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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6059941" data-attributes="member: 1465">Human cities are populated with thousands of humans with identical racial features and different ability scores... and some with class levels! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That's the most important thing for me. The game must have a system for adding class levels on top of a monster's race. If not class levels, at least class features, but monsters need to be customizable in order to achieve variety, and there must be some default rules for doing that. Maybe more than one way to do that, if necessary!At least such rules should have three requirements:- they must allow a high degree of flexibility (how much exactly is not written in stone, but the more the better)- they must be reasonably simple and fast to apply (which is of course a trade-off with flexibility)- they must allow for a reasonably reliable re-calculation of the CR/XP, in order to use the modified monsters into an encounterThat said, I then totally understand the benefit of your suggestion of having multiple sample entries in the MM <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> for two reasons: (1) a lot of people prefer not to have to do any work, at least when they aren't yet used to the ruleset, and they deserve some variety too; (2) those "samples" actually tell a lot about the society of that creature and this is useful even if you don't use them for combat (although in this second point WotC should really strive for the tradition of D&D, not "trying something new" or totally reinvent traditional creatures into something unrecognizable).I really think there is enough room for all these things in the game, and already in the core: sample entries in the MM (not necessarily for all the monsters, but the most iconic/traditional ones for sure, and all the brute beasts without a society don't really need this), a system for adding* class levels to monsters, and another for adding single powers/features and re-calculate the XP.*(note: it doesn't have to be a pure addition like in 3ed... actually I think it would be much better if it worked in a "gestalt" way so that if you take a 10HD giant and want a cleric giant, or a wizard giant, or a barbarian giant etc. you can still have it with 10HD and basically the same CR/XP; I think this should be possible in a way that whatever chosen number of "racial HD" are replaced by class levels)</blockquote>

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