DMs have favourite monsters, now.

[SmilingPiePlate]

Oh, and I realize you could say '4e has taken the flavour out of RPGs!'. But that's not my point here. I still love the gnolls and bugbears - they have great flavour. And I'm all about flavour. But, it's nice to have the actual rules of the game make my human bandit different from the orc raider.

In 4e, each monster is fairly unique, and has a unique "Feel" to it's rules. I'm a fan.

Rules that reflect flavor is a strength of a system, not a weakness.

So yeah, I agree. I ran goblins against a 1st level party and had fun using their goblin tactics to flank the PCs as the PCs tried to hit them.

3e goblins were just cannon fodder. They ran at the PCs, hit them a few times, and then got one-shotted. You could give them class levels, but no matter how many they got they never felt like more than up-gunned cannon fodder to me. These goblins are slippery little bastards, and at least when fighting 1st level characters, they felt more like -monsters-. You know, like the PCs are brave for facing them.

I really like that.

 

[Wik]

Yeah, I'm curious to see how goblins turn out in actual play. Kobolds are kind of fun, but they get knocked over fast - and rightfully so, they're kobolds.

Orcs deal a buttload of damage, and can stay in a fight for a while.

And those little drakes that swarm up on foes? Felldrakes or something? That 1d10+4 or 1d10+9 damage at first level can be ROUGH.