CapnZapp
Legend
My experience is that elites and solos and soldiers work surprisingly badly as soon as you leave the characters' level.
I have tried several times in an attempt to evoke a "this critter is seriously bad-ass" feeling, and failed everytime*.
High-level elites, solos and soldiers doesn't come across as especially threatening. They come across as being especially boringly unkillable.
*) With the sole exception when I pitted a Dragon at them, which I boosted through the roof (granting it a much wider area for its breath attack, doubling the damage of that breath attack, giving it roughly 50% more attacks, in addition to the MM2 guidelines of less hp and lower defenses). This dragon was 5 levels higher already from the start - and still it needed its offensive to be more than doubled to present a serious threat (a threat the group had to think in order to overcome)
For my next campaign, I am going to seriously start to ignore the 4E philosophy on damage. Instead of making "serious threats" of higher level, I'm just going to make them do double damage or do triple attacks (etc).
(Incidentally, some of the most exciting fights have been against foes where 4E apparently inadvertantly accomplished this on its own. I have one word for you: Greataxe. Orcs and Grimlocks work beautifully. They're brutes, so they're fun to kill. They do whopping amounts of damage - despite being legit 4E critters - so they're fun to kill. Basically, they're the most fun monsters to kill thus far!)
I have tried several times in an attempt to evoke a "this critter is seriously bad-ass" feeling, and failed everytime*.
High-level elites, solos and soldiers doesn't come across as especially threatening. They come across as being especially boringly unkillable.
*) With the sole exception when I pitted a Dragon at them, which I boosted through the roof (granting it a much wider area for its breath attack, doubling the damage of that breath attack, giving it roughly 50% more attacks, in addition to the MM2 guidelines of less hp and lower defenses). This dragon was 5 levels higher already from the start - and still it needed its offensive to be more than doubled to present a serious threat (a threat the group had to think in order to overcome)
For my next campaign, I am going to seriously start to ignore the 4E philosophy on damage. Instead of making "serious threats" of higher level, I'm just going to make them do double damage or do triple attacks (etc).
(Incidentally, some of the most exciting fights have been against foes where 4E apparently inadvertantly accomplished this on its own. I have one word for you: Greataxe. Orcs and Grimlocks work beautifully. They're brutes, so they're fun to kill. They do whopping amounts of damage - despite being legit 4E critters - so they're fun to kill. Basically, they're the most fun monsters to kill thus far!)