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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9047139" data-attributes="member: 20323">Each one has a trade off. Skerples' The Monster Overhaul is more my speed these days because I find it's a great source of inspiration.All of the examples you gave – WotC, EN Publishing, Kobold Press – I feel fall into the pigeon-holing of repeating/emulating WotC's stat block that is hyper-focused on what monsters do in combat. For me (not presuming I speak for the majority, or even a sizable minority), I think that woefully undersells the imagination of these monsters.I'll give a super conservative example. During 4th, you'd sometimes see in monster stat blocks 2 separate lines – one for Javelin attack in melee, another for Javelin attack at range. AFAIK, when I wrote &quot;Court of Stars: The Wild Hunt&quot; in the last online Dragon Magazine issue 428 (October 2013), and I combined melee/ranged into a single attack, that was the first time that was done in 4e. For me it was a no brainer, but we (collectively as gamers &amp; also the designers) tend to fixate on replicating this one way of presenting a monster.And that's not getting into more interesting redesigns like I shared for my take on the Peryton where I divided that stat block into three parts: Exploration, Roleplay, and Combat.I think &quot;one size stat block fits all&quot; is a fallacy – even the green slime in the 5e DMG rules themselves shows how that is a fallacy. Why aren't there riddles under the Sphinx entry? Am I really expected to have a tactical combat to kill a unicorn or might that word count be better reserved for something more inspiring? Do I really need a whole new stat block for an urd (it's a flying kobold!), or might a list of kobold traps be a better use of that space?I know D&amp;D and adjacent games tend to stat up everything to the nines, but I think a lot gets lost there, and – in my humble personal view – that's to the detriment of the game because it leads to &quot;death by thousand cuts&quot; of some very rich lore that makes for a more interesting story.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 9047139, member: 20323"] Each one has a trade off. Skerples' [I]The Monster Overhaul[/I] is more my speed these days because I find it's a great source of inspiration. All of the examples you gave – WotC, EN Publishing, Kobold Press – I feel fall into the pigeon-holing of repeating/emulating WotC's stat block that is hyper-focused on what monsters do in combat. For me (not presuming I speak for the majority, or even a sizable minority), I think that woefully undersells the imagination of these monsters. I'll give a [I]super conservative [/I]example. During 4th, you'd sometimes see in monster stat blocks 2 separate lines – one for Javelin attack in melee, another for Javelin attack at range. AFAIK, when I wrote "Court of Stars: The Wild Hunt" in the last online Dragon Magazine issue 428 (October 2013), and I combined melee/ranged into a single attack, that was the first time that was done in 4e. For me it was a no brainer, but we (collectively as gamers & also the designers) tend to fixate on replicating this one way of presenting a monster. And that's not getting into more interesting redesigns like I shared for my take on the Peryton where I divided that stat block into three parts: Exploration, Roleplay, and Combat. I think "one size stat block fits all" is a fallacy – even the green slime in the 5e DMG rules themselves shows how that is a fallacy. Why aren't there riddles under the Sphinx entry? Am I really expected to have a tactical combat to kill a unicorn or might that word count be better reserved for something more inspiring? Do I really need a whole new stat block for an urd (it's a flying kobold!), or might a list of kobold traps be a better use of that space? I know D&D and adjacent games tend to stat up everything to the nines, but I think a lot gets lost there, and – in my humble personal view – that's to the detriment of the game because it leads to "death by thousand cuts" of some very rich lore that makes for a more interesting story. [/QUOTE]

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