Grind

[KarinsDad]

"Not a threat, not a challenge"?

You mean my players don't feel threatened or challenged by encounters where several of them have been reduced to negative hit points? (The only two combat encounters I've run where no one hit negatives, one was ended through diplomacy and the other didn't have any minions).

I suspect that if you are using minions that run away when missed in a lot of fights, it's not the minions that are seriously threatening and challenging the PCs enough to have some of them hit negatives.

You mean that there shouldn't be pets and half-involved bystanders or trainees that are easily driven off while the core of thugs is solid? Or that the Necromancer's skeleton horde should all be almost as tough as the necromancer himself? Rather than a horde - with a dozen or so skeletons, a couple of zombies, and the necromancer in one fight. You mean that I shouldn't run a lynch mob stirred up by agents - but with the would be lynchers breaking when they take a solid blow?

It's not the flavor concept. Your flavor concept of pets and bystanders and trainees and lynch mobs and zombies is totally cool.

It's the game mechanics of minions in 4E. They suck. Additionally, players will go out of their way to waste the purchase of area effect powers or special feats that handle minions in a minions occur in a 3 out of 4 encounter campaign.

Many people house rule change their minions to be something a bit more challenging and less cookie cutter and cardboard, but still have the flavor of minions or mooks.

In my campaign, I have what I call Tough Minions. A Tough Minion might go down in 1 hit, in 2 hits, or in 3 hits. A Tough Minion might run away after getting hit once or twice. It might not. A Tough Minion can become bloodied. A Tough Minion rolls damage so that the players are not in that artificial game mechanics world of "Those are minions, those are not". Knowing which are minions and which are not is playing the mechanics instead of playing the flavor of the game. The pets and bystanders and trainees are the cool elements, not the "Oh, those are minions, let's use different powers on them". That's totally uncool.


It's not the flavor concept of minions and mooks that make 4E minions suck. Minions and mooks are cool from a flavor aspect.

It's the game mechanics. They totally suck if used as is. I'd rather have my PC be dazed than have him fight minions. They're that mechanically dull as written in 4E.

Next week, the 5 PCs are going into Hobbittown and killing a bunch of green grocers for fun. Minions are about this exciting as designed. "Look Jed, I got me a rabbit, yuk yuk, it put up a tough fight, but my dagger won the day". zzzzzzz

 

[KarinsDad]

I changed just about all my minions into "underlings" - they take two hits or a crit to kill. Works out a lot better.

Are they bloodied after the first hit?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

shudder

I guess it all boils down to what people get used to. Maybe I'm old school where for 28 years, we did not have minions, but this feels too much like video games like Halo where some monsters are one shot from a blaster and others require a beat down. It's like taking on enemy villagers instead of enemy combatants. It's one thing to have an occasional mook, but 3 encounters out of 4? Yikes! Way too lackluster and uninspiring. It's like being an adult bully and fighting kids instead of adults. Not a threat, not a challenge.

Yeah, I have to agree with the above posters. I can hardly recall an encounter that didn't include at least a couple of minions. Typically I'm going to have something like an elite, 4 minions, a brute, and a couple skirmishers or something like that. Its hard to generalize but minions definitely factor in a lot of encounters. I'd say maybe 50% of the time the minions have little impact on the encounter, and the other 50% of the time they do something. Now and then the minions will actually present a really serious issue for someone. The two encounters I ran last week each had minions doing a considerable amount of damage.

I don't really understand how a combat can involve having 4 effects on every enemy combatant either. I think in most fights in our group there will generally be one or two of the enemy that are being focused on that may end up say prone, marked, and with some debuff on them. Generally that monster is toast before it matters.

Again last week the 2nd encounter we did was pretty condition intensive and there were 2 rounds where 3 of the enemy were really laid onto with conditions. There was one enemy that was prone, marked by the cleric, and had some debuff on it. Another was marked, slowed, and immobilized, and a third one was unconscious (and consequently prone).

In this same encounter some of the party had slowed from an Orc Alchemist, but that was about it. IIRC one or two PCs got the stink bomb effect for a round as well (-2 to all attacks IIRC).

I'd think if all the monsters have 4 effects on them then the fight is pretty much over. Its hard to imagine a monster that larded with conditions being able to actually DO anything.

As for player special ability type stuff, that's up to the players. I mark each monster with its conditions and effects. If they don't know their character well enough to know they get extra damage vs a bloodied enemy or whatever then that's the player's bad. Often I remember this kind of stuff and I'll remind them if I do but the players all know its their responsibility to make sure they know about it and they're responsible to track whatever their character has for resources etc.

Now, we have played a lot more heroic tier than anything else and I haven't run a lot of epic stuff, so maybe things are uglier at that point. I do tend to avoid using several complex monsters in the same encounter too, but even the tracking issues aside I don't think its a great idea to do that since it would tend to bog things down. A single controller and MAYBE one other monster that can do some sort of condition is usually plenty. If I want more monster trickiness than that I go for something more direct like minions that explode when they die or something like that.

 

[firesnakearies]

A brief guide to making minions rock:


1. Use lots of them. Adding four or six minions to an encounter is usually pretty lame and not very challenging. If you're going to bother with minions in an encounter, use 15 or 20 or 30 of them.

2. Don't ever have them bunch up. Spread 'em out all over a big encounter area.

3. Use bigger encounter maps, in general. This is good advice for 4E whether you're using minions or not. Whenever possible, have battles take place in large areas, either wide-open maps or groups of linked rooms/hallways. Fighting in little 30' x 30' square rooms is lame.

4. Bring in more as the fight progresses. Have a couple of waves of extra minions come in later, from different directions. Have two or three or five of them go running off for help as soon as the encounter starts.

5. Use minions with a lot of mobility. High speed, maybe some little power that lets them shift extra or move extra squares. Or minions who can fly, have climb speeds, and so on.

6. Use minions with ranged attacks. Even LONG range attacks. Give your mooks longbows and a large map, and watch the carnage.

7. Focus fire. 20 minions shooting at one guy is going to be a scary day for him. Those little bits of damage add up fast.

8. Have the minions move around a lot, use cover, break line of sight, hide, and even spend a few rounds if necessary getting into position to attack a vulnerable party member from behind or by surprise.

9. When you do use melee minions, have them do things more useful than their weak little basic attack. Multiple charging bull rushes from minions can be really effective (opening up the party's defensive line, or getting people into hazards, and so forth). Multiple minions using Aid Another against one PC to give a huge bonus to some dangerous non-minion creature is good, too.

10. Have interesting and tactically useable terrain, and have your minions take advantage of it. Platforms and ledges where they can snipe from, and PCs have to expend some real effort to get up to. Lots of little boltholes, passages, or bits of cover to hide behind. Pits or traps that they can lure or bullrush PCs into.

11. Combine minions with a good leader creature. Someone who can give all of his allies temporary hit points, or allow them all an extra free action, or something like that. Leader monsters become all that much better when they have a LOT of allies around, even if those allies are minions.


Sure, having 10 melee minions standing in one big clump in the middle of a plain 30' x 30' room is going to be weaksauce.

But try an encounter which takes place on a large forest map, on a dark night, against 30 minions with climb speeds, darkvision, longbows, and trained in Stealth, who all focus their fire on the weakest party member at once whenever they can, and see how scary and challenging minions can be.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't really understand how a combat can involve having 4 effects on every enemy combatant either. I think in most fights in our group there will generally be one or two of the enemy that are being focused on that may end up say prone, marked, and with some debuff on them. Generally that monster is toast before it matters.

Well, it's typically 2 or 3, but 4 is not unheard of and it's not always every foe every round, but often most of the foes on many of the rounds.

For example, in a 6 round encounter with 6 foes, the foes are Bloodied 3 rounds out of 6 (for example, some foes for lesser periods, some for longer). That's up to 18 foe rounds of Bloodied (out of 36). Hunter's Quarry is 6 foe rounds. Oath of Enmity is 6 foe rounds. Marked by Fighter is typically a minimum of 10 foe rounds (marked via bursts twice per encounter minimum). Marked by Swordmage is typically a minimum of 8 foe rounds (often more). Just via damage and class features and not a single power, that's a rough average of 48 foe rounds or an average of 1.33 effects on each foe spread over the entire encounter.

Once we throw on powers, especially things that end on a save and can last more than a single round, it starts adding up. Combat Advantage alone from powers is available half of the time or more. That's 18 more foe rounds and the average is almost up to 2 right there. There's at least 8 more debuffs (Slow, Stun, Daze) that can be done, sometimes against multiple foes. It's fortunate that we only have one Controller and one Leader in the group.

And that's just the effects on the monsters, let alone the PCs. Ongoing damage and Daze are common effects on PCs from monsters, but a few PCs often have buffs on some rounds. Heaven forbid it is a tough encounter with PCs throwing buffs or debuffs that last most of the encounter.

Something as simple as Hymn of Resurgence has to have bookkeeping as to which foes got hit by it and which did not. It's Close Blast 5 which is a 9x9 area, so it may or may not hit a significant number of foes. Hymn of Resurgence could easily hit 4 foes and and add 4 foe rounds to the total. It all adds up.

And I'm not even counting things like Prone (since we knock over the miniature to indicate that, so it's typically much easier). But, Prone is a status.


But, I am definitely going to take your 3x5 card advice for effects on PCs. That should help some (it is unfortunate that DMs have to come up with shortcuts to handle this better, but c'est la guerre). The downside of this approach is that it is not as visible as the colored plastic rings that we put on the miniatures at the moment. We may need to do both.

 

[keterys]

If oath, quarry, and bloodied are eating up any of your cycles, something odd is going on.

 

[MrMyth]

Well, it's typically 2 or 3, but 4 is not unheard of and it's not always every foe every round, but often most of the foes on many of the rounds.

For example, in a 6 round encounter with 6 foes, the foes are Bloodied 3 rounds out of 6 (for example, some foes for lesser periods, some for longer). That's up to 18 foe rounds of Bloodied (out of 36). Hunter's Quarry is 6 foe rounds. Oath of Enmity is 6 foe rounds. Marked by Fighter is typically a minimum of 10 foe rounds (marked via bursts twice per encounter minimum). Marked by Swordmage is typically a minimum of 8 foe rounds (often more). Just via damage and class features and not a single power, that's a rough average of 48 foe rounds or an average of 1.33 effects on each foe spread over the entire encounter.

Once we throw on powers, especially things that end on a save and can last more than a single round, it starts adding up. Combat Advantage alone from powers is available half of the time or more. That's 18 more foe rounds and the average is almost up to 2 right there. There's at least 8 more debuffs (Slow, Stun, Daze) that can be done, sometimes against multiple foes. It's fortunate that we only have one Controller and one Leader in the group.

I'm going to have to say that I think you might be undermining your argument here.

Bloodied might technically be a condition, but doesn't require any more tracking than the hp of the enemy, which is being done anyway.

Hunter's Quarry and Oath of Emnity - none of these should require any real tracking on the part of the DM. It doesn't affect or impede the monster's activity at all. And since the player will only have one such foe designated under these conditions at any time, it should not be at all an issue to keep track of for that player.

Combat Advantage? How often does it come up specifically from powers? "Half the time or more"? That's absurd. It comes up a lot, but usually from flanking, or occasionally as part of another condition. The number of powers that make an enemy grant combat advantage and require tracking that independantly is relatively small.

Marked? Well... yes, that's a condition. And one that requires paying attention to. And there are certainly quite a few others out there, both the standard ones you mention (Slow, Daze, etc), but also small bonuses or penalties to attacks and defenses.

I'm not saying conditions don't exist, and can't be potentially overwhelming. For myself, I certainly haven't experienced that happening to nearly this extent. I'd be interested to see a list of the powers your characters have that are resulting in so much mayhem - but as it is, throwing out Bloodied, Quarry and Oath as key examples just seems likely to undercut the point you are trying to make.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm going to have to say that I think you might be undermining your argument here.

Maybe.

Bloodied might technically be a condition, but doesn't require any more tracking than the hp of the enemy, which is being done anyway.

It doesn't? Please explain.

It's not that this isn't tracked by the hit points.

It's that it has to be tracked visually on the board in some way in order for the players to know that an NPC or a PC is bloodied or not.

In our case, we put little red plastic soda bottle rings (the ones from the caps) on the miniature.

In the case of NPCs, not too big of a deal. They become bloodied and they stay bloodied. The ring goes on and stays on.

In the case of PCs, the players are often putting little plastic red rings on the PC miniatures and a few minutes later, taking them off again when they get healed or take a Second Wind.

Bottom line, it's still bookkeeping.

Hunter's Quarry and Oath of Emnity - none of these should require any real tracking on the part of the DM. It doesn't affect or impede the monster's activity at all. And since the player will only have one such foe designated under these conditions at any time, it should not be at all an issue to keep track of for that player.

I agree. The bookkeeping is not for the DM too much, although the DM has to be aware of these.

This amount of bookkeeping is half way between that of Bloodied for NPCs and Bloodied for PCs.

A visual indicator should to be assigned to the foe so that the DM and players know which foe is Quarried. Sure, there are groups of players with good memories that can remember which is the Quarried foe, but that's problematic for other groups.

So, a little colored plastic ring is placed on the miniature so that everyone knows that Dire Wolf #2 is the Ranger Quarried foe. Unlike Bloodied NPCs, that ring can change as the Ranger switches targets for whatever reason.

It's still bookkeeping. It's still bookkeeping that did not exist in earlier version.

It slows up the game to place the plastic ring on the miniature and take it back off later on and put in on a new miniature. Does it take a lot of time? No. Maybe 5 to 10 seconds, but the time both adds up and the interruption of doing so detracts from the flow of the game as everyone more or less stops to wait for miniatures to be played with.

No matter what bookkeeping system is used, a bookkeeping system has to be used. And specifically, some form of visual system should be used because quite frankly, there are a ton of things going on in the game for every single player and the DM to remember every nit little detail.

Combat Advantage? How often does it come up specifically from powers? "Half the time or more"? That's absurd. It comes up a lot, but usually from flanking, or occasionally as part of another condition. The number of powers that make an enemy grant combat advantage and require tracking that independantly is relatively small.

Is it absurd? I know of players that specifically take powers that grant combat advantage (we have one).

About 1 power in 15 either grants combat advantage, or gives a different bonus when combat advantage exists.

About 1 feat in 15 does it as well under certain conditions.

Let's see, our Druid minimally has Pounce, Swarming Locusts and Plague of Locusts (our Druid also has Claw Gloves, so she is incentivized to have CA a lot) and possibly some others.

Our Druid has Stinging Swarm.

Our Ranger has Ruffling Sting.

Our Ranger has Group Flanking (this is, of course, easy to visualize with the miniatures, but is sometimes forgotten because we do not do CA bookkeeping for it).

These are the ones I can think off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure that a few of the other PCs have a non-flanking way to acquire CA.

Sure, one does not need to illustrate CA for Flank or Prone (if one knocks over the miniature) or Daze (if one indicates the Daze another way and everyone remembers that Daze results in CA, ditto for a bunch of other conditions), but one does need to do so for some powers and feats. But then again, if the DM or other players do NOT remember which conditions result in CA, then it becomes more problematic.


Note: It is pretty obvious to me that younger players remember a lot of nit details better than older people. Being a grognard in my 50s, it is becoming a lot more important to track things than it is to memorize them.

 

[MrMyth]

In the case of PCs, the players are often putting little plastic red rings on the PC miniatures and a few minutes later, taking them off again when they get healed or take a Second Wind.

How many things come up, for your group, that take advantage of things being bloodied? Or is it just a question of knowing how close enemies/PCs are to death? If the latter, then you can stop paying attention to it entirely and are in the same situation as any past edition - if players need to know the status of an enemy, they can ask. If the former, the question becomes whether those visual aids take more time than the occasional question would take. My group has several PCs with abilities that involve bloodied enemies, and we don't bother with visual trackers (though we use a similar system, with wooden discs instead of rings.) When a PC attacks an enemy, they can confirm whether it is bloodied, and given I am already getting out the enemy hp to write down damage, the time delay is pretty nonexistent.

For the DM, such abilities are even rarer. Do you need to track bloodied for the PCs? If it is truly a hassle... you could simply not worry about doing so.

A visual indicator should to be assigned to the foe so that the DM and players know which foe is Quarried. Sure, there are groups of players with good memories that can remember which is the Quarried foe, but that's problematic for other groups.

A ranger will typically have a single enemy designated as their Quarry. Does the DM need to know? Do the other players? The only one who needs to remember is the ranger, and for one player, who designated the Quarry in the first place, that should be a trivial task. [/quote]

No matter what bookkeeping system is used, a bookkeeping system has to be used. And specifically, some form of visual system should be used because quite frankly, there are a ton of things going on in the game for every single player and the DM to remember every nit little detail.

Sure, but it sounds like you have bookkeeping elements that are adding more time than they are saving.

Is it absurd? I know of players that specifically take powers that grant combat advantage (we have one).

About 1 power in 15 either grants combat advantage, or gives a different bonus when combat advantage exists.

About 1 feat in 15 does it as well under certain conditions.

I'll have to take a closer look, but I'd be really surprised if these numbers were accurate. What are you basing these estimates on?

Sure, some groups might have players who have powers that regularly inflict combat advantage as its own condition. But enough powers that they are active on the enemies for half the entire battle? That seems unlikely, and certainly far from the norm.

 

[KarinsDad]

How many things come up, for your group, that take advantage of things being bloodied? Or is it just a question of knowing how close enemies/PCs are to death? If the latter, then you can stop paying attention to it entirely and are in the same situation as any past edition - if players need to know the status of an enemy, they can ask. If the former, the question becomes whether those visual aids take more time than the occasional question would take. My group has several PCs with abilities that involve bloodied enemies, and we don't bother with visual trackers (though we use a similar system, with wooden discs instead of rings.) When a PC attacks an enemy, they can confirm whether it is bloodied, and given I am already getting out the enemy hp to write down damage, the time delay is pretty nonexistent.

So, your rational is that since you don't care about it, other players and DMs shouldn't either.

Our players are a bit more tactical than that.

For the DM, such abilities are even rarer. Do you need to track bloodied for the PCs? If it is truly a hassle... you could simply not worry about doing so.

Every creature on the board should be aware of the bloodied condition of all other creatures.

The players do so in order to have PCs assist PCs that are bloodied, or attack NPCs that are bloodied.

The DM does so in order to have NPCs assist NPCs that are bloodied, or concentrate attacks on PCs that are bloodied.

One of the suppositions of 4E design is that the game system should be more fluid and tactical than earlier versions. It's hard to do that if the players and DM cannot quickly determine state information.

A ranger will typically have a single enemy designated as their Quarry. Does the DM need to know? Do the other players? The only one who needs to remember is the ranger, and for one player, who designated the Quarry in the first place, that should be a trivial task.

Very strange. Every player in my group wants to know which foes the Strikers are focusing on in order to maximize focused fire. Sure, they could pay close attention, but with the number of slides and pushes and shifts (and the ten minutes from a players turn to his next turn) and such, combat is often chaotic. It's much easier to look at a miniature with a purple ring on it for the Hunter's Quarry than it is to remember which one it is.

Sure, but it sounds like you have bookkeeping elements that are adding more time than they are saving.

And that's quite possible.

It's one of the reasons I come here to discuss things. If someone were to come up with a good way to visually keep track of this stuff, I'm all for it. For example, I was thinking of adding strips of duct tape to half of our plastic colored rings to indicate conditions that expire with a save vs. ones that expire at the end of a turn. Anything to make it easier for the DM and players.

I'll have to take a closer look, but I'd be really surprised if these numbers were accurate. What are you basing these estimates on?

Just a rough estimate from a DD&I search.

Sure, some groups might have players who have powers that regularly inflict combat advantage as its own condition. But enough powers that they are active on the enemies for half the entire battle? That seems unlikely, and certainly far from the norm.

Not as one gets into Paragon and Epic levels and the PCs start acquiring more and more options, especially area effect options.