assault

The biggest healing change in 5e (for me, having skipped 3e and 4e) that enables this is the short rest healing mechanic.  This approximately doubles a character's hit points for a given session.  Couple that with the fact that damage generally doesn't affect characters until they reach 0HP and you have a pretty cinematic game going.
 
That said you'd still have to tune the adversaries some.  In the 5e campaign I played, my paladin often wound up spending combats running around playing tag with his lay on hands.

Does Gimli count as his True Love?
 
If not, Westley wins.

My bad.  I should have typed "mostly dead".

Space Ghost was the series that really kicked the Saturday morning cartoon supers trend into high gear. The success of that show prompted the other two of the Big Three TV networks to contract H-B and others to develop their own series.
 
Many younger viewers only know the character from his later satirical pseudo talk show, and haven't experienced the coolness of his original adventures.

Shane MacGowan, Pogues songwriter and Irish music legend, dies aged 65

All fantasy?  I disagree with that.

Thank you for that insight, Mr. McGee. But we've asked you not to leave your room before you've had your meds.

Curse you, Duke, there's coffee everywhere now. 
 
It's the look on the cat's face more than anything.  Presumably the monocle on the guy's left eye is cold.
Don't ruin this for me, I'm really enjoying the absurdist vision of legions of 5e PCs squashing berries into their eyes before delving. 

Well, he counts also.
 
But not Scooby Dum. Nor Scrapy Doo.
 
Defently not Scrapy Doo.

You're think of Wonder Dog, who was with Wendy and Marvin in the first Super Friends series.  Gleek was with The Wonder Twins in the second series.

The figurine origin is well documented.

It also includes the Bulette and the Rust Monster.

Scooby Doo?

The figurine origin is well documented.

It also includes the Bulette and the Rust Monster.

Didn't they recover that version of Bat-Cow from an illegal slaughterhouse or something?  Pretty sure the dietary conversion came from firsthand experience with an abattoir and the pet was a side effect.
 
Nowhere near as dangerous as the Tick's Man-Eating Cow, of course.  And the Chick Fil A super-cows from the promotional comics are nobody's pets.

It's not the hypothetical owl stealth that matters (which doesn't apply anyway since the hybrid can't fly - owls are not especially quite on the ground), it's the neck rotation and incredible night vision that also picks out movement well thing.  Hypothetically it's harder to sneak on an owlbear than a regular bear, which makes it a superior guard animal.  If anything the bear's own stealth is probably helping the owl parts hunt better, since it's at least somewhat akin to an owl's game plan - just with less swooping and more charging and mauling involved. 
 
I've seen a few rulesets that gave them limited gliding abilities that restores swooping as an option, which would go a fair ways toward making these things less absurd.  Bears climb trees quite well, making reaching a position to swoop from easy enough.
 
It's also quite likely that the intent was get a fully flight-capable hybrid out of the experiment and this is the best they could do.  Wizards are usually not aeronautical (bio)engineers. 
 
Or the original creator really, really wanted something special for a rug in their love nest and had a fur-and-feathers fetish.  If you think the owlbear's weird you should see his chinchillafinches and hamsterobins.
 
Mind you, the whole concept only makes sense to people who've been huffing too much yellow lotus dust.  More sane wizards just build animated statues and the like when they want a guard.  The really sarcastic ones sculpt them to look like owlbears.  

FH third ed. had magic Items, scar sword - IIRC - you had to rub and invoke the spell and you had a magic sword. My original group ran with the idea, not only the sword, but a shield too. One of them went all the way to a scar suit of armor, the scar on the chest. 
Magic Items was/is a book detailing magic items and rules for making same.

Gygax had said that a cheap plastic toy was the inspiration for the owlbear.  (The URL I'd saved in reference to this and some other D&D monster origins no longer works, but it was from Enworld forums, a Q&A thread with Gary Gygax.)

I always wonder why someone would use one system to try to emulate another. Nothing will emulate a D&D game like playing D&D, so if that is the desired play experience, play D&D.
 
I recently read a Pathfinder scenario with some Lovecraftian influence.  It tried to bolt on a sanity mechanic (noted as optional). Given what the characters (L9 at the start of this section of an AP) should already have witnessed, their mental health should already have taken a hit.

Try looking up the the Black Hand from Minaria, the setting of TSR's old, old board game Divine Right.  Minaria got a huge (for a hex-and-counter wargame) amount of worldbuilding background and was obviously someone's homebrew D&D campaign at some points, most of which was published in early Dragon issues that can be found online.  The Black Hand is your classic necromancer-liche type, magically bound to his cursed tower stronghold but occasionally wandering afield on military campaigns with hordes of skellies and other undead.  One of his signature spells/creations was a conglomeration of zombified flesh and bone the size of a small hill, which was pretty much a smellier version of the giant bone construct you're describing.  In game terms he could only create the thing by moving into a hex marked as a "recent battlefield" where one or more armies had been destroyed during the game - the source for all the semi-fresh corpses used constructing the thing.  "Old battlefields" (permanently marked on the map, from historical battlefields) were recruiting ground for skeletons, of course. 
 
Haven't played that game in decades but the Hand came to mind the moment I read your description.  Good memories. 
 
In a swords & sorcery game he'd fit nicely as either a legendary-but-static menace to overcome at home, or a threat to a whole kingdom if he's taken to the field and started raising his legions of undead   Or go more creepy/weird horror with it and have your heroes sent on diplomatic mission to recruit his aid against another kingdom.  That'll work out great, I'm sure.  Don't forget to to include the token sacrificial royal offspring for the players to save from a fate worse than undeath - or not, if they're that kind of heroes.

You can find even more examples of this overall archetype in Clark Ashton Smith's writings, particularly the Zothique story cycle.  Some of them may have started out as human, but by the time they come into the story their study of magic has rendered their humanity a dim memory, while others are just plain things from beyond disguised as mortal men or women.  You can find most or all of CAS' writings in public domain online, inclduing some very well-done audio readings scattered around YouTube.  IMO he does a better job with really dreadful inhuman magicians than REH manages, in part because he's happy to write from their point of view instead of their sword-wielding opponent(s).
 
On a less literary note, the old Sinbad films with SFX done by Ray Harryhausen are chock full of fine evil magicians who could easily be reskinned for use outside of their Hollywood Arabian setting.  I'm particularly fond of Tom "Doctor Who" Baker's Prince Koura, whose magic is just the right level of "this clearly isn't healthy for the user" to explain why magicians are so rare.  The fact that Caroline Munro is also in the film might make me a little biased, though.   

Wicked sorcerers tend to fall into one of two appearance types: devilishly handsome or sinfully ugly. Evil sorceresses tend to be more attractive on average than hideous, but haglike ones also abound.

Going back to Robert E. Howard's precedents, he was fond of what  I like to call "pseudo-gods." These were non-human supernatural creatures out of some "hell" dimension, or the "outer darkness" ouside the world, or whatever other Lovecraftian locale you prefer. Typically malevolent or at least hostile, they usually wielded magic beyond what mortals could attain, and attracted cultists who worshiped them; but in clothing their spirits in the substance of Earth they were vulnerable to injury and even death by enough force, or some weakness the protagonist could discover.

This is fascinating reading, and does some highlighting of the mechanics of the powerful destabilization of society and politics enabled by manipulation of social media.

Further on my Necromancers, I broadly divide magic into two major classes, "Death vs Life Magic". I still use comeliness in my campaign, and as a set of disadvantages for using "Death" magic you lose comeliness, constitution, and strength (with consequence's to the figured characteristics). Up to 100 cp active cost of spell, .5 loss of characteristic in each of the aforementioned characteristics, above 100 cp 1 full point. Losses are imposed at the end of each session, yes I keep track. (right now only on NPC's da bad guys none of my players have chosen to be Death Mages) Other disadvantages, hunted by the life church's large very active, hunted by the Academy of Magic likewise, hunted by the various polities within my campaign. Distinctive looks, usually in the not concealable plus causes fear, disgust ect. (the comeliness is not repairable or replaceable)

Arithmetic is easy. It's decisions that are hard. A question I would pose is, if CON is how healthy you are, why do I then also have to decide how much damage I can take, how much endurance I have, and how tough I am, separately from my Constitution? What does DEX represent, if it's completely divorced from combat ability? If I'm creating a fighter for a fantasy campaign, how much PD and ED should I have? These might seem like second nature to long-time players, but to the novice, we've gone from a system where you have eights traits to decide, and a few things to calculate, to one in which you have sixteen or so, including a vestigial OMCV for many characters. The current system is what you get when you keep refining something to appeal to an expert user base who are comfortable with odd legacy items.
Splitting off SPD, in order to get rid of decimal purchases for that one trait, and because it doesn't necessarily have a strong relationship with DEX, was a good idea.