Pure Glow decimates minions?

[Garthanos]

Some of the higher level minion killing things are so cool...hard to resist.... must have ... I want to kill the dragon... but wiping out an army of minions by teleporting and launching an attack on every one in sight just rocks to high heavens... everybody boost me up quick.. DM fill the valley with minion bad guys pretty please I have a bag of dice I am itching to roll. And quite honestly I am not bein sarcastic...

[Dr_Sage]

Originally Posted by Turtlejay

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.

Jay

I agree.

We are still lv 6, but the minions are real challenge to us. Thheir defenses in special.

Just an example: last fight involved hobgoblin minions, and their effective AC was 24. My Ac as the dwarf fighter is 21.... Our ranger had trouble hitting them even with spitting cobra stance.

[sirshandlar2]

Thanks for all the responses folks, it is much appreciated (except perhaps for the two fellows who are unaware of modern dictionaries). Some great ideas here. I see it is ongoing damage that is the real problem and not just Pure Glow. Well, at least ongoing damage that is applied in an area and doesn't require a to-hit roll.

~Ryan