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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RodneyThompson" data-source="post: 3150019" data-attributes="member: 3594">Fully acknowledging that I am probably biased, as a writer who may have worked on a particular book in a series of manuals about monsters coming out in 2007 (*clears throat*), I think doing new monsters instead of conversions for the Monster Manuals is a good thing. When WotC doles out assignments for these monster books, they encourage people to create monsters that create interesting and exciting encounters. As a result, many, if not most, of the new monsters also include unique special qualities that allow them to do things that players haven't seen before. As an unashamed lover of Monster Manual IV, there are a lot of great encounters in that book. While I might disagree with some of the flavor (I mean, really? 30 pages of Spawn of Tiamat?) in my book there is no denying that the MMIV contains some of the most mechanically interesting monsters to ever exist in D&D. Nearly every monster in that book is an exciting encounter in a box, and I think that's a philosophy that carried over to, er, the theoretical book I might have worked on. WotC encourages its designers not to create monsters in a vacuum, but rather to think of them as the anchor of a cool encounter. During actual play, monsters that do new and unique things > monsters that my players have seen before, or so I've found. Some of the most interesting and exciting mechanics in D&D can be found in the special qualities of a lot of monsters, so why wouldn't you want to do more?Contrary to the way the book reads, the book is designed to create mechanically interesting encounters first, with flavor as a parallel consideration. At least, that's been my experience. Ask some of the other designers, their mileage may vary. I think (pure speculation here) that one reason WotC is reluctant to do a lot of conversions is that a conversion brings with it some mechanical baggage that might not translate well into 3.5. That, or the monster may be high on flavor, low on interesting mechanics, and as a result doing a faithful translation of the monster would likely result in ho-hum encounters. Also, creating a new monster allows the designer to flex their mechanics muscles and really think outside the box, which I think produces more exciting encounters. I know that if I were given my choice between, "Convert monster X" and "Create a new monster that does X" I'm going to choose the latter each time, because it lets me hand-craft the monster to meet a specific need.I'm not saying we shouldn't have old monster conversions; far from it. In fact, I think a Big Book O' Monster Conversions (title pending) would be a great idea. However, I would only really be interested in such a book if they could do the same thing as the Monster Manuals of late and use those monsters to create exciting encounters. I think that's doable though. I can understand, though, that when faced with the decision between creating new monsters tailored to 3.5 mechanics and converting old monsters, most designers want to create something new. As a fan and a DM (putting all writing aspects aside), I found MMIV to be far superior to MMII and even MMIII in some ways, just because I immediately wanted to plunder it for encounters (and I have). I've never understood the disdain for that book, but hey, if we didn't have different opinions then it would be a boring, boring game. So, I hope that gives you some insight into WotC's logic, at least as I see it.</blockquote>

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