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just have to point out somethiat niggles me.
the title of the thread says, pure glow decimates minions.
so it kills one in ten minions?. not really the best eh?
Yeah, decimate is something a roman commander did to his OWN troops when they lost a battle.
It helped to keep their motivation high..... We made a joke like this when I was in the navy....
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"
Hmmm. I don't find that AoEs really make minions useless. I had a bunch of lowly Goblin Cutters running around last night in a level 6 encounter. They annoyed the party plenty, managed to hit a couple of characters and ended up annoying the fighter until he burned Rain of Steel to get rid of them. It was WELL worth the 10% of the total encounter budget from a tactical standpoint.
The encounter before that the hobgoblin warrior minions were lovely. blocked up a chokepoint for a couple rounds, and then 2 out of 3 still managed to beat feet out of the inevitable AoE and gave a Hobgoblin Commander flanking for a couple rounds.
Sure, auto damage is going hurt, but the way I look at it if I can force a player to burn an auto damage power clearing them, its usually worth it. I'd far rather that than it was slagging the artillery.
This is kind of a key point too. Tactically minions should pose a "damned-if-I-do and damned-if-I-dont" kind of dilemma. If the party concentrates on a leader/controller/artillery with their good stuff, then those minions are going to make themselves into a bigger annoyance. On the other hand if the spell casters deal with them right off, that gives you a lot better chance of your key monsters getting to work their good stuff for a couple extra rounds.
Make no mistake, minions certainly have little staying power and often enough things go the other way and they just plain die, but I think if you pay careful attention you'll find that even then they still usually earned their keep. Plus there are always those times when you get a single minion that just won't go down and proves to be a significant thorn in someone's side.
When you get into paragon and epic minions also work a bit differently. They really should synergize with leader/boss monsters, traps, terrain, etc. in interesting ways. I agree that MM1 higher level minions generally missed the boat a bit in that sense. One way to mitigate auto damage in those types of encounters is to create trade offs for the party. Someone wants to swab the decks down with radiant auto-damage? OK, but maybe it carries a small situational cost, like creating an unfavorable terrain situation or a new hazard.
just have to point out [something that] niggles me.
Don't. Decimate means "to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely". You're millennia behind current usage.
Quote:
Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts this extension in the sentence The Jewish population of Germany was decimated by the war, even though it is common knowledge that the number of Jews killed was much greater than a tenth of the original population.
Originally Posted by pascalnz View Post
just have to point out somethiat niggles me.
the title of the thread says, pure glow decimates minions.
so it kills one in ten minions?. not really the best eh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by N8Ball
Yeah, decimate is something a roman commander did to his OWN troops when they lost a battle.
It helped to keep their motivation high..... We made a joke like this when I was in the navy....
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"
You two do realize that you are being intensely pedantic and boring here, right?
Let's think about what you are claiming.
That "decimate" means and only means "what a Roman commander did to his own troops when they lost a battle."
Can you imagine a situation when you would use this word? EVER? Maybe some Roman historians, or those writing Roman Historical Novels. That's about it.
For example, the following would make no sense -- according to you two:
"Captain, it was terrible. The machine guns cut us down ruthlessly. We lost nine out of our 100 troops. We were decimated!"
Pedantic captain: "Actually, we only lost 9%. That's not a decimation. But it is close. You are demoted for incorrect word use."
"Good news captain, one of the wounded just died! That's 10 out of 100! We were decimated!"
Pedantic captain: "Actually, 1 in 10 of our men were killed by ENEMIES. Not by a Roman Commander. Therefore your use of the word is incorrect. You are further demoted."
Do you see how stupid this is?
You do know English is a living language, right? And to insist upon a narrow definition for a word (a definition about 1,500 years old) which has no parallel in our modern world is a fool's errand?
Does the following dialogue make sense to you?
"How did your sales presentation go?"
"Oh god, it sucked. When I got to the projections, they piled on and decimated me. I never recovered."
Does this mean that the listeners attacked the presenter and attempted to kill 1 in every ten of the (solitary) presenters? Of course not.
Did you have any trouble understanding the meaning of the sentence? (if you are honest you will say "no." The sense of the sentence is clear: "the presentation was bad particularly after the projections".)
Am I revealing something to you when I claim that your objections to the use of "decimate" have far more to do with your desire to "show off" your knowledge of a not-very-obscure etymology, and almost nothing to do with clarifying or saying something interesting about the English language as it is now used?
That's not to say people always use words correctly. To call somebody who stands still long enough to kill himself a stillicide is obviously insane. But that's not what is going on here.
You two do realize that you are being intensely pedantic and boring here, right?
Speaking of pedantic, was writing a report about this really necessary?
Back on topic: the best system (IMO) was already mentioned in this thread. Allow minions to scale. If they take damage equal to their level, they die; if they take damage less than their level, they are bloodied (or they die if they are already bloodied).
Of course, I wouldn't recommend instituting it now without taking your players aside and discussing it with them. Otherwise it'll just seem like you're trying to nerf your Morninglord.
Yup, 11th level characters are very good at dropping minions en masse.
Agreed.
Somethimes I think people misunderestand what is a minion: IMHO a minion is supposed to succomb the heroes attacks easly. And you could and should use descriptions about how they try to defend themselves but untimately are defeated.
Just remmember: ordinary villagers are supposed to minions as well. thats why townsfolk usually are slaughtered by the orcs and goblins.
Its OK to get rid of the minions to engage the "liutenants and bosses". Think of them as dungerous (they can hurn the PCs), but not the main focus of the story.
To complicate minions is not a very good idea in my oppinion, and its counterproductive. Minions as written allos us DMs to make 40 vs 5 encounters from time to time. (Does anyone remmember the Lord of the Rings battles?)
Last edited by Dr_Sage; 25th August 2009 at 12:38 AM..
I love minions. I love the way they stay out of the way and wait to gum up the works after the first round by getting in the fighter's way, getting snuggly with ranged PCs, and stabbing unconscious PCs. They can stay on the sidelines, waiting (delay) for the first PC to set foot near the hidden pit, then charge with a bull rush. Sure the chances are slim, but even minions roll an automatic hit 5% of the time. Increase your chances by using three of them instead.
Using them as a swarm is just unfair to minions. They know they are vulnerable to auto-damage area attacks; so do you, and so do the players. So why are they huddled in one spot? They should be hiding behind columns, peaking through a secret door, or plain scattered around to avoid such attacks. Put waves of them in to protect that priest from being exposed with a blanket of them after the wizard decimates the first batch with a blast of Winter's Wrath.
Be careful adding save vs. death onto auto-damage effects, you don't want to inadvertently make it harder to hit with them than with something that normally requires an attack roll.
I think the HP pool idea is the best solution, if you think it's an issue which warrants solving.
It's not just auto damage effects: so many classes and paragon paths offer area effect attacks that can wipe them off the map. As a DM I've found that melee minions aren't usually worth the effort of assembling on the battlemat once the party exceeded 6-7th level.
As a player of a wizard, I'm annoyed that what's meant to be my class specialty is something so trivial (fortunately the crippling save-ends effects I get makes up for it!)
Ranged minions are in a somewhat better situation since they don't have to group up. Some sort of minion generator can also make them interesting.
Minions should be minions. They serve a specific purpose in game. They are the red shirts...the cannon fodder. They are meant to be mowed down in spectacular fashion.
So, AoE powers in 4e are very light on the damage. And, for almost every class, they are encounter or daily powers. I am sure there are more, but the only AoE I can think of that's at-will is the Wizard's Thunder Wave. So, instead of taking an encounter or daily power that can do very good damage + status effect or massive damage with no status effect to a single target (which, by the way, is what you need to take down your lieutenant and BBEGs) you have spent that slot on a power that does little damage or negligible damage + status effect. Every power that you take as a minion broom is one less power you have available to you to effectively threaten the major monsters on the battlefield.
If you are concerned about the fact that minions are effectively neutralized in your encounters then halve the xp value, send them in waves, and put an extra lieutenant on the field. And don't send them in bunched up.
Wizards may be better at minion killing, but that is not their only role. Wizard AoE attacks may do less damage, but they also hit a few targets and apply an effect.
There are quite a few at will area attacks, spread among quite a few classes. Many of them are not controllers.
Minions are only as effective as the strategy behind them. Quite a few of those strategies have been mentioned in this thread. Not counting house rules.
Our last session we fought a warlord-type enemy who acted as a 'spotter' for about a dozen crossbow wielding minions hidden around the map. On his turn, he would call out for them to attack, and the unfortunate target was made a pincushion. Once we started going after the minions, we found that they were in groups of 3, and it took some time to hunt them all down. It was an interesting fight with only 1 non minion, and 10-20 minions. It's all in how you use them.
The problem with minions, however, is that people tend to abuse them or reduce their efforts in fighting them to the point where the minions' presence doesn't make any difference.
By now, I've seen players pick or acquire various means for doing auto-damage as effortlessly as possible. Everything from Long Night Scions to Pure Glow to Enlarge Spell Cloud of Daggers (okay, I was being lenient on that one, seeing how Cloud of Daggers technically isn't an area burst spell).
Anyway, the idea with introducing a bloodied state (if you deal less damage to the minion than its level) seems like an interesting option. Means that the amount of damage dealt to a minion still matters (to some extend) without rendering low-damage effects neither obliterating nor worthless.
Last edited by Thundershield; 27th August 2009 at 12:26 PM..
I'm not convinced that the minion's level should be the damage threshold. In a few cases where I wanted a group of minions that was able to hang tough for a round or two I made the "tough" and just gave them an arbitrary damage threshold. The number you pick should be tailored to the sorts of damage they're going to be expected to take. If its low level or the party invariably favors some particular minion sweeping power, then set the threshold such that 50% of the minions end up bloodied instead of instantly popped. At that point they've done their job, they made the PCs use another action and another power to try to get rid of them.
Remember though, it is pretty easy to go overboard with this. An AoE that already has to make a to-hit roll should be missing 50% of the time. If the damage also has to exceed a certain value, now your down to 25% or less effectiveness. At least with non-minions there is always damage done and the targets are now easier to kill. Pile on too many restrictions on killing minions easily or hit point pools etc and all of a sudden you don't actually have minions anymore, you have some exceedingly annoying opponents that don't use the normal hit point rules. That's OK for certain specific situations where you want to have a special type of enemy but the vast majority of the time it isn't justified.
a bloodied minon always goes down next hit.. no matter what the most I get is two damages. Or one targetted attack that hits. They are still more interesting (healable intimidateable etc), but never in danger of becoming too significant.
I dont worry about the threshold normally... a cleave now bloodies the adjacent minion.. as does greenflame blade.
I hate minions, the suspension of disbelief that adding a big number of enemies that die in one hit makes whne the other enemies tend to have lots of HP, is just too much to be ignored. I think minions are a metagamy mechanic.
As opposed to the metagamy mechanic of anybody in the game suriving a sword thrust through the chest? Much less continuing to fight as if nothing had happened? HP are, for the most part, the ability to not be there when that sword thrust lands, but if you want to talk about suspension of dsibelief; why should every opponent the PCs face, especially an actual horde of faceless minions the PCs are supposed to be wiping the floor with, automatically be good enough to evade the attacks of the universe's best weapon masters or spell casters?
Mechanically I have no problem with the concept of minions, this game is a lot more level dependant and hp progression is still mostly linear, using a pile of low level monsters won't get the job done. They aren't going to be a real threat to the PCs and they still have more than enough hp that a large group of them would take exceedingly long to kill.
My real issue with minions is in implementation, by 8th level or so they are mostly useless and by mid Paragon they are almost completely useless due to things like a PP feature that automatically kills every minion within 100 feet the second you become bloodied or at-will burst 5 attacks that only hit enemies. By Epic it's just silly, there is at least one ED power that will kill at least half of all the minions within line of sight, even if there is an army of a million of them, and it would be easy for a party to stack on some attack bonuses for the power and push that number as high as 95%.
Nice. And since this is D&D, instead of the 50,000 survivors running away to live another day, your jerk DM would have them mob you and you'd die. And come back to life later.
Epic is seriously another matter entirely when it comes to whether things make sense or not. You made a really good point about HPs not being actual damage, why does that not apply in all cases?
So, when this epic power that you reference is unleashed, instead of burning the flesh off of 950,000 minions, perhaps it just does that to . . .100,000 of them, and the others are all so freaking terrified that they bolt like rabbits. Leaving 50,000 to charge you and make you die (of course, if you can repeat the attack they are reduced to 2,500, and you will not likely survive that either. The next round though, when there are only 125 left, you have a chance).
The recent article up on the WotC site about high level challenges addresses this issue, kind of. Minions are not a club to be waved around without skill. You apply them delicately, and deliberately. A minion rush will always die, even at 1st level.
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