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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5889148" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can level monsters up and down on my own - the maths is very easy. But I like having a better designer than me design the abilities/spells. On my own, for example, I wouldn't come up with a hobgoblin warcaster, a goblin hexer or a gnoll gorger.Definitely. This is a huge thing for me. The first adventure I ran in 4e was the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror. The early parts of that module have a lot of goblin encounters. The variety of goblin stats in the 4e was a huge help.And since then I've run quite a few hobgoblin and gnoll encounters, using the various stats for these creatures, as well as a wide range of human thugs and cutlists and the like drawing on the variety of stats for human foes. What those stat blocks do is let me run a game with a range of mechanically diverse antagonists and encounters, without the story involving some absurdly diverse menagerie of the White Plume Mountain variety.Because of this (but also some other factors, too) the 4e MMs are hands down the best monster books I've used. (Runner up is Rolemaster Creature and Treasures, which packs in heaps of monsters using a very concise but effective stat block.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5889148, member: 42582"] I can level monsters up and down on my own - the maths is very easy. But I like having a better designer than me design the abilities/spells. On my own, for example, I wouldn't come up with a hobgoblin warcaster, a goblin hexer or a gnoll gorger. Definitely. This is a huge thing for me. The first adventure I ran in 4e was the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror. The early parts of that module have a lot of goblin encounters. The variety of goblin stats in the 4e was a huge help. And since then I've run quite a few hobgoblin and gnoll encounters, using the various stats for these creatures, as well as a wide range of human thugs and cutlists and the like drawing on the variety of stats for human foes. What those stat blocks do is let me run a game with a range of mechanically diverse antagonists and encounters, without the [I]story[/I] involving some absurdly diverse menagerie of the White Plume Mountain variety. Because of this (but also some other factors, too) the 4e MMs are hands down the best monster books I've used. (Runner up is Rolemaster Creature and Treasures, which packs in heaps of monsters using a very concise but effective stat block.) [/QUOTE]

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