"Generic" Monsters

[BASHMAN]

Something that I was wondering about is whether the MM will also have any "default" generic monsters. There are Gnoll Clawfighters, Gnoll Huntsmen, but are there any generic "Gnolls"? What should we assume is the "default" of all these monsters that exist, since each thing will probably have at least 5 entries?

 

[Jack99]

Gnoll minion most likely

 

[Kwalish Kid]

From what I've seen, there are a few answers to this question.

For many humanoid monsters, there are guidelines in an appendix that show how to use the monsters as races for the process of PC creation. There will not be as much detail in this appendix as there are for the races in the PHB (I suspect that one difference is that the monsters in this appendix will have no racial feats presented or only one or two.)

For monsters in general, there will be guidelines for what powers and abilities a brute/soldier/artillery/what-have-you role should have at a given level. This can be used, with obvious features of a monster, to create other versions of the monster.

 

[pawsplay]

1. No.
2. Like a creature of its role of that level, plus signature abilities of other members of that race that seem to apply.

 

[AllisterH]

That's a good question.

Speculation:
For Humanoid races, I think it will depend on the entries. I don't think we'll get a hobgoblin minion, but the kobolds obviously will.

We know there's a Human Commoner figure, so presumably there's a human commoner entry. For orc and the other humanoid races, I'd default to the lowest level entry of that race. Thus, a kobold minion is the default kobold, while for gnolls, it is the gnoll huntmaster.

If there are two characters of the same level, default to the non-leader/non-elite version and then default to the one with the lowest HP.

For other monsters, like the grell and the grick which only have two entries, just pick the standard (lower level) version.