is if this choice achieves an affect that could not otherwise be achieved. In which case it's less useful, maybe, but is still viable.

The fact of the matter so far is that all you have listed off as design goals is "This game should be balanced among the classes and among the abilities."

What your describing to a large extent is balance. It's a great design goal. It's not the only one.

I propose never including options, except in the rarest of circumstances, that are absolutes. No spell that gives complete invisibility, no Blind sense (or whatever the fucked up, no sneaking up on dragons ability is called), no fire immunity, no immunity to crits and sneak attacks.

These abilities should be restricted, incredibly restricted. Oozes may have immunity to sneak attacks, and fire elementals immunity to fire. That's it.

We should also have a gross restriction on out of turn actions and triggers. These things are susceptible to infinite loops, so we need to be careful about them. I'm not saying don't use them, but definitely keep an eye on them.

I personally think that monsters should not be build drastically different from players. Now don't come yelling at me that players are more complex, monsters don't need that complexity, yatta yatta yatta. I'm saying that a level 10 monster should be roughly equivalent to a level 10 player. Replace a few abilities with equivalent stat buffs to make him easier to run. Very rarely some monsters should be very different. This should be no more common, maybe even rarer, than monsters with immunities

By what I previously said, make sure that the most playtested part of the system are the player classes. Then, when we roughly base the monsters off the player classes, we can be sure that they are reasonably close (we would still have to playtest the abilities that we swapped out). It's more efficient than playtesting everything equally, and lets face it, npc's will probably be the most used enemy.

As Frank pointed out, we don't need too many filler levels, but at the same time not every level needs to be crucial.

Keep the numbers low. We aren't computers, we can't do logarithmic formulas at a whim. If we could then our combat systems would be much more complicated and work out much nicer. As it is, if our numbers are high at low level, they'll be even higher at high level, so lets keep them low, at least at first.

Let's also build gear into levels. It's a part of a characters overall strength, it shouldn't be up to the whims of the dm or the parties rogue.

That's all I have off the top of my head.

[Murtak]

I propose never including options, except in the rarest of circumstances, that are absolutes. No spell that gives complete invisibility, no Blind sense (or whatever the fucked up, no sneaking up on dragons ability is called), no fire immunity, no immunity to crits and sneak attacks.

Goal:There should be as few absolutes in the world as possible.
Best Practice: Immunities should only go to entities which do not interact with the element in question. (Automatons are fine with mind-affecting-immunity, oozes are immune to crits. But golems should not have spell immunity.)

That sound good?

I personally think that monsters should not be build drastically different from players. Now don't come yelling at me that players are more complex, monsters don't need that complexity, yatta yatta yatta. I'm saying that a level 10 monster should be roughly equivalent to a level 10 player. Replace a few abilities with equivalent stat buffs to make him easier to run. Very rarely some monsters should be very different. This should be no more common, maybe even rarer, than monsters with immunities

Personally I would even say that monsters should be built using the exact same system. That way, if your players want to play as giants, all the rules already exist. It is fine to have something like an "NPC Mage" class, or bundles of preselected abilities and it is also fine for players to play them.

As Frank pointed out, we don't need too many filler levels, but at the same time not every level needs to be crucial.

I disagree. There should not be any filler levels at all, ever. There should be as many levels as are needed to distinguish between the most powerful being and least powerful being your game will have you interact with and not one single level more. And every single one of these levels should be a visible increase in power over the previous level. If it isn't the design is flawed.

Let's also build gear into levels. It's a part of a characters overall strength, it shouldn't be up to the whims of the dm or the parties rogue.

I'm not sure about that - ideally the game should be balanced both with low and high wealth and then all you need to worry about is a roughly equal distribution. I would agree for D&D though.

[Roy]

Just one thing. The ONLY thing that counters Rocket Tag, without bait and switching it for Padded Sumo is forcefields. And of course, for those to be effective, they have to grant flat out immunity or very close to it. So removing immunities means moar Rocket Tag. Do you really want that?

[Username17]

Personally I would even say that monsters should be built using the exact same system. That way, if your players want to play as giants, all the rules already exist. It is fine to have something like an "NPC Mage" class, or bundles of preselected abilities and it is also fine for players to play them.

Definitely disagree. There are a number of things that a monster or obstacle can be that a player character can't. Leaving aside philosophically arguable cases such as the puzzle monster that is a mild diversion as an opponent but a world shattering nightmare in the hands of the protagonists, there are simple and inarguable cases of limitations. An opponent can be immobile, incapable of manipulating objects, mute, or non-sapient. Obviously, a player character basically can't do that.

And Cerberus doesn't get "points" back for the fact that he can't leave the gateway to the underworld. Because that's where the players encounter him, and they win that particular encounter by getting past. He therefore is built in a system that is noticeably different from that of the player characters. He has inherent limitations that prevent him from having any impact on the story outside of a single scene. And that's fine, because he's an NPC and he only shows up in that scene. NPCs all only show up in a very limited slice of the story, so whether they don't interact with the rest of the story because they can't or simply because the camera is pointed somewhere else is entirely immaterial to whether they are balanced in the context they actually appear.

You can't play a laser turret, or the underworld's gate guardian, or an attack hyena, or a devastating fungus, or any of a billion other level appropriate hazards. And many of them are "creatures" or even "humans." Your game doesn't just make humans and orcs, it makes fucking tigers. They aren't player characters. They won't ever be player characters, and they shouldn't be.

So no. Making all NPCs to the same rules as you make PCs is not good design. It's fucking retarded and totally pointless. Now that isn't to say that you should double your work or anything. The 4e D&D thing where an NPC Dwarven Fighter has totally different abilities and numbers from a PC Dwarven Fighter of the same level is needlessly complicated and maks the game worse. But there has to be room in your system for things that have rules that allow them to be challenges for PCs that are not intended to actually be something that players could be.

-Username17

[Murtak]

We agree that all player characters need to be valid NPCs. I think we agree on using the same generation system for both NPCs and PCs (for D&D: choose race (these are arbitrary), tack on levels, choose skills and feats). And I agree, many NPCs are pointless choices for almost all campaigns. But I don't see why there should be an arbitrary barrier between the NPC and PC choices. I don't get your Cerberus example - presumably Cerberus is CR 10 instead of 12 because he is chained to the underworld entrance and thus easier to kill/bypass, but if the campaign level is level 12, why shouldn't one of the players be Cerberus? I guess I can see the point for puzzle monsters, and arguably for non-sentient creatures, but the distinction between "ok for players" and "NPC only" looks awfully fuzzy to me. Perhaps a "not recommended for PC use" tag?

[Avoraciopoctules]

I can envision a game where you play laser turrets. The game would be about identifying and eliminating enemy personnel. If you want to add role-playing to the mix, you can link all a facility's systems together (you could surf the intranet if you're ever have time off). There's a delicate diplomatic balance between the laser turrets and the guard robots. The laser turrets have access to the facility database and a powerful attack, but the robots can move around and have hands. Both envy each other, and both need to work together to defeat determined assaults on the base. I'd be willing to play this.

I can envision a game where you play the guardians of the underworld's gates. Half the time, it would be a tactical combat game where you always have the home terrain advantage. The other half would be interacting with things other than souls of the dead trying to escape. Would you take bribes? What price would someone have to pay for you to let them past? As you do your job, Hades rewards you with awesome new powers. Eventually, you'll each have a small warband of summoned monsters and will have to defend against an entire army of souls that perished around the same time. If you want the keep the Greek theme, you could fight the 300 Spartans and King Leonidas. I'd be willing to play this.

I can envision a game where you play a grove of dryads with no combat abilities. It would be a game of talking and negotiation. People would come to the grove for advice, and you'd dissect the problem before suggesting a solution. I'd be willing to play this.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I can envision a game where you play laser turrets.

I can envision explosive diarrhea. That doesn't make it fun.

[Username17]

but if the campaign level is level 12, why shouldn't one of the players be Cerberus?

Because he can't fucking leave a 20 meter radius! Do I have to draw you a diagram with all the possible places that characters might be called upon to interact with things and the area Cerberus can interact with shaded in? It's basically a big white piece of paper with a tiny dot on it. Use your imagination.

Cerberus is not a 10th level enemy instead of a 12th level enemy because he can't leave his encounter zone. He's a 12th level enemy who can't leave his encounter zone. The fact that he can't leave the encounter zone doesn't make the encounter any easier or more difficult. It's just an abstract fact. A fact that completely and unilaterally excludes him from being a player character. But a fact which in no way modifies his contribution to the encounter you meet him in because that is by definition in his encounter zone.

When you meet an ogre in the middle of the woods it doesn't make any god damn difference to your encounter whether that ogre could leave the woods or not. You're in the woods, and so is the Ogre. And if you were somewhere else you'd have another encounter. And that would be fine. It might even be with a different Ogre. That would be fine too.

A character is judged by how much they affect the story. And NPC is judged by how much they affect the scenes in which they appear. Which means that NPCs don't get any points back for being completely meaningless in the scenes they don't show up in, because they fucking don't show up in those scenes! And there is absolutely no difference whatsoever to an NPC's story contribution between them contributing nothing to a scene that they aren't in because they are incapable of having influenced that scene vs. them simply being off camera but nominally capable of having influenced that scene had they been in it.

But I don't see why there should be an arbitrary barrier between the NPC and PC choices.

PC choices are limited to protagonists. NPC choices include antagonists (just like protagonists except with a different colored hat) and also extras. You can't play an extra. It also includes special effects, obstacles, and mooks. They serve a purpose in the story, which is why they are NPCs. But you can't fucking play one, because that would be lame. Incredibly, incredibly lame.

As a player character you can have a horse. You can't be a horse. You can have an autonomously targeted missile. You can't be a missile.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

I can envision a game where you play laser turrets.

I can envision explosive diarrhea. That doesn't make it fun.

I can envision a role-playing game where you play this character. I wouldn't play it, but somebody would. I could believe that this hypothetical person would have fun.

[Falgund]

I can envision a role-playing game where you play this character. I wouldn't play it, but somebody would. I could believe that this hypothetical person would have fun.

That doesn't mean this game should or even could use the rules of the game you play adventurers raiding dungeons. And if they don't use the same rules, why talking about making this game PC and that game PC with the same rules ?

[Murtak]

but if the campaign level is level 12, why shouldn't one of the players be Cerberus?

Because he can't fucking leave a 20 meter radius! Do I have to draw you a diagram with all the possible places that characters might be called upon to interact with things and the area Cerberus can interact with shaded in? It's basically a big white piece of paper with a tiny dot on it. Use your imagination.

Cerberus is not a 10th level enemy instead of a 12th level enemy because he can't leave his encounter zone. He's a 12th level enemy who can't leave his encounter zone.

Is there any fucking reason at all why some 3 headed dog must always be chained up except some figment of your imagination you chose not to share with us? Apparently Cerberus is level 12, presumably has abilities which are suited for level 12 creatures and he doesn't exactly sound like some puzzle monster/achilles heel opponent either. So can you you tell me one reason he cannot be unchained other than "dude, you can't unchain him, hes chained!!!1". Because, believe it or not, I got that the first time through.

[RandomCasualty2]

Personally I would even say that monsters should be built using the exact same system. That way, if your players want to play as giants, all the rules already exist. It is fine to have something like an "NPC Mage" class, or bundles of preselected abilities and it is also fine for players to play them.

I would definitely disagree here. Actually this is one spot that 4E had right, in that monsters/NPCs are playing different games than PCs.

NPCs/Monsters are designed for a single fight. That's it. This means that if you have any daily abilities, they are effectively encounter abilities for monsters and NPCs. This is basically a total fuck job for the PCs because if you have classes like 3E wizards who are a ton of daily abilities, they can blow their entire wad in one encounter and be way tougher than they normally would be.

Further, there's just the logistical problem of DMs designing these things. 3E had a tax code system which slowed down monster/NPC generation but didn't actually produce any more balanced NPCs or monsters. This meant that every encounter had to be planned especially at higher levels. If the DM can't easily create stuff on the fly, then he can't improvise. And if he can't improvise, then railroading is your only option. The longer it takes to prepare each encounter, the fewer different story and plot branches you can have. Ideally you want a DM to be able to come up with an encounter during the session, so as to allow more freeform gaming. And that's a huge consideration, because we all hate being railroaded. But if the DM just can't generate NPC encounters on the fly, then pretty much when you decide to turn on the king or attack the merchant or some other unexpected twist, the DM has to stop the session for two hours to do the tax code and prepare the encounter. Either that or the more likely case is he's just going to tell you "you can't do that."

And the threat of getting your ass force railroaded by the rules set easily outweighs any potentially small benefits that doing NPC and PC the same may have.

Really the only advantage to having everyone use the same generation system is that in theory, you could just decide to play Drizz't or Cerberus as your character, but that's already been debunked that a system just won't be able to allow that easily. As Frank has stated, Cerberus just isn't a valid character to play as a PC and you could just as easily build Drizz't using the PC rules anyway.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I can envision a role-playing game where you play this character. I wouldn't play it, but somebody would. I could believe that this hypothetical person would have fun.

That doesn't mean this game should or even could use the rules of the game you play adventurers raiding dungeons. And if they don't use the same rules, why talking about making this game PC and that game PC with the same rules ?

I am not talking about those rules.

My understanding was that we are discussing game design principles are general. Thus, I thought it worthwhile to keep in mind that one role-playing game may be considerably different from another. In some role-playing games and settings, PC mobility and/or combat ability is unnecessary.

[TavishArtair]

Is there any fucking reason at all why some 3 headed dog must always be chained up except some figment of your imagination you chose not to share with us? Apparently Cerberus is level 12, presumably has abilities which are suited for level 12 creatures and he doesn't exactly sound like some puzzle monster/achilles heel opponent either. So can you you tell me one reason he cannot be unchained other than "dude, you can't unchain him, hes chained!!!1". Because, believe it or not, I got that the first time through.

It's not a figment of his imagination. It's Cerberus. Cerberus is there because he's Hades' loyal watchdog. He isn't there because he's chained, because he isn't, that's Fenrir. He's Hades' loyal watchdog. Let's think about that for a moment. The important thing here, the thing that is keeping Cerberus in place, is Hades. He's a class feature of a god. He is something infinitely less than playable because he's a playing piece for a player character himself. Like a playing piece, Cerberus has rules on how he can move. In this case, Cerberus is a Queen (heh?) while you keep him to his strict 64-square board, which is why no one wants to fvck with the Underworld because they inevitably have to get past that area somehow. To wit, Cerberus really is just a line of description on Hades' "I have a stronghold" trait.

You can play Hades in a surprising number of games. But in most of those you also can't play Cerberus, any more than you can play my lich's greater mage armor spell.

Now, if you wanted a hypothetical three-headed dog-monster that is not Cerberus you could argue about whether he's playable. Be my guest. But it's not Cerberus.

Broadly speaking, though, anything that does not have sufficient humanlike qualities generally cannot interact with a humanlike game narrative. These can be surprisingly flexible, you don't have to have two eyes, two ears, a mouth, legs, and arms, but you have to have something equivalent in many cases. I don't think it's impossible to play a totally alien creature in that regard, but it's pretty challenging, and not really a good thing to inflict on a game table that is about humanlike adventurers, regardless of whether they're humans, or dwarves, or elves, or snakelike nagas, or freaky bug-people. Dropping in a four-legged dragon is bad because it limits the number of adventures they can go on, unless the dragon can also shapeshift, in which case you are not necessarily breaking the game in terms of playable archetypes anymore, though you might have lingering questions as to whether the inclusion of a dragon was wise.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can envision a role-playing game where you play this character. I wouldn't play it, but somebody would. I could believe that this hypothetical person would have fun.

That's fucking bad, because the rest of the people would not have fun. The singing poo can only exist in a very specific area of the Conkerverse and the rest of the players and DM would be forced to accomodate

Here are the criteria I have that makes something not a valid PC:

1) If you prevent the rest of the party from being able to continue the adventure. Tron is a valid player character when you're playing Space Paranoids and only Space Paranoids, but when you're playing Kingdom Hearts he is not because the players are forced to either stay in Space Paranoids or split the party. Characters that are too large to be inserted into most adventures also fall into this category; the BFG is not a valid character when you're playing Dungeons and Dragons.

2) If your PC is designed in such a way that it can't interact with the rest of the players or the world at large. Jotaro's Stand Star Platinum is not a valid character to play, because it cannot talk, it can't move too far from its owner, and most people can't even fucking see it. You can roleplay both characters at once, but the arrangement of one PC controlling Jotaro and the other controlling Star Platinum is unworkable. You are not allowed to roleplay being the loyal-but-stupid dog familiar searching for his owner for this very reason.

3) The character is disruptive to the flow of the game. If your character have an artifact grafted to her that requires it to be dipped in the blood of a sapient creature every morning or it'll take control of you, that is not a valid character to play. If you're playing a Forsaker and you need to occasionally break some of your fellow players' items to keep your class abilities that is not a valid character to play.

4) The character is offensive to the rest of the party. No, you are not allowed to play Buck Rogers when your group decides to run a Jason and the Argonauts adventure. You are not allowed to play a mindflayer who eats the brains of children every week to maintain their powers while the rest of your party are agents of Pelor.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now, granted, we can bend some of these rules depending on the group. Some groups really don't mind if they have to adventure out in the countryside for the rest of their careers because they have the Iron Giant on their side. Some groups would think it's really fricking cool to have Solid Snake show up and help King Arthur fight Mordred. Some groups don't mind that one of their party members kills infants for lulz because they're refugees from FATAL. And some groups are willing to carry Ariel on their shoulders if they have to to get her in the fight against the O13's outer space city.

But when we design an RPG setting, we can still make general statements about what and who would be a valid character. For D&D, we know that for most campaigns the Iron Giant, Ariel, Luca Blight, and Solid Snake are not characters that we want to play. If we're playing Destroy All Humans! then only Ariel gets left out. And so on.

D&D tells us ahead of time that the basic template for an adventurer is a two-opposable thumb'd, five sense'd, medium-to-small sized, land-dwelling, air-breathing, non-baby rapist able to make it in a Dark Ages to Reiassance-era level of civilization. There is a lot of variation we can do on that and even some concessions, but that's the basic idea.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1) If you prevent the rest of the party from being able to continue the adventure. Tron is a valid player character when you're playing Space Paranoids and only Space Paranoids, but when you're playing Kingdom Hearts he is not because the players are forced to either stay in Space Paranoids or split the party.

To expand a little on this subject, I think you could quite reasonably play a Kingdom Hearts RPG where one player each took Sora, Donald and Goofy, and a fourth player rotated through the native characters they interact with. But that player is still only playing Tron while the group is playing Space Paranoids.

...

On the monster/PC thing, didn't we do this months ago? Some things are inherently incapable of being PCs, though what those things might be varies from game to game. In D&D, an Assassin Vine is not a viable PC, because while it can pose a threat, there is too much that it cannot do, like talking or thinking. At the same time, Conan is not a viable PC in Nobilis, because he's not a bizarre conceptual god; and he's not a viable PC in Bunnies and Burrows, because he's not a goddamn lagomorph.

[Lago PARANOIA]

To expand a little on this subject, I think you could quite reasonably play a Kingdom Hearts RPG where one player each took Sora, Donald and Goofy, and a fourth player rotated through the native characters they interact with. But that player is still only playing Tron while the group is playing Space Paranoids.

That's still not fair, because it violates rule #2.

When the Organization XIII starts doing some crazy shit Sora, Donald, and Goofy can hop into their dumbass spaceship and go to try to stop them. Auron and Tron and Simba can't. They're stuck. So when they head over to the appropriate world they pick up a new companion.

The thing is, the new companion was not there for the previous adventures. A large part of the campaign had already happened and he was not there to interact with it or the players. The 4th guy willfully chose a role that would limit how much involvement any particular character had and shouldn't in the general case be allowed to do that.

I mean, really, if someone told you that they wanted to play Lassie who at a certain point in the campaign would switch over to Red XIII, would you let him do it?

[Thymos]

Personally I would even say that monsters should be built using the exact same system. That way, if your players want to play as giants, all the rules already exist. It is fine to have something like an "NPC Mage" class, or bundles of preselected abilities and it is also fine for players to play them.

I would definitely disagree here. Actually this is one spot that 4E had right, in that monsters/NPCs are playing different games than PCs.

NPCs/Monsters are designed for a single fight. That's it. This means that if you have any daily abilities, they are effectively encounter abilities for monsters and NPCs. This is basically a total fuck job for the PCs because if you have classes like 3E wizards who are a ton of daily abilities, they can blow their entire wad in one encounter and be way tougher than they normally would be.

Further, there's just the logistical problem of DMs designing these things. 3E had a tax code system which slowed down monster/NPC generation but didn't actually produce any more balanced NPCs or monsters. This meant that every encounter had to be planned especially at higher levels. If the DM can't easily create stuff on the fly, then he can't improvise. And if he can't improvise, then railroading is your only option. The longer it takes to prepare each encounter, the fewer different story and plot branches you can have. Ideally you want a DM to be able to come up with an encounter during the session, so as to allow more freeform gaming. And that's a huge consideration, because we all hate being railroaded. But if the DM just can't generate NPC encounters on the fly, then pretty much when you decide to turn on the king or attack the merchant or some other unexpected twist, the DM has to stop the session for two hours to do the tax code and prepare the encounter. Either that or the more likely case is he's just going to tell you "you can't do that."

And the threat of getting your ass force railroaded by the rules set easily outweighs any potentially small benefits that doing NPC and PC the same may have.

Really the only advantage to having everyone use the same generation system is that in theory, you could just decide to play Drizz't or Cerberus as your character, but that's already been debunked that a system just won't be able to allow that easily. As Frank has stated, Cerberus just isn't a valid character to play as a PC and you could just as easily build Drizz't using the PC rules anyway.

I have to strongly disagree with most of the points you make here.

1. Daily abilities are shit on both PC's and Monsters. Don't pretend they are ok on PC's, hell, you just named the wizard, who is a great example of why dailies don't f-ing work along side fighters. In fact it seems to be the prevailing opinion that the exact problem you mentioned for monsters is exactly what PC's did.

2. DnD's character generation doesn't even provide Balanced PC's, so your comparison falls flat right here. Yes, monster don't need skill points, yes, they don't need feats. This isn't an argument not to use PC generation as Monster generation, only an argument that we can use half of the PC generation for monster generation. First find a system that makes balanced PC's before saying it doesn't make balanced Monsters.

DnD is a horrible system to use as an argument against most Monster='PC classes' either way because both sides of it are messed up.

3. If DM's want to generate encounter's on the fly we have MM so they don't have to stat anything up. I don't think good monster creation rules should be created with the intent that DM's can make monsters in 5 seconds. They should make monsters that are balanced, fun to play against, and can be made quickly, but not on the fly. We have pregenerated monsters for running things on the fly.

4. Apprently a huge complaint in 2e was exactly that you could not make Drizzt using PC rules. He was a NPC so he got something special.

On Franks whole list of things that are ok for a monster and not ok for PC's. Those are all fluff reasons. They aren't mechanical reasons, in combat not one of them matters.

Sure, you can't have a mindless zombie as your PC. He's mindless. You sure as hell can stat him up using PC rules though, even fluffwise he isn't playable. We can make abilities that are balanced with PC abilities even if they shouldn't be given to PC's as an options, simply because they are inappropriate (for fluff, not mechanical reasons) for PCs.

The cases where Monsters are for mechanical reasons no good as PC's are the puzzle monsters (whether they are too strong against people who can't hurt them, or their weakness is too big). Frank already said neglecting these cases.

You all are making this even more clear as you go on. There are appropriate and inappropriate PC concepts. Aside from mechanics possibly encouraging inappropriate PC concepts, this has no mechanical bearing. This is all fluff.

Very rarely does this have anything to do with mechanics. Tron guy only existing in whatever the hell he exists in, and Giants not being able to go inside... anything are mechanical problems. That aside most of your shit is fluff. Cerberus being chained to the gates or whatever, fluff. It has no bearing on his mechanics, and Frank even explains this when he explains why him being changed doesn't result in a drop in his CR.

Mechanics should give the feel for fluff, but don't confuse the two for the same damn thing.

The reason I say similar rules for PC's and not exact is because, as pointed out, we don't need to know everything we know about PC's for monsters. We also want to have the flexibility to create puzzle monsters.