In your games, do you include trolls that you've adjusted to be CR 1 and trolls that you've adjusted to be CR 10 in your game, without changing how you describe such a troll to your players? *snip*
Yes, I do describe them differently, but for me this comes at no extra cost. If I had to spend money to create new textures/models for each monster I mod I would resort to levelling monsters, which is exactly what we see.
Reasonable point: it does cost resources. Then my preference would tend toward just using different (already modeled) monsters for that encounter. Instead of an under-leveled troll, they use gnolls or an ogre or some other creature they've included somewhere else in the game.
Failing that, at the absolute minimum, I'd like different names. (Troll Commander, Young vs Old Mindflayer, etc). That would add more memorability to encounters than "level 10 troll"
