Are demons/devils/dragons too complex?

[delericho]

When I make high-level monsters, I tend to give each of them three or four big tricks that they like to pull. Might be spell combos (buffs), might be SLAs, might be just a focus on melee, ranged attacks, or a special attack like a breath weapon.

Good idea. I like this approach.

The time invested is usually too much, but it's time that I enjoy spending -- mostly. As the PCs have gotten higher level, the work required for the same payoff is increasing. And it's less enjoyable, because making one change can have huge obnoxious ripples throughout the critter's stat block.

An unfortunate weakness of 3.X. If WotC had ever gotten their act together with Master Tools (or other electronic support), there would be an easy-to-use monster generator that is essentially a glorified spreadsheet. Then, that one change would automatically ripple through.

I would expect the DI to include something similar to this for 4e, although the "monster design is more art than science" quotes lead me to fear there will be a lot more special cases, which would make such a thing harder to implement.