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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5537378" data-attributes="member: 78116">That is just absolutely not true. Nothing pre-MM3 could challenge a party with a warlord and if you threw in a wizard with bloodmage you just added insult to injury. These were probably two of the strongest classes in 4E, both from the PHB and in fact they still are. Rangers are another example, it is indisputably the strongest striker in 4E and all the things that make that true are in the PHB.I actually played and ran a game in epic that was well before all the splatbooks came out. I can 100% affirm that monsters pre-MM3 were just as hopeless against an actually well put together party then as they would be now. I think it's too easy for people to forget there is a huge errata document that nerfs the living crap out of the PHB. It's for good reason, because some of the most absolutely ridiculous stuff is based on the PHB (and in fact, still is like multiple attacks + frostcheese - something that could be done right out of the PHB from release).They started out crap and weren't really helped. The best thing to do is to take a decent PHB1 no errata party and play with MM3 monsters. When you realize that when things like surgeless healing and ridiculous attack powers like righteous brand, lead the attack, relentless assault, rain of blows being 4 attacks, bloodmages being the "I win 4E DnD" choice of paragon path etc were in there from the start: paragon/epic monsters never stood a chance. MM3 creatures stand a good chance against this, but even they aren't capable of handling some of the raw bs PHB1 classes produce routinely.It takes some major loops of logic to make MM1 monsters at paragon/epic look good compared to the sheer ridiculousness of many PHB options. Especially doing this in an apples to apples way: Take the errata off the PHB and bring all that really broken crap back into the game. See how well they do then and I can assure you - having done it at the time - it was actually much worse. For comparison, I've actually done the "MM3 maths vs. PHB only unerrata'ed options" test. MM3 monsters really struggle with a decent PHB only party, partly because the core broken elements of that party are obscenely broken. At least they are able to challenge the PCs - something their forebears could not do.If that isn't a firm enough statement I would say that you could not pay me to DM a game with MM1 monsters in paragon/epic vs. the original PHB stuff. I really don't believe anyone has played enough epic to see stuff abused routinely like destructive salutation (Bloodmage), bloodpulse, legions hold (close burst 20, stun on hit and daze on a miss! And turn it into an encounter power once you got high enough with archmage, WHEEEEE. PS Archmage is in the PHB and is STILL probably the best wizard epic destiny in the game IMO), relentless assault (infinite attacks!), lead the attack (The I win button of DnD), rain of blows (4 attacks originally) and such forth. There is a really good reason that stuff from the PHB is still some of the best in the game and why much of it was pounded by errata so much.Edit: It is SUPER important as well to realize the designers had no concept of just how ridiculous PCs got (especially in terms of healing resources and damage resilience) by epic tier. MM1 monsters true flaw isn't maths: It's how poor their powers are. They aren't as condition resistant. They can't do the same things as MM3 creatures (compare apocalypse spells to equivalent level creatures from MM1). In short they can't handle epic PCs because aside from their damage being so poor you might as well use level 20+ housecats, they just don't have the power options to let them compete.</blockquote>

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