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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fanboy2000" data-source="post: 6387519" data-attributes="member: 19998">You have hit on an interesting tension in D&D game design: when should something be a trait and when should it be a spell? This has been a question since at least 3e, which had spells pull quadruple duty as spells, spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, and (sometimes) extraordinary abilities. As 3e DM the worst was when a monster had full caster levels. (Typically as a Sorcerer.) This was compounded by those monsters that didn't have pre-made spell lists and it was DM responsibility to choses them before running the monster. 4e ran screaming in the opposite direction where just about everything was a trait. This led to spell-casters that knew something three spells: an at-will, an daily, and a utility. IIRC the 4e DMG had rules for creating NPCs that might have been better. You'd think, because I'm complaining about NPCs and Monsters online that I might have used those instead, but I didn't. I'm not even sure the designers used them.I actually think there's a pretty good balance for NPCs and Monsters in 5e. I'm just not having the problems with spells in statblocks that I did in 3.x.To expand on your example: while I don't know about Gorgons, Medusas and Basilisks don't use the flesh-to-stone spell. They have a Petrifying Gaze trait listed above their actions. I don't know how alike they are, but it's detailed in the statblock. So far, it looks like the only monsters that use spells are NPC spell casters like the Evil Mage statblock in the starter set and the Acolyte statblock in HotDQ. I'm not sure if I want those in statblocks. Sure, I want monster abilities in statblocks, but the spells of an NPC spellcaster? I just don't know.</blockquote>

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