Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gloombunny" data-source="post: 3936144" data-attributes="member: 54916">The reason why you would want an "elite" monster, instead of just using a regular monster of a higher level, is that elite-ness and level will make a monster tougher in different ways.  A higher-level monster will have better attack bonuses and better defenses (both AC, and Fort/Reflex/Will).  Fighting a monster of a significantly higher level than yours means your attacks and spells will "whiff" a lot more often, which is both annoying and weakens player contribution by making success more a matter of luck.  And the monster's better attack bonuses means its attacks and spells will only rarely fail to hit/take effect, which can throw off the balance significantly.  (Remember that "sweet spot" they keep talking about?)By contrast, an elite monster will probably have a lot more HP than a regular monster of its level, but its attack and defense bonuses will be in the same ballpark.  It'll probably also have either multiple actions or attacks that effect multiple PCs (like area-of-effect blasts), which makes it damage better spread out across the party, rather than smacking the crap out of one PC and leaving the rest of the party untouched.  And it may have defensive abilities specifically designed to help when it's outnumbered, where a higher-level regular monster might fall surprisingly quickly to a coordinated assault.In short, using elite monsters instead of higher-level regular monsters when you want something tough is a developers' tool to help keep the game balanced and fun for different kinds of encounters.  I expect 4e will make it lot easier for DMs to throw varied encounters at the PCs without hassles like trying to figure out how many under-CR enemies add up to the right encounter level.</blockquote>

Verification