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<blockquote data-quote="lichmaster" data-source="post: 9600086" data-attributes="member: 6683330">Depends on what you want to do: a Legendary monster is supposed to make for a tactically interesting, more complex combat, but not necessarily much harder than a non legendary monster with the same CR. Legendary monsters should in principle be good for Solo encounters, except it was found already in 5e that despite having better action economy, they don't necessarily measure up against a fully rested and prepared party, so you may need to give the monster some minions and lair actions.An Elite monster instead is designed to be a Solo monster that can deal and endure enough damage to be a hard encounter against a party of 4 PCs of a given level without having a CR that's astronomically higher than the level of the party. It doesn't necessarily make for a tactically complex encounter, though.You can also have a monster that's both Elite and Legendary, perfect for the final confrontation in the campaign against the BBEG.I can't answer the &quot;why&quot; as I'm not part of the design team. I can speculate that it is so because AoEs normally don't manage to hit more than 2 or 3 targets, and even in that case when designing the monster the damage is assumed to be unmitigated by saves or resistances, but in combat they often are. So there should be no major concern of the damage being too high.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="lichmaster, post: 9600086, member: 6683330"] Depends on what you want to do: a Legendary monster is supposed to make for a tactically interesting, more complex combat, but not necessarily much harder than a non legendary monster with the same CR. Legendary monsters should in principle be good for Solo encounters, except it was found already in 5e that despite having better action economy, they don't necessarily measure up against a fully rested and prepared party, so you may need to give the monster some minions and lair actions. An Elite monster instead is designed to be a Solo monster that can deal and endure enough damage to be a hard encounter against a party of 4 PCs of a given level without having a CR that's astronomically higher than the level of the party. It doesn't necessarily make for a tactically complex encounter, though. You can also have a monster that's both Elite and Legendary, perfect for the final confrontation in the campaign against the BBEG. I can't answer the "why" as I'm not part of the design team. I can speculate that it is so because AoEs normally don't manage to hit more than 2 or 3 targets, and even in that case when designing the monster the damage is assumed to be unmitigated by saves or resistances, but in combat they often are. So there should be no major concern of the damage being too high. [/QUOTE]

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