Here's my response to Neonchameleon from the other thread (it's kind of long, but the basic takeaway is that stablocks aren't what make a monster book wonderful to me -- adventure ideas are).
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Kamikaze Midget said:
Personally, I think the focus on stat-blocks over "pointless notes on piercer ecology" after that diminished the utility of the MMs to me. Good stat blocks are essential and useful, but piles of numbers and keywords don't make me want to do anything.
Good stat blocks tell me how monsters think, how they behave, and how they organise. An orc and a goblin behave very differently beyond their size and their equipment just from the statblocks in 4e.
IMXP, the 4e stat blocks tell me one thing: how this thing kills my players' things. That feels a lot more narrow to me than telling me a whole lot about the creatures' place in the world. Again, a good statblock is a useful tool, and should absolutely reflect the critter's mind and behavior and organization. If I were to compare statblocks, I'd say 4e's are probably better than 2e's. But to me, a monster book needs to be much, much more than stat blocks. Statblocks alone don't make me want to use goblins. Notes like "a goblin tribe has an exact pecking order; each member knows who is above him and who is below him. They fight amongst themselves constantly to move up this social ladder." have me thinking about how a goblin turncoat might lead the adventurers to his old lair to destroy the leaders there, only to come take it over after they leave. Bits like "goblin tactics" don't bring me there. They bring me to what a fight with this guy looks like. Which is useful, but isn't enough for me to make an adventure out of.
Comparing 2e and 4e goblin fluff/mechanics, 2e goblin fluff tells me how many goblins there are in a generic tribe. 4e goblins show me how they are expert ambushers and what the edge goblins have over most-non-goblins is at this.
I think part of this is the change in fluff between 2e and 4e, but 2e goblins aren't particularly good ambushers. They do it, they're just not any better at it than a human or a dwarf. Instead, they're organized -- you'll get hit by a dozen of them at once.
That tribe info isn't just what a tribe looks like. It's how you go from "I want there to be goblins at this point on the map" to an entire dungeon in a handful of die rolls. That's what I, as a very spontaneous DM, call
extremely useful.
This works in combination with older D&D's method of random encounter creation. The reason you'd be looking the goblin up in the MM is because it popped up on your random monster chart (or you chose it). From there, the goblin entry gives you rules for a random encounter (4d6) and for an entire lair (4d10*10 + 1 leader and 4 assistants for every 40 goblis, + 25% chance of 10% of those with worgs + 1d4*10 worgs + 60% chance of 5d6 wolves + 20% chance of 2d6 bugbears + a shaman if you want + 160% noncombatant (60% females + 100% children)).
If I didn't know 5 minutes ago that the party was going to encounter a goblin tonight, I now have an entire goblin tribe ready to go. That's useful information for me, either pre-prep or in the moment. Maybe it could be streamlined a little bit, but the idea of spontaneously generating a lair from a monster entry is
awesomely useful for me as a DM.
The tribe's relationships (bugbears, wolves, worgs) also help me flesh out the world, develop factions, and spur further adventures. If I've got prep time, I can figure out how the worgs and bugbears might react to this goblin's little scheme to become king. If not, I at least have enough variety to keep the dungeon interesting.
And then there's the magic. Good statblocks reflect the casters. Goblin shamans hex and produce nasty clouds of pestilence. Ogre shamans are storm shamans, using elemental thunder and lightning. In neither case are the casters generic casters who happen to be ogres or goblins.
Sure, but that's still just more ways to murder PC's. That said, it is more useful to have all the rules for how they're going to murder the PC's in one place rather than spread out amongst different books. But the spheres listed in the 2e goblin entry for a shaman give me a broad start: they use Divination, Protection, and the reverse of Healing and Sun (so, pain and darkness). It'd be better to have an example spell or two, but it's a good start.
A well designed 4e statblock literally shows me how a monster of that type moves and how they fight when the rubber meets the road. And the monster entry with the multiple statblocks shows me how they organise naturally. On their best day, the 2e Monstrous Manual will tell me things like this. But the 4e one shows me and does it freely.
It shows you how it will fight.
It doesn't do anything else.
I see that as remarkably limited in comparison to what a 2e monster entry shows you. I mean, judging from 2e, goblin combat stats almost don't matter: their morale is 15, their tactics are "crude," and they run away from anything like a face-to-face fight. A goblin "fight" is likely to take all of two rounds: the first two rounds, the goblins test the mettle of the party, then one or two drop, and the rest run off to try an ambush (unless there's a gnome or a dwarf around). Fighting is one of the least interesting things that a goblin does.
On the other hand reading the 4e statblocks so that you can see the picture they are painting of the monsters is a skill and there should be more designers' notes on how the statblocks work.
You say skill I say chore.
I want to know more about how to use goblins in an adventure, not more about how to use them in a fight. Like I said in the other thread, making a bench without a good saw is tough, but making a bench without wanting to make a bench is impossible. A combat stat-block is a good saw, but it doesn't make me want to build a bench. The 2e monster entries are some old, rusty saws, but I can get a better toolset, and those entries make me wnat to build that bench!
I find the Monstrous Manual to be second rate fluff that ranks behind e.g. the 3.5 Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon in terms of inspiring plots. And in terms of inspiring throwaway scenes, I can pick three random monsters from any 4e monster manual from the MM3 onwards, throw in a piece of terrain or two, and if I have an immediate motivation (something 4e MMs are IMO better at providing than 2e) then it'll take me less than a minute to create a good scene. That's inspiring.
Combat stat blocks don't make me want to make adventures because I'm not that interested in combat when I make adventures. Relationships between neighboring monsters? Motivations? Plots? Notes on lair-building? I can use that TONIGHT! And maybe for the next 3 months.
4 different ways to murder a PC? *Yawn.*
That's me. And I absolutely think a good statblock is a good idea. It's never going to
replace the other information for me. In fact, the other information is more important to me, since I can kludge whatever rules I need, but I can't always kludge compelling adventures.
And I don't need the monster manual to offer me the main plot of the story. If I didn't have one I wouldn't be running the game.
Not the plot. The conflict.
I don't make up stories before I sit down and play. I want the game -- the players, the environment, the dice, the situation -- to tell me what to do. I want dramatic situations. Uppity goblins give me a dramatic situation. "Shifts" do not.
And fundamentally my belief that the 4e MMs are superior boil down to the fact that when I look at a humanoid monster in 2e I see a generic humanoid of a certain size. 4e I see a part of a team, moving and contributing in a certain way.
You're looking at a forest and only seeing a forest. If you drill down, you can see that each tree is unique.
That is, goblins and orcs and githyanki are different creatures. But their difference isn't necessarily in how they kill things. The difference is in the kind of stories you can tell with them. 2e helps me tell stories with them. 4e helps me kill PC's with them. I only kill PC's within the context of a story.
And when I look at a
2e dragon I see a bag of hit points with claws and wings, and that can pull down a cloud of darkness. When I look at the 4e Black Dragon below, I see something almost unstoppable that comes tearing in to the enemy from under the surface of a swamp and is inhumanly unstoppable. It turns the lights out on the enemy, setting them up for its own attacks, and reacts to some attacks, twisting out of the way and bashing the enemy to the floor. And its very blood is acidic and painful.
See, when I look at the 2e black dragon, I see that it hates humans, that it likes ambushes, that it can corrupt water, grow plants, spread darkness, summon insects, and tame reptiles. And suddenly I see it lurking in a town's water supply, poisoning it, sending snakes and plagues of mosquitoes up through the wells, waiting for the foolish humans to try and drive it away.
I don't see a
fight, I see an
adventure. I could throw my PC's into that tomorrow.
When I look at the 4e black dragon, I see something that is probably pretty good at killing things. But that doesn't tell me how to use it in my games. The 2e black dragon is a threat to all even without knowing her attack bonus or her HP total. The 4e black dragon, knowing all that, is no more than that.
I'm not sure what fluff other than the spells for higher level dragons (Corrupt Water, Plant Growth) there is in the 2e Monstrous Manual that isn't summarised in the statblock above or obvious from it (like Black Dragons liking to fly at night; they are black, they are lurkers, they have dark vision and they are trained in stealth - or Black Dragons liking to fight in water; they have the aquatic trait).
Do you see how the idea of the adventure I had relied on a lot of those abilities? Even those abilities don't kill people? Because killing people is perhaps the least interesting thing about a monster to me? Because stats are easy to fudge, but interesting conflict is not?
Those abilities that do not kill are important.
So what am I missing from the 2e Monstrous Manual that makes it so good?
Mostly, you're missing that combat stats aren't the most important thing for everybody. Adventure ideas are much more useful in play to me than fightin' numbers.
And the big reason is this: Fighting numbers are
easy to fudge.
But adventure ideas....man, you don't have those, and you don't have a game.
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