Minions. The DM knows 'em. Do the players?

Question:

I suspect the DMG may have information on whether a DM should indicate which critters are minions and which aren't (Ari - any help?). I was wondering what you guys thought.

The benefit of PCs knowing minions is that they don't waste encounter/daily powers on those minions. May be a bit of a fun sponge to loose a Daily and then find out it was a poor ol' minion.

The benefit of PCs not knowing which critters are minions fall under the whole "atmosphere" type thing. 20 goblins charging at you is more threatening if you don't know that 19 of them are minions.

Of course, "hiding" minion status could become a chore for the poor DM as he's trying to sort/choose miniatures, tokens, counters, etc. to use. Is the bookkeeping worth it?

Since I know you're wondering "What would Wisdom Penalty do?", I'll tell you: I think I'm going to attempt to keep minion status secret from the players. If minions physically look different than their compadres, then - sure - the PCs will likely mark them as such after a round or two. Otherwise, a rotting zombie and a rotting zombie minion will be identical as far as the players/characters are concerned.

Good idea? Bad idea? Indifferent?

Wis


Also...on an area power that delivers half damage on a failed attack, does a minion die? Or is that considered a "miss" and therefore the minion takes no damage? (I think it's the latter; I'm just checking.)

I'm still not at liberty to say what's in the book if it hasn't been made public. I will say, though, that I personally have no intention of spelling out what's a minion and what's not for my players--but they'll often be able to tell from context clues. (Such as sheer numbers, if nothing else.)

And yes, half damage on a miss is still a miss, be it area attack or melee.

The players will start catching on as soon as the enemies start dying with one hit. The ones that stay around for TWO hits are the ones to be wary of.

Thank you Ari and Henry.

You have also neatly fallen into my test/trap to see if you were both hitting Refresh on EN World on a Friday night.

Good to see I have some company.

Wis

Wisdom Penalty said:

You have also neatly fallen into my test/trap to see if you were both hitting Refresh on EN World on a Friday night.

Click to expand...

Only because my game was canceled tomorrow, so I can afford to put off some of my rewrites from tonight until then.


...

Somehow, that's less of an "I have a life! Really!" argument than it seemed in my head.

I don't plan to tell my players up front which are minions, but I'm also not going to take any particular pains to hide it.

"You see twenty goblins. Sixteen of them are dressed in rags and clutching crude knives and spears. Three are bigger and tougher-looking, wearing scavenged mail, and one is hung about with talismans and trinkets made from bone."

I doubt my players will have much trouble figuring out that the sixteen goblins in rags are minions, while the others are more formidable foes. Once in a while I might hide a non-minion among the minions, but I don't feel that "Guess The Real Monster" is a game my group needs to play every encounter.

If a DM is concerned about players being upset that they waste a daily power on a minion, just make sure not to tell them it was a minion after it dies. All the player should know is that the daily power killed the critter, not whether it barely killed it or wiped it out easily.

Henry said:

The players will start catching on as soon as the enemies start dying with one hit. The ones that stay around for TWO hits are the ones to be wary of.

Click to expand...

That's how Fung Shui, TSING, and any number of other systems deal with mooks. I mean, minions

Dausuul said:

I don't plan to tell my players up front which are minions, but I'm also not going to take any particular pains to hide it.

"You see twenty goblins. Sixteen of them are dressed in rags and clutching crude knives and spears. Three are bigger and tougher-looking, wearing scavenged mail, and one is hung about with talismans and trinkets made from bone."

I doubt my players will have much trouble figuring out that the sixteen goblins in rags are minions, while the others are more formidable foes. Once in a while I might hide a non-minion among the minions, but I don't feel that "Guess The Real Monster" is a game my group needs to play every encounter.

Click to expand...

Yeah for sure.

The monsters use the same system to "guess" which pc is the wizard, fighter etc.

Still it will be a nice surprise for my players to figure the whole system out (they havn't been following the details online like I have).

The way I look at it is this: in an action film, it's never difficult to discern the flunkies from the major threats. Kill Bill is a good example ... the Bride cleaves through dozens of expendable thugs ... but when you see the schoolgirl with the nunchucks, you know it's gonna be a fight. Likewise in Buffy it's never difficult to separate the easy-come, easy-slay vampires from the dangerous leaders.

So I guess I lean on making the distinction fairly obvious, although more through description as Ari suggested.