Machpants, you will have seen them before if you've got Monstrosities and Tome of Horrors. The new material is all in the Adventure Book, Quests of Doom, unless you count Steve's conversions to 5th edition as being new. Wizards says that they will have conversion guides eventually, so if you have our earlier books and you're willing to wait, you can actually do the conversions using the old books. We're not trying to hide that, and we're trying to put it front and center. This is for new Necromancer fans or for those who want the conversions early, or those who don't want to mark up a book with conversion notes.
That said, the old school types already know our response to the "monster balance" issues. We don't just write tactically-balanced monsters (we write them, but not just them). We also write monsters that have a "ring" to them, something that grabs you and makes you want to use them in an adventure. It's not the same for everyone; Bill and I have different opinions on flail snails, for example.
There's a limit to that, of course, the point about goblins with meteor swarms is not only correct, it's absolutely relevant to a discussion of this monster. But it's the extreme example of where (hopefully) I was just pushing the envelope with this monster's original design. The goblins with meteor swarm go beyond the envelope. I think there is room for some powerful adventure-making fuel at the borders of balance, where it's close but the imbalance ITSELF can create that spark of creativity. Imbalance, at least when it's done right, can be the fuse that drives the flower.
There's absolutely room for disagreement -- but I think it's wrong to conclude that just because something is subject to the "goblins with meteors" test, doesn't mean it necessarily fails the test. Indeed, I think that risking "goblins with meteors" is one of the many approaches that SHOULD be taken with some of the monsters in a book of many monsters. As long as it works, and that can be subjective. Look, though, at how many people, even some of the people who criticized the chassis of the monster, immediately got ideas about how to use it.
That's the real test. Because it plays to the strength of 5th edition as opposed to 3 and 4; you can customize a monster to fit an adventure like lightning. Taking a rigid approach to monster-construction is to instantly brush away one of the edition's stronger attributes, IMO.
*"Fuse that drives the flower" isn't mine, I think it's Dylan Thomas.
