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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4121012" data-attributes="member: 1054">Actually, I think 4e makes that problem worse. If the bugbear strangler's ability is a feat/talent/power, you can say, "Well, you sure look like that bugbear strangler. But you can no more use his learned fighting skills than you get Arcana +20 by turning into the head of the mage's guild. Sorry, Charlie."OTOH if, (as it seems to be in 4e) it's a natural function of the monster type, then, yeah, he gets the power. Well, I dunno. We'll need to see what the polymorph rules are. From what I've heard, you'll have a list of creatures you can turn into, all designed from the get-go to be things-you-can-turn-into, so all the game balance issues -- and, baby with bathwater, all the creative and ingenious things players can do -- are tossed aside. 4e seems to have, as a guiding philosophy, that everything should do one thing, and one thing only, and be extremely restricted and rulebound. Balance uber alles.I appreciate many of the design *goals* of 4e. I dispute their methods. Under 3e, it was trivial for me to make a half-fiend medusa rogue as a villain, and when he became a reluctant ally of the PCs instead of a foe to be slain, he wasn't grossly unbalanced because he wasn't built entirely on the assumption he would exist for only one encounter and be gone. Every monster in 4e is seemingly balanced on the basis of a single encounter only, and while that may work in 95% of cases, it's the other 5% -- where the game takes an unexpected veer and the plot lurches off the tracks, never to return -- that makes for memorable sessions.</blockquote>

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