[+] Here's my ideal future 5E supplement

[dave2008]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]
I have been thinking about what is needed for an Advanced Monster Manual and pondering what this means for stat block inflation. I have made stats for many high CR monsters and one of the issues I run into is that giving them all the traits they need takes up a lot of space. Heck, if you stat up a 20th level PC with all their traits and abilities it takes about a full page! I ended up make categories that cary some of the burden of describing the monster's abilities. So the stat block of a god can say: "Refer to Greater God traits," or something similar. However, given your comment about providing descriptions of spells, I don't think this is what you want.

So, here is my question:
Is it better to have a shorter stat block that references information elsewhere; or is better to have all of the information in a longer stat block (possibly 2 pages or more)?

 

[CapnZapp]

If all Demons were given the same set of base traits, I would be more than happy to not repeat that over and over again.

But that assumes fairly common trait "sets" that's actually worthwhile for DMs to memorize.

It also assumes passive traits. Spells are generally active, with moving parts.

But a spell like Shield or Mirror Image could be described very succinctly as a trait, with only something like "(per Mirror Image)" to tell the DM its not really a trait, but a spell for those instances where that becomes important.

Mainly I'd like to see evidence the dev is an experienced DM, that truly gets what experienced DMs need and doesn't need.