Appeal to SJG

[Amra]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I'd buy them. I may whinge but the only 4e hardback books I haven't bought are Vorskien and Infinite Worlds.

Those happen to be the same two hardbacks I'm missing from my collection.

It feels like I've been waiting forever for Horror - really looking forward to reading that one.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

The system to build your own is called GURPS. What more are you looking for?

Because not all of us want to make our own.

Because not all groups will accept-without-argument custom created monsters.

Because not all GMs are confident in their ability to make their own.

Because not all of us have the time to make our own.

Because ... and I could go on, but I'm sure you get my point. Shockingly, people are willing to pay for others to do what they consider work so they don't have to.

*grins*

[Celti]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I'd buy them. I may whinge but the only 4e hardback books I haven't bought are Vorskien and Infinite Worlds.

Infinite Worlds has several useful traits for any game that involves time-travel, mundane or not (I've used Anachronistic Training to stat up a few immortals), and Vorkosigan was worth it if only for the beautiful treatment of GURPS Lite in the back. I use that to introduce new players, now.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

The system to build your own is called GURPS. What more are you looking for?

IIRC D&D 3.x had a substantial list of guidelines in the DMG for things like:

- how many HD a creature should have to face a party at a given power level
- how much armor a creature with a given number of HD should have
- how much damage it should do
- how many special/magical attacks it should have
- what its saves should be
- how much treasure it should have
- how much XP it was worth

I suppose he wants something like that.

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by Xplo

IIRC D&D 3.x had a substantial list of guidelines in the DMG for things like:

- how many HD a creature should have to face a party at a given power level
- how much armor a creature with a given number of HD should have
- how much damage it should do
- how many special/magical attacks it should have
- what its saves should be

Difficult to work out in GURPS if you simply go by power level, surely? HP and DR based on the strength of the group's attacks, damage based on their DR, etc, sure, but you can't equate any of these to a generic party of 250 (or 300 or 500) points, and there are enough special cases that in GURPS I'm not sure how useful any specific guidelines beyond things along the lines of "Mooks should go crumple in one hit, not be of any danger in ones and twos but should be potentially threatening in large numbers"

[Enoch]

D&D has a tight control of character advancement, and it's measured out in discrete increments. That's why they can measure challenges. You can't really do that with GURPS unless you get rid of custom characters.

Besides, D&D has never succeeded at doing it well even with their system tightly balanced for combat.

-Joshua

[Grouchy Chris]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Because....

Yes, I can see that there are many reasons to want a bestiary, but he said he wanted that AND a system to design monsters. We already have a system to make monsters or whatever else you'd like; it's called GURPS. So what is he looking for in a monster design system that we don't already have?

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

Yes, I can see that there are many reasons to want a bestiary, but he said he wanted that AND a system to design monsters. We already have a system to make monsters or whatever else you'd like; it's called GURPS. So what is he looking for in a monster design system that we don't already have?

Probably more concrete guidelines on how to make them the right type of challenging. For your group

[sjard]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Probably more concrete guidelines on how to make them the right type of challenging. For your group

My method for this is to keep copies of the players character sheets. Then, when I need a new challenge/monster type for them, I have access to what they can do and can run a proxy fight using them and edit the bad thing as needed.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Gizensha

Difficult to work out in GURPS if you simply go by power level, surely?

Originally Posted by Enoch

You can't really do that with GURPS unless you get rid of custom characters.

Yeah, well, tell that to the guy who wants a monster design system, if you can get him to listen.