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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4862462" data-attributes="member: 3424">I was having similar thoughts, but from the DM side of the screen. I believe that the "default" DM style has gradually shifted from being a referee running mostly status quo encounters in a sandbox-style game to an entertainer running mostly tailored encounters in a game with an assumed plot or story arc. Issues such as whether an opponent is appropriate for the PCs (in terms of attack bonus, AC and other defenses, hit points, damage, etc.) and how an opponent is supposed to perform in a fight with the PCs (how hard is it to hit, how many hits are required to take it down, etc.) are only meaningful when the DM sets out to tailor an encounter.If a high-level party decides to take on an ogre tribe, and becomes bored because the ogres have attack bonuses that are too low to make them a meaningful threat, but have so many hit points that they need three or four hits to kill each ogre, the sandbox referee DM would not consider it to be a problem. After all, it was the players who decided to take on the ogres instead of the black dragon in the swamp or the giants in the hills. However, if an entertainer DM wants to send a high-level party against a tribe of ogres (and for some storyline reason, it has to be ogres*) he will want ogres that are (1) not boring to fight; (2) still a threat to the PCs; and (3) for the sake of in-game consistency, less dangerous than the stone giants the PCs fought last week and the frost giants they are going to face next session. This is the line of thinking that results in the concept of minions. Similarly, practices such as varying the opponents' attack bonuses, AC and other defences based on the PCs' level are born out of the desire to create an interesting encounter first, and to justify how the opponents came by those numerical bonuses later, as a secondary concern, if it ever comes up at all. To be fair to 4e, though, there is sufficient scope within the official guidelines (I hesitate to call them rules) for variations in the numerical bonuses of opponents of the same level (usually depending on the role the monster is expected to play in a fight) and for the PCs to face opponents of varying levels.At the end of the day, though, I believe that most of us do agree that mathematically-sound guidelines are a good thing, and internal self-consistency is a good thing, and mcuh of the sound and fury about putting the cart before the horse is because we simply don't agree which is which.[SBLOCK=*] IMO, a much better solution would simply be to never come up with a storyline in which the high-level PCs have to fight ogres. I personally prefer to confine my use of minions to the lower levels, but YMMV.[/SBLOCK]</blockquote>

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