Actually, I would say take a closer look at how they have it set up in the DMG: it is a more urban environment, but it is well situated to be a starter hub with specific hooks for all the Backgrounds in the PHB.And the Free City of Greyhawk is also not what I consider the starting town
My take is that DM's like me took one look at those rules, shrugged, and never created their own monsters in 5e. And, for good measure, it was rules like this that made me ignore 90% of the DMG in the first place. Particularly coming from 4e where monster creation rules could fit on a business card.
It was great for DMs like me that found the 4e rules lacking. The 2014 rules were my favorite monster creation rules and I used them to make more monsters in 5e than I have ever made for another edition.
To be fair, someone did the same thing for 5e.
Like I said, I took one look at it, turned the page and never looked at them again. Far, far too fiddly for me. I have zero interest in spending an hour designing a monster that I'm going to use once, maybe. If the party happens to meet that monster.
I don't think I ever used them to create a monster from scratch, but I have used them heaps to check CRs when modifying existing monsters and NPCs. Doesn't take an hour to do that!
No, hey. I get it. Others found it useful. I did not. I took one look at it, decided it was far too much effort for me, and just never looked at it again. I mean, the section is ten PAGES long. We don't even have that much material for entire 20 level classes. I just saw the giant wall of text and noped hard out of it.
if you count the skills and spells they use, we have a lot more than that…
not sure what you consider ‘a more targeted supplement’, WotC is not going to release a 32 page or so softcover, so this either goes into the next ‘of Everything’ book or it becomes a 4 page or so post on their website
From previous comments I believe @Parmandur does indeed mean in the next "of Everything" style book. Several people have speculated / hoped for a book full of variant, option, and not as yet updated rules. The hope now is that it will included the monster creation rules. Personally, the lack of monster creation rules in the DMG or MM has made me thing such a book is less likely, where I previously felt it was very likely.
