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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6116789" data-attributes="member: 58197">That's kind of what I mean when I say it's not robust; it works tolerably well if you do things the normal way, but when you start doing unusual stuff or pushing the boundaries, you can't count on it. Because it prescribes a process instead of an outcome, it's fragile any time you include an unusual element. This is where I draw an unfavorable comparison with 4E; 4E tells you what outcome, in terms of hit points and damage output and so forth, to expect for a monster of a given level and role. You just have to check that you get close to that outcome and your monster works pretty much as expected.Of course, there is a downside to the 4E approach...And this would be that downside. 4E is even worse, because of the across-the-board half level bonus and the tightly constrained attack and defense values. One hopes that the "bounded accuracy" of D&DN will avoid this problem.I didn't mean that 3E monsters were inherently boring, but that the system did nothing to encourage the creation of interesting monsters. It could be used for that, but it could just as easily be used to create boring sacks of hit points. (4E is the same way. Offhand I'm not aware of any monster creation system that guides designers toward "interesting" and away from "boring," but it'd be a fun challenge to try and devise one.)</blockquote>