I agree that there were problems with them. I personally enjoyed the first ed more then the 2nd ed. I was always bothered by the fact that a creature with X amount of hit point was worth the same as Y unless you adjusted it yourself. However, these were tools that provided the GM some ideas on how to build a monster and how "powerful" it was. The rules in the old Dragon magazine on building a monsters are great but ELCs and CLs are still an issue not really covered by that.
I'm hoping that Savage Species or a 3rd party product will help with this issue. I'm thinking about just taxing on an XP penalty for X amount of levels, depending on how powerful the race is.
