Balancing special encounters

[HealingAura]

I like the way you can "buy" monsters with EXP for your encounter, to make it balanced for your party. I was wondering how can you evaluate how much exp do you add to a monster when you make it stronger through:

1. Adding Disease to the monster's bite attack
2. Adding Poison to the monster's weapon attack
3. Adding a class template to the monster
4. Adding explosives to the enemies' arsenal (like Alchemist’s Acid)
5. Adding a major villain NPC to the enemy party (played like a PC)

I want to add new exciting features to the battle, without having a TPK, but with appropriate reward for the PCs for overcoming a greater threat.

 

[Nifft]

1. Adding Disease to the monster's bite attack
2. Adding Poison to the monster's weapon attack
3. Adding a class template to the monster
4. Adding explosives to the enemies' arsenal (like Alchemist’s Acid)
5. Adding a major villain NPC to the enemy party (played like a PC)

(3), the class template, makes a critter into an Elite, no?

For the others, I'd suggest looking for monsters which already have the appropriate attacks and reskinning those attacks. For example, an Orc Bombadier could easily have "acid flasks" instead of "cinder bombs". Change the damage type to acid, reskin the monster, done.

Cheers, -- N