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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9553139" data-attributes="member: 6690965">If you don't set PC/NPC design transparency as a design goal from the outset, then 4e's choices are sort of an inevitable outcome, assuming you do the design work well and don't intentionally shoot for minimalism. Monsters exist to show off a few abilities, you want a variety of different roles/encounter functions to make fights dynamic, and you want a variety of monsters within an archetype/species to let you do themed encounters. The result is a bunch of different orc statblocks for different kinds of orcs, and design generally references a "role" or combat archetype system to get your starting math.Personally, I think PC/NPC transparency is an obvious good and should be a design constraint, but as that's clearly never been a 5e norm then all improvements to 5e monster design will make it look a little more like 4e. It's not so much taking ideas from 4e, as doing a better job running with a 4e idea 5e had already brought on board.</blockquote>