At the same time, it will help DMs. Lots of times I want to make a humanoid villain. But if I create an NPC using PC creation rules, I don't have the benefit of a CR to help me balance encounters. Or a certain type of monster fits the theme of an encounter, but it's the wrong CR for the party.
Trying to follow this notion here. How is this supposed to mesh better with CR (or whatever the equivalent of CR would be)?
CR would just be replaced with level, actually. Like maybe a Salamander is a lizardfolk with 5 levels of fire elemental. It should be equivalent in difficulty to an Otyugh which is an aberration with 4 levels of tentacle monster and 1 level of disease monster or something.
Then there would be encounter difficulty rules based on level and number of both sides. Presumably a battle between equal numbers of equal level should be deadly by definition.
Wouldn't that make matching "character/class level" with "monster level" a bit of a nightmare? I mean, first I'd design an Otyugh. Then I have to break that design down into monster levels. Those would essentially all need to be equivalent (this was an issue with monstrous PCs in 3E, the Savage Species mechanics): 5 levels of fire elemental need to be equivalent to 3 levels of tentacle monster + 2 levels of disease monster as well as to 5 class levels or a mix of class and monster levels in order to be balanced. This seems like a lot more work and a lot fiddlier work than designing a monster and then determining its CR, as hermetic as that process may sometimes feel.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Fundamentally, a PC is designed to be rich enough to engage a player with nothing else to think about or keep track of. Saddling a DM with 4-5 creatures at that level of complexity is not going to go well. While I think 5e has leaned a little too hard into simplicity for monsters, I have absolutely no desire to ever run a party of 5 PCs as a DM. And likewise on the other side of the screen, I wouldn't want to give up complexity as a PC for the sake of giving the DM an easier job.
The system should be flexible enough to allow you to create simple or complex players / monsters. You can buy up a lot of low-level abilities or a few high-level ones. DMs will usually create / select monsters with a few simple options. But sometimes they might want to create an intricate tactical combat. Probably they'll never want as many capabilities as a PC, but they can adjust up or down as the encounter requires.
Flexible complexity would be a nice feature for PCs, too. Maybe you want to create a very simplified character sheet for a newbie or casual player, which looks a lot like a monster stat block. Such characters could also be used for followers.
Ideally the point system would be balanced so that a very simple character or monster would hit slightly harder just by spamming its most powerful ability, but not much. Buying extra options at the same level would be at a discounted cost, because they don't make you overall more powerful, just more flexible, which is a little bit powerful in the right situation.
Well know we have 4e which almost nobody likes or at any point liked
4th did a lot of things right.
The classification of Druid/Ranger spells being more nature attuned, rather divine. Ritual casting. Having a top end of 30 honestly made sense, because it made it easier to do low-middle-high games. The creation of the "no alignment" monster. 4E made combat FUN, and not just "miss miss miss miss 7 damage miss miss miss". Action Economy as we know it today in 5th came from 4th. Classes had very clear defined roles. Skill Challenges is a GOOD idea, but I think it gets a lot of flac for how it might have been used.
4th was a great step, it just wasn't 3.5 and it was a DRASTIC change, and we'd only be here in 5th due to the changes from 4th, which by and large, most of them are still in 5th. They've just been tweaked.
Back on topic.
A point buy overall character creation system is doable. It just is. Other games do it and have done it. It could totally be adapted for D&D, but I don't see it being done officially. I think there are a lot of positives to it, but I don't see the player base as a whole adopting it, which is why it wouldn't be done officially. Balance would be tricky to achieve, not impossible, but tricky.
The classification of Druid/Ranger spells being more nature attuned, rather divine. Ritual casting. Having a top end of 30 honestly made sense, because it made it easier to do low-middle-high games. The creation of the "no alignment" monster. 4E made combat FUN, and not just "miss miss miss miss 7 damage miss miss miss". Action Economy as we know it today in 5th came from 4th. Classes had very clear defined roles. Skill Challenges is a GOOD idea, but I think it gets a lot of flac for how it might have been used.
4th was a great step, it just wasn't 3.5 and it was a DRASTIC change, and we'd only be here in 5th due to the changes from 4th, which by and large, most of them are still in 5th. They've just been tweaked.
+1. 4E gets maligned far too often here, and seemingly by people who either didn't play D&D back then or have no real idea of what the edition was like for those who gave it more than a cursory glance.
A point buy overall character creation system is doable. It just is. Other games do it and have done it. It could totally be adapted for D&D, but I don't see it being done officially. I think there are a lot of positives to it, but I don't see the player base as a whole adopting it, which is why it wouldn't be done officially. Balance would be tricky to achieve, not impossible, but tricky.
D&D is class-based for me. I know not everyone feels that way from plenty of threads about what makes D&D D&D, but in my book it just is.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Fundamentally, a PC is designed to be rich enough to engage a player with nothing else to think about or keep track of. Saddling a DM with 4-5 creatures at that level of complexity is not going to go well. While I think 5e has leaned a little too hard into simplicity for monsters, I have absolutely no desire to ever run a party of 5 PCs as a DM. And likewise on the other side of the screen, I wouldn't want to give up complexity as a PC for the sake of giving the DM an easier job.
The system should be flexible enough to allow you to create simple or complex players / monsters. You can buy up a lot of low-level abilities or a few high-level ones. DMs will usually create / select monsters with a few simple options. But sometimes they might want to create an intricate tactical combat. Probably they'll never want as many capabilities as a PC, but they can adjust up or down as the encounter requires.
Flexible complexity would be a nice feature for PCs, too. Maybe you want to create a very simplified character sheet for a newbie or casual player, which looks a lot like a monster stat block. Such characters could also be used for followers.
Ideally the point system would be balanced so that a very simple character or monster would hit slightly harder just by spamming its most powerful ability, but not much. Buying extra options at the same level would be at a discounted cost, because they don't make you overall more powerful, just more flexible, which is a little bit powerful in the right situation.
Well know we have 4e which almost nobody likes or at any point liked
4th did a lot of things right.
The classification of Druid/Ranger spells being more nature attuned, rather divine. Ritual casting. Having a top end of 30 honestly made sense, because it made it easier to do low-middle-high games. The creation of the "no alignment" monster. 4E made combat FUN, and not just "miss miss miss miss 7 damage miss miss miss". Action Economy as we know it today in 5th came from 4th. Classes had very clear defined roles. Skill Challenges is a GOOD idea, but I think it gets a lot of flac for how it might have been used.
4th was a great step, it just wasn't 3.5 and it was a DRASTIC change, and we'd only be here in 5th due to the changes from 4th, which by and large, most of them are still in 5th. They've just been tweaked.
Back on topic.
A point buy overall character creation system is doable. It just is. Other games do it and have done it. It could totally be adapted for D&D, but I don't see it being done officially. I think there are a lot of positives to it, but I don't see the player base as a whole adopting it, which is why it wouldn't be done officially. Balance would be tricky to achieve, not impossible, but tricky.
yeah but it is also stastically the least played and least liked edition.
And it's not a question of power levels. Do you really want a PC version of a Grimlok? Or a gelatinous cube?
People seem to think D&D should be all things to all players. If you can't play X, that's viewed as the game shutting out a certain group of players or somehow not being inclusive or something. But it simply can't be. And no one holds other games to this standard.
I used to DM 3e, where you had to make almost full PC versions of NPCs if you wanted to customize them. No thanks. Remember that a good system will make PCs as complex as they can be, but not so complex that a player gets overwhelmed playing them. But the DM has to play a half-dozen NPCs simultaneously, while also running the session, adjudicating rules, and so forth. So NPCs need to be no more than 1/6 as complex as PCs, and ideally much less. So while there can be a PC version of an NPC, like playing an orc before Eberron came along, but it can't be guaranteed that the PC orc will have exactly the same features as an NPC orc.
I’m sorry if I sound harsh, but I think this is a genuinely bad idea. Other people have talked about the “it creates more work for the DM” issue, so I won’t go into the mechanics, but the fact that D&D isn’t a total sandbox as written, that it’s based around limited characters, gives it structure. Sure, playing as a gnoll or sprite is fun as a novelty, but that’s because it’s a novelty, and you know the rest of the party (and the rest of your characters) will be classic humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, or tieflings. And it’s way easier to write dungeon-delving or fellowship-esque quests for that group than an otyugh, a beholder, a gelatinous cube, and a drider. Unless the DM wants to run a totally plotless sandbox, a coherent game will be impossible. It loses the classic fantasy tone and archetypes that even new players will immediately understand and relate to.
And if you want to play any of those things...THAT’S WHAT HOMEBREW IS FOR. You can totally do it, but there’s a reason it’s not in the out-of-the-box rules.
And that’s before we even get to the nightmare of adventure building without monsters. I’d quit DMing.
In the end, it sounds to me like you want D&D to be something that it’s not, a perfect sandbox instead of “Gandalf meets Indiana Jones: the pulp fantasy simulator.” The nice thing is, with homebrew, you can do a lot of different things with it, but it’s not an open system: some thematic or mechanical changes are too broad and the game stops working.
It sounds like you want a more open game, and that’s great, but D&D is not it. As always, I recommend Genesys. It’s a system for any theme that works well for everything and is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. And it sounds like a perfect fit for what you’re looking for.
At the same time, it will help DMs. Lots of times I want to make a humanoid villain. But if I create an NPC using PC creation rules, I don't have the benefit of a CR to help me balance encounters. Or a certain type of monster fits the theme of an encounter, but it's the wrong CR for the party.
Trying to follow this notion here. How is this supposed to mesh better with CR (or whatever the equivalent of CR would be)?
CR would just be replaced with level, actually. Like maybe a Salamander is a lizardfolk with 5 levels of fire elemental. It should be equivalent in difficulty to an Otyugh which is an aberration with 4 levels of tentacle monster and 1 level of disease monster or something.
Then there would be encounter difficulty rules based on level and number of both sides. Presumably a battle between equal numbers of equal level should be deadly by definition.
Wouldn't that make matching "character/class level" with "monster level" a bit of a nightmare? I mean, first I'd design an Otyugh. Then I have to break that design down into monster levels. Those would essentially all need to be equivalent (this was an issue with monstrous PCs in 3E, the Savage Species mechanics): 5 levels of fire elemental need to be equivalent to 3 levels of tentacle monster + 2 levels of disease monster as well as to 5 class levels or a mix of class and monster levels in order to be balanced. This seems like a lot more work and a lot fiddlier work than designing a monster and then determining its CR, as hermetic as that process may sometimes feel.
I think it would probably be done the other way around. First the folks at WotC, design the monster classes to be balanced, then slap them together in a few combinations to make a variety of monsters. Still no easy task.
But like I said, nothing would be mandatory about the system or prevent you from building a monster from scratch, just like now you don't have to use character creation rules for your NPCs.
At the same time, it will help DMs. Lots of times I want to make a humanoid villain. But if I create an NPC using PC creation rules, I don't have the benefit of a CR to help me balance encounters. Or a certain type of monster fits the theme of an encounter, but it's the wrong CR for the party.
Trying to follow this notion here. How is this supposed to mesh better with CR (or whatever the equivalent of CR would be)?
CR would just be replaced with level, actually. Like maybe a Salamander is a lizardfolk with 5 levels of fire elemental. It should be equivalent in difficulty to an Otyugh which is an aberration with 4 levels of tentacle monster and 1 level of disease monster or something.
Then there would be encounter difficulty rules based on level and number of both sides. Presumably a battle between equal numbers of equal level should be deadly by definition.
Wouldn't that make matching "character/class level" with "monster level" a bit of a nightmare? I mean, first I'd design an Otyugh. Then I have to break that design down into monster levels. Those would essentially all need to be equivalent (this was an issue with monstrous PCs in 3E, the Savage Species mechanics): 5 levels of fire elemental need to be equivalent to 3 levels of tentacle monster + 2 levels of disease monster as well as to 5 class levels or a mix of class and monster levels in order to be balanced. This seems like a lot more work and a lot fiddlier work than designing a monster and then determining its CR, as hermetic as that process may sometimes feel.
I think it would probably be done the other way around. First the folks at WotC, design the monster classes to be balanced, then slap them together in a few combinations to make a variety of monsters. Still no easy task.
But like I said, nothing would be mandatory about the system or prevent you from building a monster from scratch, just like now you don't have to use character creation rules for your NPCs.
I'm not sure that really matters; sure, it's easy for us if WotC has to do all the heavy lifting but why would they choose to make their lifting that much heavier? Remember, if they don't do a good job we will complain and the new edition gets played less and nobody is happy. :p
To reiterate my main concern: if you want character/class level and monster level equivalence, a pure monster (say a Fire Elemental Myrmidon with 7 levels in Fire Elemental) needs to be equivalent to a mixed level PC (say a Lizardfolk Salamander with 5 levels in Fire Elemental and 2 in Sorcerer) and also to a strict character level PC (say a regular Lizardfolk with 7 levels in Ranger). Every edition so far has had class levels that increased in power with increasing level (going from level 1 to 2 is a small step, going from level 11 to 12 is a much bigger step) - this basic principle is at odds with the notion that mixed leveling needs to be equivalent to pure leveling.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
We had this in 3.5 - racial levels. A variety of races could be built to function at "level" 1, and then they could essentially multiclass between their race and their real class at will.
It would be a lot of work, but you could do at least some dragons the same way.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Step 1. Level to 17.
Step 2. Have your wizard cast true polymorph on you to be an adult red dragon.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Most of the math is already there for dragons. You have kobold to half dragon to wyrmling to young dragon to adult dragon to ancient dragon. When you level up from young dragon to adult dragon, gain Legendary Resistances and Frightful Presence and 30' more reach on your breath weapon. We just need a few extra levels to fill in the missing links. Interpolate the HP and AC and damage dice and peanut butter out those special abilities over 3 levels. Oh, plus every third or fourth level you'll get a dragon subclass feature for your chromatic or metallic subclass. But if you want to be a gem dragon, mix in a level of elemental earth and a level of sorcerer.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Most of the math is already there for dragons. You have kobold to half dragon to wyrmling to young dragon to adult dragon to ancient dragon. When you level up from young dragon to adult dragon, gain Legendary Resistances and Frightful Presence and 30' more reach on your breath weapon. We just need a few extra levels to fill in the missing links. Interpolate the HP and AC and damage dice and peanut butter out those special abilities over 3 levels. Oh, plus every third or fourth level you'll get a dragon subclass feature for your chromatic or metallic subclass. But if you want to be a gem dragon, mix in a level of elemental earth and a level of sorcerer.
Sorry, that is an F. Show me your work. Run the actual math, not meta. I don't want to see hand-waving, but actual numbers, and features for ONE dragon. There are hundreds of monsters. Surely if you think this can be done by Hasbro you can give the mechanics of ONE monster being converted into a playable class. And you KNOW that people will want to play Dragons. So show me the progression from level 1 to 20 for say, a Silver Dragon playable char.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Most of the math is already there for dragons. You have kobold to half dragon to wyrmling to young dragon to adult dragon to ancient dragon. When you level up from young dragon to adult dragon, gain Legendary Resistances and Frightful Presence and 30' more reach on your breath weapon. We just need a few extra levels to fill in the missing links. Interpolate the HP and AC and damage dice and peanut butter out those special abilities over 3 levels. Oh, plus every third or fourth level you'll get a dragon subclass feature for your chromatic or metallic subclass. But if you want to be a gem dragon, mix in a level of elemental earth and a level of sorcerer.
Sorry, that is an F. Show me your work. Run the actual math, not meta. I don't want to see hand-waving, but actual numbers, and features for ONE dragon. There are hundreds of monsters. Surely if you think this can be done by Hasbro you can give the mechanics of ONE monster being converted into a playable class. And you KNOW that people will want to play Dragons. So show me the progression from level 1 to 20 for say, a Silver Dragon playable char.
Just because I, an amateur, don't want to jump through your hoops for free doesn't mean it couldn't be done by a dozen professionals working over years.
I like the idea of having one set of creation rules for both NPCs and PCs. I do not think it is practical to implement something like that in 5e without a huge overhaul, but it is not a big deal to include elements of it such as breaking down class/subclass/monster features into feats/boons, and there are already some feats which are basically class/subclass features.
When the core game loop is already asymmetric, I prefer the creature design to take advantage of that asymmetry. I honestly thing it just leads to better gameplay for everyone at the table.
When the core game loop is already asymmetric, I prefer the creature design to take advantage of that asymmetry. I honestly thing it just leads to better gameplay for everyone at the table.
Isn't the core game loop the initiative system? That's symmetrical.
Or do you mean the campaign loop, the way adventurers encounter multiple groups of monsters per long rest and monsters only encounter one adventuring party in their lives? I mean, that's not enshrouded in the rules. You can play a highly deadly gritty realism campaign where your first combat encounter might well be your last.
Sorry, that is an F. Show me your work. Run the actual math, not meta. I don't want to see hand-waving, but actual numbers, and features for ONE dragon. There are hundreds of monsters. Surely if you think this can be done by Hasbro you can give the mechanics of ONE monster being converted into a playable class. And you KNOW that people will want to play Dragons. So show me the progression from level 1 to 20 for say, a Silver Dragon playable char.
Why don't you do it? Why not help, instead of hinder? You're an experienced roleplaying gamer who loves RAW. What advice would you have, constructive advice, on how to achieve this?
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
Step 1. Level to 17.
Step 2. Have your wizard cast true polymorph on you to be an adult red dragon.
Step 3. Wait it out so that it's permanent.
Or have your wizard cast Wish and play as a Tarrasque.
Wouldn't that make matching "character/class level" with "monster level" a bit of a nightmare? I mean, first I'd design an Otyugh. Then I have to break that design down into monster levels. Those would essentially all need to be equivalent (this was an issue with monstrous PCs in 3E, the Savage Species mechanics): 5 levels of fire elemental need to be equivalent to 3 levels of tentacle monster + 2 levels of disease monster as well as to 5 class levels or a mix of class and monster levels in order to be balanced. This seems like a lot more work and a lot fiddlier work than designing a monster and then determining its CR, as hermetic as that process may sometimes feel.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
4th did a lot of things right.
The classification of Druid/Ranger spells being more nature attuned, rather divine. Ritual casting. Having a top end of 30 honestly made sense, because it made it easier to do low-middle-high games. The creation of the "no alignment" monster. 4E made combat FUN, and not just "miss miss miss miss 7 damage miss miss miss". Action Economy as we know it today in 5th came from 4th. Classes had very clear defined roles. Skill Challenges is a GOOD idea, but I think it gets a lot of flac for how it might have been used.
4th was a great step, it just wasn't 3.5 and it was a DRASTIC change, and we'd only be here in 5th due to the changes from 4th, which by and large, most of them are still in 5th. They've just been tweaked.
Back on topic.
A point buy overall character creation system is doable. It just is. Other games do it and have done it. It could totally be adapted for D&D, but I don't see it being done officially. I think there are a lot of positives to it, but I don't see the player base as a whole adopting it, which is why it wouldn't be done officially. Balance would be tricky to achieve, not impossible, but tricky.
+1. 4E gets maligned far too often here, and seemingly by people who either didn't play D&D back then or have no real idea of what the edition was like for those who gave it more than a cursory glance.
D&D is class-based for me. I know not everyone feels that way from plenty of threads about what makes D&D D&D, but in my book it just is.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
yeah but it is also stastically the least played and least liked edition.
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
i am a sauce priest
help create a world here
And it's not a question of power levels. Do you really want a PC version of a Grimlok? Or a gelatinous cube?
People seem to think D&D should be all things to all players. If you can't play X, that's viewed as the game shutting out a certain group of players or somehow not being inclusive or something. But it simply can't be. And no one holds other games to this standard.
I used to DM 3e, where you had to make almost full PC versions of NPCs if you wanted to customize them. No thanks. Remember that a good system will make PCs as complex as they can be, but not so complex that a player gets overwhelmed playing them. But the DM has to play a half-dozen NPCs simultaneously, while also running the session, adjudicating rules, and so forth. So NPCs need to be no more than 1/6 as complex as PCs, and ideally much less. So while there can be a PC version of an NPC, like playing an orc before Eberron came along, but it can't be guaranteed that the PC orc will have exactly the same features as an NPC orc.
I’m sorry if I sound harsh, but I think this is a genuinely bad idea. Other people have talked about the “it creates more work for the DM” issue, so I won’t go into the mechanics, but the fact that D&D isn’t a total sandbox as written, that it’s based around limited characters, gives it structure. Sure, playing as a gnoll or sprite is fun as a novelty, but that’s because it’s a novelty, and you know the rest of the party (and the rest of your characters) will be classic humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, or tieflings. And it’s way easier to write dungeon-delving or fellowship-esque quests for that group than an otyugh, a beholder, a gelatinous cube, and a drider. Unless the DM wants to run a totally plotless sandbox, a coherent game will be impossible. It loses the classic fantasy tone and archetypes that even new players will immediately understand and relate to.
And if you want to play any of those things...THAT’S WHAT HOMEBREW IS FOR. You can totally do it, but there’s a reason it’s not in the out-of-the-box rules.
And that’s before we even get to the nightmare of adventure building without monsters. I’d quit DMing.
In the end, it sounds to me like you want D&D to be something that it’s not, a perfect sandbox instead of “Gandalf meets Indiana Jones: the pulp fantasy simulator.” The nice thing is, with homebrew, you can do a lot of different things with it, but it’s not an open system: some thematic or mechanical changes are too broad and the game stops working.
It sounds like you want a more open game, and that’s great, but D&D is not it. As always, I recommend Genesys. It’s a system for any theme that works well for everything and is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. And it sounds like a perfect fit for what you’re looking for.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I think it would probably be done the other way around. First the folks at WotC, design the monster classes to be balanced, then slap them together in a few combinations to make a variety of monsters. Still no easy task.
But like I said, nothing would be mandatory about the system or prevent you from building a monster from scratch, just like now you don't have to use character creation rules for your NPCs.
Sure, why not.
You start at level one as a Kobold. At level 30 you can become an ancient dragon.
I'm not sure that really matters; sure, it's easy for us if WotC has to do all the heavy lifting but why would they choose to make their lifting that much heavier? Remember, if they don't do a good job we will complain and the new edition gets played less and nobody is happy. :p
To reiterate my main concern: if you want character/class level and monster level equivalence, a pure monster (say a Fire Elemental Myrmidon with 7 levels in Fire Elemental) needs to be equivalent to a mixed level PC (say a Lizardfolk Salamander with 5 levels in Fire Elemental and 2 in Sorcerer) and also to a strict character level PC (say a regular Lizardfolk with 7 levels in Ranger). Every edition so far has had class levels that increased in power with increasing level (going from level 1 to 2 is a small step, going from level 11 to 12 is a much bigger step) - this basic principle is at odds with the notion that mixed leveling needs to be equivalent to pure leveling.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Please, you and the OP, illuminate how a player at level 1 plays a dragon, or aspires to level up to a dragon. Show all the math. Describe, in detail, the feature and game mechanics, just using the example of a dragon. Ignore the 300 other monsters in the source books.
We had this in 3.5 - racial levels. A variety of races could be built to function at "level" 1, and then they could essentially multiclass between their race and their real class at will.
It would be a lot of work, but you could do at least some dragons the same way.
Step 1. Level to 17.
Step 2. Have your wizard cast true polymorph on you to be an adult red dragon.
Step 3. Wait it out so that it's permanent.
Most of the math is already there for dragons. You have kobold to half dragon to wyrmling to young dragon to adult dragon to ancient dragon. When you level up from young dragon to adult dragon, gain Legendary Resistances and Frightful Presence and 30' more reach on your breath weapon. We just need a few extra levels to fill in the missing links. Interpolate the HP and AC and damage dice and peanut butter out those special abilities over 3 levels. Oh, plus every third or fourth level you'll get a dragon subclass feature for your chromatic or metallic subclass. But if you want to be a gem dragon, mix in a level of elemental earth and a level of sorcerer.
Sorry, that is an F. Show me your work. Run the actual math, not meta. I don't want to see hand-waving, but actual numbers, and features for ONE dragon. There are hundreds of monsters. Surely if you think this can be done by Hasbro you can give the mechanics of ONE monster being converted into a playable class. And you KNOW that people will want to play Dragons. So show me the progression from level 1 to 20 for say, a Silver Dragon playable char.
Just because I, an amateur, don't want to jump through your hoops for free doesn't mean it couldn't be done by a dozen professionals working over years.
I like the idea of having one set of creation rules for both NPCs and PCs. I do not think it is practical to implement something like that in 5e without a huge overhaul, but it is not a big deal to include elements of it such as breaking down class/subclass/monster features into feats/boons, and there are already some feats which are basically class/subclass features.
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When the core game loop is already asymmetric, I prefer the creature design to take advantage of that asymmetry. I honestly thing it just leads to better gameplay for everyone at the table.
Isn't the core game loop the initiative system? That's symmetrical.
Or do you mean the campaign loop, the way adventurers encounter multiple groups of monsters per long rest and monsters only encounter one adventuring party in their lives? I mean, that's not enshrouded in the rules. You can play a highly deadly gritty realism campaign where your first combat encounter might well be your last.
Why don't you do it? Why not help, instead of hinder? You're an experienced roleplaying gamer who loves RAW. What advice would you have, constructive advice, on how to achieve this?
Or have your wizard cast Wish and play as a Tarrasque.
PhEnOMenAL cOsMIc POwEr, Itty-bitty pea brain