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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 6039751" data-attributes="member: 6701124">I'm definitely convinced that some of the monster descriptions in 4e are at least comparable in content to the descriptions in 2e (I'm hoping that was all just cutting and pasting and not retyping!!).   And I'm willing to grant that 2e should lose points for the way it errs on the side of beating points to death instead of providing additional information, and on how its stat blocks should be more informative.  I'm only willing to concede a few points on the lack of mythos if you'd be happy if the ones provided were for a campaign world you weren't using. But I don't think selected good examples from 4e can argue away how 4e fails some of my personal criteria below.  Nor will showing that 2e has these flaws more than I recall add any points to 4e's tally.  At best (?) it would show I should dislike them both <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I think a good description should at least briefly describe the creature's appearance - e.g. a gnoll is a humanoid hyena - without having to rely on the picture (especially since all of the monster books seem hit and miss on the art).  This is missing for a sizable number of creatures in 4e (and sometimes the picture either unlabeled or pages away), and I don't know if its missing for any in 2e except the animals. I think a good description shouldn't leave the creature's general origin or the nature of their attacks up to inference of possibly inexperienced DMs, when a few sentences would make it clear - e.g. how the various zombies are created... some of the ones in 2e, for example, are not created in the usual way.  This is completely missing for a sizable number of creatures in 4e, and 2e makes an attempt at it for virtually all of them except the animals. I think a good description shouldn't leave out vital game aspects of iconic monsters, like dealing with the eyestalks of a beholder. I think a good description should do what you want done with all the demographics in 2e -- have information of one type all in one place.  All of 2e is organized in a standard format.  In 4e the text is all over the page intermixed with stat blocks, sometimes literally pages away from the stat blocks. :::shrugs:: But I guess "good description", like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder... even if we don't know how many eyes that is.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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