Quote Originally Posted by Just to Browse View Post
I like the two other categories. I think an aboleth is a good candidate for a controller, honestly.
It's sort of a hybrid controller/mastermind with a side order of puzzle, really. A delicious, delicious side order. Tastes like PC.

I will gladly repeat my claim that hybrid monsters are a totally fine part of this descriptive system, and I fully embrace the idea of Beholders acting as artillery bosses just as much as I embrace kobold archers being artillery fodder. I will also concede that bosses don't absolutely positively need a bunch of defenses. But I do believe that boss and fodder creatures are distinct roles, and I strongly disagree with the idea that you can designate bosses are well-rounded / complex monsters.
The difference between boss/mook roles and the other ones is a matter of scope. Every other role is defined both by what it is and what is isn't. Artillery critters are strong at range and often good at keeping out of range of enemies, and they aren't good at attacking or defending in close quarters and generally can't take hits even at range. Meatbag monsters do have good all-around defenses and often have some sort of fast healing/DoT/etc. ability that punishes you for leaving them alone for more than a few rounds, and they don't have any good ways to deal with fast or far-away foes and generally aren't impressive on their own. You can take a role and take a monster concept and figure out what abilities would and wouldn't fit.

However, bosses don't really have an "isn't" list, and mooks don't really have an "is" list. A boss is (or should be) good at dealing with a whole party, can resist or ignore many combat-ending effects, has several varied tactics it can take in combat, and so forth, but there's not really anything you can point to and say "This isn't a thing a boss should have" (even things like "dies in one hit from certain weapon" or "dies on contact with a certain materian" have their place; rakshasas and Bowser say hi), and likewise a mook isn't (or shouldn't be) particularly complicated to run because the DM might have to use a couple dozen at once, can't punch above its CR with any niche SLAs or the like, doesn't make for a hard or challenging encounter on its own, and so forth, but there's not really anything specific that a creature must have to qualify as a mook.

If you say something is an artillery/mastermind you have some idea of what that would mean for its combat style and what synergies might be present, and you can look at a hypothetical artillery/closet monster and say that doesn't make sense because the two roles are thematically opposed. Saying that something is an artillery/boss or meatbag/mook doesn't give you any distinct information from the boss or mook side, it just tells you that they should be artillery++ and meatbag––.

If anything, bosses and mooks should be templates, not roles. Getting a bunch more actions/free ability activations/natural weapons/handy SLAs/immunities/etc. in exchange for a CR bump--and those would all be distinct templates, not one "Boss Monster" template; dragons have the Bunch O' Natural Weapons template, beholders have the Do Ten Things Per Round template, and so on--would work well to explicitly distinguish them from "normal" monsters and lets you cost different aspects of being a boss monster appropriately. The reverse would also work, of course, for giving minions the Glowing Weak Point template or Consistency Of Wet Cardboard template or Freaks Out And Runs After Getting Hit template or whatever else.

Not all complexity or broadess is inherently boss-worthy. [...] Those options do not inherently make a creature worthy of boss monster status.
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On a similar note, fodder doesn't inherently benefit from being narrow and simple. For example, a hydra's fast healing makes it a bad fodder creature even though it is extremely narrow and simple, especially at higher CRs.
No arguments there. Complexity is necessary for good bosses and simplicity for good mooks, but not sufficient for them.