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<blockquote data-quote="Victim" data-source="post: 4445149" data-attributes="member: 78">One general standard for DnD is that more powerful characters and monsters are basically more powerful all around.&nbsp; A high level enemy will usually have better defenses AND better offense than a lower level monster.Minions and solos are all about breaking that proportional relationship.&nbsp; Minions can have high level offense and armor, but don't even have the HP of low level creatures (they do, however, basically have the HP of old low level creatures).&nbsp; Using a large number of fully detailed low level monsters tends to make tracking HP, power uses, etc more difficult.&nbsp; It also means that the enemies have usually serious problems hitting higher level enemies, and the high level people have a trivial time hitting them.&nbsp; Using a booster monster - to use 3.x example, a bard twinked for Inspire Courage - to make the standard low level grunts more dangerous tends to increase the complexity and initiative dependence of the encounter.&nbsp; In some ways, you can think of a minion as someone using a berserk fighting style to temporarily increase their effective level at the expense of surviveability - that's why a normal ogre might be level 4, but the minion is level 8.&nbsp; Solos are much tougher than normal and tend to have more area attacks, reaction abilities, and other tricks to spread their offense around, but they often lack the concentrated punch and high level defenses of other monsters.&nbsp; To put things simply, minions are about answering &quot;how can there be fights with lots of enemies without bogging the game down?&quot; (minions tend to have simpler abilities, and no HP to track) and to a lesser extent: &quot;how can I make groups of low level enemies not completely negligible threats?&quot; (since low level guys usually become higher level minions - but not too much higher).&nbsp; And solos are about answering: &quot;How do I make a boss monster that can withstand the gang beating the PCs dish out without making it so powerful that it can drop 1 or more PCs a round?&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Victim, post: 4445149, member: 78"] One general standard for DnD is that more powerful characters and monsters are basically more powerful all around. A high level enemy will usually have better defenses AND better offense than a lower level monster. Minions and solos are all about breaking that proportional relationship. Minions can have high level offense and armor, but don't even have the HP of low level creatures (they do, however, basically have the HP of old low level creatures). Using a large number of fully detailed low level monsters tends to make tracking HP, power uses, etc more difficult. It also means that the enemies have usually serious problems hitting higher level enemies, and the high level people have a trivial time hitting them. Using a booster monster - to use 3.x example, a bard twinked for Inspire Courage - to make the standard low level grunts more dangerous tends to increase the complexity and initiative dependence of the encounter. In some ways, you can think of a minion as someone using a berserk fighting style to temporarily increase their effective level at the expense of surviveability - that's why a normal ogre might be level 4, but the minion is level 8. Solos are much tougher than normal and tend to have more area attacks, reaction abilities, and other tricks to spread their offense around, but they often lack the concentrated punch and high level defenses of other monsters. To put things simply, minions are about answering "how can there be fights with lots of enemies without bogging the game down?" (minions tend to have simpler abilities, and no HP to track) and to a lesser extent: "how can I make groups of low level enemies not completely negligible threats?" (since low level guys usually become higher level minions - but not too much higher). And solos are about answering: "How do I make a boss monster that can withstand the gang beating the PCs dish out without making it so powerful that it can drop 1 or more PCs a round?" [/QUOTE]

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