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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5072555" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, first, the monstrous bats in the MM1 do have super-powers, so they're kind of justified in preying on heavily armed adventurers. That's one of the big things about the 4e MM: there's nothing in there that isn't going to be able to prey on heavily armed adventurers. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Second, there's the option of them behaving like the mythic storybook creatures that bats can be, which is the better option IMO. It's more awesome in general to interact with a force of shadow and silence than to interact with something that wants to eat you or run away from you. Third, in general, yes, a clear and unique motive is part and parcel of any force that is going to oppose the PCs in my games. For me, it's part of playing the role of the monsters as DM, just as the players play their characters: they find out what they want, and they try to achieve it with the means they have at hand. I find out what the monsters want, and I have them try to achieve it. Ideally, if the fluff is good, this brings them into some sort of conflict with PC's, and I have ways to resolve that conflict with die-rolling. 4e fluff has plenty of conflict, but not a lot of motivation. Fourth, I see the problem with a lot of the MM's as mostly organizational problems. That's probably a topic worthy of its own thread, but basically, I think that monstrous bats probably don't deserve their very own entry with artwork and all. They're not a full encounter. They're part of other creatures' plots and plans, so put them with the other creatures. Put the fire bats with the efreet and the shadow bats with the wraiths and then organize the MM based on encounters, like "Here are the creatures, terrain features, maps, and rules you will need for an example encounter (or three) with Vampires," and have it be wolves and bats and rats and, of course, the vampire itself. There's also maybe some traps (a deadly iron maiden!) maybe some terrain features (eerie mist!), maybe some NPC's in the plot hooks (here's the father of an abducted girl, and a skill challenge for calming him down), maybe some allies nestled in there somewhere (here's ally stats for the local vampire hunter, and fluff on how to recruit him)...all the necessary components for an actual encounter. As it is, a DM who wants to run a vampire encounter has several different books, pages, and rules to cross-reference and compile onto a notepad before the game begins. This would add value to the books (Open to Pgs. 110-111, use that to run your encounter), this would add value to the DDI (if you're looking for a specific monster, you can either use the Index in your MM's, or you can search the Monster Builder), this would make the fluffy folks happy (each encounter is its own little plot hook machine)...about the only people it might hurt are those who really really want stat blocks for 250 pages. Those who are solid enough DM's with enough prep time that they can assemble everything together smoothly, and need quantity. For them, DDI, and perhaps Dungeon, would probably be the answer.That's kind of a big change from what MM's have been, so I certainly don't expect all that. But if MM3 and the DS book can move more toward encounter groups and less toward individual monsters as the focus of the book, I'll be pretty happy with the direction. But that's the biggest problem I see with those bats. They're not given a good motive, but they're not really WORTHY of a good motive. They're helpers for some other, more flavorful, more iconic monster, and THAT monster has a good motive.</blockquote>

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