Starting on Abishai
Added 2022-01-22 19:01:01 +0000 UTCWotC must've set the CR of the abishai late on a Friday afternoon, because they went real wild with it. The black one, for instance, has some nice defensive abilities, but certainly not enough to make up for the ~130 extra HP it should have at that CR.
The black abishai also showcases one of my problems with 5e monster design; defensive abilities that take a full action to activate. At best they just slow your combat down without producing dramatic moments, and at worst they slow it down AND make it less challenging, since that defensive ability that costs a full turn is likely to provide less than a full turn of additional survival, on average.
The blue abishai showcases some other problems I have with 5e. The rules to play it are spread over more than 20 pages, across two books. That's not the biggest deal if you have all the spells in the game memorized or a digital tool to help you, but even then it drags combat to a crawl as the DM scans through 27 abilities to figure out which ones are worth using. DMs are often managing too many things to preplan their turns; monster stat blocks shouldn't have a bunch of useless crap to filter away so the DM can make a decision.
