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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8919018" data-attributes="member: 907">Elites, solos, and minions are the things from 4e I miss the most in Pathfinder 2 (the second most are healing surges, and the Stamina variant kinda fixes that).PF2 only measure creature power on one axis: level. A &quot;solo&quot; is just a higher-level creature. The devs have defended this choice, because they want PCs to be able to fight a level 3 ogre warrior at level 1 and go &quot;Dang, that was tough&quot; and then at level 5 have a fight with four of them that's the same overall difficulty but having each ogre go down like a chump. But I think this is unfortunate, because that means &quot;bosses&quot; hit like a truck, can hardly be damaged, and are near-impervious to any cool things the PCs want to do. I think there's room for monsters that are &quot;wide&quot; – having the same basic numbers as a normal monster, but with enough hp and action economy (either directly or indirectly, such as having AOEs) to pose the same threat as two or more normal monsters.I'm thinking these are related in 4e, and maybe should be inverted.Let's take a very simplified combat against four monsters. Each monster deals X damage per round, and the party when focus-firing can take out one monster each round. So the monsters will deal a total of 10X damage (4X in round 1, 3X in round 2, 2X in round 3, and X in round 4 – somewhat depending on initiative, but we're keeping it simple here).Now replace the four monsters with a single monster with four times the hit points, so it takes four rounds for the party to beat it down. If the monster also deals 4X damage per round, that means it will deal a total of 16X damage. That's a lot more than 10X, so quadrupling both hp and damage doesn't work. A more appropriate damage level would be 2.5X, which would deal the same overall damage. But we could also have 3X damage per round and 3.33 times the hp, or 4X damage per round and 2.5 times the hp.Of course, the math isn't as simple as that in reality. The solo is generally less susceptible to AOE magic, but more susceptible to debuffs. But it at least illustrates the point.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8919018, member: 907"] Elites, solos, and minions are the things from 4e I miss the most in Pathfinder 2 (the second most are healing surges, and the Stamina variant kinda fixes that). PF2 only measure creature power on one axis: level. A "solo" is just a higher-level creature. The devs have defended this choice, because they want PCs to be able to fight a level 3 ogre warrior at level 1 and go "Dang, that was tough" and then at level 5 have a fight with four of them that's the same overall difficulty but having each ogre go down like a chump. But I think this is unfortunate, because that means "bosses" hit like a truck, can hardly be damaged, and are near-impervious to any cool things the PCs want to do. I think there's room for monsters that are "wide" – having the same basic numbers as a normal monster, but with enough hp and action economy (either directly or indirectly, such as having AOEs) to pose the same threat as two or more normal monsters. I'm thinking these are related in 4e, and maybe should be inverted. Let's take a very simplified combat against four monsters. Each monster deals X damage per round, and the party when focus-firing can take out one monster each round. So the monsters will deal a total of 10X damage (4X in round 1, 3X in round 2, 2X in round 3, and X in round 4 – somewhat depending on initiative, but we're keeping it simple here). Now replace the four monsters with a single monster with four times the hit points, so it takes four rounds for the party to beat it down. If the monster also deals 4X damage per round, that means it will deal a total of 16X damage. That's a lot more than 10X, so quadrupling both hp and damage doesn't work. A more appropriate damage level would be 2.5X, which would deal the same overall damage. But we could also have 3X damage per round and 3.33 times the hp, or 4X damage per round and 2.5 times the hp. Of course, the math isn't as simple as that in reality. The solo is generally less susceptible to AOE magic, but more susceptible to debuffs. But it at least illustrates the point. [/QUOTE]

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