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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 4759502" data-attributes="member: 12731">So true! If only the DMG could have been so brutally honest in its advice!(Soldiers are best considered to be "mini elites" imo)Well, "never" is a strong word... I'd use this shift in strategy to play up differences between minions of disciplined races and... thugs, basically. (The latter kind of minion would just attack for minimal effect and then die. Which is of course the root of the minion's reputation for being "free XP". For this latter kind of stupid minion, you might want to use the advice given in another thread discussing minion power: multiply its damage by its tier, that is x2 for Paragon and x3 for Epic)I'd point out what I believe many players easily miss: that you can aid another that you aren't adjacent to. (Otherwise you'd have to have two minions, one to flank and one to AA). It might be helpful too to note how the AA bonus is untyped and thus stacks, so if the defender is swarmed by seven minions and one brute that brute could get +10 to attacks and +6 to defenses thanks to this rule alone (at least, until the Defender's Controller buddy tires and fireballs them all)... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Excellent advice! Thanks for putting this in print. I think the name "Solo" was misguided, thinking of how that name implies to DMs to use these monsters alone.I would make it a point of connecting these two pieces of advice, in that lowering the level of the Solo is precisely what allows you to spice up the encounter by adding some underlings and minions to the fight (thanks to how the lowe-levelled Solo being much cheaper in your XP budget)!Yeah. 4E PCs are amazingly resilient, so there's seldom any real cause why you should hesitate being "unfair"...While I can kind of understand how WotC wouldn't dare to give the advice "be evil with your APs" (considering how evil a 14-year old DM can be <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) for the average twenty- or thirty-something reader it would have been a very good addition! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />Yeah. And hazards! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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