Ethel is not a good example. She's a boss fight. Bosses are meant to be buffed and tweaked. The best example is Spider Matriarch and Phase Spiders. Matriarch again is a boss, so making her buffed is good. However, she should have Phase Spider minions that stay true to their original design.
So what we're suggesting is not a complete overhaul. It's a tweaking of the system to set monsters to proper stats with bosses as the exceptions. In a goblin fight, they should all be roughly easy to kill so you can slaughter droves of them in each encounter. A single intellect devourer should be a tough fight even for a team of 4 level 2 adventurers if done properly.
And if Larian wants more numbers of enemies, don't use a monster that needs to be nerfed in order to be large numbers of them. There are plenty of monsters. Use something that fits more.
Again, Kuo-Toas in the beginning as opposed to intellect devourers especially since they aren't even having the monsters use their abilities that make them what they are.
