NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4182842" data-attributes="member: 2067">No, it's not. Because an encounter is more than just stats vs. stats, and encounters don't exist in a vacuum. Again, from what we've seen of the 4e MM, it seems to realize this, even if some of the apologists here don't. It gives, for instance, allied monsters that it might show up with. That's useful information - I can look at a page in the MM and have a group of monsters to fight my PC's.It gives, for some monsters at least, lairs! That's more than just stats, that's basically an entire night's gaming in one page! Traps and allies!Take a look at the information that the MM5 gives! Or go even further with the Exemplars of Evil/Elder Evils books! As some of the pre-sages of 4e, the team was quite evidently thinking in terms of "complete" monsters that weren't just stat blocks!I do believe the new, non-mythological monsters it DOESN'T do this for -- perhaps critters like the phane -- will end up being the "ythraks of 4e," creatures that are out there, but that nobody really uses, because their main reaction is "WTF?"A statblock is not a complete monster. Allies, motives (preferably more diverse that "it kills because it likes to kill!"), lairs, setting information (even if you ignore it, it's good to steal), unusual ideas the monster holds, this doesn't always take up much space (3-4 sentences can convey it if you're efficient and you don't want to go any farther), but it makes it so that as the players are meeting each other in town, I can flip through the MM to a random creature of an appropriate level and have a night of gaming laid out in front of me. And what better place for that than alongside the stats of the monster itself? The less page-flipping and book-juggling I have to do, the better!The thing is, 4e seems to realize all of this, and agrees with me, at least for some of the monsters (dare I hope most?).Honestly, sometimes I think 4e's worst enemies can sometimes be its staunchest defenders. Every single monster part-times both roles. Heck, PC's triple time, they play the role of adversary, NPC, AND player character. This is part of why some people have been a little wary of 4e's "different strokes" approach, since the line is not an in-game line, but rather a metagame line that they don't want to see. But I don't see why I should have to turn to the DMG and my own devices to run a succubus out of the MM when 4e is supposed to be easier to run with less cross-referencing. I want the designers to give me a game, not to give me bits and pieces I need to kit-bash together into a game in my spare time.I don't have spare time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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