I thought of that a little bit after I posted. I remember he was the one that remarked they were grey to him. That would explain it.
I guess I was stuck on the idea that these are task-forces where the highest level regardless of leader is the level of the TF (for non-signatures). It obviously a hybrid with rules taken from both TF's and normal contacts.
Sorry. I should have thought it out more before I posted.
We were running an arc last night designed by one of our supergroup members. It was fun but a little too easy. I was the leader and that character is set for Heroic.
When we entered the last mission and the minions were gray to some and blue/green to me he made us pull out and reset the mission. This time he was the leader set to Rugged.
It was like night and day. The minions were orange and red and some of the bosses were purple. It turned into a completely different mission.
Why the big diff between heroic and rugged? I REALLY thought it was going to go from blue/green to white when we reset it.
The other thing I noticed was that his minions used power sets I've read over and over shouldn't be used but they were fine. Super Strength, Dark, Regen on Hard Lieutenants and Willpower on Hard bosses etc. Has anyone with real experience (if such a thing exists yet) thought about writing a How to Design Custom Critters guide? I've read the one in the Wiki but it needs fleshing out. Especially the section on selecting actual powersets.
Maybe creature difficulty is too personal to make a good guide on what powers work well together in an NPC. *shrug*