Flesh Golems, Vampires, and Werewolves

Oh my.

Flesh Golem
This Monster Vault excerpt has a new stat block for a flesh golem and master vampire, as well as werewolf moon frenzy (complete with a different disease layout). One thing of note is that it looks like they're taking the lack of fluff thing from Monster Manual to heart, as flesh golems feature seven paragraphs of text dedicated to their creation methods, and lack of biological needs and social etiquette. Aside from that, here's the rundown of notable changes in the Monster Vault version.

• Hit points are unchanged
• Defenses are equal to or lower than the older version
• Resist 10 cold
• Fire attacks cause it to flee as a free action, and if it cannot move at least half its speed it grants combat advantage
• When it takes lightning damage it gets to make a basic melee attack
• Slam is slightly more accurate and deals a lot more damage (11 more points on average), and becomes more accurate when its bloodied
• Double attack also causes its attacks to prone targets that it hits
• Golem rampage is reworded, but basically does the same thing. The old version made it clear that it provokes opportunity attacks and attacks friend and foe alike, and while the new version uses the terms "move" and "creatures", I think it could be easily interpreted incorrectly
• Berserk attack is unchanged

I like this one a lot more because its afraid of fire and gets a boost from lightning, like Frankenstein's monster (which it is so obviously based off of). I also like that when it gets bloodied it gets a bit more dangerous, not just with the extra attacks it gets (good for an elite), but also because they become more accurate. This lends itself narratively to the idea of a wounded beast frantically lashing out. All these work together to mechanically enforce the core concept, and perhaps allowing players to sympathize with it if you want to make it more intelligent and/or free-willed.

Master Vampire
Vampires get a similar treatment in the fluff department, but since there's no real cohesive vampire statblock it's kind of hard to make a direct comparison. For example, sunlight usually destroys minions instantly, but either doesnt do anything to other vampires, or just stops their regeneration. Some are vulnerable to radiant damage, some just dont give a fuck. In the case of this vampire, sunlight deals radiant damage, and all radiant damage stops their regeneration, making it super effective.

Its claw deals more damage than an elite war troll vampire, and while its bite can only be usd on dazed, dominated, or stunned opponents the damage is insanely high (32 average) and heals him by almost a quarter of his max hit points. He can turn into a cloud of bats, making him insubstantial, stealthier, and granting him a fast fly speed. Since its supposed to be a swarm, I'm assuming the insubstantial is a fast method for saying "he takes less damage from attacks". Dominating gaze takes a standard action to use, still works on one creature at a time, and only lasts for a turn (thank god). His last little trick is that when he is bloodied, he can turn into a mist form, which works mostly the same except that the vampire can only do it after he takes damage while bloodied. It makes him insubstantial and gives him a fly of 12.

I like the concentration of traditional vampiric themes. Other vampires sometimes had one or two abilities, but they were wildly inconsistent.

Lycanthrope
Unfortunately the only statblock is for the new werewolf moon frenzy disease. The differences are slight and only present in stages two and three; during stage 2 the victim only makes one attack when bloodied as opposed to making save each turn, and during stage 3 the victim makes a free attack each time she is struck instead of going for the closest target. To make matters worse, free attacks made in both stages are only against allies. Moon frenzy was already pretty annoying, a nice change from 3rd Edition when it could actually be quite advantageous, but now it's even worse.