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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imban" data-source="post: 4020694" data-attributes="member: 29206">Hm. See, I tend to have pretty much your exact viewpoint on stuff, but having played around with writing a few of these, they work really well in play for quick-play combat monsters. Basically, I took Death Slaadi, and pumped up their Hit Dice and a few stats and such to what I felt would be appropriate for 25th-level monsters, and gave them the ability to cast a maximized Maw of Chaos with Intelligence added to damage at will, called them "Death Slaad Storms", and moved on to designing the rest of that encounter. As it turns out? It worked really well.Now, can a PC Death Slaad be a Death Slaad Storm? Well, no. No they can't. But that didn't bother me, because the mechanical ways in which a Death Slaad Storm was superior to or different from a Death Slaad warmage were the direct result of being solely intended for a 4-round combat encounter. (I mean, over 4 rounds, a Death Slaad warmage would have a Sudden Maximize use, assumedly a Rod of Greater Maximize Spell, and something like 6 9th-level spells per day? So "maximized Maw of Chaos + Intelligence at will" was effectively the same thing.) If I had intended for the Storm to be a recurring NPC or recruitable by the party or playable as a PC, I would not have statted it in that fashion.However, I likewise hated the Hobgoblins in MM5, because of essentially all the reasons you stated. Monsters statted like that, especially "classed" monsters, don't give me options, and present that trimmed, combat-only statblock as the one mechanical truth. In this way, I feel that a designer, who's being paid to do this and doesn't have the knowledge to tell how people will be inspired to use his creations, is obliged to make them as generally useful as possible. DMs do it for fun and are in just the right place to know when expanded rules are needed.(By the way, statblock advice I wish I could have given someone back in 2000 when 3.0 was new? Bold SLAs or spellbook spells that are worth a monster or NPC's time of day in a 5-round death match, and underline SLAs or spellbook spells that monsters or NPCs should pre-buff themselves with. I liked having monsters who could bring to bear a wide variety of spell effects, many useless for combat? But honestly, a quick reference to tell me "these are the spells that actually kill things" is the least you could do.)</blockquote>

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