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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5374876" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'd much rather have monsters powers be imposing but potentially thwartable and use mechanics that evocative of something. "I'm still next to you so you take an extra 6d8 damage" is pretty bland. I think monsters should be able to operate effectively, but really the whole POINT of monsters is they do strange things that nobody else can do. This particular monster's 'shtick' just seems to be implemented in a way that is rather characterless. Yes, you can use tactics to overcome it, and in fact said tactics are pretty straightforward, it is just hard to relate the extra damage it does to what it is doing in terms of the game world. Why does looking like your opponent grant you a whole bunch of extra damage? I don't hate, I'm just not really impressed by it. Monsters need both mechanical and story coherency. This is one area where the designers still haven't entirely figured it out. The mechanical box things are put into with 4e is pretty tight. In the old days you could just describe the way the monster worked and not worry about it. By codifying everything 4e makes play easy, but it makes unusual monsters well, just not that unusual anymore. I mean all sorts of crazy stuff COULD be done, but then you'd need a page long stat block full of rules to weld it into the system (and doubtless said rules would create more questions than answers, as the Gelatinous Cube amply demonstrates). Not that any of that really holds ME back as a DM, but it does seem to crimp some people's style a bit.</blockquote>

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