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<blockquote data-quote="Benimoto" data-source="post: 4048061" data-attributes="member: 40093">There's mechanical problems with the transition from &quot;elite&quot; to &quot;minion&quot; status, and it has to do with how they were designed.&nbsp; From what we've heard, since elite monsters take up the space of two monsters, they have roughly twice as many HP, they have more actions, but yet the still have about the normal ACs and chance to hit for monsters of their level.&nbsp; Minions don't have a lot of HP, probably don't have more than one attack, may not do a lot of damage individually, but probably also have a fairly normal chance to hit, so that they're not totally irrelevant.Look at the Pit Fiend.&nbsp; He's got two auras, spends his turn usually attacking twice and then doing one other thing, and can summon 2-8 other monsters.&nbsp; If you finally got to the point where you could fight 20 Pit Fiends, there'd be like 40 auras, 40-160 summoned monsters, and the players would have to wait for up to 60 attack rolls for just the pit fiends' attacks.&nbsp; Most of which would miss, since the Pit Fiend's attack bonuses never increased, even though the party got higher level and probably has better AC.&nbsp; Even 4 or 6 Pit Fiends is probably too many in an encounter.The reason why you mostly don't fight a boss monster at level 5 and then a dozen of those monsters at level 15 is that the same qualities that make a monster a good boss do not make it good in groups.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Benimoto, post: 4048061, member: 40093"] There's mechanical problems with the transition from "elite" to "minion" status, and it has to do with how they were designed. From what we've heard, since elite monsters take up the space of two monsters, they have roughly twice as many HP, they have more actions, but yet the still have about the normal ACs and chance to hit for monsters of their level. Minions don't have a lot of HP, probably don't have more than one attack, may not do a lot of damage individually, but probably also have a fairly normal chance to hit, so that they're not totally irrelevant. Look at the Pit Fiend. He's got two auras, spends his turn usually attacking twice and then doing one other thing, and can summon 2-8 other monsters. If you finally got to the point where you could fight 20 Pit Fiends, there'd be like 40 auras, 40-160 summoned monsters, and the players would have to wait for up to 60 attack rolls for just the pit fiends' attacks. Most of which would miss, since the Pit Fiend's attack bonuses never increased, even though the party got higher level and probably has better AC. Even 4 or 6 Pit Fiends is probably too many in an encounter. The reason why you mostly don't fight a boss monster at level 5 and then a dozen of those monsters at level 15 is that the same qualities that make a monster a good boss do not make it good in groups. [/QUOTE]

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