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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5929592" data-attributes="member: 51942">The idea of a solo is a good metagame concept.  And I agree that the monsters in the MM's aren't as bad as those in the modules.  But even in the MMs, there are just too many.  Apparently their use is seductive - if a critter is terrifying, it must be a solo?  For example, I'm not convinced a purple worm should be a solo.  A terrifying overlevel monster, but not necessarily chock full of immunities required to make it interesting in a long, tactical battle.  An elite, and one that's very dangerous if the adventures are unprepared or surprised - sure.  But not necessarily a solo.  I'd be much more inclined to use them as a random encounter if they weren't, for instance.Even creatures that fight solo don't necessarily need built-in solo mechanics. Perhaps a demon lord summons lots of minions.  Perhaps a dragon's lair is full of nasty surprises.  Perhaps the lich has a bunch of contingency dweomers to avoid nasty PCs.  I'd much rather that such a monster gains some of its power from the environment and encourages the module writer (or DM) to give it that, rather than giving the creature oddly standout abilities that scream "solo!" and let it carry the day on its own.As you say, most creatures in the MM gained the distinction of being a solo via the fluff - and that's true - that doesn't avoid the problem that the resulting creatures are mostly recognizable as a solo and only secondarily recognizable as whatever their fluff represents. Put a new creature in front of a party and omit the fluff and they're likely to almost immediately notice it's a solo, but have much more trouble guessing what it's supposed to represent.  The mechanics are too transparently metagame.But the way the 5e playtest seems to have removed or strongly limited attack bonus scaling leads me to believe the distinction may be moot.  I mean, if a solo is mostly just a creature that's more damaging and has more hitpoints, then the boundary between a standard, and elite and a solo is perhaps not so clearcut anymore.  Which would greatly please me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />.</blockquote>

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