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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2914596" data-attributes="member: 697">I think the real bone of contention lies in exactly how we define innovation. Many people want to see monsters with unique, never before seen abilities. I can empathize, since I like that too. However, that doesn't mean that unique abilities are the only way to go.The idea behind the spawn is to provide a bunch of creatures tied together by theme and built in a way that makes them easy to use together. The redspawn arcaniss is meant to stand back and blast away at its enemies, while other, more melee-oriented spawn fight in melee. He's a very simple, easy to understand and use monster. Many of the spawn are the same way. They are meant to be used together, and are kept simple to make it easy to run a number of monsters at the same time.That really hasn't been tried in D&D before, so in that sense it's innovative. However, we really have no idea if people will like them. When we try something different, we're flying blind. But without trying anything different, we can't really push the game in new directions. What seems obvious to gamers about how good or bad a monster is isn't obvious to us, because we don't have any feedback on it.The key is that when we try something different, we pay attention to sales and what people say about the book. We don't like firing blind, but sometimes we do it because we want to see how we can push the game in new directions. With stuff like the spawn, the writeups on monsters, the Black Talon tribe, and so on, we definitely pay attention to what people have to say.We don't expect every book or idea to appeal to everyone. What we try to do is put new ideas out there and see if enough people respond to them. You might like monsters with new, unique abilities, but if there are a lot of people out there who don't like them, we won't know until we try something a little different.</blockquote>

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