Exactly. Combos in Level Up involve heritage (who your parents are), culture (the society you grew up in), background (the job you had before you became an adventurer), destiny (your goal as an adventurer), class and subclass.
The 4e MM was a little too crunchy. Monster entries need to be a cross of crunch and fluff for the DM to set up a challenging encounter for the players. The 5e MM and Level Up's Monstrous Menagerie do this.
That all depends on what you personally find inspiring. I've opened the 5e MM at random and turned up the page on Gargoyles (p140) and found the matching 4e MM page.
What do I get from 5e? Five paragraphs an indent and a statblock:
- The paragraphs:
- A basic description
- One saying that they are animate stone
- One saying they have a deadly reputation
- One saying they are cruel servants (on re-reading there are two just only a little is marked in bold)
- One line and a half that belongs in the statblock saying they don't need to eat drink, breathe, or sleep
- A section on their link to Ogremoch
- A statblock where there are only a couple of differences between it and an oversized bear
- It can fly
- You do half damage if you hit it with normal weapons and shouldn't try to petrify or poison it (but for some reason the stone doesn't e.g. resist fire any better than flesh)
- It disguises itself as stone
Honestly it reads to me as if the authors were paid by the word. In particular you do not need two paragraphs to say that gargoyles are cruel servants when you also say that gargoyles delight in creating terror and causing pain.
Meanwhile I look at the 4e one and I see about as much and at least for me it's far more inspiring. Three general sections, not one but two statblocks, and two tactics sections.
- An introductory paragraph
- A section of Gargoyle Lore with an appropriate difficulty check
- A section on encounter groups, giving you a suggestion as to who they are likely to work with that you can just drop into play
- Two different statblocks - one for your standard gargoyle and one for a higher level one
- A distinctive special ability with two signature abilities
- The ability to turn to stone as a standard action giving it DR 25/All, regeneration, and tremorsense (and that it leaves as a minor action)
- A flyby attack which recharges after it turns to stone
- (Oh, and it can fly and is immune to petrification)
With that statblock the tactics section is
almost redundant. It is on its own a memorable encounter with the gargoyles turning into stone and even if you know which they are they are still almost indestructible while stone. And the suggested encounters also help.
The next page I flicked through to in the 5e MM was Goblins - and even comparing the two is absolutely unfair as 5e is not in the same league as 4e here. I'll give 5e its due and say that when you compare it to any edition
except 4e it looks good, with the basic Goblin having Nimble Escape while the Goblin Boss can also pull people into its way.
But in terms of inspiration 4e leaves 5e in the dust for me. We've the encounter groups of which there are half a dozen (and they would be
so much better if instead of just saying "Encounter Group" they gave each one a name). But instead of two stat blocks - "Normal goblin" and "Boss Goblin" there are Goblin Cutter Minions, the Goblin Blackblade with a 1d6 Sneak Attack, the standard Goblin Warrior that likes to run around, the Goblin Sharpshooter (again with Sneak Attack), the Goblin Hexer (Goblins have their own type of mages with really cruel magics - and it's this that the 5e Underboss gets its signature ability from), the Goblin Skullcleaver who rages, and the Goblin Underboss who has a quasi-warlord ability and who has strong survival instincts.
Sure 5e spends an entire paragraph to say that goblins have Challenging Lairs while 4e spends about half a sentence saying "[goblin lairs are]... often easily defensible and often riddled with simple traps designed to snare or kill intruders".
But are you really telling me, hand on heart, that you can not see why I find the monster manual that gives goblins their own type of spellcasters (which is really useful and evocative fluff), gives most goblins extra damage for having combat advantage (again fluff made manifest), and gives me encounter groups I can use straight out of the book containing multiple types of monster (some using just goblins, some using goblins and other animals, and some where the goblins are getting bossed around by hobgoblins or bugbears - more fluff made manifest) is much better for setting up challenging encounters and inspiring than the one that just has blank prose, no tactical advice, and only "goblin" and "goblin boss" even if the 5e one spends literally eight lines saying "the strongest goblins are bosses but often ousted and some are replaced by hobgoblins and bugbears"?
I find that the 4e monster manual has more fluff than any other edition because it follows the rule "Show, don't tell". When you write the fluff as text boxes you are telling. When you write it into the encounter groups, and into the character's abilities you are showing. But telling is more basic and easier to understand.
