Monster creation guidelines in D&DN

[Ramen]

One thing that I've always felt was missing from the previous editions of D&D was a more comprehensive step by step method for creating new monsters and modifying ones already present.

Of course I'm only familiar with the system up to 3.5 and in that they did a good job with monster templates in my opinion. However sometimes the challenge ratings seemed to be a bit off. Also the monster building and modification rules have always been the old fashioned compare yours to other monsters and guestimate.

I guess I'd just like tools so its easy to predict the challenge of any new fancy monster before I feed it a few adventurers.

So is there anyone else who would want that too or is the old method good enough.

 

[the Jester]

You've just pointed out the very best thing about 4e- and I speak as someone who enjoys running 4e a great deal. But its monster creation system is just so good and easy that it's ridiculous.

 

[Li Shenron]

My personal opinion is that Adventures creation guidelines (which include Encounter creation guidelines, i.e. combining monsters together and be able to guesstimate how hard the encounter will be) are much much more important than Monsters creation guidelines.

Because you're going to need new adventures since day #1, and published adventures are not published frequently enough to support groups that play heavily, and also of course they cost a lot if you run only on published adventures...

Customizing monsters or advancing monsters (contrary to customizing adventures and encounters) is not something that the majority of DMs does on a regular basis, and many DMs will never do since anyway there will be tons on ready-monsters books. So IMHO it's be great to have good rules and guidelines but they don't even need to be part of the core, they can be published later on.