Yes, that's the post I started with. What he seems to be looking for is, to me, poorly defined. It looks to be subjective to the given GM's playstyle.
Clearly you
haven't read it if you think it has anything to do with a given GM's playstyle.
No argument there. But exactly which bits of stat blocks are useful to that end, and which aren't? Have too many bits, and the thing is cumbersome. Have too few, and we gripe that possibilities aren't presented. Damned if they do, and damned if they don't!
Let me requote myself then.
When everything is a hammer, the only thing players get out is a hammer.
We've been comparing one of Paizo's earlier modules with the first 4e module. Let's jump ahead a few years.
Have the 4e modules changed? Nope. Enemies exist just to die. This is very much a part of monster creation - if monsters are just blobs of combat, and in 4e they are indeed blobs of combat, that's all they do. They serve their function, and their function is nothing more then "Oh hey an enemy *splorch*" As cool as skill challenges can be, because they're so structured, there's no sudden case of bluffing your way past the monster. Look at Revenge of the Giants. Skill challenges, just like combats, are their own separate encounters, taking place
outside the narrative instead of alongside or inside. They give you two or three skills you can use, and that's it - when you flop them, woops, combat time.
Compare this to how open ended Stolen Land makes it on sneaking into a bandit fort, even telling you the players could indeed simply bide their time and try to assassinate the Stag Lord while he sleeps, or how they might kill one bandit and set the others in the camp against each other with accusations. Don't have the best bluff or disguise? Taking an enemy captive and getting information from them earlier can help you there, scoring you code words and the secret that the bossman has a weakness for alcohol.
Look at the 4e statblock for the monster. Look at how much is dedicated to the combat blob part. Now look at what's dedicated to everything else. Do you see it? That small block on skills?
That's it. And even that doesn't say much, as the only time you'll see those skills come into play is if the enemy has a skill power or if your set a skill challenge up around it.
Instead of Burning, let's look back at Stolen Land. Let's skip ALL flavor entirely and just jump to the Stag Lord's stats. Literally, just the numbers. What do we get?
We know that he has a penalty to his stats due to being sickened from too much booze. We know that his favored targets are other humans. We know that, as a ranger, he has bow skills and is built to his terrain. He has high stealth and acrobatics, which gives some major clues on how he would fight. His physical stats are good with a very good dexterity, but his mental stats are low, with his wisdom being especially bad and his charisma being slightly better, which is reflected in how easily his bandits abandon him as soon as he falls (which is, in turn, in their stat blocks).
Do you see what happened there? Even the stuff based purely on combat told you things about the Stag Lord's character. Even just the strict combat blob bits gave hints and hooks on how to play him
outside of the actual fight. That one stat block tells you more then
entire modules in 4e tells you about their bad guys.
Once you go just one step beyond the pure numbers, it gets even worse. Still sitting in the stat block, now we look at the words. His sickness is gone once he sobers up, suggesting a number of ways to help keep him weaker. In melee he moves around a lot to flank with his bandits, so he knows and uses teamwork (the bandits themselves had a note that they'd often use terrible tactics due to being poorly trained. You'd never see that in a 4e creature). Most importantly, the fight isn't segregated from the narrative - you can wait for him to pass out and then just coup de grace him. No battlemat needed!
