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<blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4037109" data-attributes="member: 1054">I basically consider such a list (regardless of what's on it) nigh-pointless, because every monster you think of as &quot;fat&quot; is someone else's &quot;meat&quot;, and vice-versa. There's no objective way to decide if a monster is &quot;worth keeping&quot; or not. A marginally more useful exercise would be a list of &quot;iconic&quot; or &quot;core&quot; monsters, because we can at least measure how many different rulebooks/incarnations of the game the critters appeared in. Everything outside that list is pretty much whim...For example, I think in 8 years of playing D&amp;D, I've used one giant (Hill) in one encounter. So, to me, giants are &quot;fat&quot; -- they rarely enter into the types of games I run. Other people, perhaps with fond memories of G1-3, have giants under every bridge. OTOH, I make a lot of use of different humanoid types -- I like to have orcs, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, etc, often with high-level PC-classed leader types. Other DMs, I know, HATE the &quot;palette swap&quot; monsters and have just one kind of humanoid with a lot of different cultures. Different tastes.Based on the 4e design goals, I think we'll see a heavy emphasis on &quot;Monsters with cool combat powers&quot;, including the addition of &quot;special attacks&quot; to creatures which never had them before. This can be done well -- witness how wolves in 3x are notable because their nasty, nasty, trip attacks -- or it can be done poorly, and we won't know until June. 4e has five monster manuals to pick from, so there's a lot of potential for a unique blend of &quot;core&quot; creatures. They have also stated in some podcast that some formerly 'core' creatures (like frost giants) will be deliberatelyheld back for MM2+, in order to help sell the notion that the annual &quot;core&quot; books are, in fact, truly core, not just &quot;supplements&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lizard, post: 4037109, member: 1054"] I basically consider such a list (regardless of what's on it) nigh-pointless, because every monster you think of as "fat" is someone else's "meat", and vice-versa. There's no objective way to decide if a monster is "worth keeping" or not. A marginally more useful exercise would be a list of "iconic" or "core" monsters, because we can at least measure how many different rulebooks/incarnations of the game the critters appeared in. Everything outside that list is pretty much whim... For example, I think in 8 years of playing D&D, I've used one giant (Hill) in one encounter. So, to me, giants are "fat" -- they rarely enter into the types of games I run. Other people, perhaps with fond memories of G1-3, have giants under every bridge. OTOH, I make a lot of use of different humanoid types -- I like to have orcs, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, etc, often with high-level PC-classed leader types. Other DMs, I know, HATE the "palette swap" monsters and have just one kind of humanoid with a lot of different cultures. Different tastes. Based on the 4e design goals, I think we'll see a heavy emphasis on "Monsters with cool combat powers", including the addition of "special attacks" to creatures which never had them before. This can be done well -- witness how wolves in 3x are notable because their nasty, nasty, trip attacks -- or it can be done poorly, and we won't know until June. 4e has five monster manuals to pick from, so there's a lot of potential for a unique blend of "core" creatures. They have also stated in some podcast that some formerly 'core' creatures (like frost giants) will be deliberatelyheld back for MM2+, in order to help sell the notion that the annual "core" books are, in fact, truly core, not just "supplements". [/QUOTE]

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