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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannager" data-source="post: 6002218" data-attributes="member: 73683">D&D Players: placing personal, arbitrary limits on the fantasy fighting prowess of imaginary monsters since the invention of the d20."Hmm, I think I'll use this elite bugbear instead of this standard bugbear!" is a choice the DM makes. I'm not sure why that choice doesn't count in your eyes.Monsters designed to be badass tend to be more badass at the table. Does that surprise you in any way?No, but altering that monster's mechanical abilities so that it qualifies for that keyword tends to.Did you think that we were just talking about adding a word to a stat block and being done with it?When that keyword comes with clear, simple, step-by-step rules for making it so, then yes, it does.How in the world is a keyword that tells the DM, "Hey, we designed this monster to be as much of a challenge for the party as two normal monsters put together, and accordingly it's worth double the experience and has some nifty abilities to boot!" useless?DMing is a metagame distraction. When your explicit job is to handle all things metagame, how can you possibly find it a "distraction" when a new metagame element is introduced to make the DM's job easier, and one that the players are never witness to except through the lens of their PCs?</blockquote>