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<blockquote data-quote="lutecius" data-source="post: 4104584" data-attributes="member: 60332">That’s exactly what I thought when I read about monster roles and how their skills and abilities would be trimmed down. I guess they learned their lesson from the last Monster Manuals.It’s not that the new approach would just be an excuse to print the same stuff with small variations over and over, I don’t think that would be well received.It could be an excuse to keep iconic monsters to sell later books, though. Just like the bard or druid were put off “because there wasn’t enough space”I would hate to see too many variations with silly names filling the MM1. If a dm doesn’t have time to prepare an encounter, there are these things called adventures books, where you can find all the customized ready-to-use monsters you need and whatnot. There could be whole books full of pre-made, level-appropriate encounters for those who want it.And if it’s not good enough to sell a book on its own merits, maybe it’s not good enough to take another monster’s place in MM1.Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes a variant is so different that a new paragraph is justified. I find creating a whole new beast for every role just as clumsy (I would even lump the orcs, hobs and goblins into the same race, just different builds)I won’t regret the huge stat blocks trying to cover every possible aspect of each monster but I think there should be a common base to build on rather than a series of complete rewrites.The template system didn’t work perfectly all the time, but it was one of 3e’s greatest innovations and I hope it will still be an option.If not, that would be really telling <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid&nbsp; &nbsp; :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="lutecius, post: 4104584, member: 60332"] That’s exactly what I thought when I read about monster roles and how their skills and abilities would be trimmed down. I guess they learned their lesson from the last Monster Manuals. It’s not that the new approach would just be an excuse to print the same stuff with small variations over and over, I don’t think that would be well received. It could be an excuse to keep iconic monsters to sell later books, though. Just like the bard or druid were put off “because there wasn’t enough space” I would hate to see too many variations with silly names filling the MM1. If a dm doesn’t have time to prepare an encounter, there are these things called adventures books, where you can find all the customized ready-to-use monsters you need and whatnot. There could be whole books full of pre-made, level-appropriate encounters for those who want it. And if it’s not good enough to sell a book on its own merits, maybe it’s not good enough to take another monster’s place in MM1. Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes a variant is so different that a new paragraph is justified. I find creating a whole new beast for every role just as clumsy (I would even lump the orcs, hobs and goblins into the same race, just different builds) I won’t regret the huge stat blocks trying to cover every possible aspect of each monster but I think there should be a common base to build on rather than a series of complete rewrites. The template system didn’t work perfectly all the time, but it was one of 3e’s greatest innovations and I hope it will still be an option. If not, that would be really telling :uhoh: [/QUOTE]

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