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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 4107284" data-attributes="member: 12037">I said this on the first page, but I think it bears repeating. This is a very important part of why they have multiple types of specialist creatures:The game is built around PCs' vs. an enemy group.And we aren't talking about the ability to use groups or an encouragement of using groups. The very nature of the game is built assuming the PCs will almost always be fighting a group of enemies, except in very unique circumstances like dragons or beholders. Groups that can scale quite large, in fact. In my 4e game I ran an encounter with 20 kobolds, a kobold shaman, and an orc leader. I ran a battle with 3 kobold archers, 10 more kobolds of various types, and a kobold dragonshield. I ran a battle with a kobold slinger, some kobold minions, and 2 kobold skirmisher.My point is that variety pretty much has to be built into the DM's repertoire for encounters from the bottom up. It is not enough to give us a kobold and say "If you want to add variety, you can level them up" or even "If you want to add variety, pick powers from a table!" Why? Because you would have to do this for every single encounter in the entire adventure!In 3e this kind of thing wasn't as much of an issue. The game was more or less balanced around combats against singular or small groups of enemies. You would rarely see the kind of opposition that you are expected to see on a regular basis in 4e. Especially, since in 4e, enemies are supposed to be more interesting, more fiddly. They also want a fight with kobolds to be different than a fight with goblins or hobgoblins or orcs, mechanically, so that there's a different feeling to those battles.The base assumptions of combat have changed from 3e to 4e and that change is being reflected in the Monster Manual. Don't think about what you would want from a 3e or previous edition Monster Manual. Take a look at how 4e is working and think about what you're going to need when you run those games, and I think that it casts the 4e MM in a much better light than the way you see it right now.</blockquote>

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