The flip side of the insta-kill discussion... What good are mooks?

[Grayhawk]

... Honestly, I think mooks are a great way of showing how far the PC's have come. They may have feared those orcs or those level 1 warriors at a point in their career, but now they are just wheat before the scythe.

As I was reading through this thread, I was looking for an answer along those lines.

I believe that fighting mooks at levels where they pose an neglible threat is a rewarding way of highlighting the PC's progress. If every fight at 10th level is just as hard as those at 1st level, where's the sense of accomplishment and development?

In earlier editions I played with DM's who's every encounter brought us within an inch of dying, and I was longing for some mooks to let my characters show off their hardearned battle prowess, just once in a while. So now, as the DM, I give my players some mook encounters so they occasionally get a chance to really shine.

Besides, it doesn't do much for the verisimilitude of the game world if every encounter somehow precisely matches the party's power-level.