[*]You consider all monsters should be as detailed as PCs despite wildly differing screen time
Again, screen time may or may not differ. And the point is not that every monster should be as detailed as every PC, but that the game engine should allow this to take place if the DM chooses. They've talked a lot about varying the level of complexity in character creation. Also, what if a PC becomes and NPC, or vice versa? They have to run off the same basic engine. I full well expect that many players will spend more time actually detailing their characters than DMs will, but that doesn't mean I don't want my monster rules to work.
[*]You either go into world building in such detail that there are almost no NPCs the PCs are going to meet who you haven't statted or your PCs are going to stick to that railroad like glue so there are no NPCs the PCs are going to meet that you haven't statted
D&D is improvisational. If I need an NPC I don't have, I make things up. I can make stats later if needed. Moreover, a good set of stats can be used in a variety of ways, allowing creative freedom. If I go into a session knowing that the PCs will meet an athach, but not knowing where or why this meeting will happen or whether combat will even take place, the PCs are hardly railroaded.
[*]You consider a perfect answer that takes ages to be better than a good answer right now. In essence you consider your time has no value.
Precisely the opposite. I consider monster stats a luxury. Thus, when I bother to make them, they get the royal treatment. I consider having a set of monster and character rules that I can easily manipulate in my head essential to actually running the game session, wherein I most certainly don't have perfect answers ready.
[*]You have a philosophical aversion to there being actual detail in the monster manual and therefore refuse to use the statblocks that provide the detail on the monster where the rubber meets the road and an outline the rest of the time.
Frankly, the actual statblocks themselves are usually written so poorly I can't use them (in any game). I have an aversion to game designers doing my work for me, doing it ineptly, and making me pay for it if I want the actual rules. This objection carries through to the 3e MMIV and MMV, which also have this problem. Again, a monster manual is a tool you use to make monsters. The less well it fulfills that function, the less well-written I judge it to be.
The thing is that your empirical first hand observations come from the way you use the monster manuals and monster stats and not the way anyone else I have ever met wants to use them.
My observations, like all people's, are a product of my experience. As are yours and everyone else's. I have never met anyone with the philosophy of monster design you describe, have never met anyone who uses monster statblocks straight out of the book or had a problem referencing monster abilities, and indeed, have never met anyone who plays 4e, despite knowing people who play a number of different rpg systems in different contexts. I think it is safe to say that both our experiences are completely different, but equally valid.
Dausuul said:
Um... no. I really don't think it is. There are a lot of reasons why people didn't like 4E, including dissociated mechanics, massive changes to game lore, battlemat dependence, lengthy combats, rigid class structure, and the condescending attitude of much of the design team*. I have seen very few people cite "monster design" as a reason to dislike 4E. In fact, I have seen several comments to the effect, "You know, I can't stand 4E, but they got monsters right."
I recall a lot of debate being directed towards the minion concept (and the monster role concept in general), as well as the inability to play monsters as PCs, lack of detail for monster ecology and out-of-combat functionality, and many other things that are germane to this thread topic. The other points you raise are perfectly valid, but your suggestion that there is a prevailing opinion against the monster design of 3e and earlier editions is unconvincing.
There is a place for monsters with spell lists. As I said above, that place is when the monster is an actual spellcaster, like a lich, an NPC cleric, or what have you. But spell lists should be used with great restraint and only where it really matches the fiction.
Well, this is true. We should, however, dump this "spell-like ability" nonsense and say that everything that has magic uses it the same way. But certainly, limiting the appearance of that magic is a good idea.
As others have noted, the 5e statblock that started this thread was for a spellcaster.