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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5749847" data-attributes="member: 58197">Man, I should have kept my mouth shut about beer helmets. Sorry for the thread derail, guys.I think this is basically you agreeing with Croesus. Both of you point to "optional rules silos" as a good solution to rules bloat. And a monster is a perfect example of an optional rules silo.As DM, I do not have to go down the list of monsters and say, "Okay, in this campaign, we're using aboleths, not using achaierai, not using allips, using angels but only devas and planetars..." When I want to use a monster, I pick it up and read its rules. When I don't, I can ignore its existence. It has no impact on the rest of the game, except maybe a summoning spell here and there.Contrast that with 3E's grapple rules. If you don't like the grapple rules and try to ignore their existence, you've carved a great big hole in the system. Suddenly a ton of classic monsters, from mind flayers to purple worms, have to be rewritten. Fifty percent of monks lose their reason for existence (pathetic as that existence may be). Spells like Evard's Black Tentacles and much of the Bigby repertoire cease to work. The Escape Artist skill becomes dramatically less useful. And so on, and on, and on.</blockquote>