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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 6793844" data-attributes="member: 2525">I raised the topic in the other thread, and it had nothing to do with a boss monster.  That term is different from "solo" in my mind, but I think a lot of people equate them together.  So let me just explain what I meant:I meant a room with a single monster in it.  It's not a boss.  It's not some end challenge to a section of an adventure.  It's just a single monster (IE a solo monster) in a room instead of multiple monsters in a room.  You enter a room and it has an Umberhulk, or a Roper, or an Ogre, or whatever.  It just meant quantity of one.  It had nothing to do with video game references or bosses or anything like that.This was found A LOT in OD&D, AD&D 1e, B/Ex, and BECIM.  If you look at the adventure modules sold back in, some rooms had many monsters, some just had one monster, and there was no real major difference between them.  You could run into a lone Ogre in a room and have it be a challenge to the party and not simply a minor speed bump.I've found in 5e, due to the action economy, solo monsters like this (which, again, are NOT bosses) don't work as well as they did in some prior editions.  I think this is because each player has a move, an attack and a bonus action, and a reaction.  And they have all four of those from first level.  So a party of 5 PCs has potentially 20 actions per round at 1st level (though they are not all attacks of course and a lot is dependent on the monster's actions).  While that many actions in (for example) 1e wasn't unheard of, it would have been pretty rare at low levels, and even mid levels for some classes.So when I've run a solo encounter (NOT a boss), I find they get run over quick. Quicker than they did in some prior editions.</blockquote>

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