Rule of Three finally addresses an important epic tier question!

[S'mon]

IThe PCs don't really get to butt heads with things they can beat... yet..., nor do they get to mow through what was once a serious threat..

As U-K says, the Solo-Elite-Standard-Minion devolution is the perfect way to do this in 4e.

The first time the PCs IMC met Gnolls around 2nd level, they were 2nd level standard monsters. Now that the PCs are considerably higher level, those same gnolls are now 10th level minions, and the ca 6th level PCs are fighting Drakkarim Chaos Knights, who are 8th level standard monsters. Should the PCs fight a platoon of Drakkarim Chaos Knights at 14th level, they will be fighting 16th level minions. If the PCs had faced a Chaos Knight at 2nd level I'd have statted him as a 4th level Elite.

 

[kaomera]

As U-K says, the Solo-Elite-Standard-Minion devolution is the perfect way to do this in 4e.

The first time the PCs IMC met Gnolls around 2nd level, they were 2nd level standard monsters. Now that the PCs are considerably higher level, those same gnolls are now 10th level minions, and the ca 6th level PCs are fighting Drakkarim Chaos Knights, who are 8th level standard monsters. Should the PCs fight a platoon of Drakkarim Chaos Knights at 14th level, they will be fighting 16th level minions. If the PCs had faced a Chaos Knight at 2nd level I'd have statted him as a 4th level Elite.

So, my experience has been that this sort of thing has been far from perfect, but reading what you've written above leads me to believe that I may just be doing it wrong. So, equal-level (standard) Gnolls become L+4 minions? The XP matches up, but I would have thought that you'd want more Gnolls for the PCs to mow down, not just equal numbers. When I've done this sort of thing, I've usually made the minions L-2 or even L-3; it seemed to me that the problems where that there still weren't enough of them, and they weren't actually the same Gnolls (mechanically) and the players knew it.

Maybe the problem, tho, was actually that they weren't enough of a threat? Eh, I don't like having to do this kind of mechanical gymnastics to set up encounters in 4e - in 1e I would have just put a tribe of Gnolls somewhere and relied on the players to change tactics when facing them. At 2nd level they'd sneak around and pick them off a few at a time, and at 6th they'd just wade in...

I've actually been thinking of just including some creatures that are "too low-level" for the party, as-is. Since I don't actually track XP in the current game it wouldn't really mess that end of things up, and if they're just likely to go down in one or two hits I can just treat them as minions (and maybe just throw more of them in). I'd even consider throwing in something too high of a level, that the PCs would need to run from, but given how much I've emphasized trying to get some more challenging encounters going recently, and not stopping to extended-rest after every other encounter, I think that might not go over the way I'd want right now.

 

[S'mon]

Kaomera - the trick is to keep the XP Value the same, so standard monsters become minions 8 levels higher. You do this whenever the standard monster would be 4 or more levels below the PC level, possibly 3 levels (DM's judgement).

Eg: Gnolls - I use the standard MM/MV gnoll stats as gnoll leaders, heroes, battle-hardened gnolls, etc.
The first time the PCs met 'mook' gnolls, it was a scout party of 6 2nd level standard monsters. It was a long fight.
The next time the PCs met 'mook' gnolls from the same tribe, the PCs were 6th level, and the 10 gnolls were 10th level minions, just one small part of a big Chaos army.

So the gnolls' XPV and absolute threat level didn't change, they could still hurt the PCs, but now they die fast (although I set a minion damage threshold: level+5 to kill, 1/2 that to bloody. Takes 10 damage to kill a minion-10 in 1 blow).

An alternative is to always use the standard monster stats for enemy scouts, but stat the main body of the enemy as higher level minions, about the same level as the enemy commander.

Eg: The orc tribes' scouts are 3rd level standard monster Orc Raiders. The Orc Chief is an 8th level elite. The main body of the orcs are 7th level minion Orc warriors.

Eg: The bandit scouts are 2nd level standard monster Human Bandits. The chief is a 6th level standard Bandit Chief. The main body are 5th level minions.

That way the PCs can fight the scouts, rise in power a couple levels, then go take on the main body, and it all works.

 

[S'mon]

it seemed to me that the problems where that there still weren't enough of them, and they weren't actually the same Gnolls (mechanically) and the players knew it.

(a) Still not enough? Yeah, um, maybe you're worrying too much about encounter budgets. Throw 80 (non artillery) minions at the PCs, and let the players decide whether to fight or flee. I'll have 90 enemy minions on the board next session, some up to 14th level. Of course the players will have 62 minions of their own, so maybe they'll be ok...

(b) Technically IMC the gnoll standard-2s were "Gnoll Scouts" and the min-10s are "Gnoll Horde Ravager", but really that just comes down to the gnoll getting up in the morning and deciding "So, what'll I be today?" - The standard-2 stats might last longer but they'd be pretty ineffective on a battlefield up against 7th level minion Dwarf Veterans and 8th level minion Thrinian Knights.

 

[kaomera]

(a) Still not enough? Yeah, um, maybe you're worrying too much about encounter budgets. Throw 80 (non artillery) minions at the PCs, and let the players decide whether to fight or flee. I'll have 90 enemy minions on the board next session, some up to 14th level. Of course the players will have 62 minions of their own, so maybe they'll be ok...

That seems like a really awesome encounter, but I'm seeing on-budget fights last an hour and a half to two hours or more, and we're having to work to get two encounters into a session.

(b) Technically IMC the gnoll standard-2s were "Gnoll Scouts" and the min-10s are "Gnoll Horde Ravager", but really that just comes down to the gnoll getting up in the morning and deciding "So, what'll I be today?" - The standard-2 stats might last longer but they'd be pretty ineffective on a battlefield up against 7th level minion Dwarf Veterans and 8th level minion Thrinian Knights.

Well, unfortunately, with the issues mentioned above I'm finding that I and (as far as I can tell) the players lose track of the fluff after like fifteen minutes or half an hour when it's clear that we're no-where near done with the fight. (And for me, personally, staring at the battlemat and figures really doesn't help.) Aside from description and stunts dropping off to basically nothing, the players are no longer thinking "Wow, we're really mowing through these Gnolls!", but "Gee, these minions sure do have high defenses, and it would sure be nice if I was hitting more often...", or at least that's my impression.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy kaomera!

S'mon has already answered most of the questions.

As for Rank Scaling, the key is to use the most appropriate Rank closest to your PC's level. When the PCs are directly in the middle between what makes the best rank, then always change the monsters rank to the higher level.

Solo Monster = Standard Monster -9 Levels
Elite Monster = Standard Monster -4 Levels
Minion Monster = Standard Monster +8 Levels

Example: Young White Dragon

= Level 3 Solo Monster...use when the PCs are between Levels 1-5
= Level 8 Elite Monster...use when the PCs are between Levels 6-9
= Level 12 Standard Monster...use when the PCs are between Levels 10-15
= Level 20 Minion Monster...use when the PCs are between Levels 16-21

Now you might be worried about using a lot of minions (as per S'mons example) might take too long to run. The solution here is to use the UNIT rules, whereby you treat a group of monsters in the same way as a swarm.

So instead of running 50 gnoll minions, you might run 5 Mobs of x10 Gnolls. Wherein each mob is a single Standard Monster rather than treated as individuals.

You can scale this idea up so that instead of fighting mobs of x10, you could fight companies of x100, battalions of x1000, legions of x10,000, armies of x100,000 or horde's of x1,000,000.

Of course using this method you can easily pit opposing armies against one another.

The question becomes what level are all these different units converted. Here I think you have to break from the XP mechanic used in Rank Scaling and start taking diminsihing returns into account. As best I can pinpoint it, +6 levels (for each factor of 10) seems to be the best fit.

So if a typical Orc is Level 3.

- A squad of 10 Orcs = Level 9
- A company of 100 Orcs = Level 15
- A battalion of 1000 Orcs = Level 21
- A legion of 10,000 Orcs = Level 27
- An army of 100,000 Orcs = Level 33
- A horde of 1,000,000 Orcs = Level 39

Of course then you have to determine how powerful the groups leader is. It doesn't really make sense that the leader would be higher level than his most powerful unit, so I suggest the leader should be about 1-3 levels lower (of course they could still be Elite or Solo monsters).

Here are the sample Orc Leaders:

Commands less than 100 Orcs = Max. Level 8...Orc Chieftain
Commands < 1000 Orcs = Max. Level 14...Orc War-Chief
Commands < 10,000 Orcs = Max. Level 20...Orc General
Commands < 100,000 Orcs = Max. Level 26...Orc King
Commands < 1,000,000 Orcs = Max. Level 32...Orc Emperor

...of course the leader doesn't have to be the same race as his subjects. Instead of an Orc Emperor you could have an Ancient Red Dragon.

 

[S'mon]

That seems like a really awesome encounter, but I'm seeing on-budget fights last an hour and a half to two hours or more, and we're having to work to get two encounters into a session.

I expect the battle with 90 enemy minions, 7(?) enemy Champions (standards & elites) vs 6 PCs and 62 allied minions, to take around 3 hours, 3.5 tops. The previous fight took 2.5 hours, there were only 41 enemy minions and 4 enemy leaders to deal with, but it took awhile to get the PC's army of 70 minions over the bridge.

 

[Tony Vargas]

S'mon: are you rolling for the various enemies attacking NPC minion allies (and vice versa) or do you use some sort of calculated shortcut?

By the numbers, minions would go through eachother pretty quickly - hitting roughly half the time and hits dropping... 90 minions would inflict 45 casualties/round on another crowd of minions, That's awefully fast. But what quasi-realistic force has the discipline and coordination to all attack every round, and each attack different targets, every time?

 

[Incenjucar]

Sounds like a non-minion swarm with an AOE attack to me.

 

[S'mon]

S'mon: are you rolling for the various enemies attacking NPC minion allies (and vice versa) or do you use some sort of calculated shortcut?

By the numbers, minions would go through eachother pretty quickly - hitting roughly half the time and hits dropping... 90 minions would inflict 45 casualties/round on another crowd of minions, That's awefully fast. But what quasi-realistic force has the discipline and coordination to all attack every round, and each attack different targets, every time?

I tried using an abstracted system last time, which deliberately slowed down the rate at which the minions killed each other to around 1/6 rounds, but we felt it didn't work very well. Instead I'll use the standard minion rules next time, with various players commanding groups of minions, including a couple bad-guy commanders. But I give all minions a damage threshold: 5+ 1/2 Level to kill, 1/2 that to bloody. This means that in many cases minions do not kill each other with 1 hit, instead they inflict the red paperclip. In extreme cases minions may not even be able to hurt much more powerful minions, but I think everyone on the field will be able to at least bloody each other (eg the weakest PC minions the Thrinian Footmen min-5s do 6 damage with their swords, the strongest Chaos minions the Ogre Thug min-14s need 6 damage to be bloodied, 12 to be killed).

As we're using minis there won't be anything like 90 attacks/round, judging by last week. That would require a 90-square frontage! And I restrict minion artillery from firing through allied forces, so positioning becomes important. But I do want the fighting to be fast and bloody so we don't run out of time, and to encourage the players to focus on how to keep their own minions alive.