Additional Rules

Champion Monsters

Champion monsters are monsters who are much more powerful than the normal cannon fodder fed to a party of adventurers. They are the boss monsters you would see in a video game, and the final enemy of a dungeon or a quest.

They are usually the leader of a band of monsters or the king that reigns over the rest of the enemies the party has encountered so far.

They have the following special abilities:

Champion Actions

In a round of combat, the creature has one full turn, and one reaction between turns, for each set of hit points it has above zero. When a set of hit points has been reduced to zero, the creature loses one turn each round thereafter. In addition, the character has a series of optional Initiatives located below their Hit Points value on the stat block to use instead of rolling for their initiative.

Champion Hit Points

The creature has multiple sets of hit points, each of which is tracked separately. Only the first set with more than zero hit points is affected. When one set of hit points is reduced to zero, all external ongoing conditions and effects affecting the creature end immediately, but all unapplied damage spills over to the next. After a set has been reduced to zero, it normal healing cannot restore it until after a long rest. The creature dies only when all sets of hit points have been reduced to zero.

tl;dr:

Has separate sets of hit points that must all be reduced to zero before the monster is killed, and every time a set is reduced to zero, all ongoing conditions and effects applied to the monster, whether negative or positive, end immediately. The monster has a number of turns in each round of combat equal to the number of sets it has remaining.

Initiatives? Some of the monsters here have an optional initiative roll(s) you may use instead of rolling as would be normal. This is more to save time and prevent confusion than much of anything else, especially if they gain more than one turn per round. In the case of Champion Monsters, they are shown with separate initiatives for each set of hit points.

New Details

Tactics

These are actions that aren't weapon attacks or spell-like abilities. They have special effects and are entirely optional. They can have various prefixes (each is shown as an example):

Bonus Tactic - Consumes a Bonus Action on activation.

Movement Tactic - Consumes a Move Action on activation.

Normal Tactic - Consumes a regular Action on activation.

Reaction Tactic - Consumes a Reaction on activation.

Single-use tactic - The creature cannot use this tactic more than once in any single combat encounter.

Class

A monster's role replaces its alignment. It represents the combat tactics suggested for it, in a matter much like the role of a character class in a video game. Monster roles are the following: