Don’t forget to play to the PCs attacks and resistances. Every now and then make sure a monster is vulnerable to one of their attack types (like fire if the Fighter has a flaming sword, that kind of thing). Likewise with resistances. If three PCs have resist 5 poison then throw some monsters with poison attacks at them once and a while. PCs love that kind of thing. “Ha ha, I have resist poison.”

For instance: a controller with lots of aoe should have a ton of minions to blast into pieces. A striker really wants to take on a big-tough baddy. Your defender should be keeping npc controllers or leaders off ballance, etc.

A well-ballanced combat (from what I cam tell) knows the strenghth of the pcs and works to give each of them a challenge. In this way all of your players are having fun, and each feels vital…

I’ve been playing very close attention to what all of my monsters can do. I try to make sure that their powers compliment each others. It doesn’t seem right to have one monster have fire resistance/cold vulnerability and have another monster have cold resistance/fire vulnerability.

In a game I ran after I wrote this article I used monsters that were levels 8 and 10 (the PCs are level 11). The XP math was exactly what the DMG suggested. The combat was a lot of fun, but the monsters didn’t have many cool abilities. It was just a typical hack and slash fight.

As I speculated in the article above, I think it’s just going to take some practice to get the balance right and make the encounters exciting.

Now, one thing I pay close attention to is monster mix and their special abilities. Proper balance depends greatly on knowing what the monsters can do to the players. Also, pay attention to how swingy the abilities are. Does the monster have a low change to hit, high damage aoe? Be aware you could get lucky with the dice and devastate the group.

There’s a number of things to get a feel for as you play. It’s much more math based than prior editions, but it does still require the DM to understand what all the monster’s abilities mean.

Cheers

I’m not a big fan of including an NPC as the “voice of the DM” mainly because it’s one more creature I have to work during the game. But I can certainly understand the benefits of doing so.

@Neuroglyph
I plan to use this exact monster grouping for the majority of my encounters. For now I’m still trying a few different combos while the PCs get back into the swing of things. I do plan to keep using lots of minions because this group really feels powerful when they drop monsters, even if they’re just minions.

@wickedmurph
It sounds like you’ve become a pro at this kind of encounter. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the suggestion.

@Richard
Our group is down a player so we only have 4 PCs. I’m finding that 4e D&D really requires 5 PCs or more. Playing with 4 makes balance tough.

I think your math is bang on the money. This is exactly the kind of range I’ve been striving for too. I agree that MM2 creates are tougher than MM1 creatures of the same level.

With my campaign, I’ll toss in all different levels of monsters, and I use monster builder a lot to change monsters to the level I want as well. The balance is not easy. When I create the encounters I tend to try to make it so the monster defenses are high enough so the players do have chance to miss but not too high to make them only hit 25% of the time. I try to keep that balance at around 55 -60% hit chance. (if the average PC has a +15 to hit, the average monster defense is around 24) solos I will have higher. If they play right and get combat advantage, then it jumps to 65 – 70%.

I try to work the monsters hit chance the same way, monsters have around a 60% hit chance on strikers, and about a 45% on defenders. (that balance can get thrown off in my campaign though, we have a dwarf warden in the party that if he plays his skills right, can get his ac to between 32 and 34).

One other thing I’ve noticed, is that the monsters in MM2 seem to have higher defenses and attack scores than the monsters in MM1, so you might want to adjust for this as well.

That way, my players need to use all the different tactics to survive – focusing fire on some monsters, crowd control and area effects on others, flanking, using terrain. Plus, by eliminating the short rests between encounters, it stretches the parties resources more, and makes leaders and healers critical.
.-= wickedmurph´s last blog ..4e Sandboxing =-.

4e has a bit of a balance issue in the Paragon and Elite tiers due to the Non-AC Defenses of monsters vs. PCs – in fact, I did a blog about it after reading numerous posts on message boards – and using lower level monsters to fill out the bulk of your Encounter XP budgets really helps a DM keep encounters from becoming overly brutal against the PCs.

Besides, it feels more heroic if the PCs are cleaving through lots of little guys to get to the big bad boss!
.-= Neuroglyph´s last blog ..Secret Sects: The Ebon Cabal – Part II =-.

Experienced, team oriented players, who know their powers well will do a few things to give themselves better shots at hitting.

1. They will exploit flanking.
2. They will use powers that grant bonuses to teammates to hit with big powers.
3. They will figure out and hit the monster’s weakest defense, which is usually worth 2 or 3 at least.

I wouldn’t hand them “tough to hit” as a steady diet, but it’s definitely one of the sorts of things that players need to figure out how to deal with, so I wouldn’t completely avoid it either.

Of course, the point is for the group to have fun, so you as a GM have to finely calibrate the level of challenge for it to be fun. Remember that overcoming difficulties can be fun.

I like having an NPC in the group, and this is one of the reasons. So the NPC can shout suggestions, or carry out tactical moves that the PC’s will see and imitate. Don’t make them an oracle, though. Sometimes make a bad suggestion, or stick to stuff that would make sense to their class/race/experience level.
.-= Toldain´s last blog ..My MMO of the Decade, (and the other 4 top games of the Decade) =-.