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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3760130" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not saying that there won't be a build system. I'm predicting that it won't be the same as the PC build system.The PC build system works by starting with the base of a race and class, then adding levels. At each stage this adds skills, feats, class abilities and race abilities.As I understand it, the monster build system will work differently. A GM works out what role they want the monster to play, at what challenge level, and then (as a result of those two choices) reads the monsters stats off (whether from a table, or a formula, or a list of examples I don't know - the designers' comments suggest, however, a combination of examples and general tables).Have you seen the Dying Earth rules? Creatures in that game don't have fixed stats. A number of key creature stats are defined as N*X, where N is a constant and X is the average of the PCs' bonuses in a particular skill. The idea of this mechanic is that, whatever the skill level of a particular party of PCs, a given monster will always be sneaky, or a physical challenge or whatever. This is a different approach to monsters from traditional D&D, but it is neither arbitrary nor handwaving. It just supports a different approach to play.My impression is that 4e is also intended at supporting a different approach to play. As I read it, there may be a centaur statted out as a brute, or an archer, in the MM, but this is just an example. It is not a generic centaur. Thus, from the fact that this centaur brute is statted out with no Diplomacy or Survival bonus it does not follow that it does not have one, or that other centaurs typically do not. The point would be that, if you want to use the centaur for one of those other roles (social, or survival, challenges) you look at a different part of the rules - the social challenge builder, for example - to work out what it's stats are, based on the level of challenge you want it to pose.This is not handwaving in place of building. The rules tell you what numbers a given monster has if it is to play a given role at a given level of challenge.But it is a change from typical D&D, because it does away with the notion of a "generic centaur" (just as one of the designers gave the example that there is no "generic orc", and the players won't know what an orc can do till they encounter it and see what role it is playing). It puts the onus on the GM to choose what sorts of challenges, at what level, to pose to the players. Just as, at the moment, you must choose whether or not to advance a monster or give it class levels.You have said that you don't use non-MM creatures if you haven't prepped them. The equivalent in 4e might be saying that all MM-statted brutes default to 1st level social challenges unless you've prepared something else in advance. Or maybe the DMG will give guidance on other ways to handle a change of role, if the players decide to talk to the centaurs rather than fight them.If, instead of the approach I am describing, you want monster-build rules that (in effect) model in-game environmental processes, so that they deliver a "generic centaur" which is the typical gameworld representative of that species, I don't think that 4e will deliver that. (Except, perhaps, for those animals or beasts which are only capably of filling one role - but even then one of the designers was talking about having a bear fill different roles by statting it up in a different way.)</blockquote>

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