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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5758203" data-attributes="member: 82106">Monsters in MM3, MV, and MV:Threats are all the newest designs. If you are using DDI any monster in the Compendium which has a new-style statblock is updated (they have missed a few there too that are in MV like Adult Green Dragon). Updating a monster to the new stats is also pretty easy. Look at the errata for DMG1, it tells you what the new numbers should be (very slight adjustments really) and then make sure damage is around level + 8 average for a basic attack. Honestly for the lower level monsters, say levels 1-5 the old monsters were pretty much fine with a few exceptions.I think level advancement is just one of those things that different groups find work better with more or less XP than baseline. Remember, there are 30 viable levels now, so advancement being a bit faster gets you to 30 in about the time you used to get to 20. I never really experienced &quot;PCs just stomp everything&quot; so, I'm not really sure what to say about that. If the players are going to really optimize all the PCs then I guess they can kind of trivialize near-level encounters. Faster play, well, it seems like both a thing where some tables seem to have the problem and others don't. It is self-reinforcing too, boredom slows things down, which produces more boredom. If you play nothing but WotC modules, things can be sloggy feeling. The encounters really need to be more dynamic and interesting. They have some good ones, but I find you really want to either lay on the interesting terrain and stuff and/or make the encounter important to the plot and have other goals besides kill the enemy. I run very few &quot;just kill the monster&quot; type encounters, and I always make those the easy ones. In a dungeon crawl mode I tend to make a lot of them below level. They're worth limited XP, so you can use more of them. Just make sure the monsters get a chance to get in a couple hits, things like surprise or etc help.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5758203, member: 82106"] Monsters in MM3, MV, and MV:Threats are all the newest designs. If you are using DDI any monster in the Compendium which has a new-style statblock is updated (they have missed a few there too that are in MV like Adult Green Dragon). Updating a monster to the new stats is also pretty easy. Look at the errata for DMG1, it tells you what the new numbers should be (very slight adjustments really) and then make sure damage is around level + 8 average for a basic attack. Honestly for the lower level monsters, say levels 1-5 the old monsters were pretty much fine with a few exceptions. I think level advancement is just one of those things that different groups find work better with more or less XP than baseline. Remember, there are 30 viable levels now, so advancement being a bit faster gets you to 30 in about the time you used to get to 20. I never really experienced "PCs just stomp everything" so, I'm not really sure what to say about that. If the players are going to really optimize all the PCs then I guess they can kind of trivialize near-level encounters. Faster play, well, it seems like both a thing where some tables seem to have the problem and others don't. It is self-reinforcing too, boredom slows things down, which produces more boredom. If you play nothing but WotC modules, things can be sloggy feeling. The encounters really need to be more dynamic and interesting. They have some good ones, but I find you really want to either lay on the interesting terrain and stuff and/or make the encounter important to the plot and have other goals besides kill the enemy. I run very few "just kill the monster" type encounters, and I always make those the easy ones. In a dungeon crawl mode I tend to make a lot of them below level. They're worth limited XP, so you can use more of them. Just make sure the monsters get a chance to get in a couple hits, things like surprise or etc help. [/QUOTE]

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