Over the weekend I was trying to come up with an interesting encounter with humanoids for my party. To that end, I made summary stat blocks from the MM for the humanoids I was using (goblins, hobgoblins, orcs), all the other humanoids, and all the general NPCs at the back of the book.
One thing I noticed, and you all probably as well, is that many of the NPCs have abilities that look an awful lot like simplified feats/class abilities. It made it easier to "buff up" the humanoids by combining them with NPC templates (like a goblin acolyte) and then grafting on a class feature (like making it a Trickery Cleric for Pass Without Trace & Blessings of the Trickster for ultimate humanoid Scout team).
Usually, the simplifying of class mechanics works fine for a quick combat but often fails for something longer or for a tougher. But at least there's the obvious class chassis to work with. I mean, just taking any of the CR2 creatures that are casters (usually level 5 or 6) and making them trickery clerics turns a Scout with +6 Stealth into (roughly) one with +10 Stealth because of the Advantage. Add Pass Without Trace and all of a sudden you can have uber-scouts to ambush PCs.
One thing I noticed, and you all probably as well, is that many of the NPCs have abilities that look an awful lot like simplified feats/class abilities. It made it easier to "buff up" the humanoids by combining them with NPC templates (like a goblin acolyte) and then grafting on a class feature (like making it a Trickery Cleric for Pass Without Trace & Blessings of the Trickster for ultimate humanoid Scout team).
Usually, the simplifying of class mechanics works fine for a quick combat but often fails for something longer or for a tougher. But at least there's the obvious class chassis to work with. I mean, just taking any of the CR2 creatures that are casters (usually level 5 or 6) and making them trickery clerics turns a Scout with +6 Stealth into (roughly) one with +10 Stealth because of the Advantage. Add Pass Without Trace and all of a sudden you can have uber-scouts to ambush PCs.