You Never Pit 9th Lvl Minions Against 1st Lvl PCs.

[AverageCitizen]

Just thought I'd point that out. People were confused.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

well said

 

[baberg]

Why not?

The Orc Warrior Minion, Level 9 XP 100, seems to be a good match for a first-level PC. 21 AC, and our 1st level fighter from DDXP has several +6 vs AC attacks, so they'll hit 1/4 of the time and kill it. The Ranger, +10 vs AC on his standard attack has nearly a coinflip to hit, with Magic Missiles from the Wizard the same way (+5 vs Reflex, a 16 for the Orc Warrior).

Seems reasonable balanced to me.

 

[Kordeth]

Why not?

The Orc Warrior Minion, Level 9 XP 100, seems to be a good match for a first-level PC. 21 AC, and our 1st level fighter from DDXP has several +6 vs AC attacks, so they'll hit 1/4 of the time and kill it. The Ranger, +10 vs AC on his standard attack has nearly a coinflip to hit, with Magic Missiles from the Wizard the same way (+5 vs Reflex, a 16 for the Orc Warrior).

Seems reasonable balanced to me.

Because with the orc warrior's +14 to hit, he hits even the party defenders on a 5 or better and knocks off about 1/5 of the fighter's hp per smack. If you put a group of them together, economy of actions dictates that they'll almost certainly inflict pretty heavy damage on a party of 1st-level characters before they're brought down, and if you supplement a standard 1st-level encounter with one of these dudes, his 1 hp means he'll be dropped out of the fight too quickly to be a satisfying challenge. High-level minions vs. low-level PCs are just too swingy.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

But not very satisfying when the PCs do kill the minion.

 

[Grimstaff]

Remember, encounters are built around xp value now, as opposed to a Challenge Rating. "Level"s on a monster are used to define its statistics, not as a measuring stick for balancing encounters. Thus, a 400xp encounter could be 16 kobold minions, or 4 of these guys.

The kobolds have a remote chance of dealing as much as 32pts of dmg in a round. The orcs have a pretty dependable chance of dealing out 20pts of dmg a round.

Both groups have a pretty good chance of getting nuked by my Scorching Burst.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Why not?

The Orc Warrior Minion, Level 9 XP 100, seems to be a good match for a first-level PC. 21 AC, and our 1st level fighter from DDXP has several +6 vs AC attacks, so they'll hit 1/4 of the time and kill it. The Ranger, +10 vs AC on his standard attack has nearly a coinflip to hit, with Magic Missiles from the Wizard the same way (+5 vs Reflex, a 16 for the Orc Warrior).

Seems reasonable balanced to me.

Because there is more to building an encounter then just XP. You also have to take into account the class minion, elite, solo, etc.), level, etc. of the monster.

Its the diffirence, as you showed with the Ranger, being a coin flip away from ending an encounter and having a nice properly paced and timed battle. The latter is simply more fun.

It looks like when building an encounter there are a few things you must take note of. The total XP, the level of the monsters, the class of the monster, and the role of the monster. If you just take one without the others you are probably not going to have such a great encounter.

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

You don't send a ninth level minion against a first level character because one is ninth level and the other is first.
Sure, you *can*. But you can also load first level characters up with ninth level magic items. You just don't, because doing so would be...not genius.

 

[mach1.9pants]

IIRC someone from WotC pointed out that the XP works OK within three levels of the PC outside of that it starts to get a bit wobbly. But I could be misremembering.

 

[Kordeth]

IIRC someone from WotC pointed out that the XP works OK within three levels of the PC outside of that it starts to get a bit wobbly. But I could be misremembering.

I suspect that individual monster level is going to be a handy way to fine-tune the difficulty of an encounter more precisely beyond just the encounter level, and a good way to change the feel of the fight. A 500 XP fight against ten 50 XP monsters is going to feel very different than one against two 250 XP elites, even if both are roughly the same overall difficulty.

But yeah, I imagine beyond a 3-5 level gap the numbers won't yield a fun encounter.