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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9101065" data-attributes="member: 87792">It's a version that's been scuffed, yesI've literally looked at that wall of text for the inventions and point blank refused to use it. And that's the problem. The kobold inventor isn't something you can sue on the fly.The two best sources of solo monsters in D&amp;D have, I agree, been 5e Solos with legendary and lair actions as the most evocative and MV era solos and 4e MV era solos which are the most kinaesthetic. However where 5e monster design fails as against 4e is on two counts I consider serious. The first is un-necessary cross-referencing. If my PCs go somewhere I haven't prepared but know what's there I can turn to a relevant monster and know how to run them on a simple scan through with a few seconds notice. This is partly the more compact statblocks but more importantly that a lot of the interesting and powerful things are references to other things, whether spells, other monsters, lair actions, or something else (and 5e is badly indexed). A properly prepped 5e monster can be pretty good but the prep work is unnecessarily high (although far lower than 3.X) and higher than most games I run, although far lower than most 80s or 90s games. MMotM is far better than Volo's this way - but a still well behind 4e. The second is that there's often a whole lot less ability to use the game world and the monster design for counterplay; there's not much point forcing archers or casters into melee other than for focus fire. The 4e brute/soldier, artillery, and lurker (and &quot;type 2 skirmisher&quot; with things like Sneak Attack; most 5e humanoids are &quot;type 1 skirmishers&quot;, equally adept in melee and at range) designations almost forced this.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 9101065, member: 87792"] It's a version that's been scuffed, yes I've literally looked at that wall of text for the inventions and point blank refused to use it. And that's the problem. The kobold inventor isn't something you can sue on the fly. The two best sources of solo monsters in D&D have, I agree, been 5e Solos with legendary and lair actions as the most evocative and MV era solos and 4e MV era solos which are the most kinaesthetic. However where 5e monster design fails as against 4e is on two counts I consider serious. The first is un-necessary cross-referencing. If my PCs go somewhere I haven't prepared but know what's there I can turn to a relevant monster and know how to run them on a simple scan through with a few seconds notice. This is partly the more compact statblocks but more importantly that a lot of the interesting and powerful things are references to other things, whether spells, other monsters, lair actions, or something else (and 5e is badly indexed). A [I]properly prepped[/I] 5e monster can be pretty good but the prep work is unnecessarily high (although far lower than 3.X) and higher than most games I run, although far lower than most 80s or 90s games. MMotM is far better than Volo's this way - but a still well behind 4e. The second is that there's often a whole lot less ability to use the game world and the monster design for counterplay; there's not much point forcing archers or casters into melee other than for focus fire. The 4e brute/soldier, artillery, and lurker (and "type 2 skirmisher" with things like Sneak Attack; most 5e humanoids are "type 1 skirmishers", equally adept in melee and at range) designations almost forced this. [/QUOTE]

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