I'm preparing to run through Chapter 3 of Prey for Death, and as I have a 5 player party I was running through encounters and tweaking the ones that I thought would need a boost. I figured I'd adjust the final fight at the Nexus by adjusting Soleil to be Elite, and when doing so I noticed that Soleil's perception in the book (29) is already equivalent to the perception for an Elite Phoenix (29). For a 4 player party the Elite adjustment would put this encounter neatly at 120 XP for a Severe encounter (without the adjustment it's 110 XP). This made me wonder -- was Soleil just intended to be an Elite Phoenix? Or is it common to adjust only the initiative for monsters like this?
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I'm preparing to run through Chapter 3 of Prey for Death, and as I have a 5 player party I was running through encounters and tweaking the ones that I thought would need a boost. I figured I'd adjust the final fight at the Nexus by adjusting Soleil to be Elite, and when doing so I noticed that Soleil's perception in the book (29) is already equivalent to the perception for an Elite Phoenix (29). For a 4 player party the Elite adjustment would put this encounter neatly at 120 XP for a Severe encounter (without the adjustment it's 110 XP). This made me wonder -- was Soleil just intended to be an Elite Phoenix? Or is it common to adjust only the initiative for monsters like this?
Soleil is not meant to be an elite phoenix, and technically should have the standard initiative of Perception +27. (Note that Soleil's level is 15, the same as the standard Monster Core phoenix.)
A +2 bonus to initiative will have a minimal impact all on its own, fortunately, since a +29 roll is within the High range for a 15th level creature, so feel free to simply assume that Soleil is just a little bit better at perception than the typical phoenix if you roll with that initiative and then use all the other standard 15th level Monster Core stats.
If you do want to boost Soleil with the elite adjustments, do so normally—whether or not you boost that Perception up to +31 is up to you!