Level Up's new Monstrous Menagerie 2 includes rules for heroic monsters, designed to level up as recurring foes and/or allies. They are explicitly mentioned as good mechanical options for upgrading an existing creature.
I assume by “PC/NPC design transparency” you mean PCs and NPCs function in the same way mechanically? In that case, I would argue that it was kind of a design constraint in early 5e. Like, not quite because they weren’t totally consistent about it. But they seemed committed to keeping NPC designs close enough to transparent with PC designs that you could pretend they were transparent if you wanted them to be. It was kind of part of 5e’s “compromise edition” design. Make everything look close enough to something that could have fit into the reader’s favorite edition, regardless of what that may have been (maybe excluding the various versions of original/basic).
I would propose a third option: Start from the design principle that players should be able to tell what a monster is (or near enough to the mark) by fighting it, even if the DM doesn’t use its name or describe its appearance beyond minimum necessary detail. This should completely avoid Sack of HP syndrome because one sack of HP is indistinguishable from another without description, but it will also insure that all the abilities a monster has “makes sense” for that monster to have, because the abilities are designed specifically to express something recognizable about the monster.
sure, tastes are different, so they never will. They also do not have to
That may have been true in your game, but in published adventures, as well as every campaign I ran or played in, monsters with class levels were very common.
I loved the whole ecology of the monster's things that dragon magazine used to do. I do think for those who are new to DM'ing, overworked and without lots of prep time or in some cases just not super creative it helps a lot to have an idea of the ecologcial niche the monster might occupy. But i find it easier to design the area I'm going to be in then just put monsters that seem to make sense to me. I don't have time to get a master's degree in monster Biology and lifestyles, (though I may have put a big chunk towards it in early years), Sometimes the encounter just needs to work at the level your party is going to fight at and you just have to pull somethingout of the monster manual or a google search. That's just as ok as having a perfect ecological encounter.
I started using Class levels for monsters in 1st edition because it just made it easier to design encounters that were challenging for my high level party. First time I did it I made a PC half/ogre after reading a dragon magazine article and the PC's had to deal with a 10th level fighter half ogre chief. I'll never forget the look on thier faces when they unloaded on him and he didn't drop, but instead took a potion and pulled out that sword of sharpness they'd been asking for for 5 levels. You know they never asked for a really powerful anything again.
Sure, except the rules rarely offer both equally.
That sounds like an awesome session! Good thing there were rules back then that supported it.
