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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8859826" data-attributes="member: 6790260">No idea. Let's do the math! By the MM3-on-a-business-card, a level 8 monster should have the following statistics.[SPOILER="We do the Monster Math"]AC: 14+8 = 22Def: 12+8 = 20 (read: 4e's equivalent of "Constitution saves" and the like)Hit: 5+8 = 13Average (baseline) damage: 8+8 = 16 (probably best represented as 4d6+2 or 2d6+9, but there are other options.)Damage modifiers: Encounter actions (+25% to +50%), Brute role (+25%), AoE effects (-25%)Minion: half damageElite: x2 HPSolo: x4 HPHP (and any modifiers to AC) would then be determined by monster role:Skirmisher: 24+8*8 = 88 HP (closest to the "baseline" role: stands out via mobility and abilities, not stats per se)Controller: 88 HP (same calc)Soldier: 88 HP, +2 AC (the "high defense" type)Brute: 26+8*10 = 106 HP, -2 AC (the Barbarian-type, more beef and damage, but lower defenses)Artilery: 21+8*6 = 69 HP (nice), -2 ACLurker: 69 HP (same calc; this is the Rogue-type, sneaky damage dealer)[/SPOILER]A typical level 17 character in 4e (in this case, a Sorcerer) should have (roughly) +20 attack bonus and deal (roughly) 1d8+20 damage with an At-Will attack (3d8+18 damage on a multi-target Encounter attack, for comparison.) And they should have roughly AC 32, and 104 HP, give or take.With +13 to hit, the level 8 minion only hits on 19 or 20. Due to the way 4e crits work, this means half the time that they hit they'll do their average damage, and half the time they'll do maximized damage (possibly with a small rider), so if we go with 2d6+1 as their normal damage range, they'll be putting out 0.05(8+13) = 1.05 average damage per round. This, obviously, isn't much, but against a very large number (say, 20+), this can actually add up to something serious. When they hit, they actually do a moderate amount of damage--on a crit, even this weak minion does 1/6th of a Sorcerer's HP, so there's still some risk, even though it's low on a per-monster basis.If we made them brutes (fragile but harder-hitting) and gave them some kind of attack-boosting buff or benefit (perhaps they have a battle standard that boosts them, or a leader far in the back giving them buffs), their damage would be reasonably decent. E.g. let's say they get a +3 to attack, allowing them to hit on 16+. That would mean, on average, a group of 10 of them should hit roughly 2-3 attacks per round; a group of 20 should  hit 5 per round. That's enough to still be scary en masse, even though they don't do that much damage (brute would increase damage by roughly 1/3, to about 10 damage on a normal hit.)Keep in mind that this is combining both "this monster is easily defeated by someone of its listed level" and "this is far below the level of the PCs." If we used minions of a higher level...which the way the minion rules were designed to be used...no further embellishments would be required. And you can make the MM3-on-a-business-card monster in about two minutes by just using the formulae on it. The only difficult part is giving it interesting actions or properties other than its fundamental statistics. Given that's the part where DMs are showing their creativity, it should be the "difficult" part of designing a monster.</blockquote>

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