Check out the Astral Deadnought from Mordenkainen's Tome

WotC's Nathan Stewart celebrated hitting 5,000 Twitter followers by sharing a page from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the upcoming D&D book due for release next month. The art gloriously evokes Jeff Easley's art from the cover of 1987's Manual of the Planes (a monster originally called an "ethereal dreadnought" and changed to "astral dreadnought" in D&D 2E).

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[The Crimson Binome]

Not sure I understand all the quibbling over the HP presented in the stat block. The 297 that is presented is just the average. Based on 17d20 + 119, the DM could choose to utilize a very beefy Astral Dreadnaught with 459 HP or a relatively feeble one with just 136 HP. Or something in between. A DM should not feel constrained by the average.

When utilizing this monster for its intended purpose, I believe that most such examples would wind up significantly above average. Kind of like how PCs, on average, have significantly higher-than-average Constitution.

If the average in theory isn't the same as the average in practice, then that indicates a failure of game design. (Not a catastrophic failure, by any means, but a failure none-the-less.)

 

[Saplatt]

Nice to see some higher CR critters.