My minion rules

[Ulorian]

I'm sure this has been done to death, but here's my take on minions.

'Minion' is a template applied to any non-Elite and non-Solo creature. It adds the Minion Weakness power:

Minion Weakness

1) A critical hit against a minion automatically reduces it to 0 hit points.

2) At the end of an opponent's turn, any minion it has damaged must make a saving throw.

Success: The minion suffers the standard effect from the attack.
Failure: The minion is reduced to 0 hit points.

3) If the minion is suffering from ongoing damage at the beginning of its turn, it must make a saving throw.

Success: The minion suffers the ongoing damage.
Failure: The minion is reduced to 0 hit points.

Converting existing Minion monsters: Give them hit points as per p.184 of the DMG and assign them the template decribed above.

[Sporemine]

Interesting idea but I think it will unbalance combat too much. You might want to try these rules for "elite minions", minions that are worth 1/2 the exp or a normal monster, opposed to a normal minion that's worth 1/4.

Kudos

-Sporemine

[NotAYakk]

A goal of minions is that they be bookkeeping-light, and have fast turns.

This is no easier bookkeeping wise than a normal monster.

[Sporemine]

Originally Posted by NotAYakk

A goal of minions is that they be bookkeeping-light, and have fast turns.

This is no easier bookkeeping wise than a normal monster.

Good point, I thinkI agree

Why did you make these rules in the first place Ulorian? I think they slow down combat.

Kudos

-Sporemine

[Ulorian]

Originally Posted by Sporemine

Interesting idea but I think it will unbalance combat too much. You might want to try these rules for "elite minions", minions that are worth 1/2 the exp or a normal monster, opposed to a normal minion that's worth 1/4.

I knew I forgot to mention something! I actually use 1/3 xp, but 1/2 could work too. As a side note, I find that minions under RAW are not worth 1/4 xp, but closer to 1/6 xp or even 1/8 xp.

Interesting idea to have these minion rules co-exist with the RAW minion rules. I was using my rules as a replacement, but I'll give this some thought. By combining the two, you could have combats with really large numbers of challenging foes without overwhelming the party.

Originally Posted by NotAYakk

A goal of minions is that they be bookkeeping-light, and have fast turns.

This is no easier bookkeeping wise than a normal monster.

Originally Posted by Sporemine

Good point, I thinkI agree

Why did you make these rules in the first place Ulorian? I think they slow down combat.

Do my minion rules speed up bookkeeping? Absolutely not. These minions are roughly as much work to manage as a standard monster: the 'death' saving throws are more dice rolls than a standard monster requires, but that's balanced by the fact that they die more quickly. Although faster bookkeeping was one design goal, the 4E design team's overarching paradigm was to create a type of monster with attacks/defenses matched to a party's level that could be included in an encounter in large numbers, and my rules achieve this.

Although a great concept, the RAW minion rules just don't work in my opinion. I DMed a party for 8 months using the RAW rules, and in every combat involving minions, things unfolded the same way:

1) Party sees an encounter with more than 5 or 6 opponents. "Oho! Minions!" The dragonborn Warlord breaks out his breath weapon while the Swordmage readies his Flame Cyclone and the two Rangers prep Twin Strike.
2) After 2 rounds, the minions are generally gone, leaving the non-minion foes in the encounter outnumbered and ripe for the picking.

Result: an unsatisfying combat whose challenge level is far less than the total xp it yields.

The main problems with RAW minions:

1) Ineffective. RAW minions deal low damage when compared to standard monsters of their level, with generally no rider effects, which standard monsters often/usually have. As a result, even large groups of minions don't tax a party's resources.

* Note: MM2 addresses this: minion damage is higher and minions often have secondary effects for their attacks.

2) One hit and die.

This promotes metagame thinking in the PCs. "This monster went down in one hit! I can thus rely on all monsters that look like this one to also go down in one hit! Break out the area attacks!"

A corollary of 'one hit and die' is that area attacks (or any attack that targets multiple opponents) are far too effective at handling minions.

If minions are close together, they might as well not have been present in the encounter (i.e. one or two attacks will clear them from the board). This forces the DM to metagame when setting up the encounter by having the minions attack in waves, from different parts of the map, by having some use ranged attacks, etc. so that the PCs have to use more attacks to tag them all.

[Mesh Hong]

Its not easy being a minion. You have no name and your job description reads "die in the first round of combat", if a Warlock looks at you then you die, if an area effect goes off somewhere near you you die, if you are lucky enough to have an attack and its against a rogue you miss and die. If you are a minion accept the fact that somewhere, someone has already dug your grave.........if you are lucky.

As a DM I have come to accept that minions are there to die, their job is to let the players feel good about their big flash area attack powers. There is nothing wrong with that, let the players kill the minions.

In my experience about 1 in 4 melee minions gets 1 attack in combat before death. This can be increased by not having all the minions charging in at the PCs and bunching up ready to be blasted with burst attacks. I am not really bothered about starting a "how to use minions" thread but I will repeat the system I use for minion xp.

minion level 1 to 5 : 4 minions = 1 standard creature
minion level 6 to 10 : 5 minions = 1 standard creature
minion level 11 to 15 : 6 minions = 1 standard creature
minion level 16 to 20 : 7 minions = 1 standard creature
minion level 21 to 25 : 8 minions = 1 standard creature
minion level 26 to 30 : 9 minions = 1 standard creature

and from experience I fully endorse the MM2 approach of making minions do more damage, usually about half dice amount + usual ability bonus.

Do not grieve for the minion, it doesn't know any better. Remember you are the evil overlord who sends these worthless cretins in waves at your enemies while you slip out through the secret escape tunnel.

[vagabundo]

I've been thinking of giving minions a saving throw on a hit:

20-19 : Heroic
20-16 : Paragon
20-13 : Epic

[Mesh Hong]

Originally Posted by vagabundo

I've been thinking of giving minions a saving throw on a hit:

20-19 : Heroic
20-16 : Paragon
20-13 : Epic

I think that might get a bit frustrating for your players. You might be better off just increasing the numbers of minions (based roughly on the probability of them making a save) without adding any more XP value (but then I would say that because it is my approach ).

Really I think there are many different ways of handling minions, there have been so many different solutions posted that it is clear to me that different groups find different solutions. As long as your group knows what to expect from minions then what ever system you use is probably fine.

[jstomel]

For a while I considered giving minions hitpoints equal to their level (ie. a level 9 minion would have 9 hitpoints). This would mean that they generally would go down with a single good solid hit, but splash damage and overflow from cleave and whatnot would still stand a chance of not killing them outright. Then I came to my senses and realized that minions exist to die and simply lowered their xp to 1/8 normal rather than 1/4.

[Kalthanis]

I like to give my minions Damage Resistance equal to one-half their level. In this way, lower leveled minions go down fast to Cleave and Scorching Burst, but it doesn't take long to avoid the Warlock's Chosen Wave of Slaying. They stop dying to incidental damage and start soaking up actions and attacks as they were meant to.

Plus, it's fairly bookkeeping light. You don't have to make extra rolls, track hit points, or anything.

[NotAYakk]

I like the common damage pool and a death threshold solution.

Minions have a death threshold at (minion level).

When you damage a minion, if it passes the death threshold, the minion dies. Otherwise, you borrow damage from the damage pool to kill the minion. If that isn't enough, you move the damage you did to the damage pool. That is it.

A level 11 minion, taking 5 damage, doesn't die. 5 level 11 minions, each taking 5 damage, take a total of 25 damage -- two die, and 3 damage goes on the damage pool.

You can increase the death threshold to 2*level if you find that they still don't last long enough (that makes it take about as many HP of damage to kill a minion as it did to kill the pre-minion normal monster, but area damage works better on the swarm of minions).

Naturally if you use this rule, minions now take damage on a miss.

Also, when a minion takes a status effect that is prone or weaker, they go prone. If they take a status effect that is stronger than prone, they save-or-die immediately -- if they succeed, they go prone, if they fail, they die.

Temporary HP just increase the damage threshold of that minion by the amount granted.

Continuing damage ... well, that still sucks. I haven't figured out a fair approximation.

The bookkeeping required is 1 number for any number of minions (the damage in the damage pool), and if they are prone. Temp HP should use a counter on the table to represent a 'tougher' minion.

[Garthanos]

my rule has minions becoming bloodied on a miss/non targetted attack ... community damage pools are too wierd and more tracking than I like ;-).
I will add more minions at high levels since they aren't a lot more hearty... though by being bloodied they can add other roleplaying dynamics ... some will just run even if the players don't try intimidation. My 1 in 4 fine and 1 in 4 defeated rule also allows me fudge factor and an element of non-predictability without adding a die roll for every single one....
I think of minions as being more like real people ... they don't have this heroic luck buffer zone... so when it gets hairy many flee... bloodied state gives me an idea about that, healable ally minions let players inclined to heal have another way to be cool too.

[Ulorian]

Some interesting ideas here; thanks everyone!

My 'death save' minion rule predates MM2. The MM2 formula of increasing the effectiveness of minion attacks (by upping damage and adding rider effects) makes minions much more viable, which is forcing me to rethink my rule.

Combining the MM2 formula with a reduction in xp value from 1/4 to 1/8 produces a minion with which I'm reasonably happy. The drop in xp value allows you to include more minions in an encounter (or the same number of minions and more non-minions), which creates an encounter whose xp value is more in line with the challenge that encounter presents (in my opinion).

[Rothe_]

I just tend to use minions in waves, so that there are some of them in each part of the battle. I also use them liberally, ignoring XP from them, to make combats more interesting. So far my players are not complaining at all.

In fact, I don't use XP normally, other than for balancing non-minions in encounters, but I'd imagine the 1/8 XP rule is roughly equivalent to what I use.

I do recommend trying the wave thing. If you originally have 4 minions, just let 4 more run to join the battle after a couple of rounds, or when the enemies are getting killed.

I have also had the following things happen:

- Dwarf minions who get a save when they are hit. If they make the save, they fall prone and are dazed until the end of their next round. They also count as bloodied from then on. If they lose, they are killed. Bloodied dwarf minions just die if they get hit.

- An encounter with lots of weak human warrior minions. Once they die, they get up as zombie minions. Their boss was a human necromancer, so it fit the encounter well.

- Wraith minions who also get a save when hit. If they make it, they are not hit and are instead dazed until end of next round. If they are hit while dazed, or they miss the save, they die.

[Syrsuro]

If you want them to stick around more, just roll a d6 when they die. On a 5 or 6, they 'recharge'. Literally. From around the corner...

("recharge" value set as appropriate for the encounter)

In other words - the actual number of minions isn't fixed - rather they come at the party in waves, as the first few are killed they are reinforced by more arriving.

Carl