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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5965433" data-attributes="member: 54877">As built, if I understand you correctly, I'd say the roles are part descriptive, part prescriptive. &nbsp;They are descriptive in that nothing stops you from staring with &quot;ogre&quot;, adding some particular spells and special abilities, and calling that an &quot;ogre magi&quot;. Then if you wanted to publish that thing and/or evaluate it against the 4E encounter rules (which are quite different from 3E in some ways), you'd then decide on the closest role that matched and assign a level. Obviously, if this was for home use, you might not even care. If you did a decent job of translating an earlier ogre magi to the spirit of 4E, this would probably come out as a controller, though a striker or artillery is certainly possible. &nbsp;The prescriptive part would be that having picked a role, if you wanted to be technically correct, you might need to adjust some of the numbers a bit to fit into the expected range of a monster of that level and role. Or alternately, adjusting the level might do it. &nbsp;I personally read that as, &quot;If you don't conform to the numbers, level, and role guidelines, your creature won't perform correctly in the quite nifty 4E encounter budget guidelines.&quot; Note the &quot;if&quot;. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> By nature, then, the monster manual entries are going to be more prescriptive than what you can do yourself with the same materials, but this is about the encounter guidelines, not the monsters per se.&nbsp;This is different in degree, not kind, from if you wrote a 3E PC up with a bunch of Vancian arcane spells, relatively low hit points, etc. you'd be constrained to something like &quot;wizard&quot; or &quot;sorcerer&quot; for the class.&nbsp; You can move those numbers and abilities however you want in your own game and call it a &quot;bard&quot; or something even less obvious, if you want, but that wouldn't wash in a published book of NPCs.&nbsp; You could multiclass for something that the monster roles don't do, but then with 4E's level scaling bonuses, and relatively narrow differences in stats between the roles, there isn't much room for a multiclass role monster to even exist.&nbsp; If you want a &quot;controller/striker&quot; ogre magi, that is pretty much going to be swapping out a power or two, anyway--maybe adjusting a number here or there.&nbsp; It's really going to be a &quot;controller&quot; with some secondary strikerish abilities or vice versa.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5965433, member: 54877"] As built, if I understand you correctly, I'd say the roles are part descriptive, part prescriptive. They are descriptive in that nothing stops you from staring with "ogre", adding some particular spells and special abilities, and calling that an "ogre magi". Then if you wanted to publish that thing and/or evaluate it against the 4E encounter rules (which are quite different from 3E in some ways), you'd then decide on the closest role that matched and assign a level. Obviously, if this was for home use, you might not even care. If you did a decent job of translating an earlier ogre magi to the spirit of 4E, this would probably come out as a controller, though a striker or artillery is certainly possible. The prescriptive part would be that having picked a role, if you wanted to be technically correct, you might need to adjust some of the numbers a bit to fit into the expected range of a monster of that level and role. Or alternately, adjusting the level might do it. I personally read that as, "If you don't conform to the numbers, level, and role guidelines, your creature won't perform correctly in the quite nifty 4E encounter budget guidelines." Note the "if". :D By nature, then, the monster manual entries are going to be more prescriptive than what you can do yourself with the same materials, but this is about the encounter guidelines, not the monsters per se. This is different in degree, not kind, from if you wrote a 3E PC up with a bunch of Vancian arcane spells, relatively low hit points, etc. you'd be constrained to something like "wizard" or "sorcerer" for the class. You can move those numbers and abilities however you want in your own game and call it a "bard" or something even less obvious, if you want, but that wouldn't wash in a published book of NPCs. You could multiclass for something that the monster roles don't do, but then with 4E's level scaling bonuses, and relatively narrow differences in stats between the roles, there isn't much room for a multiclass role monster to even exist. If you want a "controller/striker" ogre magi, that is pretty much going to be swapping out a power or two, anyway--maybe adjusting a number here or there. It's really going to be a "controller" with some secondary strikerish abilities or vice versa. [/QUOTE]

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