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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benimoto" data-source="post: 4031340" data-attributes="member: 40093">This sort of thing was built into 3rd edition too.  While there were guidelines for how much natural armor a monster of a certain size had, or how much damage a slam attack did, there were no hard and fast rules, and the monsters as presented in the monster manuals varied widely.  Plus, monsters had fairly arbitrary abilities to vary even weapon damage, such as the cloud giant's ability to wield an oversized weapon.I can understand that you may have liked the fact that most of these deviations were called out as a special ability, but at their core they were just as arbitrary or handwavey as the 4th edition monster guidelines.The fact that monsters were built in a similar fashion as PCs were was one of the things I was really excited about when 3rd edition came out.  Over the past few years, as I've DMed, I've come to see the limitations of the system.  For that reason, I'm looking forward to the 4th ed monster design guidelines.For years, I've come up with an idea for what I want a monster or NPC to be able to do to challenge the party or provide for an exciting and then had to spend hours rummaging through books for the perfect feat or prestige class ability to fulfill my idea.  Why can't I just throw off the shackles and design the monsters and NPCs I want?</blockquote>