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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5922220" data-attributes="member: 17106">And here's my problem. If I buy a monster manual, I'm paying for someone else to make a bunch of kobold shamans and quickblades that are useless to me. Books of monster stats are fine, but that's not what a monster manual is for. A "manual" is a <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/manual" target="_blank">small reference book, especially one giving instructions</a>. A monster *manual* gives you instructions on how to do something (in this case, to make and run monsters). It's not supposed to contain the finished product. If you want to pay for a Monster Vault or the like with finished stats for 12 different versions of each species, that's fine, and it is good for WotC.In this analogy, you should definitely be cooking your own food. Maybe growing it as well?Or perhaps, if a restaurant is so overrun, we should find a path or blaze a trail that leads to a better one.That's certainly a valid opinion. However, 4e monster design is also one of the major reasons why we are where we are (4e being abandoned for this new edition after an unprecedented short run, D&D losing the top spot in the market). It is obviously a positive for some people, but an absolute non-starter for many others, including myself. The 3.5 treatment of monsters as characters with HD, feats, and skills delivered in the same method as PCs, was one of the biggest meaningful steps forward (not just a change in tone or cleaning up an old mechanic) in D&D's entire history. The 4e treatment of monsters as not being full characters was a correspondingly big backwards step.Hopefully, there is a way to render monster statblocks that are as robust and customizable as the early 3.5 ones, while maintaining enough readability to satisfy the 4e niche.***In any case, I write all these posts about general issues not having actually read the playtest, which I have finally been able to download. I will probably go read it before continuing this line of inquiry.</blockquote>

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