I love 4E monster design. The online monster builder was fantastic. I had so much fun giving orcs and goblins unique abilities that didn't imbalance the game. Solo monsters in the first monster manual were kinda just big bags of hit points. Monster manual 2 and 3 rectified these issues. As did Open Grave. I love reading monster stats in 4E. I like that they don't have spell lists, just abilities. They are all unique. It's so cool. Also, the Soldier, Lurker, Brute, Artillery, Controller and Skirmisher roles help to understand exactly how these creatures behave in combat was really helpful.
I remember when the pocket sized monster vault came out, and everyone was "holy shit, THAT's a dragon." The Monster Manual on a Business Card made adjusting levels or creating monsters from whole cloth so easy.
Glad to hear the discourse is improving around D&D4! I’ve gotten flak in real life for expressing that I liked it so I’m always happy to hear things are improving.
You and me both. There are still people I won't discuss it with, since their minds are made up, but overall it is so great to see more people approach it with an open mind.
I also liked them, but what was especially nice to see is that they tried to improve! If you look at the Monster Vault (or even Monster Vault Threats to Nentir vale which is even better), you can see how the monster stat blocks etc. improved further.
@@TheyDarthElmo It shows that they had more people working on it (including layout) and also more money (leaving more white space for readability). Beacon also has a great layout, while many other games just put too much stuff near together
This was one of the best things of 4e. They were fantastic with multiple versions of the monsters, the art, and giving bigger single monsters bonus actions to even the action economy. I like minions and elites, I already was using something similar. I didn't like the mass amount of HP, it kinda just drags out the fight. Class cannons are more fun for me, they hit really damn hard and they're going to drop a player or two but the fight is quick still. The 4e monster manual had me look at how I ran monsters, it was a cleaner more tested version of a lot of what I was trying. Even though I didn't play much 4e and didn't like it as a whole with the PCs powers and healing surges, there was a lot of value that changed up how I ran my 3e games.
Best monsters of any edition of D&D. Easy encounter builds. Fully inclusive monster stat blocks (no page flipping), minions (!), and monsters do cool stuff. Kobolds play like Kobolds!
I looove the monster design of 4e Bloodied status and effects are genius, Minions are amazing, monster and NPC special abilities are so fun and thematic, and there was always such a unique tactical element to most fights: Enemies who did more damage on flanking, enemies who could work of each others skills, enemies who could shove you around, it was great
I love these videos. I have no plans to ever use 4e (although I may get some of the map books/packs that look neat), but it's still fun to hear about from someone who played it. Also, can't go wrong with Wayne Reynolds being the main artist for the edition. Everyone has their favorite and Wayne is mine. His art isn't necessarily the reason I started getting pathfinder 1e and early 2e books as well as old 3rd edition stuff, but his art on those editions was definitely an extra perk! I'm a little jealous 4e fans got so much of his art for their edition, actually haha
These are my favourite monster books of any RPG ever, not just d&d. Beautifully designed, and easy to use. Also people's complaint about the numbers not being right is way overblown and was trivial to fix.
Great, great, great review!!! I too am a recent 4e lover after playing 2nd, 3rd, and 3.5 for so long I only have 4 books in my collection. If you could do a solo review on the DMG. Thanks again.
As a (now) frequent viewer, I personally love the 3.0/3.5 comparisons. It gives a lot of insight into why they might have changed specific things or gone into certain directions. Additionally, my passion project I've been working on is a 3.5 revision utilizing its framework but with several ideas/fixes from newer editions, so comparisons such as these have been very informative into areas for improvement.
I always enjoy hearing you talk about 4E! This is by far my favorite edition of D&D and I’m not afraid to admit it anymore which is really refreshing. It did so many things right and my group and I keep going back to it because it’s so darn fun. We’ve played four sessions of the new edition and my players are already bored of it and asked me if we can just go back to 4E lol. So now I’m in the process of switching everything over hahahaha.
I wish my group would be as receptive. My online group is mostly interested in trying it, though I have a player who dislikes 4th (B/X is his favorite version).
@ B/X is actually my second favorite version of the game and as weird as it sounds it’s probably the reason I appreciate 4E so much. People think I’m crazy but the old school sense of freedom that exists with B/X is the same feeling that 4E stirs up in me. For it has an ease of use that’s on par with B/X. They both can be picked up and played with little to no prep. That’s the essence of old-school play.
It looks really cool, but 4th edition gives me an excuse to use all my minis lol. I also can't imagine it's as tactical without the grid, but I haven't tried it yet to verify whether it is or not.
Honestly, there’s a lot of really great ideas in 4e, many of which I’ve implemented in my PF1 hack, especially GM-facing rules like what you’ve talked about in this video.
As you were talking about what you liked with the Beholder, an idea popped in my head. You could do deep dives into the different monsters in the MM and expanding them out to how they would behave and act in a basic encounter based on their abilities and stats (the idea that monsters, like the Beholder, are not dumb and knows how to play to their strengths)
Thank you for the video. Just one small comment: Solo monsters did not only have more HP, but like the beholder you showed, also always have ways to attack several players at the same time. Like the aura and double attack (or quadrupple attack when being bloodied). I think having a cultleader with minions with such a special ability is great btw! About future videos: I would really like you show the encounter designs (and maybe also show shortly how the monster stat block evolved from MM1 to your Monster vault, because it did and made it even better).
That's a great suggestion. The next video will be making encounters to fill a dungeon/cave. I plan on using just the 1st Monster Manual, but a comparison between them all is something I will do in the near future.
While I have no hate for 4e, I don't see myself ever picking it up. Maybe the DMG, but the whole system was made with a gamist design over simulationist design making me apathetic of it.
My biggest gripe with 4e was how much lore was changed, the example I always go to is the Lamia, which became a swarm form creature, for some weird reason, it was stuff like that which made 4e (from a fluff perspective) entirely non-compatable with my games, it's not that 4e was bad, it just replaced the edition I loved and made so many of these inexplicable changes, the alignments was another weird thing, like you could be Lawful Good, Neutral, or Chaotic, if I remember right, and that felt like they tried to mash like BECMI alignment conventions with ADnD alignment conventions, so it was like a 7 alignment system, for some reason? Gripes aside, I stole a lot of ideas from 4e for my PF1 games, which were always more DND than Pathfinder, like the Warlock pact system, which when the 3.5 warlock was first introduced didn't exist at all beyond narrative, and they eventually added a series of lineage feats, but as for fleshing out a system where warlocks with different patrons felt different, 4e is what gave us that. I might get flak in less open minded spaces for saying this but... 4e might make a better "chassis" for the style of playing we call OSR than anything else made after 2nd edition, one of the grips a lot of us 3.5 enjoyers had early on was how it felt like a simplified version of playing the game, which feels like a silly complaint to have all these years later, tbh, plus the essence of OSR is to have a simple, robust set of rules which allows the player space to look for answers in places other than their character sheet before they go back to their stats and abilities. I love 3.5 but there was just SOOOOO MUCH stuff that it did become kinda hard to ignore the character sheet, I mean you just spent 3-5 levels getting to the feat you wanted, so now you wanna use it as much as possible, because ofc you do, nobody can fault you for that, but as I get older I prefer running systems that fall (broadly) under the OSR description, and you've gotten me curious about 4e again. I still have the PHB somewhere, the art was too good to just let it go even though I wasn't really using it much lol. I'm especially interested in the booklets you me ruined in the last video, because I was unaware of the specific setting for 4e until you mentioned it, and as a true "lorewhore" I NEED to know more about this setting😅
There was a system in 3.5 for having mobs of mooks, so an individual goblin wouldn't have to roll a 20 to hit a mid-high level character, they would be getting +5 or +10 bonuses from all of their comrades helping them out, it's one of the 3.5 rules that a lot of people overlook and it's very important to understanding the ECL factor in determining the CR for an encounter. 1 goblin is CR 1/4 but 10 goblins isn't CR 2.5 but rather closer to CR 5, actually. This does have the issue of the CR for the encounter going down as individual opponents are felled, which stands out more with mobs than with like, a handful of stronger creatures, but it is pretty reliable nonetheless.
@@DravenSwiftbow I also really liked the Raven Queen, some might say she steps on the toes of Wee Jas a little bit, but I'm fine with two goth goddesses in one setting to be perfectly honest😅
Well the default setting of 4E was a new setting, but I was never invested in game lore anyway. Still I like the points of light setting for making it easy to add things while still giving plot hooks etc. I also like the simpler alignment. Makes more sense to me
Great video! So true about the toxic hate towards 4E. I just wish I could find players! Sigh... I love the monster design for 4e. And I've implemented the minion rules to the Genesys game and it worked out well so far.
I agree with you that 4e is underrated and it’s really fun to hear your thoughts about it :) have you also looked into 13th Age? It’s by the same lead designer and apparently what he intended 4e to be all along. It would be great if you could make a comparison of the 2 systems!
As I mentioned while commenting your first video of the series, I did not like many of the changes to monster and NPCs creation in 4e, especially the fact that you had to use three different sets of rules. I want to use just one set of rules for all of them, much like how it worked in 3rd edition and Pathfinder 1e. I go to the extent to say that in 3rd edition monsters weren't created as characters enough. They were still a bit too different in many ways. For example, 3.5 monsters advancing by class were basically like characters, but monsters that advanced by hit dice weren't, and these were very difficult to evaluate or balance. Pathfinder made it easier to create, modify or advance monsters, but still it was not good enough for me. I can be quite obsessive about details at times. I don't agree about not being able to give unique abilities to monsters in 3.5. That was actually one of the suggested methods for advancing one. What was hard was evaluating them to give the modified creature the proper CR. For character-like creatures there were plenty of ways to make them special. You already cited feats and prestige classes, but there were also substitution levels, templates and, in Pathfinder, archetypes. And this type of foes could have hirelings, henchmen, and minions of their own, plus access to any kind of gear. Minions and solos were a cool idea, but they could have been implemented in 3.5 too. Pathfinder, again, gave a hint about that. A minion is fundamentally a foe of a certain challenge rating which is actually easy to defeat, so in PF1 it could be created by applying a simple template to any kind of creature, lowering its CR enough so that you would need four such weakened creatures to make up for a normal one. For example, only 1-2 HPs per HD, less AC, and worse damage output could be enough. I don't think that minions being basically immune to area damage effects is a good idea, though. Being able to wipe out a mob of nobodies with such an attack would be very cool and also probably a resource well spent. For solo monsters, the solution was even simpler. Fundamentally, in 4e a solo is a foe that counts as four creatures of the same CR, but in 3.5 or PF1 that's a creature with a CR four points higher, which can be extremely deadly. For example, if you wanted an orc chief worth as four CR 3 orc marauders, it had to be created as a CR 7 character, with corresponding gear and abilities. What many boss-type monsters lacked, though, was both survivability and mitigation. And they usually had very simplified descriptions, devoid of any hint on how to use their many abilities to really challenge a party. And many DMs, me included, often made the error to start the boss encounter by giving it no time to prepare for the players, as if it had no way to detect them before they appeared in front of it. When I made checks for the boss correctly, often the players could not just blast it in orbit before it even acted. And in a couple occasions, it was the players that had to sustain the boss attacks before they even noticed it was upon them. I agree that having pre-made stat blocks for monsters can be useful for new DMs, but for me having to craft an entire new stat block from scratch every time I want a different variety of a specific creature is a real pain, even more if the creature is not already in the books. To make an example, I once tried to create a pack of wild dogs for a 4e beginner encounter. I needed four or five different kinds of dogs, including a minion and an elite types. It took me more than an hour to get a satisfying result. To begin with, there is no "dog" entry in the manual, so I had to start from the generic rules to have the basic stats figured out. Then I had to modify them for role, and finally I had to give each type of dog some power, so that they had any chance of working together. This last part took a lot of time, since there were no actual suggestions on how to make balanced powers from scratch. In 3.5 or PF1, I would have just taken the basic dog entry from the Monster Manual and tweaked it, changing stats, feats and special abilities in a few minutes. One thing that many do not remember is that when 3rd edition came out, on the official D&D site, every week WotC published an example of an advanced or modified creature to be freely used either as a foe or as a NPC, and many more could be found on both the official magazines. I have saved those pages on a pendrive, alongside many other extra free content from that long lost site. What is not really good in both 3rd and 4th editions, as well as Pathfinder and 5e, is how each single foe you defeat rewards you with experience points. And the fact that you need only a few kills of your APL to level up doesn't help. I solved that issue by giving XPs only for succeeding in quests or by completing an adventure or campaign. This allows me to use CR just to evaluate the deadliness of an encounter, not having to math out the experience I would have to give the players after the fight is over. This also gives the players the choice to skip fighting altogether, since it doesn't really matter how they reach their goal. I loved some of the new concepts of creatures in 4e, though. Unfortunately, I hated a lot of others too. For me, for example, 4e's dragons are amongst the worst ever appeared in D&D. Also, sorry for another wall of text, but your videos are worth spending a few more words, in my humble opinion.
I appreciate your insights. I usually use Milestone advancement when I run games as well, though for Savage Tide I am using XP to see if the encounters and obstacles give the PC's the XP's they need to be at the level the adventures expect them to be. I always welcome feedback, so please keep it coming!
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I love 4E monster design. The online monster builder was fantastic. I had so much fun giving orcs and goblins unique abilities that didn't imbalance the game. Solo monsters in the first monster manual were kinda just big bags of hit points. Monster manual 2 and 3 rectified these issues. As did Open Grave. I love reading monster stats in 4E. I like that they don't have spell lists, just abilities. They are all unique. It's so cool. Also, the Soldier, Lurker, Brute, Artillery, Controller and Skirmisher roles help to understand exactly how these creatures behave in combat was really helpful.
I remember when the pocket sized monster vault came out, and everyone was "holy shit, THAT's a dragon."
The Monster Manual on a Business Card made adjusting levels or creating monsters from whole cloth so easy.
Hope you’ll continue this series whenever you feel moved to. Really enjoying them!
I plan on it. The reception has been much better than I expected, so it's really got me excited to continue the series!
Glad to hear the discourse is improving around D&D4! I’ve gotten flak in real life for expressing that I liked it so I’m always happy to hear things are improving.
You and me both. There are still people I won't discuss it with, since their minds are made up, but overall it is so great to see more people approach it with an open mind.
I like the way 4e books were formatted, clear and readable.
I also liked them, but what was especially nice to see is that they tried to improve! If you look at the Monster Vault (or even Monster Vault Threats to Nentir vale which is even better), you can see how the monster stat blocks etc. improved further.
You know I never thought about this until I read this but the 4e formatting is so good, I never had a problem with it unlike some other games.
@@TheyDarthElmo It shows that they had more people working on it (including layout) and also more money (leaving more white space for readability). Beacon also has a great layout, while many other games just put too much stuff near together
Darksun really benefitted from that
This was one of the best things of 4e. They were fantastic with multiple versions of the monsters, the art, and giving bigger single monsters bonus actions to even the action economy. I like minions and elites, I already was using something similar. I didn't like the mass amount of HP, it kinda just drags out the fight. Class cannons are more fun for me, they hit really damn hard and they're going to drop a player or two but the fight is quick still. The 4e monster manual had me look at how I ran monsters, it was a cleaner more tested version of a lot of what I was trying. Even though I didn't play much 4e and didn't like it as a whole with the PCs powers and healing surges, there was a lot of value that changed up how I ran my 3e games.
Best monsters of any edition of D&D. Easy encounter builds. Fully inclusive monster stat blocks (no page flipping), minions (!), and monsters do cool stuff. Kobolds play like Kobolds!
I looove the monster design of 4e
Bloodied status and effects are genius, Minions are amazing, monster and NPC special abilities are so fun and thematic, and there was always such a unique tactical element to most fights:
Enemies who did more damage on flanking, enemies who could work of each others skills, enemies who could shove you around, it was great
It had a tactical depth that I really liked about it. I found, in my experiences at least, that it helped keep the players more engaged.
I love these videos. I have no plans to ever use 4e (although I may get some of the map books/packs that look neat), but it's still fun to hear about from someone who played it.
Also, can't go wrong with Wayne Reynolds being the main artist for the edition. Everyone has their favorite and Wayne is mine. His art isn't necessarily the reason I started getting pathfinder 1e and early 2e books as well as old 3rd edition stuff, but his art on those editions was definitely an extra perk! I'm a little jealous 4e fans got so much of his art for their edition, actually haha
His art is fantastic!
These are my favourite monster books of any RPG ever, not just d&d. Beautifully designed, and easy to use. Also people's complaint about the numbers not being right is way overblown and was trivial to fix.
I love all editions of D&D, but especially 4th Ed! Keep em coming!
Same here!
Great, great, great review!!! I too am a recent 4e lover after playing 2nd, 3rd, and 3.5 for so long I only have 4 books in my collection. If you could do a solo review on the DMG. Thanks again.
I plan on covering all the hardcover books. The DMG and DMG 2 are top on the list.
As a (now) frequent viewer, I personally love the 3.0/3.5 comparisons. It gives a lot of insight into why they might have changed specific things or gone into certain directions.
Additionally, my passion project I've been working on is a 3.5 revision utilizing its framework but with several ideas/fixes from newer editions, so comparisons such as these have been very informative into areas for improvement.
I always enjoy hearing you talk about 4E! This is by far my favorite edition of D&D and I’m not afraid to admit it anymore which is really refreshing. It did so many things right and my group and I keep going back to it because it’s so darn fun. We’ve played four sessions of the new edition and my players are already bored of it and asked me if we can just go back to 4E lol. So now I’m in the process of switching everything over hahahaha.
I wish my group would be as receptive. My online group is mostly interested in trying it, though I have a player who dislikes 4th (B/X is his favorite version).
@ B/X is actually my second favorite version of the game and as weird as it sounds it’s probably the reason I appreciate 4E so much. People think I’m crazy but the old school sense of freedom that exists with B/X is the same feeling that 4E stirs up in me. For it has an ease of use that’s on par with B/X. They both can be picked up and played with little to no prep. That’s the essence of old-school play.
Rob Heinsoo, the creator of 4e, also created 13th Age. The systems are very similar. Personally, I thinks it's even better.
I have 13th Age, maybe I will include it in this series.
It looks really cool, but 4th edition gives me an excuse to use all my minis lol. I also can't imagine it's as tactical without the grid, but I haven't tried it yet to verify whether it is or not.
@SeiferVII Honestly my table uses minis and battle mats for 13th Age. Positioning is still key to powers and tactics.
@Kill2Hard101 Oh interesting. That does sell it a bit more for me.
Love this as video series!
Thank you for the 4e love. It is needed!
Honestly, there’s a lot of really great ideas in 4e, many of which I’ve implemented in my PF1 hack, especially GM-facing rules like what you’ve talked about in this video.
As you were talking about what you liked with the Beholder, an idea popped in my head. You could do deep dives into the different monsters in the MM and expanding them out to how they would behave and act in a basic encounter based on their abilities and stats (the idea that monsters, like the Beholder, are not dumb and knows how to play to their strengths)
That's a really great suggestion. I may have to give it a try!
Thank you for the video. Just one small comment: Solo monsters did not only have more HP, but like the beholder you showed, also always have ways to attack several players at the same time. Like the aura and double attack (or quadrupple attack when being bloodied).
I think having a cultleader with minions with such a special ability is great btw!
About future videos: I would really like you show the encounter designs (and maybe also show shortly how the monster stat block evolved from MM1 to your Monster vault, because it did and made it even better).
That's a great suggestion. The next video will be making encounters to fill a dungeon/cave. I plan on using just the 1st Monster Manual, but a comparison between them all is something I will do in the near future.
"not necessarily a weekly thing...." 🤭 If you didn't post a 4e video today, the comment section was going to riot.
Well, I'm glad I defused that situation. I wouldn't want a riot after all.
While I have no hate for 4e, I don't see myself ever picking it up. Maybe the DMG, but the whole system was made with a gamist design over simulationist design making me apathetic of it.
My biggest gripe with 4e was how much lore was changed, the example I always go to is the Lamia, which became a swarm form creature, for some weird reason, it was stuff like that which made 4e (from a fluff perspective) entirely non-compatable with my games, it's not that 4e was bad, it just replaced the edition I loved and made so many of these inexplicable changes, the alignments was another weird thing, like you could be Lawful Good, Neutral, or Chaotic, if I remember right, and that felt like they tried to mash like BECMI alignment conventions with ADnD alignment conventions, so it was like a 7 alignment system, for some reason?
Gripes aside, I stole a lot of ideas from 4e for my PF1 games, which were always more DND than Pathfinder, like the Warlock pact system, which when the 3.5 warlock was first introduced didn't exist at all beyond narrative, and they eventually added a series of lineage feats, but as for fleshing out a system where warlocks with different patrons felt different, 4e is what gave us that.
I might get flak in less open minded spaces for saying this but... 4e might make a better "chassis" for the style of playing we call OSR than anything else made after 2nd edition, one of the grips a lot of us 3.5 enjoyers had early on was how it felt like a simplified version of playing the game, which feels like a silly complaint to have all these years later, tbh, plus the essence of OSR is to have a simple, robust set of rules which allows the player space to look for answers in places other than their character sheet before they go back to their stats and abilities. I love 3.5 but there was just SOOOOO MUCH stuff that it did become kinda hard to ignore the character sheet, I mean you just spent 3-5 levels getting to the feat you wanted, so now you wanna use it as much as possible, because ofc you do, nobody can fault you for that, but as I get older I prefer running systems that fall (broadly) under the OSR description, and you've gotten me curious about 4e again. I still have the PHB somewhere, the art was too good to just let it go even though I wasn't really using it much lol. I'm especially interested in the booklets you me ruined in the last video, because I was unaware of the specific setting for 4e until you mentioned it, and as a true "lorewhore" I NEED to know more about this setting😅
*booklets you mentioned*
Autocorrect hates me
There was a system in 3.5 for having mobs of mooks, so an individual goblin wouldn't have to roll a 20 to hit a mid-high level character, they would be getting +5 or +10 bonuses from all of their comrades helping them out, it's one of the 3.5 rules that a lot of people overlook and it's very important to understanding the ECL factor in determining the CR for an encounter. 1 goblin is CR 1/4 but 10 goblins isn't CR 2.5 but rather closer to CR 5, actually. This does have the issue of the CR for the encounter going down as individual opponents are felled, which stands out more with mobs than with like, a handful of stronger creatures, but it is pretty reliable nonetheless.
I always looked at it as a new world with different legends and lore, but I can understand where you are coming from.
@@DravenSwiftbow I also really liked the Raven Queen, some might say she steps on the toes of Wee Jas a little bit, but I'm fine with two goth goddesses in one setting to be perfectly honest😅
Well the default setting of 4E was a new setting, but I was never invested in game lore anyway. Still I like the points of light setting for making it easy to add things while still giving plot hooks etc. I also like the simpler alignment. Makes more sense to me
Great video! So true about the toxic hate towards 4E. I just wish I could find players! Sigh... I love the monster design for 4e. And I've implemented the minion rules to the Genesys game and it worked out well so far.
I agree with you that 4e is underrated and it’s really fun to hear your thoughts about it :) have you also looked into 13th Age? It’s by the same lead designer and apparently what he intended 4e to be all along. It would be great if you could make a comparison of the 2 systems!
I have 13th Age, and really liked what I saw of it. I haven't had a chance to really dive into it though. Hopefully that will change soon.
As I mentioned while commenting your first video of the series, I did not like many of the changes to monster and NPCs creation in 4e, especially the fact that you had to use three different sets of rules.
I want to use just one set of rules for all of them, much like how it worked in 3rd edition and Pathfinder 1e. I go to the extent to say that in 3rd edition monsters weren't created as characters enough. They were still a bit too different in many ways.
For example, 3.5 monsters advancing by class were basically like characters, but monsters that advanced by hit dice weren't, and these were very difficult to evaluate or balance.
Pathfinder made it easier to create, modify or advance monsters, but still it was not good enough for me. I can be quite obsessive about details at times.
I don't agree about not being able to give unique abilities to monsters in 3.5. That was actually one of the suggested methods for advancing one. What was hard was evaluating them to give the modified creature the proper CR.
For character-like creatures there were plenty of ways to make them special. You already cited feats and prestige classes, but there were also substitution levels, templates and, in Pathfinder, archetypes. And this type of foes could have hirelings, henchmen, and minions of their own, plus access to any kind of gear.
Minions and solos were a cool idea, but they could have been implemented in 3.5 too. Pathfinder, again, gave a hint about that.
A minion is fundamentally a foe of a certain challenge rating which is actually easy to defeat, so in PF1 it could be created by applying a simple template to any kind of creature, lowering its CR enough so that you would need four such weakened creatures to make up for a normal one. For example, only 1-2 HPs per HD, less AC, and worse damage output could be enough.
I don't think that minions being basically immune to area damage effects is a good idea, though. Being able to wipe out a mob of nobodies with such an attack would be very cool and also probably a resource well spent.
For solo monsters, the solution was even simpler.
Fundamentally, in 4e a solo is a foe that counts as four creatures of the same CR, but in 3.5 or PF1 that's a creature with a CR four points higher, which can be extremely deadly. For example, if you wanted an orc chief worth as four CR 3 orc marauders, it had to be created as a CR 7 character, with corresponding gear and abilities.
What many boss-type monsters lacked, though, was both survivability and mitigation. And they usually had very simplified descriptions, devoid of any hint on how to use their many abilities to really challenge a party. And many DMs, me included, often made the error to start the boss encounter by giving it no time to prepare for the players, as if it had no way to detect them before they appeared in front of it.
When I made checks for the boss correctly, often the players could not just blast it in orbit before it even acted. And in a couple occasions, it was the players that had to sustain the boss attacks before they even noticed it was upon them.
I agree that having pre-made stat blocks for monsters can be useful for new DMs, but for me having to craft an entire new stat block from scratch every time I want a different variety of a specific creature is a real pain, even more if the creature is not already in the books.
To make an example, I once tried to create a pack of wild dogs for a 4e beginner encounter. I needed four or five different kinds of dogs, including a minion and an elite types. It took me more than an hour to get a satisfying result. To begin with, there is no "dog" entry in the manual, so I had to start from the generic rules to have the basic stats figured out. Then I had to modify them for role, and finally I had to give each type of dog some power, so that they had any chance of working together. This last part took a lot of time, since there were no actual suggestions on how to make balanced powers from scratch.
In 3.5 or PF1, I would have just taken the basic dog entry from the Monster Manual and tweaked it, changing stats, feats and special abilities in a few minutes.
One thing that many do not remember is that when 3rd edition came out, on the official D&D site, every week WotC published an example of an advanced or modified creature to be freely used either as a foe or as a NPC, and many more could be found on both the official magazines. I have saved those pages on a pendrive, alongside many other extra free content from that long lost site.
What is not really good in both 3rd and 4th editions, as well as Pathfinder and 5e, is how each single foe you defeat rewards you with experience points. And the fact that you need only a few kills of your APL to level up doesn't help. I solved that issue by giving XPs only for succeeding in quests or by completing an adventure or campaign.
This allows me to use CR just to evaluate the deadliness of an encounter, not having to math out the experience I would have to give the players after the fight is over. This also gives the players the choice to skip fighting altogether, since it doesn't really matter how they reach their goal.
I loved some of the new concepts of creatures in 4e, though. Unfortunately, I hated a lot of others too. For me, for example, 4e's dragons are amongst the worst ever appeared in D&D.
Also, sorry for another wall of text, but your videos are worth spending a few more words, in my humble opinion.
I appreciate your insights. I usually use Milestone advancement when I run games as well, though for Savage Tide I am using XP to see if the encounters and obstacles give the PC's the XP's they need to be at the level the adventures expect them to be.
I always welcome feedback, so please keep it coming!