Comment As a classic of AMAs, would you rather fight 100 Tiny-sized Owlbears or 1 Large-sized Flying Snake?
mikemearls66 points20 days ago
1 snake. I don’t want a tiny owlbear crawling up my pants leg. from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.
The snake, absolutely.
Action economy kills. A single snake can only take a single action per round, but 100 owlbears can take 100 actions per round, and with bounded accuracy and simple probability, you’re basically guaranteed to be hit by a significant number of attacks. Even if each attack only does 1 damage each, that can still add up to dozens of HP lost per round.
Meanwhile, the single snake might be able to match that level of damage with its single action per round, but it also has the very real chance of missing entirely and doing no damage whatsoever.