No edition holds a candle to 4e in this respect. In previous editions, monsters have mostly been bags of hit points. In 4e, the only way they are uniform is they they have a uniformly high level of individualisty and distinctiveness.
I obviously disagree. Previous edition (lets say AD&D monsters, more comparable to 4e than 3.x is) monsters are not 'bags of hit points'. At least MANY monsters are not. In fact there was sort of a convention operating there. Basic humanoids were very vanilla with mostly just hit points and basic attacks, though even then the higher level ones like giants added some modicum of variety. Other types of monsters were in no way shape or form bags of hit points. I also disagree that monsters in 4e are uniformly possessed of a high level of individuality. They've done a pretty good job with powers and traits, which I am not particularly arguing about, but the OVERALL impact of regularizing all defenses, hit points, etc to a fixed baseline isn't helping them at all.
This is not accurate in the slightest. 4e monsters do not have those qualties. In fact, it's earlier editions that have the uniform attack/damage or claw/claw/bite, while 4e monsters have all sorts of versatility in how they attack and defend, how much damage they deal and can take, and how they react to, for instance, becoming bloodied or having various effects or kinds of damage applied to them.
Again, we will simply have to disagree. The attack modes, damage, and special effects of AD&D monsters have a great deal of variety. You may want to go back and peruse your old 1e MM if you doubt this. You also have to take into account the systematic differences between editions. A difference like 1d6 vs 2d8 damage is a BIG difference in AD&D where it easily represents the difference between a dangerous attack that will probably take a couple of hits to kill at low levels up to an attack that is quite likely to kill a low level PC in one hit. There is nothing even approaching this level of variance in 4e monsters. In any case I'm not particularly advocating a large variance in damage output. I think in general 4e is pretty close to having this right.
Nobody is criticizing other aspects of 4e monsters in terms of special attacks and things like bloodied effects, though I think we could look into this area in terms of creating some additional distinctiveness in some cases. This would be a whole additional topic of discussion that isn't really within the scope of this thread.
This is also not the case. Prior to 4e, dms had a laughably limited pallete of options for encounters. Only with 4e have monsters become genuinly versatile and distinctive, and has it become viable to build encounters around them.
I don't even know how to respond to this. It is simply patently untrue. I've DMed and played D&D for 35 years, and I can unequivocally refute this without even breaking a sweat. I think you're getting a bit overly rhetorical here. Maybe we can stick to reasonable statements about the subject since it is pointless to trade these kinds of exaggerated responses.
There is plenty of interest and diversity in 4e, far more so than previous editions. And the balance plays a key role in this diversity- it's only because the features of the system are well balanced, that using them on a monster makes for meaningful gameplay.
We didn't have meaningful gameplay in previous editions, see above...
Now, we can certainly debate the first part, whether there is adequate diversity and distinctiveness in 4e monsters.
For instance, forced movement matters in the game, so monsters using it have a real, distinct impact on the game, as opposed to monster using say, ongoing damage.
Certainly true. I have never disputed this.
This in contrast to previous editions, where the powers monsters (and indeed, pcs) have were often completly imbalanced, and as a result, fights rarely if every had the qualities people tried to build into them, no matter what they might claim in hindsight.
Well, I disagree that fights 'rarely if ever' had the desired qualities. In fact I believe AD&D was quite facile at creating distinctive encounters. In fact there was a much greater variety in many respects, which made encounters quite a bit more distinctive in many cases. Fighting a giant and fighting a dragon were nothing alike. The key part of this was that because each of these monsters had VERY different characteristics the game created a much greater need for the players to find distinctive ways to approach an engagement with specific types of monsters. This added a whole dimension to the game which is largely missing in 4e. Maybe not so much missing as reduced to mere tactics employed after initiative dice are tossed as opposed to the careful planning and strategizing that characterized AD&D. This is one of the major reasons that plot magic like rituals have failed to gain much traction in 4e (many consumables as well).
No, what we correctly recognise is that, after years of 4e bashing, people are not talking about 4e at all, no matter what experience they claim to have with it.
Well, if all analysis of the game is '4e bashing' then I guess I'm going to bash away! lol. Lets be clear here. 4e has a lot of strengths. I'm not attacking your favorite game and trying to tear it down, AT ALL. It happens to be my favorite version of D&D as well. That does not mean it is perfect and I refuse to consider it above constructive criticism. Lets just stick to analyzing the game and seeing what improvements could be made.
But those changes have nothing to do with your criticism of 4e, and do not validate them.
I am simply pointing out that 4e is not some fragile glass sculpture that will shatter into a bajillion pieces if you twist some of the knobs that the developers chose to set at fixed values. We need not fear making even some substantial changes to monster design parameters. The game will continue to play well.
4e combat has a lot of problems- it can be slow and grindy, there are too many effects and exceptions to the combat round, it can dominate a session- but 4e monsters are certainly far more distinct then previous edition's monsters, and that is something that the people who propose popular fixes to the system readily recognise.
I think the root of this is that we're not really talking about quite the same thing. Taken individually encounters for the most part work quite well. It is more the overall effect of the high degree of consistency across ALL encounters that is a weakness.
Consider again the situation of an AD&D party taking on a red dragon. They will have to carefully consider ahead of time how to approach this because they will know that the dragon's breath is exceedingly deadly and they will DEFINITELY have to work out a plan that insures they will be able to avoid being collectively crisped by the first breath. They will also have to consider the high AC of the monster and its reactive defenses, as well as various other attributes. In the corresponding situation in 4e there will DEFINITELY be a set of superior tactics, but contrariwise to the AD&D party, you can drop the 4e party into the encounter without preparation and they can simply adopt the requisite combat tactics. The AD&D party in contrast will need to do their homework, scout out and create a plan to engage in a favorable location, come up with a way to insure that they are dispersed and can close with the enemy, etc. This is a very different, and IMHO more interesting, paradigm. The 4e paradigm has the advantage of meaning that arbitrary encounters can pop up and be handled, but this can also have negative plot consequences itself.
Beyond that though my original point had more to do with 'types' of encounters, or maybe the best way to put it is 'encounter roles'. Baselining hit points and defenses creates a situation where all encounters have very similar overall properties. This makes it difficult to create a 'skirmish' or a sudden but not overly heavy weight ambush, etc. 4e tries to accomplish this with monster roles and specific powers/properties, plus monster types (minion, etc), but this is not entirely successful, and when coupled with the way tactics and not preparation are so heavily emphasized tends to make it more difficult to pace adventures and portray certain types of situations. Routine encounters tend to take excessive time and energy to resolve, while capstone encounters can feel less than ideally distinctive or important for instance. I think you will find that these issues have been well documented by other people and while many good suggestions exist in terms of dealing with them none of these are consistently successful and in many cases no really reliable solution exists. Creating greater variety in baseline for monsters can really help here and should be given careful consideration.
