Monte Cook: Guidance for Monsters and Treasure

[Balesir]

Oddly enough I've found the opposite to be the case: one-on-one rarely if ever works well for RP; the best seems to come when the group has 2-3 players because they can feed off each other rather than just reacting to me.

2-3 might be feasible, but the (b) part of my comment about all needing to be on the same "wavelength" regarding what is "realistic" (in the game world) still applies. Finding a group who can all get onto the same "band" gets harder the more individuals you try to include. Also, new or departing players become a real issue, as they can upset the "equilibrium".

Such play is fun, and all, but it's only one sort of fun that I can get from RP and it's a rather "high maintenance" form of fun, IME.

OK. But I have to ask, as my 4e-fu isn't what it might be - isn't a monster just a monster? What is mechanically different between a level-13 standard Hill Giant and a level-3 solo Hill Giant?

The Solo is specced out so as to be better fun as a combat encounter for lower level characters, and better suited to facing a party of PCs alone. Sure, you could just use the standard monster for out-of level encounters, but the pitfalls are manifold (in all editions, actually). If you want a grindy fight where the PCs constantly miss, the best bet for party survival is to debuff the monster constantly with your best powers available (and if your best powers depend on hitting to do big damage you're SOL) and have the leader heal the strikers constantly, use the standard monster. If you want a more varied fight where the characters will hit and do damage (but have a lot to do to bring the monster down), the monster is somewhat resistant to continual debuffing (and so can be an active adversary, rather than being just a bag of hit points to erode who KO's a PC whenever he gets to act) and speads its damage around to some extent - use the Solo.

The Solo has higher HP but lower defences and ToHit bonuses, has bonuses to saves and resistance to action-robbing effects, and generally attacks several times per turn rather than once. The actual modes of attack and so on are the same as the standard monster, but, just as an example, the Solo might get a "stomp" attack each turn that the standard doesn't (because it's just too telegraphed to be effective against experienced opponents - or whatever).

It's really a "frame of reference" thing. Just as the colour of a start depends in part of its velocity relative to the viewer, whether a creature is a "Solo" or a "Minion" depends on the level of the primary protagonist (i.e. the player characters). It's the same monster/star - just seen from a different perspective.