I agree. I got to the point that I could build monsters on the fly at the table and didn’t worry about game balance. There was an elegance in the consistency.

My group landed on a rotation of silly overpowered short campaigns to absolutely destroy the engine, and long games where we all agreed not to break the game.

That being said 4th Ed was so much better to craft monsters in. It broke me for every game I’ve run since. Now I just reskin.