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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lacyon" data-source="post: 4267017" data-attributes="member: 63046">I'm not sure why you think this. (Of course, I'm not sure why Cadfan thinks mammoths should necessarily not die in one hit, either).If you pierce an Ogre's vital organs with a weapon, they should die - if not immediately, then eventually. The odd thing about Ogre minions is not that they can die in one hit to their vitals, nor really that Heros can hit them in their vitals quite easily. The odd thing is that Joe Commoner hits them in the vitals on one strike in twenty and never really hits them anywhere else.Which is only a problem if you let Joe Commoner find out about it.I think a rectification of names may be in order.Unlike 3E, wherein "level" was universally equivalent to HD but (at least partially) divorced from CR, level for monsters in 4E seems to be almost (but not quite) purely a descriptor for a monster's combat threat level (i.e., just CR). Moreover, it's not the sole component of a monster's threat level - there's also the "potency" or "size" aspect (Minion/Normal/Elite/Solo).This means that Minions can definitely be understood as "lower level" in the sense of being far less powerful, while still having a higher "monster level" than their non-minion counterparts - the Orc Warrior's "monster level" is 9, but he's certainly not a bigger threat than the level 8 Orc Chieftain! This is reflected in the fact that his XP value is equal to that of a level 1 normal monster. In fact, I did some back-of-the-envelope math* a while ago that suggested the Orc Warrior is roughly the same challenge for 9th-level PCs as an Orc Berserker scaled back to 1st level (in that his total expected damage over a number of rounds is pretty comparable, and he expects to survive the same number of total attacks on average). This is because, while the first-level orc would do way more damage on a hit, he needs something close to a natural 20 to actually damage PCs 8 levels higher than him. Meanwhile, while the PCs hit him on anything but a 1 and kill him in something like 2 hits on average.Using a 9th-level minion in place of a 1st-level normal monster in that scenario means that PCs of appropriate level still kill him in about 2 rounds and his damage is amortized alongside his buddies to an average instead of rolling a bunch of dice and hoping for nat-20s before they get meaningful.*Note, this math was based solely on preview material and not actually seeing the game. It included some assumptions about how fast PC damage/attacks/AC grow that may not hold. I still haven't seen the books to update it.</blockquote>

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