A frustrating situation - NPC spell lists

They could have done something like the way those worked in 2014, but with just a minimal "here is a spell list sufficient for combat". Generally speaking, you want

• A damaging cantrip
• Two attack spells with somewhat different use cases.
• A 'get out of dodge' spell.
• Possibly buffs or debuffs (depends somewhat on use case; it's rare for either to be useful for a solo monster).

There is an advantage to having an NPC use PC-like abilities: it means PCs can have a sensible understanding of what they can do and thus have adequate information to make plans to counter them. I certainly do have NPCs use spells like glyph of warding, mordenkainen's private sanctum, hallow and forbiddance (I don't think I've ever had one cast guards and wards, though, that's just a weird and annoying set of effects), because it means that they do suffer from restrictions on just, for example, teleporting or scrying their way in, but it becomes an obstacle that the players have sufficient information to solve.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

There is an advantage to having an NPC use PC-like abilities: it means PCs can have a sensible understanding of what they can do and thus have adequate information to make plans to counter them. I certainly do have NPCs use spells like glyph of warding, mordenkainen's private sanctum, hallow and forbiddance (I don't think I've ever had one cast guards and wards, though, that's just a weird and annoying set of effects), because it means that they do suffer from restrictions on just, for example, teleporting or scrying their way in, but it becomes an obstacle that the players have sufficient information to solve.

 Yeah, it's probably a good idea to use extant spells when possible, especially for traps, so that players can figure out how they work. But there's things that one might want that aren't available in the spell list.

I've also been bitten by using off-the-shelf spells. I had an NPC who was fond of using Demiplane to vanish inconvenient people while still being able to say under Zone of Truth that she hadn't killed them, she had no idea where they were, and the like, while still making it possible (though difficult) for the PCs to figure out her trick.

Then 5.5 rolled around, and now she's using a variant of Demiplane.

Quote from jl8e >>

I've also been bitten by using off-the-shelf spells. I had an NPC who was fond of using Demiplane to vanish inconvenient people while still being able to say under Zone of Truth that she hadn't killed them, she had no idea where they were, and the like, while still making it possible (though difficult) for the PCs to figure out her trick.

Then 5.5 rolled around, and now she's using a variant of Demiplane.

Ah right, no trapping people who don't want to be trapped in 5.5. There's various monsters that will do the job, though; feed them to an astral dreadnought. My bad guys tend towards things like flesh to stone, other than the one who casts imprisonment (minimus containment), crafts jewelry containing the resulting gem, and sells the result to fine distinguished connoisseurs of cruelty.