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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NewJeffCT" data-source="post: 6090503" data-attributes="member: 10784">As a person who primarily DMs, I loved that 4E made things easier on the DM in terms of building encounters.    I felt that once my 3.5E game got past the level 9/10 range, it felt like a second job to me just to build an encounter that was challenging and unique.  I had a big group of gamers and the gist of the campaign was that they were going up against an evil cabal of clerics and wizards who followed the deity of slavery and tyranny.  So, in order to make the BBEG of each encounter different, I had to delve into different prestige classes (mystic theurge, arch-mage, etc) or oddball races, or templates, or look through every spell in the Spell Compendium to give them different spells that still felt like they were followers of this deity.  And, of course, the BBEG would have to have melee support (guards) and lower level casters (apprentices) for counter-spellling and/or dispelling in order to make it a good encounter.  I got to be very good at this, and most of those level 10-18 encounters were ones where the PCs got knocked around, beaten up, thrashed within a millimeter of death, but barely pulled through in the end.   The BBEG would still have good options to use 6-7-8 rounds into the combat, right up to the very end. Cut to 4E.  As I said, I loved that encounters were a lot easier to build.  I’m guessing that it took me well under 10% of the time it took me to build 3.5E encounters.  However, even a tough Solo bad guy would end up being boring for me to run.  Round 1 would be Daily Power, Action Point, Recharge Power; Round 2 would be Daily or Encounter Power, Action Point, and then At-Will Power (or Recharge Power if it recharged);   Then, after Round 2, the bad guy is stuck doing At-Wills while hoping his Recharge Power recharges.  When the combat went on for 5-6-7 more rounds, it got to be kind of boring for me as a DM.  Maybe the bad guy has an Immediate Reaction or Interrupt, but there wouldn’t be more than that.  So, if I wanted to tweak 4E monsters without having to build entire PCs as bad guys, I was wondering how these changes would affect things: 1)      Each Elite monster gets an additional at-will power of equivalent level.  That way, a bad guy with a “fire” based at-will isn’t completely nerfed if the PCs have some fire resistance.  Each elite would also get an additional encounter power of equivalent level as well, for basically the same reason.2)      Each Solo monster gets the Elite extras, plus one more at-will of equivalent level, and one more encounter or recharge power of equivalent level.  I would also add in that once the Solo gets Bloodied, they also get a bonus to their Recharge power roll or rolls (either for the next round, or for the remainder of the encounter…).  This way, I would at least have more options and potential options down the road.3)      I’ve already typically added an immediate reaction or interrupt to most Solo monsters (and some Elites), just so they’re not totally helpless if hit with a status effect or cornered or similar.  It had not really affected the outcomes of combats.  Are my ideas okay?  Overpowered?  Any other suggestions?</blockquote>

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