[3.5e] MLET (Monster Level Equivalency Theory)

[Havvy]

This is a wiki article I'm working on. It's in a semi-presentable (enough that I'm posting it on here) format to request others to look at it. The theory is that CR=HD always. The article is explaining why this should be. The actual article is posted at http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Monster_Level_Equivalency_Theory_%283.5e_Other%29 and any links have been delinked on here.

If you don't understand balance points at the end, and are confused, I'll just say that wizard level is tiers 1 and 2, rogue level is tier 3, fighter level is tier 4, and monk level is tier 5.

So, what should be added/removed/renamed? Even the name of the theory/rule/system can be changed, but only if it can be said in plain English without things like equal signs.


Why a theory?

When you read through a Monster Manual, look at the HD of creatures and then look at their CR. Do you see a trend? No? Well, there isn't one really. This is because different HDs carry different 'value' in terms of monsters. Some (like dragon and outsider) are epic-win, and others (like undead) are epic-fail, and to counteract this problem, the designers of the game just gave ''more'' of a lower-value HD to a creature to get its CR to where they felt it should be.

This theory is used in the designing of creatures. Any creatures designed using this theory work with the system. Certain rules are restrictions on what you may do in creation. Other material already created that does not follow this theory will still work. so where you read "No level adjustment" in the racial part, that applies to your race. It does not apply to every race in the game. So if you want to use a Githyanki and some race you created, Githyanki get their level adjustment, but your race would have a racial paragon path of two levels if you wanted to have a race of equivalent strength. It would actually probably have five, so that you can have true paragons.

Fundamental Problems

However, this approach brings with it a pile of fundamental problems.

Abilities Based on HD

Firstly, a lot of abilities (ranging from turning to ''colour spray'') work off HD, rather than CR. This means that these abilities have wacky scaling against many (if not most) monsters, which doesn't really help anyone understand how something works. I literally cannot say either way with any certainty whether something that affects a creature of 4HD is good or not at any level because of this problem. Secondly, DCs for supernatural abilities (about the only sane standard we have in 3.5e for save DC benchmarks) is based on HD, rather than CR. This means that some creatures end up with significantly-higher save DCs than they should. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, most monsters advance by HD as they gain CR, which means that these problems become worse in advanced monsters as opposed to their 'normal' cousins.

Masking Type Flaws

Some types just suck. For example, would you ever want to take a hit die of animal or humanoid? Just like most people avoid taking levels in commoner, most people avoid gaining hit dice in these types. Other types are extraordinarily powerful. For example, the Outsider type. There is a reason there are not many LA0 Outsiders.

To fix this, there has been work to get types to be balanced with each other. For example, the Variant Giant (only posted on wiki) type is useful for people wanting to make MLET monsters of the Giant type.

Level Adjustment

Well, most people know level adjustment is wacky. Some reasoning here by people who've looked at it would better be writing this section.

Wizards of the Coast are on record as stating that they want to make monster player characters weaker than normal player races.

Name of Solution

All of these are not good to leave in, and thus, some alternative approach is needed. Our alternative approach is called the Monster Level Equivalency Theory, or MLET for short (pronounced 'emm-let' or 'omelet' if you're so inclined).

The theory itself

All monsters should have HD equal to their CR. Without exception. Ever. Creatures need increasing hit point bonuses in the form of constitution boosts or toughness style feats to keep up with damage scaling, but this just mimics how players pick up attribute boosters along the way and generally functions in exactly the same way.

Subtheory (Races)

Races without level adjustment should, without doubt, be considered a challenge rating of 1/2 before applying any class to them. If you have abilities that would make it CR 1 or higher, those should go in a racial paragon path of any length you want. It is when a class of appropriate strength is added that they become CR 1 with their first hit die. Level adjustment doesn't exist.

Projects Using MLET


Liber Demonica


With Balance Points

Most monsters created under this system could be fought as a legitimate challenge by anything of the Rogue balance point or higher. Sometimes beings of the Fighter balance point or lower would win, but it is rare. As such, it follows the Same Game Test on the reverse side of the coin. Playing under Tome, these monsters fit in just nicely.

[Eldan]

Several problems with that theory.

a) Would that mean that monster hit dice are also supposed to be as strong as class levels, always, without exception? What kind of class levels? Wizards or fighters? You say "Rogue balance point". How strong is your rogue?

b) What is your basis for challenge rating? Challenge rating X is supposed to consume one quarter of the resources of a part of level X. However, what kind of party are you assuming? Rogue balance point is still vague, as a given rogue can span a number of power levels.

c) What happens, then, to creatures with less than one HD, say, rats? How do you determine how strong a CR 1/2 creature should be?

And finally: do you really want to rewrite every monster ever written under this system?

[Gorgondantess]

Wayyyyy ahead of you, boss. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182724):smallwink:

[Cidolfas]

I consider myself a reasonable proponent of this theory, so I can try to answer. In order:

a) To exactly say that monster HD should equal class levels (that is, that a monster of a given CR and Hit Dice should be exactly as powerful as a character of a particular class) is somewhat erroneous. But it does mean that each Hit Die should scale appropriately with a character's level to ensure that a creature of a certain CR should be an appropriate challenge for a character of the same level. It has been stated by WoTC, after all, that a PC is supposed to have an effective Challenge Rating equal to their character level. This theory ensures that they both scale together instead of causing discrepancies on how to advance Hit Dice in accordance with CR.

As for which class, I think that depends on the design intent of the monster. Even though there has never been any particular Tier or Balance Point system for monsters, I think it's a known fact that some monsters are better than others; for example, an ancient black dragon and a behemoth gorilla are both statted by the SRD as being CR 19. I don't think I need to say which one proves a more difficult encounter.

This shows that monsters can vary in power just as easily as character classes can, so a Behemoth gorilla might be an appropriate challenge for, say, a level 19 monk. But a level 19 Wizard would fly over it and cast finger of death while the gorilla flails about meaninglessly, unable to do anything.

b) Yes, Challenge Rating is defined as a monster that it would take a equal-leveled party of four characters 25% of their resources to destroy. Because of this, if you cut three characters and created a one-on-one fight between the character and the CR-appropriate encounter, they should be able to go toe-to-toe with each party having a similar chance at victory. Thus, parties would assure the victory that someone could not necessarily acheive alone.

Of course, because parties are not always created equal (and, as I outlined above, neither are monsters) it would likely be assumed that all members of the party would fit a particular Balance Point/Tier. A tier 1 monster should go up against a Tier 1 character or a party of Tier 1 characters, not a party of monks. As Havvy pointed out, most creatures created under the MLET would probably fall into the Tier 3 grouping, so a party of well-prepared rogues, bards, and martial adepts could take them on and win with a regular (that is, consistently good) amount of success.

So, I suppose the important thing would be how to determine how monsters scale on Tiers? For the most part, I would advocated the same standards by which we measure character classes, but they have yet to be totally fleshed out.

c) For dealing with creatures with less than one HD, fractional Hit Dice can and already are used. This may lead to rats having only 1 measly hit point, but really, it's just a rat. It's not the bunny of doom from Monty Python.

Lastly, why not rewrite them all, if it makes for a better game? We already have people trying to do it. Fortunately, some monsters don't even need major adjustments; certain creatures across the entire spectrum of Challenge Ratings are already competent with their current ability set (chokers and vrocks come to mind) and all that is really required to put them under the MLET is an adjustment of their Hit Dice, BAB, saves, etc. in accordance with that standard.

EDIT: To Gorgon, monster classes are one way to go with it that works just fine for some people, but the problem with those is that they lose of the advantage of modularity enjoyed by normal monster blocks. If a DM wants to use monster classes, great, but then they have to stat out their own monster every single time instead of having it simply plotted right there. This advocates the use of modular creature entries while still condoning monster classes since both fall under this very premise.

[Surgo]

To Gorgon, monster classes are one way to go with it that works just fine for some people, but the problem with those is that they lose of the advantage of modularity enjoyed by normal monster blocks.
This is a really important point. It's "easy" to run a sandbox game if you have a pile of monster books available, but once you can't just pull stuff out of them immediately you start to run into problems.

[Gorgondantess]

EDIT: To Gorgon, monster classes are one way to go with it that works just fine for some people, but the problem with those is that they lose of the advantage of modularity enjoyed by normal monster blocks. If a DM wants to use monster classes, great, but then they have to stat out their own monster every single time instead of having it simply plotted right there. This advocates the use of modular creature entries while still condoning monster classes since both fall under this very premise.

Oh, for sure. Nevertheless, the content's still there. Also, how do you intend to let players ever play, say, a 14 HD class? I didn't see any class progressions in the wiki, so unless you're starting at that ungodly level, you're kindof screwed.
Beyond that, a few other things present problems- for example, none of the abilities scale. Let's use the succubus for an example: okay, so you're a level 7 succubus. You're kicking ass with your awesome SLAs and ridiculously high save DCs. Then next level what do you take? Oh, sure, something like sorcerer would be nice with your charisma... but you'll only ever get up to 6th level spells!
Beyond that, most DMs would be a little iffy allowing their players free unlimited plane shift & ethereal jaunt at 7th level, long before any other casters. Or an ekolid getting greater dispel magic at level 4. Or a quasit getting greater teleport, contact other plane & commune at level 3. The list goes on and on. You get them early, and then they don't scale at all.

Now, while your stuff is certainly better than WotC content in terms of playability by players, it still has a lot of issues, and I see no reason for a DM to use any of these as opposed to an actual monster.

[Cidolfas]

You're assuming that the whole goal of this theory is to allow for playing as monsters, though. If that's the only that particular case, monster classes are more effective. But in just about every other situation where a DM actually needs a monster to throw at the PC's, many SRD monsters are totally insufficient. This seeks to correct that huge, glaring mistake as well as stop the craziness of trying to extrapolate the HD of an advanced creature that has 23 HD but is CR 17 (or a similar proportion), not to necessarily allow the PC's to play a succubus (unless they wanted to be weaker than a PC of equivalent level).

[Gorgondantess]

You're assuming that the whole goal of this theory is to allow for playing as monsters, though. If that's the only that particular case, monster classes are more effective. But in just about every other situation where a DM actually needs a monster to throw at the PC's, many SRD monsters are totally insufficient. This seeks to correct that huge, glaring mistake as well as stop the craziness of trying to extrapolate the HD of an advanced creature that has 23 HD but is CR 17 (or a similar proportion), not to necessarily allow the PC's to play a succubus (unless they wanted to be weaker than a PC of equivalent level).

No, I'm not. I said above,

I see no reason for a DM to use any of these as opposed to an actual monster.
How? What does matching HD to CR do that solves anything? You've said that CR/HD discrepancies are a bad thing, but I don't see why. The only time it becomes relevant- as far as I'm concerned- is when you want to play as a monster PC.

[Eldan]

I don't see why having more HD can't just be an ability a monster can have. Sure, it screws with a few spells. But so does a monster with a high constitution and great fortitude if you try to cast a fort-or-die spell on it.

[Gorgondantess]

I don't see why having more HD can't just be an ability a monster can have. Sure, it screws with a few spells. But so does a monster with a high constitution and great fortitude if you try to cast a fort-or-die spell on it.

My point exactly. Aside from a very scant few things- the only I can think up off the top of my head is SLAs, and avoiding spells like color spray- having a high HD does nothing that high stats couldn't do. These are very minor things, not at all deserving of a total overhaul. If anything, just base these things off of CR instead and be done with it.

[Cidolfas]

They're bad because of all the things intrinsically tied to the amount of Hit Dice a creatures has. Saves, BAB (and everything that comes with BAB), and hit points are just loaded on with no rhyme or reason, basically Wizards' way of saying "we are too unimaginative to come up with an original way to make this a better monster, so let's just stack extra numbers on it until they are huge and impressive". It also serves to mask the crappiness of certain types (such as undead, which are loaded with HD to compensate for the fact that as a type they have poor BAB, no saves, and no Con, or oozes, which have most of the same issues except no Intelligence instead of no Con, or giants which have medium BAB as an essentially martially-oriented creature type) while unbalancing the advantages of other types (like dragons, who have ****tons of HD in addition to full BAB and all good saves), covering the imbalances between types. The problem is, it does not actually fix any of the inherent problems these creatures have; they are still just as crappy and require revisions anyway, but giving them extra things to make them actually competent is then exacerbated by the craploads of HD, creating an RNG-breaker that is not even worth using as a monster because the saves it forces are off the charts.

EDIT: I am also in no way advocating giving monsters god-like stats, either. Abiding by this theory doesn't require it to be so. There are definitely better solutions to such things than that, such as giving abilities that actually make monsters more interesting and creative than a mass of to-hit numbers and save DC's.

Having HD be equal to CR would also establish a hard line on what constitutes an epic (or at least close to epic, because epic rules suck horribly) monster. If something has 20 HD under this theory, you know it's going to be seriously awesome instead of wonder whether it's another neutronium golem or another tarrasque or some other such creature that falls woefully short of what both its HD and CR would suggest but would be off the RNG if actually given reasonable abilities. Removing the HD doesn't even make most monsters any weaker, and the addition of new abilities is an actually creative and original solution instead of using the crap published in the SRD (a la Behemoth Gorilla).

These are essentially all the same reasons that they are relevant for monster PC's, which supports the idea that they are two sides of the same coin. Saves on a 40-HD dragon would look ridiculous on a PC; do we for some reason excuse it on a monster because it's a monster? If so, then why do we do that when we obviously are able to tell that such saves are too high for all but the most munchkin'ed character to overcome?

As a last point that has to do with certain creatures actually having more CR than their Hit Dice would suggest, making HD scale with CR also uniformizes certain spell effects (like blasphemy, holy word, word of chaos, and dictum) that are dependent on the target's HD in relation to the caster's level. Such creatures get abused by these spells while others suffer no ill effects despite having a potentially lower Challenge Rating. And before anyone can try and pass the high-HD targets off as a situational circumstance where those spells were specifically designed to not be credible, the fact that the spell doesn't work equally against all targets because of their Hit Dice is a huge design oversight given that those spells are already situationally based on alignment.

I think the more important question is "Why are the SRD monsters good?", but since the burden of proof is on me since I'm questioning the established order, I've given answers. It also holds true that the best ones for games of Tier 3 and above are the ones that already most closely follow this theory and have other awesome abilities to match (the choker and the vrock, just to name a few). Also, it may help to actually see an example of a monster remade under the premises of this theory instead of simply asking why we should go to the effort of changing things. Who knows, you might like them better.

[Eldan]

I still fail to see your actual problem.

Monster with high saves aren't really a problem, often you even want them on a monster. After all, there's no reason every monster should have the same chances of resisting a certain spell, or there wouldn't have to be much scaling all, just a roll modified by CR (i.e. the dragon is CR 9, we are Level 7, it has a +2 on it's save). Similar to BAB.

If you think, in the end, that a monster has saves or an attack score that is too high, you can adjust those just by changing ability scores. And yes, that requires a lot of fine tuning.

However, your system would require just as much. If I wanted to build a monster that has an attack higher than it's CR (which would be impossible in your system without high attributes, as BAB can't be higher than HD, and therefore CR), I have to give it higher strength. Which, in the end, results in a lot of fiddling again, since that also increases it's carrying capacity and it's damage modifier, which a higher BAB wouldn't.

[Havvy]

However, your system would require just as much. If I wanted to build a monster that has an attack higher than it's CR (which would be impossible in your system without high attributes, as BAB can't be higher than HD, and therefore CR), I have to give it higher strength. Which, in the end, results in a lot of fiddling again, since that also increases it's carrying capacity and it's damage modifier, which a higher BAB wouldn't.

Trading "Saving Throws, Feats, HD Scaling DCs, Number of Attacks, Attack roll bonus" for "Attack roll bonus" "carrying capacity" "damage roll bonus" "Str scaling DCs" means less important things are being tweaked because you want to have a higher attack chance instead of tweaking everything. Chances are, you'd have to go back and tweak everything by adding extra hit die anyways, which is additional tweaking.

Extra attacks and using the various bonus types on monster attacks would help get your attack roll higher. Player characters aren't the only creatures that can get typed bonuses to attack outside of Base Attack.


Monster with high saves aren't really a problem, often you even want them on a monster. After all, there's no reason every monster should have the same chances of resisting a certain spell, or there wouldn't have to be much scaling all, just a roll modified by CR (i.e. the dragon is CR 9, we are Level 7, it has a +2 on it's save). Similar to BAB.

Special abilities like Immunity to Enchantments and whatnot are useful for this. Or spell resistance (another thing dependent partially on HD) which can be fiddled separately.


My point exactly. Aside from a very scant few things- the only I can think up off the top of my head is SLAs, and avoiding spells like color spray- having a high HD does nothing that high stats couldn't do. These are very minor things, not at all deserving of a total overhaul. If anything, just base these things off of CR instead and be done with it.

Except that BAB and saving throws are based on HD. And those are very important.

On the wiki itself, the following issues have been brought up:


Scaling spells work less well in an MLET setup. The easiest one to point at is any damaging spell ever. If you deal 1d6 per level against your level's worth of hit dice (plus bonuses), you're dealing basically the same percentage of damage with every casting, even levels after that spell was shiny and new, because their hit dice never outpace your damage growth. Which is nice for keeping the spell relevant if that's what you want, but doesn't really leave you a lot of room to make higher level spells of that type better without going right off the damage rails or being extremely wide AoEs. Discrete status condition effects, like sleep or dominate, don't have this problem because of their binary nature.

Multiple attacks need to hit less, since their are fewer piles of hit points to chew through. Diminishing returns iterative attacks actually work better in this setup than tome style iteratives, unless you want to go off the damage rails again.

It might be good to evaluate how CWBL meshes with this change. Hopefully if done right, certain bonuses can be given to all creatures, whether monsters or players, or else thrown out altogether.

And finally, the following was added in the theory section:


Creatures need increasing hit point bonuses in the form of constitution boosts or toughness style feats to keep up with damage scaling, but this just mimics how players pick up attribute boosters along the way and generally functions in exactly the same way.

Any modifications to the document you suggest are welcome, and will probably be debated at length.

[Cidolfas]

Just as an afterthought, another thing that is specific to Tome settings but important for those rules (since the MLET was partially adapted to fit for Tome rules in the first place, although not exclusively) is the advanced combat options offered by Tome, namely the concept of The Edge, which grants bonuses in combat against any monster that has a lower Base Attack Bonus than a given character. Having higher HD removes the possibility of having The Edge in that system since having monsters with more more HD than CR would put their BAB far beyond the reach of the PC. This also cannot be remedied by Strength bonuses because it is the Base Attack Bonus, not the total attack bonus, so it is only affected by Hit Dice and nothing else.

While it may be a rather specific example, it sets a precedent that many combat abilities can rely on base attack bonus instead of total attack bonus. In such cases, adding on Strength does nothing for you. But it makes HD matter a lot more.

[Jota]

Hit Dice Influences:

Base Attack Bonus
Base saves
Hit Points
Feats
Certain spell effects (sleep, color spray, circle of death, holy word, blasphemy, dictum, word of chaos, deep slumber, cause fear, scare, et cetera)
Rate of natural healing
Maximum skill ranks
Size
Special attack DCs, and others (fearsome presence,
Turn Resistance
Manifester level and caster level
Ability to deal with certain effects, related either to hit points or indirectly to HD total (enervation, energy drain, the symbol and power word lines, et cetera)


Now, none of this really matters in terms of pure numbers. Regardless of whatever method of monster creation one uses, one can always add in a nerf or power-up ability independent of the stat block that influences the stat block, and attributes are infinitely variable at a writer's whim.

It is, however, in my opinion at least, easier to scale up than scale down. You can't just have some of the things inherent to hit dice disappear (like feats, for example, though Toughness, Alertness, et cetera is a pretty good approximation -- contrast adding whatever feat you want with a superscript B -- far less clunky). But when you're doing this, you have to question why even add those hit dice when you could simply write in the desired effects to a less HD-blessed doppelganger.

I'm not specifically defending MLET, but I do think it offers a greater simplicity than what the current system provides for (seriously, mad crazy ass-backwards ish right there) and achieves the same ends. It could make turning actually feasible. You could actually base spell/maneuvers/whatever effects on hit dice and have them be balanced instead of running into a 40 HD undead with a CR of 11. It stands to offer (as we have yet to see, for the most part) simplicity and consistency, two things D&D could use a whole lot more of.

[Eldan]

Huh. I've always heard that turning undead is too easy as it is currently.

Anyway. I've stated my opinion on this, namely that I don't see much of an immediate gain. Perhaps you could rebuild a few monsters according to your theory so that we could discuss with concrete examples?

[Cidolfas]

Some have already been done, although they are on the Wiki that this theory came from. I'll link you, but before any judgments are made I should probably add in the caveat that these are monsters mostly intended to be fought by Tier 1 or Tier 2 characters, hence their strength. As I said before, I use the MLET to adapt monsters for a setting more similar to what is found in Tome than anything else.

Tarrasque (http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Tarrasque_(3.5e_Monster))

Also, so that this doesn't seem to only be something for crazily high-CR creatures (even though they are certainly offending targets):

Succubus (http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Succubus_(3.5e_Monster))

There are more examples, but those are two creatures were chosen because of the marked difference between these and their SRD incarnations. They also represent both sides of the spectrum, since the tarrasque has HD way over its CR and the succubus has HD under its CR. So together they show that the theory works both ways.

[Eldan]

That Tarrasque is... not well written. There are a lot of rules that aren't very clear, I'm afraid. It's blanket immunities are problematic. Immunity to all effects that don't deal damage, but not ability damage? That's a lot of effects. There is no defined damage for spitting someone a distance, though it's probably meant as "as if falling that far". Spines at any range... so, it can as a move action shoot a spine at superluminal speed at a target on Alpha Centauri? And so on. There's quite a few mistakes and unclear things there, that's only the most glaring ones.

[Megawizard]

Spines at any range... so, it can as a move action shoot a spine at superluminal speed at a target on Alpha Centauri? And so on. There's quite a few mistakes and unclear things there, that's only the most glaring ones.

Like Cidolfas pointed out, rules for a tome campaign. You ever looked at other homebrew done by those standards? Obscurity and unclearity are basically pre-requisites for something to be considered tome-material, since it's suposed to stand toe to toe with the most poorly written spells and rules loopholes in D&D.

After all, this is a project to solve a problem created by the tome rules themselves (let's make "the edge" based on Bab! Oh, wait, monsters have loads of Bab...).

Like already pointed out, you could simply make all those abilities based on CR itself, instead of re-writing every monster from scratch.

Or if you're re-writing every monster from scratch, you may as well make the monsters player-useable and allow for monster-scaling like in the community monster classes already pointed out here.

[Gorgondantess]

Like Cidolfas pointed out, rules for a tome campaign. You ever looked at other homebrew done by those standards? Obscurity and unclearity are basically pre-requisites for something to be considered tome-material, since it's suposed to stand toe to toe with the most poorly written spells and rules loopholes in D&D.
Thanks for reminding me why I hate Tome.:smallyuk:

[Eldan]

So, wait.

"Many spells are badly written, so in an attempt to balance the game, we write everything badly"?

I think that tells me everything I need to know about this project.

[Cidolfas]

That Tarrasque is... not well written. There are a lot of rules that aren't very clear, I'm afraid. It's blanket immunities are problematic. Immunity to all effects that don't deal damage, but not ability damage? That's a lot of effects. There is no defined damage for spitting someone a distance, though it's probably meant as "as if falling that far". Spines at any range... so, it can as a move action shoot a spine at superluminal speed at a target on Alpha Centauri? And so on. There's quite a few mistakes and unclear things there, that's only the most glaring ones.

Firstly, in defense of my own work, most of your complaints aren't very well-grounded. The blanket immunities are very intentionally worded to be ambiguous so that I didn't have to list out every single thing that is was immune too; doing so is just a good way to flood the page but not actually help it. And since ability damage is not actually "damage", it's immune to that, too. Against Tier 1 opposition, it has to be immune to all of those things, or else what stops a wizard from plane-shifting it into the next world (especially with reduced saves from the fact that it doesn't have 48 Hit Dice).

Throwing/spitting another creature has always been handled in the same way as falling (such as the warlock's repelling blast invocation); it was probably just not included because it was believed that it would be understood. Since you deduced it seemingly without much difficulty, it seems that assumption was justly made.

As for spines, it's impossible to target anything that you can't see with an attack that requires an attack roll, so the point about the range is basically moot. It's deliberately made limitless to avoid people hovering on the edge of its range and kiting it to death. Again, something it really needs to have to not suck.

The tarrasque is really an example of an elastic clause; if you think it should be immune to something then it can be made immune because it's just that awesome. Interestingly enough, the fact that it's always encountered alone and that it is immune to things that are not damage make it more of a fight for Tier 3 classes (martial adepts, in particular) than those of Tier 1.

Ambiguity is only in place here because it's the tarrasque, something of criminally high Challenge Rating. Given that level 20 characters are essentially supposed to be demi-gods in terms of power, this amount of power should be nothing new.

Your hating on Tome material is also unfairly biased, given that Tome actually fixed a lot of things that are absolutely awful excuses for rules in core. But in retrospect, it was likely my fault for bringing up Tome as an example because so many people are Tome-haters that immediately close their ears whenever it's mentioned. So despite my obvious error in bringing up such a topic as the system that actually makes use of the cool, powerful classes, it shouldn't cloud your judgment on the Monster Level Equivalency Theory.

Just because I designed these particular monsters for Tier 1 doesn't necessitate that any MLET monster is so bound. The reason for this to exist is that monster classes don't solve everything as so many people seem to believe they do. As Megawizard said, they are meant for character use, not for actually creating an encounter in which the monster is something already set up for DM's to use. Having to roll up every monster that I wanted my group to fight would be so torturous that I would prefer to take a power drill to my skull; what this does is increase the modularity of the creatures and make them not so hit-and-miss with Hit Dice and Challenge Rating (which I'm already on record as saying is similar to dart board).

What power level the specific creature fits is largely irrelvant, since different people can make monsters of different power levels in the same way they do anything else. What the Theory does do is create a concrete scale of how monsters should be statted as far as the relationship between HD and CR is concerned. For that, it fills a much-needed hole, since as written there's no rhyme or reason to any creatures Hit Dice or their Challenge Rating, which leads to half of them not actually being used. And if no one uses them, they're useless.