Pitting players against enemies with similar abilities to their own can be a lot of fun. It adds a sinister touch to players’ own favorite abilities — love action surge? Well, now there’s an enemy warrior who has it. Enjoy being a nigh-invulnerable raging Barbarian?

While there’s an undeniable sense of familiarity and fairness to these kinds of enemies, they are also best used with caution — after all, PCs are exponentially more complex than their monster equivalents.

As such, we’re putting together a compendium of stat blocks that balance out their cool abilities with enough simplicity that you can run these without slowing the game to a crawl.