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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kraydak" data-source="post: 3767320" data-attributes="member: 12306">I think some of our arguement is drifting out to sea due to a lack of a solid 4e preview anchor.  Please allow me to try and state my full position.The preview information suggests that (for brutes, maybe strikers, the suggestion that they tried to do the easy things, namely raw stats, before working out the hard things, namely cool abilities first is somewhat disheartening) they are putting in a set of look-up tables with the raw stats (and, potentially, special abilities).  This has a few problems.Firstly, if you want to allow for varied tactics (such as disarm, charm, dispell, calm emotions), you need to know the provenance of the stats (the bonus types).  Of course, different monsters will have different bonus types.  An animal will have raw, relatively untyped stats (a very few might get a morale bonus at low hp).  Humanoids however, even restricting one to the brute role, will have many different types, in different amound based on concept.  The barbaric humanoid should have different bonus types (and different stats) than a skilled civilized fighter who in turn should have different stats (and especially abilities) than an exotic weaponsmaster who in turn will have different bonus types than a mystical fey warrior.  Because typed bonuses are less valuable (stacking difficulties, ability to target them directly), and some types carry penalties (heavy armor slows one down), the stat totals should not be the same.This means that, instead of 1 look up table for brutes, you need several.  Effectively, each brute subtype is becoming its own class.  If you don't have seperate lookup tables, your goblin berserker plays the same as the skilled warrior, who plays the same as the fey knight (I consider this tradeoff to be far too expensive, and I fear it is the direction WotC is heading).Now, if each brute subtype is effectively becoming its own class, why not MAKE IT A CLASS.  In practice, using D20 modern terminology because I don't have SWSE, each *type* would become a Basic Class, with a talent tree for each Role+Style (brute being a role, skilled warrior in plate being a style).  The Type classes would be perfect DI information (too long for the print MM).  This would make things like monsters as PCs (duh) and half-breeding (half dragon template would become a varying number of Dragon Type HD, based on how draconic you want the result to be) easy.  In fact, the whole abomination that is templates (which, like anything that involves a non-zero LA, works poorly) could be removed entirely.  In terms of design difficulty, you replace reading off a line on a table with a BaB/Saves progressions and 1 talent tree taken in the obvious order (allow only one order for simplicity's sake).  Somewhat more work?  Maybe, albiet marginally.  If you want something other than a *pure* brute though, it becomes less work.All of this largely independant of stat block layout, where you have to balance simplicity of layout (difficulty in finding the information you want) with complexity of stats (having the information you need included in the stat block), although have a design procedure that produces all the information you'll want is needed.  I certainly agree with people who say that special abilities should be written out in the stat block, but that has little bearing on the design procedure of the monster/ability.(As a side note, HD does change LA.  A 2nd lvl SLA on the 20HD monster will affect the LA not at all, while it will have a huge effect on the LA for a 1HD monster.  This obviously causes problems if you level out of the range the LA was designed for.  As the wotc optimization board long ago realized, most printed LAs are *way* out of whack.  Going through the MM and changing HD until well balanced LAs became 0 would go a long way towards avoiding Ogre Magi.)</blockquote>

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