I like this, in general. All it's missing, for my purposes, is a
For The PC's entry, for how to use this thing when it's on your side, but if Warlocks can summon them, perhaps that's good enonugh for me.
Assuming that I CR the monster properly (or, in 4e, work out its level) this looks like effective design. If it's cheap and lazy, so much the better.
I don't understand why the NPC build rules have to correspond in any way to the PC build rules, nor why either has to correspond to any actual ingame process that a creature goes through between being born and dying.
For a lot of people, this breaks verisimiltude.
The idea is that in the world, a Wizard looks like X. X, in D&D's case, is a character class.
If a Wizard looks like X, then all wizards should look like X. X should be designed for use with both PC's and monsters in mind.
However, 4e may decide that a Wizard looks like X if it's a PC, Y if it's a monster, Z if it's a villain, and have DM's juggle three different definitions of what a "Wizard" is in the game world.
This isn't inherently a terrible thing, because it lets you design X for PC use, Y for use in overlaying a monster, and Z for use in building a humanoid villain, and makes sure that all of them accomplish the goal of the Wizard enough to make it believable (fireballs and magic missiles and all).
However, it comes with a cost, and that cost is the fact that the Gnoll Wizard uses different rules than the Fire Giant Wizard, who uses different rules than the Halfling Wizard, who uses different rules than the hireling Wizard the PC's rented out at the local adventuring guild, who looks different than the Evil Wizard they are all fighting (even the Gnoll and the Fire Giant, who got recruited by the PC's halfway through the adventure, and, accordingly, changed what rules they operate under).
They're all called Wizards, and they're all supposed to represent the same thing in the game world (some nerd with a spellbook and a wand), but they use a different rule for each version because, possibly according to 4e's logic, the rules to make a PC Wizard wouldn't make a very good Fire Giant Wizard, because they're trying for different purposes. And if all you want a Wizard to do is shoot fireballs and magic missiles, and that's all any of these Wizards have in common, why not end the confusion dividing them up into different rules silos with different terms to make them truly different?
Somewhere between the outcry against "Simulationism!" and the hyperbolic example I had above, there's a comfortable middle ground that can hit both sides pretty well.
It's the question of "Do we design one Wizard that works well in a vast multitude of scenarios, knowing that someday, someone, somewhere, will come up with a scenario where it doesn't work?" (where the logic of 3e would have us headed in 4e) or "Do we design a variety of things we call Wizards that do different things depending upon where we put them, but share some broad similarities?"
Personally, I'd recommend using both approaches where it makes sense to use them. Thus, you have one "as-universal-as-possible" Wizard rule that you use to make Wizards in as many basic circumstances as you can theorize, and then, when you run into an area where it *doesn't* work, you alter the name a little and fluff it up a little and make a new rule for it.
4e seems to be embracing the latter approach even when the former approach would probably work just fine, whereas 3e definately focused on the former to the exclusion of the latter until late in the edition.
