That’s not really related to the stat block size discussion, but it is a compelling point in favor of not codifying saves, for completely not-stat-block-size-related reasons. I am sympathetic to the idea of leaving this for the DM to decide for individual monsters, but I wonder how far that line of thinking extends. Would you also advocate for not codifying monster skill proficiencies?
I think there is a strong argument not to codify skills for the same reason. Many are simply rarely used, and it has the same issue as codifying saves does.
We can dig into this further by looking at when dice rolls are appropriate and when they are pointless. Any pointless dice roll, at best, just wastes the time of the players. Some can be more destructive, if important information is withheld on a die roll for example.
So thinking about the skills with that context, all of a sudden many of them seem dubious. When does a NPC roll a history that is not either of the above? It's not easy to come up with such a situation. Most situations should, instead be handled by giving the information if the NPC knowing it is reasonable. And if not, than don't but in neither case is "random" correct.
We end up with a small subset of the listed skills that actually serve any debatable purpose. Deception is not a skill NPCs need, as it just serves as a tool to frustrate in most cases. There is no need to deceive the players. If they found the information, reward them. If you need to decieve, for some reason, don't leave it to a roll. Insight is fine, but you don't care if players win the roll so profeciency is kind of moot. Intimidation and it's ilk are dubious as they can often come off as mind control, even in the best situation. Telling players what they believe is walking a line with player agency that would scare me.
We end up with the four that I see real uses for. Atheltics and acrobatics come up in combat scenerios like grappling. And perception and stealth have obvious uses as well. I don't know that it's a tall ask to have DMs track four skills, and decide if any should be profecient for a monster. And the rest of the skills are largely just traps. Traps that lead to player feel bads and pacing issues with little hope of a positive benefit.
So yes, I'd remove skills from the monster statblocks completely, outside perception and stealth. The DMs with the finesse and skill to use the other skills properly, can figure it out without designer help. This would be similar to what Kobold Press did with ToV, where they gave static values for the two above skills.
On the topic of relevance; I think it was related to the discussion, because the argument for not having the saves was being dismissed as "purely" aesthetic, while the counter was function. I was just pointing out the function to dismiss the solely aesthetic argument. This is evident here;
Including the monsters saves in the stat block makes it more usable, not less. If you dislike the visual clutter, that’s an aesthetic preference.
and here;
Putting a monster’s saving throw bonus in the stat block doesn’t add more information than not putting it there…?
And there are more examples. So we had two different standards for the two sides. I was just adding a mechanical argument to the side lacking one.
