MCDM's monster book, Flee, Mortals! (an excellent title) covers a number of D&D staples, with an intention to be something of a default monster book that could fill in for your Monster Manual. While there are tons of monsters in here, I don't know that it covers every little niche I'd want out of the Monster Manual (whatever concerns I might have over WotC, I think it's about a 99% chance that I'll be picking up the new core rulebooks in 2024, though we'll see if I convert my campaigns fully to "5.5" or do some mixing and matching). Still, the ideas at play in Flee, Mortals are really exciting, intriguing, and interesting.
First off, let's talk about the encounter-building math.
The DMG's guidance on encounter-building is infamously byzantine and also tends to make for pushover encounters. As a new DM in 2015, I found that the multipliers created by adding many monsters to an encounter pushed me instead to have my party face a single CR 1 or 2 monster, which then tended to die before they could do anything when the Fighter and Paladin beat them in initiative.
The Xanathar's rules were far, far, better, and I think are still solid for most meat-and-potatoes encounters.
Flee, Mortals makes things even simpler, though, and also recognizes that most groups - at least experienced ones - will look for a greater challenge. Thus, they simply give each character level an equivalent in CR for Easy, Standard, and Hard encounters. But whereas the DMG's "deadly" difficulty becomes only barely challenging once you get into level 5, supposedly the feedback here is that hard truly means hard here.
As an example, using the Xanthar's rules (I'm ignoring the DMG ones,) and appropriate CR for a solo monster encounter for a group of 6 players at level 16 (which mine are) is 21. So, a Lich should present a challenge to a group like this (I'll admit that my group is decked out in insane magic items, so they probably count as a level or two higher).
With the Flee, Mortals! rules, each level 16 player is good for 6.5 CR in an easy encounter, 7 in a standard one, and 8 in a hard one. So, with six of them, if we wanted a boss fight that counts as "hard," we're looking at a total CR of 48. That means that after our Lich, we are going to still have 27 points of CR left over, which could mean a Death Knight lieutenant and then two Flesh Golems, or possibly three Jiangshi (from Van Richten's). Or three Necromancer Wizards. And given the power of level 16 parties, this feels much more like a reasonable challenge to present to them.
Now, let's talk about FM's take on legendary monsters.
In most segments of the book, monsters are grouped by category - you have your goblins, your orcs, your humans, your devils, etc., and various sub-categories of undead (all the undead are grouped together, but divided into segments for, like, mummies, vampires, liches, etc.) - and several of these categories have a named figure. While the generic "Lich" or "Vampire" stat blocks are presented as just powerful monsters (with their own types - we'll get to this,) there are also figures like High Mage Vairae, a lich, or Queen Bargnot, a goblin.
These "villains" are designed to be epic boss fights, and are meant to either stand on their own or command minions effectively. Each of these has multi-part actions - you can counterspell one of the lich's spells they cast during their action, but they get two more and then a bonus action and a reaction they can use, meaning the usual problem of one bad turn making your big bad seem kind of pathetic and ineffectual is probably not going to happen.
But there are two aspects of legendary creatures from main-line D&D stuff that are arguably nerfed, but in exciting ways.
First off, instead of legendary resistance, these "villain" characters have their own unique versions that impose a penalty upon them. For example, Shtriga Nonna, the named "hag" villain, has "Feline Resilience," where when she fails a saving throw, she can succeed instead but has to turn into a cat until the end of her next turn, preventing her from using some of her features while transformed. This makes using this version of legendary resistance more of a tactical decision for the DM - do your really burn it to take less damage from that fireball, or do you want to make sure you can still use Soul Steal on her next turn? For players, you're still hampering the boss in one way or another even if the specific effect you're going for is resisted.
Legendary actions are, in FM, Villain actions. These are similar to Legendary actions, but will require a little less tracking from the DM. Each villain action can only be used once per encounter, and only once per round - and are otherwise similar to legendary actions in that you use it at the end of a player's turn. The actions are put in a recommended order, with a kind of rhythm to them - usually the first involves some kind of crowd control, and then the second will somehow change the shape of the battlefield through movement abilities. The final one is typically an "ult," which does a bunch of damage and is there as a kind of "last resort" blast of damage to try to finish the party off.
For example, Lady Emer, the named Gorgon/Medusa villain, gets an AoE "Stone Gaze" action, which can potentially petrify anyone in the party. The second one gives her wings and lets her fly away without provoking opportunity attacks, and the third lets her command every creature petrified by her Stone Gaze to move and attack targets of her choice.
Now, villain characters typically have either the Solo role or the Leader role. Roles are assigned to every monster in the book, and these give you a sense of what they're supposed to do in an encounter. Brutes and Soldiers are both front-line fighters - Brutes being more of a threat on their own, while Soldiers focus on defense and locking down party members. Skirmishers have features that let them get in and strike but then get away from their foes. Artillery creatures are ranged damage-dealers (who will benefit if they have a Soldier to lock party members down.) Most of these don't have specific rules attached to them, but the idea is that when you build an encounter, you can try to cover two to three bases - maybe you have a non-legendary vampire (a skirmisher) with Human Knaves (soldiers) to lock down the party and make it easier for the vampire to flit between players, while a group of skeletons (artillery) pelt the party with arrows from afar.
So far, I've only been able to use monsters from FM in one session, and something of a weird one at that (the party is scattered across Ravnica's 10th District, so it's been groups of 2-3 player characters). I will say that the "minions" are I think more interesting if you've got melee characters wading into them, and player characters flying can still make problems for grounded monsters, but I'm going to keep using these monsters - and this sort of monster and encounter design - and see how it feels. In theory, I adore it, but I need to get my hands dirty.
While the upcoming dungeon I'm writing for the party to go into is intentionally combat-light (I feel I've been forcing a lot of fights on them, and would like to create more opportunities for puzzles and social encounters, especially after my friend who plays a Bard expressed that he feels like he never gets to use some of his features) and should, in theory, actually require not a single fight if the party plays it that way, the follow-up to that (basically, one dungeon to resolve a crisis created by a villain, another dungeon to find said villain and fight him) will also probably be a little less combat-oriented, but should end with a big climactic clash.
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