D&D General How would you redo 4e?

[Voadam]

I've just skimmed through MM1. That is the lyingest lie that ever lied, at least in comparison to the type of lore in most other editions.

4e was skimpy on its textual descriptions in its MM1 and there was criticism of it on that basis, but I think you are forgetting other editions that were lacking in descriptions too. 3e was a big step down from 2e monster books, the MM1 was particularly short on description. You said earlier you started with 2e, which was particularly rich in descriptive lore with monster entries from its first Monstrous compendium book on, so you might not be familiar with the dearth of descriptions in the 1e MM or the basic set monster descriptions.

Taking the carrion crawler:

B/X:
This scavenger is worm-shaped, 9' long and 3' high with many
legs. It can move equally well on a floor, wall, or ceiling like a
spider. Its mouth is surrounded by 8 tentacles, each 2' long, which
can paralyze on a successful hit unless a saving throw vs. Paralysis
is made. Once paralyzed, a victim will be eaten (unless the carrion
crawler is being attacked). The paralysis can be removed by a cure
light wounds spell, but any spell so used will have no other effect.
Without a spell, the paralysis will wear off in 2-8 turns.

1e:
Carrion crawlers strongly resemble a cross between a giant green cutworm and
a huge cephalopod. They are usually found only in subterranean areas. The
carrion crawler is, as its name implies, a scavenger, but this does not preclude
aggressive attacks upon living creatures, for that insures a constant supply of
corpses upon which to feed or for deposit of eggs. The head of the monster is
well protected, but its body is only armor class 7. A carrion crawler moves
quite rapidly on its multiple legs despite its bulk, and a wall or ceiling is as
easily traveled as a floor, for each of the beast’s feet are equipped with sharp
claws which hold it fast. The head is equipped with 8 tentacles which flail at
prey; each 2’ long tentacle exudes a gummy secretion which when fresh, will
paralyze opponents (save versus paralyzation or it takes effect). As there are so
many tentacles with which to hit, and thus multiple chances of being paralyzed,
these monsters are greatly feared.

2e Monstrous Compendium 1:
The carrion crawler is a scavenger of subterranean areas, feeding
primarily upon carrion. When such food becomes scarce, however,
it will attack and kill living creatures.
The crawler looks like a cross between a giant green cutworm
and a cephalopod. Like so many other hybrid monsters, the carrion
crawler may well be the result of genetic experimentation by
a mad, evil wizard.
The monster's head, which is covered with a tough hide that
gives it Armor Class 3, sprouts eight slender, writhing tentacles.
The body of the carrion crawler is not well protected and has an
armor class of only 7. The monster is accompanied by a rank,
fetid odor which often gives warning of its approach.
Combat: The carrion crawler can move along walls, ceilings
and passages very quickly, using its many clawed feet for traction.
When attacking, the monster lashes out with its 2' long tentacles,
each of which produces a sticky secretion that can paralyze
its victims for 2-12 turns. A save versus paralyzation is allowed to
escape these effects. They kill paralyzed creatures with their bite
which inflicts 1-2 points of damage. The monster will always attack
with all of its tentacles.
Carrion crawlers are non-intelligent, and will continue to attack
as long as any of their opponents are unparalyzed. Groups of
crawlers attacking together will not fight in unison, but will each
concentrate on paralyzing as many victims as they can. When
seeking out prey, they rely primarily on their keen senses of sight
and smell. Clever travelers have been known to fool an approaching
carrion crawler with a sight and smell illusion, thus
gaining time to make good their escape.
Habitat Society: Carrion crawlers are much-feared denizens of
the underground world. They live in lairs, venturing out in search
of carrion or food every few days. Some underground inhabitants
such as goblins and trolls will make use of carrion crawlers
by leaving the bodies of dead foes out in designated areas. This
keeps the creatures at a good distance from their own homes and
encourages them to "patrol" certain areas. Some ores have been
known to chain live prisoners near the lairs of these fearsome
monsters.
Carrion crawlers will sometimes live with a mate or in a small
group numbering no more than 6. This does not mean that they
cooperate in hunting, but merely share the same space and compete
fiercely for the same food. If 2 crawlers have made a kill or
discovered carrion, they will often fight over the food, sometimes
killing one another in the process.
The carrion crawler mates once a year. Several days after mating,
the female will go off in search of a large kill. When she has
found or killed an adequate food supply, she lays about 100 eggs
among the carrion. The grubs hatch one week later and begin
feeding.
Maternal care ceases once the eggs have been laid and it is not
uncommon for eggs to later be eaten by the female who laid them.
Females die a few weeks after laying their eggs, exhausted by the
effort. Males live only a short time longer, having mated with as
many females as possible. Grubs have been known to consume
one another in feeding frenzies, and are a favorite food of adult
carrion crawlers. Few of the grubs reach maturity, but those who
do have eaten voraciously and will achieve their full size in a single
year. When they reach maturity, the mating cycle begins
again.
These monsters exist on the most basic instinctual level, having
no more intelligence than earthworms or most insects. The carrion
crawler is driven by two urges: food and reproduction. It has
absolutely no interest in the collection of treasure.
Ecology: The carrion crawler provides the same useful, if disagreeable,
function that jackals, vultures, and crows perform.
Like so many other predators carrion crawlers instinctively prey
on the weak, sick, and foolish. In the long run, this has a beneficial
effect on the prey, strengthening its gene pool. The carrion
crawler also works wonders in over crowded caverns, quickly
eliminating population problems among the weaker monsters.
Thus, the life cycle of the crawler is inextricably linked to those of
its prey—when the prey flourishes so does the crawler.

3.0
[Put out the 3.0 PDFs WotC!]
Mostly similar to the expanded 3.5 description but no intro paragraph description.

3.5:
The stink of rotten meat surrounds this multilegged creature with a
segmented, 10-foot-long body. Eight writhing tentacles protrude from
its head, growing directly from below its clacking mandibles and toothfilled
maw.
Carrion crawlers are aggressive subterranean scavengers, greatly
feared for their paralyzing attacks. They scour their underground
territory for dead and decaying flesh but won’t hesitate to attack
and kill living creatures.
Each of a carrion crawler’s tentacles is about 2 feet long and
secretes a sticky, paralyzing substance. Like so many hybrid monsters,
the carrion crawler may well be the result of arcane experimentation.
A carrion crawler weighs about 500 pounds.
Carrion crawlers use their senses of sight and smell to detect carcasses
and potential prey. When attacking, a crawler lashes out
with its tentacles and tries to paralyze its victim. The tentacles
deal no other damage. The creature then kills the paralyzed
victim with its bite and devours the flesh. Multiple crawlers do
not fight in concert, but each paralyzes as many opponents
as possible. The unintelligent creature
continues to attack as long as it
faces any moving opponents.

4e:
CARRION CRAWLERS FEED ON CORPSES but don’t always limit
their diet to the dead. They are aggressive scavengers feared
for their paralyzing tentacles.
Carrion Crawler Tactics
Carrion crawlers (regardless of size) guard their food and
eagerly attack trespassers. The crawlers have no tactical sense
but instinctively focus on one or two opponents at a time, relying
solely on the efficacy of their poisonous tentacles. Carrion
crawlers generally make bite attacks only against stunned
targets.
Carrion Crawler Lore
A character knows the following information with a successful
Dungeoneering check.
DC 15: Carrion crawlers might be the result of some mad
wizard’s experiment. They feed on carrion (hence the name)
but aggressively attack whatever wanders into their feeding
grounds.
DC 25: Carrion crawlers lay their eggs in corpses or
mounds of offal. When the eggs hatch, hundreds of baby
crawlers burst forth and begin gorging on one another.
Thankfully, their poison is too weak at that age to harm
anyone, and only a handful of them survive to adulthood.
Encounter Groups
Humanoid creatures and aberrant creatures sometimes
use carrion crawlers to dispose of waste. Some even
manage to train the crawlers as mounts or guard
beasts.

 

[jgsugden]

I'm sorry but I still don't understand how 5e does it any better? Outside of Spellcasters who ask you to read a different book, most monsters I've encounter have like... one or two melee options, then an action that says 'Do the other melee attacks as a single action' and then maaaaybe 1 ability with a condition. Is it the addition of stuff you'll never use in combat?

Ooooh, look out, the Spellcaster knows Magic Mouth! Oooh.

Ah - snark. Classic.

Again, the entire structure of 4E is part of the problem, so your focus on the stat block is a bit narrow. I am not going to relitigate something addressed by years of threads. You can go back and look at the criticism of 4E, and of 4E monsters, at your pleasure. There were many ways to describe the problem, and many tweaks on the criticism ... but in the end, they were oversimplified, the abilities they gave the monsters tended to blend together and not create distinction over the long run, and it just ... got ... boring ... fast.

However, putting aside recollections and research, think about the situation critically: if the design was as wonderful as you think it was: Why was the design abandoned, and why was there no uproar from the community when it was? Why didn't we see what happened when 4E was created - a rival capitalizing on the abandoned line of the game (as Pathfinder contined 3.5 lineage)? Why didn't we get a 4E clone entering the market and rivaling D&D by continuing to build upon the 4E model? Pathfinder proved that could be very lucrative. Why wasn't someone else able to do the same with the 4E model? It wasn't an IP issue - you can't protect game mechanics to the extend necessary to stop a clone. Why didn't someone Pathfinder the 4E model? Answer: Because the vast majority of AD&D and Pathfinder players wanted D&D's new edition to b more like 3.5 than it was like 4E. Sure, they stole a bit from 4E to put into 5E (including some isolated ideas of monster design, even) ... but overall, they did not want 4E to continue.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I saw some people in this forum asking for 4e be released as a SRD to Creative Commons like 5e (and possibly 3.5e). Do not get me wrong, I liked 4e, but I think it was very combat oriented and did a bad service to other game pillars. And most powers were, quite frankly, more of the same. Even so, I think many of its flaws could be reworked, specially now we have many good ideas we could port from 5e backwards.

So, if you are not a 4e hater, how would you rework it? My personal takes would be:

• Bounded Accuracy. I would remove the +half level to everything and the +3 bonus to skill proficiency would be remade in a proficiency bonus linked to level (as 5e)
• More like Essentials. Different classes, different power progressions. Not really needed the same AEDU thing to everyone. Fighters would get lots of ways to change Basic Attacks rather than different powers, for example.
• Spell Lists. Even if we keep spells as powers, no need a power list to every caster class. Wizards and warlocks, for example, could both take "spells from the arcane power list". Perhaps same idea to martials, like A5e maneuver schools.
• Exploration and Social Powers. New powers to cover exploration and social pillars. In addition to other powers your class gives, not take in place of them.
• Subclasses earlier. Not wait to level 11 to take a subclass/paragon path/whatever. Like 5e, around 3rd level is a good start.

Of course, lots of mine suggestion would need rework lots of the game moving parts, specially to keep math working both in combat and outside it. But the above would be my initial blueprint. Now, curious to know how you would redo it.

Just based on my own extensive GMing experience with 4e, and a lesser amount of time spent as a player, I know a couple of things:
1. 4e is very much a 'story game', but it isn't ENTIRELY 'there'. I do think there's a more focused design lurking in there.
2. I don't run 4e like almost anyone else does. For example your bullet points above don't particularly speak to me (not to say you may not have some specific ideas that are interesting).

I've actually written, and played, my own "Beyond 4e" kind of game, Heroes of Myth and Legend. This game basically starts where 4e left off in terms of taking this sort of design to its logical conclusion. Some highlights:

• Leveling from 1 to 20: This is simply a way of reducing the need for 'noise' like levels and levels of powers that sometimes seem to exist for the purpose of filling 30 levels. HoML's 'Mythic' tier is only the top 3 levels. This gives you a more succinct finish.
• Modes of play: You are either in an interlude (no dice, just dialog), a challenge (essentially a 4e SC, though the rules are a bit polished), or combat (quite 4e-like round by round, grid, actions, etc.). Checks DO NOT EXIST outside of challenge/combat, no free-standing checks!
• Checks have variable outcomes and the outcome is related to intent. If you are trying to beat another guy to the top of a cliff and you fail, you may well get to the top, just not fast enough, or you might suffer an injury. You can fail, you can succeed, and you can achieve critical success, but only if you spend PPs.
• There isn't explicitly an AEDU in HoML at this point. Powers generally can be used as desired, but have effects scaled by power point expenditure. This also means there isn't quite the hard required focus on combat vs utility, but players will need to sort out what they need.
• 'Build' isn't some sort of isolated game that is independent of play. There are no XP in HoML. You play, you designate quests for your character/party, and you receive boons for quest completion. The acquisition of a major boon, which usually includes a power and/or similar stuff (maybe like a 4e feat) produces a level increase. So, you want to be a certain type of PC? You will need to figure that out, IN GAME.
• You can opt to take an injury or other Affliction (basically like a 4e disease, but the rules are improved a bit) in place of some other failure consequence (often damage in combat). This introduces a bit different set of trade-offs. Healing Surges are now Power Points, which still drive hit point recovery as in 4e, but with the added feature that they can be expended for increased effects with powers (which are called feats in HoML, but they're 4e powers, basically).
• Rituals and similar stuff serve a slightly different purpose: they allow you to reframe a situation in terms of using a different check. Fly up the cliff with arcana instead of climbing it with athletics, different means, same intent. They may also serve to alter fictional position constraints (let your PC do something otherwise deemed impossible, though I am not too fond of that word).
• 5e-style inspiration: Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, and this covers all dynamic situational adjustments.
• Simplified modifiers: There is a level mod, a proficiency mod, a 'permanent' mod, and ability mod, that's it, they never stack, there's no such thing as 'untyped' modifiers, and these categories apply to everything everywhere, not just checks. Stacking simply isn't a thing.
• All proficiency mods are +5: This along with the simplified non-stacking mods mean ALL checks of all types are entirely equivalent! You could use a skill as a defense in HoML, unlike in 4e (where it almost but not quite works).
• Players roll all dice: There are no AC/NADS, you simply defend yourself. You can use feats (powers) to do so, skills, abilities, heck you could defend yourself with a background if you can figure out why that would work.
• Armor is just a DR.
• Items are all just 'instantiations' of ritual magic. Any ritual could exist as an item (some might not make sense) and you could hypothetically learn the formula to any item and, say, put a vorpal sword enchantment on your sword for one combat.
• Scaling: It is possible for combats at higher tiers (Legendary, Mythic) to happen in 'scaled space' such that squares become large areas. So you can have gonzo Legendary fights that cover large areas, etc. Scale could be adjusted as-desired, although I haven't really tried to work out rules for this. Honestly, it has little mechanical impact on play, its more of a dramatic device that can be employed. You would be unlikely to want to scale up where a fight happens inside a building, but suppose the bad guy runs outside, that might change things. Certainly there are likely to be some higher level situations where these scalings can make things more interesting.
• Wealth is basically just an attribute. You can 'buy things', but in general this isn't a game about counting loot, so effectively 'gold' and such are just flavor, all that matters is if you have a +3 wealth ability mod, when it matters you can lean on that in a challenge. Since it isn't one of the big 6 it is more of a 'substitute', letting you do a sort of ritual-like thing where you say "well, I get out my purse..." and suddenly that mod comes into play.
• You can declare some free descriptors on your character and expend your fate to explain how they give you auto-success, or auto-fail to get your fate back. This is a bit better than 5e's BIFTs approach. There's always the question of altering these as well, and the GM can always use them to explain difficult checks, for example.

Anyway, as you can see, there is a lot of stuff that is different from 4e. It is not really 'the same game', but it works well for the very gonzo sort of low prep/low myth, character-story-centered, kind of play that I do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, 4E mechanics produced a lot of boring combat.

No! There is insufficient explanation of how to really make good combats, maybe, though if you actually closely follow the instructions in DMG1 and also include some of the DMG2 stuff this will not happen (well, MM3 and up monsters are a bit helpful too).

Still, what is not fully explicated in 4e's presentation is it is a game of GONZO ACTION MOVIE COMBAT, not boring 1e "4 orcs in a room" combat. Arctanus, 4th Warden of the Storm Circle doesn't stand around in rooms hacking on orcs. He's sliding down the log flume into the sawmill, landing on a log balancing on the saw table, kicking it into the face of the Great Vule Pack Leader, and then shielding the girl chained to the log from the ensuing breath weapon attack with his stupidly incredibly indestructible body (because he's a Warden and they are just about unkillable). That's combat in my games!

But 4e combat is still REALLY good, and not at all boring, if you are simply presenting a deep tactical puzzle. It is REALLY good at doing that too! Like 100x better at it than 5e is. This is just 4e's thing, and you have to roll with it. I also find that more character-focused-play also means more exciting combats, because they generally stop being about straight up kill-or-be-killed fights. You are there for a reason, accomplish your thing. I mean, fights to the death are fine, sometimes, they can be fun, but too much of any one thing gets stale quickly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, that sounds like what I mean by clocks and how I ran skill challenges at the end of 4E and still do in other games.

Each obstacle requires so many successes to overcome, the clock. The referee decides that up front and maybe some auto success and auto fail conditions. Like this guard is in debt so bribery auto succeeds but because this guard is in debt he's being shaken down by some serious leg breakers so intimidation auto fails. But then the players get to do whatever. Interact with the obstacle however they want, just like the regular back-and-forth conversational play loop.

And yeah, instead of three failures and that's somehow the end, failures bring in new obstacles or increase the difficulty of existing obstacles. You try to intimidate the in-debt guard, it auto fails which makes it more difficult to deal with and it now requires one more success to bypass that obstacle.

Success and failure should be directly tied to the narrative. The narrative is the important bit, not the mechanics. To me at least.

See, its weird to me, because I'm not sure how any of this is actually MATERIALLY different from an SC. I mean, a complexity 5 SC requires
12 successes. Lets say I take a quick assessment of the PC's plan. They want to break into the big boss' place and loot his safe so they can acquire gold to get a Cure Disease to save their friend. So, we have the guard, the safe, and getting out unseen. Each of these is going to take up some part of those 12 successes. So, effectively you have 3 clocks, one for each obstacle (they might be distributed unevenly, maybe the final escape is 2 checks, the others are 5 each). Additionally, I almost always include a planning phase as PART of the SC where it makes sense. So here the PCs might have already ticked some successes before they arrive at the guard on the front door.

And I also find it odd how people keep saying things about SCs should be 'tied to the narrative', as if 4e doesn't say that from day one! I know there are a whole bunch of people who OBVIOUSLY never read the DMG who seem to not be aware of that and think its just some die tossing side-game or something. Its not, you work out what it is you have to accomplish and each check changes the situation, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse! Sometimes the change is small (the guard is now thinking over the bribe, maybe you need to offer more?) and sometimes its large (the guard lets you pass, you are now inside and you have to find the safe).

So, oddly I both agree with you, and kinda disagree, SCs need to be narratives, and they should mostly ideally involve some related set of obstacles (you can do a complexity one if there's really only one thing to get past, like a guard). I generally figure complexity 2-3 are a couple obstacles, 4 and 5 are 3 or maybe even 4 obstacles. I wouldn't GENERALLY go beyond that in one SC, but as you pointed out elsewhere, granularity is also a question, so a single check could represent spinning a dial on a safe one time, or wiping out a whole room full of minions. And scale can shift within an SC sometimes too. I just think stock 4e actually covers this, though it doesn't always explain it well.

 

[James Gasik]

Starting to think this should have been a "+" thread.

 

[Zaukrie]

Starting to think this should have been a "+" thread.

Same. Right into edition wars. Not how to make 4e better

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I thought rituals were supposed to be the replacement for non combat spells?
And Skill Challenges were suppose to support social and exploration activities?
And couldn't any CHA based class with access to diplomacy or whatever be a face class? Like the Warlord??

Or course I never understood what people mean by "support."

Thought I will admit that finding powers that were useful outside of combat was too rare. They were there but they were few and far between; as well at buried under dozens of attack powers.

I keep hearing this, but you could do a ton of stuff with powers outside of combat. I mean, FIRST of all the DMG has a whole section on objects and their defenses and hit points. So right there is a cut and dried rule on "can I hit this door with Magic Missile until it caves in?" and the answer is right there in the DMG!!!! Admittedly, that's a limited set of non-combat situations, but powers DO have fairly known "what does this look like." EVERY power has flavor text, and often the actual rules text, or in some cases other text, tells you more about that. Every power that is included in Essentials (a lot of them) has ANOTHER flavor text outside the power block itself. So there is plenty of flavor text to go around.

When using a power outside of combat, you simply look at how it works and what the effect looks like, as well as its mechanics. It is usually pretty obvious what a power can do. I mean, again, some are going to be practically useless, but far from all of them. Easily more than half of all powers are conceivably usable in many situations, and some entire classes of powers, like summons, forms, stances, etc. are VERY OBVIOUSLY useful and significant out of combat. I turn into a raven, any questions???

Its just weird to me that people have such rigid mindsets when it comes to things like that. Its an RPG, its OPEN ENDED RULES, the fiction matters! Just do it. If the wizard wants to burn down the barn with a fireball, or the Warden wants to hide in the icy winter forest, its pretty obvious what power is going to do that and how to use it.

 

[James Gasik]

I keep hearing this, but you could do a ton of stuff with powers outside of combat. I mean, FIRST of all the DMG has a whole section on objects and their defenses and hit points. So right there is a cut and dried rule on "can I hit this door with Magic Missile until it caves in?" and the answer is right there in the DMG!!!! Admittedly, that's a limited set of non-combat situations, but powers DO have fairly known "what does this look like." EVERY power has flavor text, and often the actual rules text, or in some cases other text, tells you more about that. Every power that is included in Essentials (a lot of them) has ANOTHER flavor text outside the power block itself. So there is plenty of flavor text to go around.

When using a power outside of combat, you simply look at how it works and what the effect looks like, as well as its mechanics. It is usually pretty obvious what a power can do. I mean, again, some are going to be practically useless, but far from all of them. Easily more than half of all powers are conceivably usable in many situations, and some entire classes of powers, like summons, forms, stances, etc. are VERY OBVIOUSLY useful and significant out of combat. I turn into a raven, any questions???

Its just weird to me that people have such rigid mindsets when it comes to things like that. Its an RPG, its OPEN ENDED RULES, the fiction matters! Just do it. If the wizard wants to burn down the barn with a fireball, or the Warden wants to hide in the icy winter forest, its pretty obvious what power is going to do that and how to use it.

I will grant that by not specifically saying "fireball ignites things" or giving rules for it, it puts the onus on the DM to ad hoc these situations. Many powers explicitly state they only target creatures right in their rules, which is just going to lead to arguments.

A lot of my 4e play was in Encounters or Living Forgotten Realms, where the culture was to stick to the rules-as-written as much as possible, and even then, this often required you to bring along printouts of forum posts and cust serv replies (of dubious value). In that environment, it does become easy to denounce 4e as a "vidya game" as many seem to do.

Usually these debates would go like this:

Player wants to use power in unusual way.

DM says no because that's not how power works.

DM wants to impose sanctions for player using a power (typically, by spreading fire damage around).

Player says power can't do that, and often points out a previous ruling by the DM to that effect.

Status quo maintained.

But this is really no different than arguments that have taken place at tables throughout D&D's history, nay, the history of gaming itself. Every group has to establish house rules on how they are going to handle these situations. Where some people balked at 4e was that there was no "wiggle room" in the powers themselves. They told you exactly what they did, no more, no less.

If you were tired of endless debates about what an ability does in D&D, this was refreshing. If you liked being able easily morph the rules to suit your gaming style, this was stifling.

From my own experience, neither way is superior to the other; loose rules with lots of grey areas can cause just as many problems at the table as tightly written ones, depending on the play style of those involved. Personally, however, I hate having to parse the text of a D&D spell to figure out exactly what it's doing, and try to figure out what to do in corner cases.

Maybe the best approach is to have the long, drawn-out spell description, and then at the end of the spell have the quick TLDR of how it's intended to be used, to give DM's a good starting point for how to rule on it.

 

[Undrave]

Again, the entire structure of 4E is part of the problem

I still haven't seen a convincing argument that 5e does monsters better.

so your focus on the stat block is a bit narrow.

Because the stat block is what you need at the table when a fight breaks out. All that flowery 2e ecology is nice to read about, I'm sure, but I'm not gonna want to start scanning half a page of fluff when somehing comes up in a fight. And honestly the 5e stat block isn't that much different, except for that part I hate with the spells.

Maybe you don't think the 4e lore goes into enough details, maybe the 5e one is way better (I don't own the 5e MM) but I'm not sure what you exactly need. 4e monsters works on a philosophy of economy of details. It won't tell you how many kids on average a Bulette can have, or how long the gestation period of Warg, but it'll tell you if they'll attack adventurers and where you're likely to encounter those creatures. It will tell you the essential and trust you to fill in the rest and give your world your own flavor. That's what DMs have been doing forever after all.

It's why they don't give spellcaster monsters a series of Rituals in their stat blocks or anywhere on the page. Because the base assumption is that you'll decide what rituals they need if you think they need one, and if you only encounter that monster in a fight you'll have every data and rule bits you need on hand.

It's not the same philosophy as 3.X or even 5e. It might not appeal to you but it appealed to me and if I was redoing 4e I wouldn't be trying to appeal to you since you're already satisfied by 5e. I'm trying to scratch my 4e itch here.