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For example: An encounter with Merrox, the head librarian of Throal, could potentially change the course of barsaivian history. Work him up according to the rules, and he's worth like 55 legend points. The scorcher, however, you can literally kill dozens of them in an afternoon and no one will notice. However, his (or her!) legend point award is three or four times Merrox. Combat ability just isn't an honest measure of the importance of the encounter. I like the idea of the Legend point awards, but giving each creature a LP rating based on combat ability means that almost every game is going to depend on combat to provide LP. I would like to see LP awards based on the importance of the event and how significant the consequences if something goes wrong. Challenge Rating is fine. I would go further and recommend that the Challenge rating be completely unrelated to LP award numerically so that GMs and Players will not think 'killing monster X equals 150 legend points," because that is how it works in video games and lots of tabletop RPGs. If there's not a distinction, then that's how people will play.

Okay, it's been about a week since I read it - I guess you are pretty much doing what I was hoping anyway. Hah! Winning is the best. I still think putting the words 'Legend Award' in there is a trap, but I will gracefully accept my victory.

I would like to see a sentence about which creatures are subjects to illusions, beastmaster talents etc.

Lys, thanks for that. Is that from the 3rd Edition GMG? What page?

I distinctly remember this topic coming up on the RedBrick forums, and arma (possibly 1 or 2 others in the Devs at that point) explained it as I did. Damn, some-one grabbed a partial grab of the old forums. Was it Drucifer? Let me check... ah, there we are: http://www.4shared.com/dir/w1ZlT8hl/sha ... r=w1ZlT8hl

I'll look for those references.

[Edit] I have to doublecheck my 1st Edition material once I get home, but I believe the confusion came in because in 1st Edition, the Legend Award stat in the statblock listed an actual number, i.e. Krill Worm has a "Legend Award: 75".

When this was changed to Circle ratings, it introduced some confusion.

So, here's the intention with regard to ED4.

Creatures will still have a "Circle" rating for the purposes of measuring the level of challenge they represent, which will also help set some of the step values the creature uses for its attack/damage/special abilities and the like.

This is not really intended to directly correlate to a particular legend award, more to help a GM determine the approximate difficulty a particular creature will pose to their player group.

Obviously, since the general guideline is to have the "conflict" legend award be appropriate for the group, generally the creatures used as opposition are going to roughly line up with the circle of the group. However, every group is different, and different creatures may pose different levels of challenge. A group with a lot of physical combat prowess but low spell power will have a harder time against a creature that is tough physically but weak magically, while a strong spell group will have an easier time. Likewise, a group with a strong social element may be able to handle challenges that would be much more difficult for a combat-heavy group.

Choosing appropriate challenges for your group is more art than science. The recommended legend awards and the different categories are, I feel, a way for the GM to get some variety into their game, to offer challenges other than a simple monster-bash every week. There is a place for that kind of game (I suppose) but combat is just one of many ways to overcome challenges, and looking at creatures as a bag of meat and Legend is... not the sort of thing I want to encourage.