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Now that I have 4e MM in my hands and have quickly read through it, I've noticed a few things I propably have to adjust in my games.

That's right, minions. The idea behind minions that I can see is that they allow lower level monsters to function in higer level encounters. The Ogre is a good example. Minions are at level 11 and 16, while basic ogres are level 8. This is how it should be. When the basic ogre shouldn't be much of a threat, I can use minions instead.

Some of them are too low level to be used reasonably. For example, cyclops have minions at 14th and 16th level, but other cyclopses are at least level 14 and highest level for them is 17. How can I justify throwing masses of weak cyclopses at my players at the same time they're facing basic cyclopses? If cyclops was a low level monster like a kobold or an orc I could understand this. Even low level monsters can have minions, but high level creatures should use lower level creatures as minions, not their own kind. The good thing here is, that cyclops seems to me the worst case of minion level being unexplainably low.

Other monsters that face this problem are:

- Abyssal Ghoul (Only hungerer, who is only two levels higher than its basic counterpart. I'll most likely drop "abyssal" from its name and it fits right where it should.)
- Sahuagin (although this is propably low enough level monster that it should have its own kind as minions.)
- Snaketongue cultists (although I might explain their suckiest minions by claiming they aren't actually warriors, but armed peasants.

Some monsters have a fine explanation why they have sucky minions, like skeletons and zombies. These minions can be explained away by being really old, frail and moldy undead.

Other examples include:
- Vampire spawn, who are supposed to be weaker than their master.
- Aboleths also have lower level minions, but they have a good explanation for this.

I foresee a lot of people having trouble to fit minions into their "the way the game has to be".

You don't have to "justify" anything.
Players come across a group of, say 8 cyclops. Three of them looks stronger, while the five others look weak, and, as the players soon realize, go down in one hit.
There, you have a balanced encounter that makes for a nice change of pace, instead of just 4 cyclops that each take much longer to kill.

You should just see them as a tool to make an encounter different and enjoyable; 5 minions of one level are pretty much equivalent to one regular monster of same level. Same way one elite monster is about as strong as 2 reg monsters of same level, and solo is 5 times as strong. This allows us to build many encounters of the same diffculty level, but that are each different from one another.

In short, don't pull your hair out trying to justify strong monsters dying in one hit, it's no use.

The heroes drop out of the portal and into the Demonweb Pits, and can immediately see a swarm of abyssal ghouls that come scrambling towards them across the silken strands, led by several pack leaders that drive them onwards...

Stumbling out from the wreckage of their ship, the heroes find themselves on the Isle of the Cyclops - and are quickly surrounded by a mob of the natives. The brutes are pushed aside as the chieftain and his bodyguards make their way through the crowd towards the intruders...

There are plenty of reasons why you could be encountering weaker versions of creatures at the same time you encounter most of the normal variety. And remember that monsters are pretty easy to scale - if the PCs were in a situation to be fighting these 'cyclops chumps' earlier, they could have actually been facing Cyclops Ramblers scaled down to level 9.

For me minions can represent a couple different things. Some represent a weaker breed of a race, some represent the power of the players when at high levels.

But the most common way of representing minions in my games, are as the "unlucky ones" in combat.

Lets take two orcs, both the same level with the same abilities. One is a minion however, what does this mean. Well the minion is the one who is going to be beheaded in a single blow, or slips in the mud and gets impaled on a spear, or misjudges a jump and becomes a bloody pulp on the rocks below.

The normal orc is the one who blocks the blow, or manages to avoid a killing hit, who doesn't slip in the mud and who manages to jump correctly and land in the water.

Essentially the minion is a way to create a certain narrative and cinematic flow to battles.

If minions are unlucky ones, the enemies are really unlucky. If minions are used like they are in encounter groups, the comparison sigil_beguiler and Randallw make means four unlucky orcs and one lucky orc, and the rest of encounter's monsters who might or might not be similar to the five orcs. This might make the enemy seem incompetent instead of being unlucky. In my experience, incompetent enemies aren't fun to fight against.