So, while I haven't yet had a chance to toss its monsters against my players a lot (basically two sessions, and I had to cancel tonight's because I'm sick and don't want to strain my throat) the monster design in Flee, Mortals! tickles me profoundly on a theoretical level. That being said, I suspect that these monsters will be generally tougher than what we get in the Monster Manual.
Take your standard Orc from the Monster Manual. These guys have a +5 to hit with their Greataxe and Javelin attacks, with a +3 to Strength. They have an AC of 13, and 15 hit points. The main thing that makes them distinct as monsters is that they can dash toward a target as a bonus action (this "aggressive" trait being kind of the defining Orc feature).
There are two CR 1/2 Orcs in FM - the Fury, which is a Brute, and the Bloodrunner, which is a skirmisher.
FM's Orcs have Relentless as their shared trait, which functions like the playable Orc and Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance, allowing them to drop to 1 instead of 0 HP when their HP is depleted once a day.
The Bloodrunner already has a speed of 60 feet, meaning that it can move the speed a MM Orc would be able to without a bonus action, and it has a number of other features, along with having a higher AC. Its Spiked Shield attack does less than a Greataxe, but its Unimpeded passive feature can potentially make up for that if it runs through a prone creature's space - something its shield attack can cause.
The Fury is perhaps closer to the "standard" Orc, in that it just strikes with a Greataxe or Javelin. It is not going to be moving as quickly, (though still has 35 feet, over the standard 30) and gets to deal a little extra damage against a prone target, and can knock a target prone if they aren't already. And they can heal themselves a little once a day.
So, yeah, these are, I think, both more powerful than the Monster Manual version.
They're more dynamic, to be sure, and I think experienced players will enjoy the greater challenge of the fight.
But that's not really what I'm looking to explore here.
FM has a number of "Solo" monsters that are designed to be a challenging fight without any additional monsters. If you face down its version of the Kraken, that's meant to be a serious encounter even if the party is composed of six level 19 characters. The Kraken has 499 HP, its standard "multiattack" involves seven different attacks (four tentacles and three mental lances) along with a bonus action that can hurl grappled creatures up to 60 feet and a reaction that will deal an AoE burst of psychic damage to the attacker and anyone nearby. And then, on top of all of this, it has three "villain actions," which are one-use-only-per-round and once-per-encounter legendary actions that have pretty big effects.
So, naturally, these guys are built to put a party through their paces without any help from other monsters. And, indeed, encounter-building uses a different sort of math for them: A solo monster against a group of 4-5 level, say, 10 characters, should have a CR of 11-12 if you're building a Standard encounter, or 13-15 if you want the fight to be hard.
Normally, using FM's encounter-building system, each player accounts for a certain "budget" of CR, depending on their level and the encounter difficulty. There's also, then, a CR cap, where the fight shouldn't involve creatures that go above it. The solo encounter building system uses this cap as a maximum as well, and then lowers it depending on how much you want to tune the difficulty down from its maximum.
So, for example, the CR cap at level 20 is 30, which means you should never throw the Titan Goxomoc (kind of FM's version of the Tarrasque, with a whole second phase as a powerful elemental) against any party that's not level 20, and even then it should, in theory, be a difficult fight.
But what about less powerful monsters? Can we build a solo monster encounter that doesn't use a, well, solo monster?
So, right from the start, I think we've got an issue: the CR cap for solo monsters is already a pretty hard limit - they recommend never going over it even when you've got a big, climactic boss fight. So, really, can we put a single monster in there that fills out our CR budget without hitting the cap?
The answer is, well, yes. But it'll be an easy encounter.
Level 10 players are each worth 3.5 CR's worth. So, if we have a four-player party, that puts us at a CR budget of 14 - just shy of our cap at 15. There are a couple CR 14 monsters in FM, though a couple of them are Leaders or Support, neither of which seem like they will lend themselves well to a single-monster fight. There's also a solo monster, but we're looking specifically outside of that for this case. (Though it might be a point of comparison). So, we're left with the Devil Adjudicator - a Controller, which seems like the sort of monster that might pose a challenge on its own.
The Adjudicator has a three-part multiattack, with two uses of its main spell attack (dealing 27 fire damage on a hit and either charming or frightening the target) and a recharge ability (5-6) that can significantly reduce a character's power with a fairly high Charisma save. It also flies, which is not unbeatable at this level, but will make things tougher for melee characters.
The key here, though, is that unlike a Solo or Leader monster, there's no remedy if a player uses a powerful spell like Banishment and the creature fails. The Adjudicator has a +10 to charisma saving throws, which means there's a good chance it will succeed against such a spell, but once they fail, the fight is over - the party needs to only wait around for the full minute and let the guy be banished permanently back to the Nine Hells (or Seven Cities of Hell, in MCDM's multiverse).
That being said, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. If this is not meant to be a climactic encounter, and is only something that might emerge in a dungeon room as a sudden threat, perhaps getting lucky and taking it out with a single spell is all right. At level 10, whittling down 204 HP is not going to be super easy, so this devil will in most cases pose a fair challenge. But even if he's pumping out 54 damage per round (assuming he's always hitting) a level 10 group can probably manage it, especially if they're smart.
Now, as a point of comparison, Xorannox, the named "Overmind" villain (MCDM's version of the Beholder) is also CR 14. They have the same AC, while Xorannox has a little more HP (228 to the adjudicator's 204). As a Beholder-like creature, most of its eye beams (which it chooses, rather than rolling randomly) impose status effects. That said, if it goes in for maximum damage, using its Lightning Bolt, Explosion, and Necrosis beams will do a lot more than the 54 the devil is doing.
So, truly, CR is not everything here - Solo monsters are really built differently.
Still, I think using the normal encounter-building rules and sometimes having the party fight a single monster is not totally infeasible. But as any experienced DM will note, it's generally better for your standard fights to involve multiple monsters.
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