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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shadowguidex" data-source="post: 4291342" data-attributes="member: 60880">I think you're looking for the MM to provide you everything you need, and you want it to replace all the fun and work of adventure creation.  In 3E, all the monsters shown were at their weakest point - unless you have your heroes fight a group of baseline monsters, the monsters needed further modification.In 4E, the monster manual presents monsters not at their baseline, but at their optimal to present a fun challenge to the heroes.  Nobody wants to fight Drow Elf villagers who suck at combat.  IF you want to make weak drow elves, it it very easy to do so.That brings us to the main difference between the two editions.  The amount of time it takes to modify the monster manual entries to make them into a fun an exciting encounter.  3E required you to take the baseline monster and pile on templates, levels, or advanements to make them into more powerful versions.  Weakening them was basically impossible, and strengthening them often made them too difficult in comparison to the baseline monsters.In 4E, you have a core mechanic to build any type of monster from scratch with easy.  It takes about 3 minutes to build the core of any monster, and however much extra time to make exciting and cool powers for the monster.  If you need a really weak drow, just build it, and give it the standard racials that all drow get scaled for level.  If you need a super powerful Kobold, likewise it's easy to build, and again just give it the normal racials.  I think this is the prime difference in editions...in both you need to do work to make your adventure exciting, but in 4E it's just so much easier to craft the monsters exactly how you want them.In both editions, if you take the majority of your monsters as is, straight from the MM, your adventure probably sucks.  Spend some time and effort, no matter what edition you play, and the benefits will pay off - with 4E paying off a bit more because the time requirement to do the above is much less strenuous.</blockquote>

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