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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4714468" data-attributes="member: 82106">One or two things might be noted:Swarms in general are widely acknowledged to be quite easy to unbalance. I'm not really convinced that whatever guidelines the designers might have followed really work well for low level swarms. Certainly the Needlefang Drake Swarm is WAY over the top on damage potential at level 2. The general mechanic of a 'free attack aura' which most swarms seem to use makes them tricky to balance since any increase in damage or to-hit can have a multiplicative effect on the creature's damage dealing potential. The other problem with balancing swarms is that the power of the creature is unusually highly dependent on party structure. A party heavy on ranged and area attacks will handle most of them easily, while a party made up of all melee attackers could be slaughtered. They also play funny with encounter balance at different levels, being usually a lot deadlier as an N+ level monster, but a lot less deadly as an N- encounter component. All of this pretty much tells me that swarms are a case where you probably want to tune them specifically to match with the party. So I am not sure a template is actually a good idea for swarms.I think you're elite brute template is OK. Not sure if all the numbers are exactly the best, but it seems like pretty much an elite template with some slight changes. I think it will leave certain defenses over weak, but that is rather typical for brutes. I wouldn't consider it a general receipe for all size changes, but probably most oversize monsters are likely to be brutes just for thematic reasons. The charge mechanic might not be appropriate for all of them though. Some might instead want to have reach for example. Also you missed providing any damage bonuses on their attacks. I would suggest either moving up to the maximum damage expression for that level, or increasing the main attack by a die size. I would also think it may not work so well on certain monsters, soldiers in particular may just end up being too tough.As for downsizing, thats also going to be a bit tricky. Some things are reasonably obvious. Decreasing damage expression or downsizing damage die. Removing or reducing reach by 1. Of course you may need to actually ADD something, given that the monster is the same level as before then in theory it should be about the same challenge. Exactly what you would add though is hard to really quantify in a template.As for minionization. It appears that the essential process is to remove certain exceptional powers. Generally minions have one mode of attack. Maybe they can use their weapon at range (ala the Kobold Minion), but they usually lose at least some ancillary powers. Other than that there is usually a general reduction in defenses vs a normal monster of the same level, but it isn't entirely consistent. As a quick rule of thumb I would decrease 2-4 of the creature's defenses by 1. If actually designing minions from scratch I would simply design them as normal creatures and give them 1 hit point. That seems to be essentially what the MM authors did.</blockquote>

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