Most of the advice I would have given is already in the thread (along with good suggestions that I wouldn't have thought of). I will just add some general points about more monsters vs. bulked-up monsters. Although the narrative situation might tilt the scales heavily one way or the other, as a
general matter, all other things being about equal, I prefer more monsters to bulked-up monsters. To be more concrete, as a very simplified hypothetical, say you were considering three standard orcs vs. one orc with 3x the HP and 3 attacks.*, **
- Using 3 standard orcs, I do not incur the added burden of explaining the existence of super-orc, and of ensuring that the players are given adequate information to suss out that super-orc is much more dangerous than a standard orc, and approximately how much more dangerous.
- With 3 standard orcs, it will be easier for the PCs to see how much 'progress' they are making by how many orcs are left vs. relying on my narration of how damaged super-orc looks.
- Three standard orcs degrade more gracefully than super-orc - their offensive abilities lessen as they are killed off. This makes them (under most circumstances) a bit less deadly than super-orc, which means my upgrade path (2 orcs to 3 orcs to 4 orcs) is a little more granular than the parallel process of bulking up super-orc. Also, should the PCs decide they need to retreat, they will probably have a better chance of surviving being chased by a degraded enemy.
- If I want the orc's actions during battle to be broken up, I find it more natural to do this with conceptually separate creatures, even though technically I could create the same effect with one.
I hope this helps, or is at least interesting. Good luck with your session.
* This example definitely is narrower than the general case (of multiple monsters vs. bigger monsters), so in fairness not all my observations apply to the general case.
** Also, some of these points reflect personal preference. I don't claim any of this as objective fact or hard and fast rules.
