D&D 5E 4th edition minions in 5th?

[Sunseeker]

One concern to be aware of. With bounded accuracy, numbers of attackers are more dangerous that attacker power (in general). So, despite the fact that your kobolds have 1 hp, they still do 1d4+2ish (5 points avg.) and hit pretty often (especially in packs with advantage). So they will still output a ton of damage, even though they drop in one hit (and they usually do normally, with 5hp anyway). So your minions are a viable threat to drop characters fast, sometimes before the characters can act to cut down their numbers.

I believe in 4th, minions could grant advantage to non-minion mobs, but not themselves gain it. If I am incorrect, well it's been a while, but since minions exist for purposes of simplifying large-mob encounters, giving minions advantage would be counter to that point. So simple rule: minions can't gain advantage.

 

[Jester David]

I believe in 4th, minions could grant advantage to non-minion mobs, but not themselves gain it. If I am incorrect, well it's been a while, but since minions exist for purposes of simplifying large-mob encounters, giving minions advantage would be counter to that point. So simple rule: minions can't gain advantage.

I don't recall that rule. And in 4e, advantage was just a +2, so the bookkeeping was low.
It does make sense for 5e though, where you're rolling twice.

 

[Imaro]

Another thing I have done is taken from 13th Age and their mooks (like minions), and that is for the little guys in a big fight just pool the hit points for groups of them. You have 5 goblins in a fight and they normally have 7 h.p each, the group has 35 h.p. Every time 7 damage is done a goblin dies, so if a fighter does 22 points of damage in an attack he kills 3 goblins. I don't do this often but it helps speed up large fights and gives a cinematic hero vs the horde kind of feel.

There is also an official variant on pg 272 of the DMG, cleaving through monsters.

The mook rules from 13th Age were my favorite version of minion rules, minimal book keeping but still kept that fighting down a horde feeling. Also xp for pointing out the rule on DMG 272 I may have to try that out as my players head into higher levels.

 

[Cernor]

Instead of making 1HP minions and throwing lots of them at the party, why not make a "Swarm of [minion]"? Say you have a group of 30 kobolds; instead of keeping track of all 30, it could be a Gargantuan swarm of Small creatures, that has a CR of 7 (30 kobolds times 25XP each times the mob multiplier of 4 makes 3000 XP, round down to 2900). Using the rules in the DMG, we can build that REALLY easily!

So it would have AC 12, 150 HP (sum of the kobolds' HP), and resistance to bludgeoning/slashing/piercing (for being a swarm), giving us a defensive CR of 9. An offensive CR of 5 makes up the difference, so if we make its attacks +7 to hit and two attacks for 19 (6d4+4) damage (11 [3d4+4] when below half HP), we're perfectly in the CR 7 range.

And why did I show off my epic (okay, not really) monster-building skills? Because building "minions" in this way has a few benefits over the 4e style. First, it speeds up play. Instead of having 30 enemies to keep track of initiative, HP, positioning, etc. you have 1. And who'd rather track 30 enemies than 1? Secondly, you balance the XP of the group of enemies vs the threat they pose: in some cases not having given XP the same as effective XP makes sense, but not when using large (>20 members) groups. Third, it provides better internal consistency: it makes almost no sense that an enemy powerful enough to deal the same amount of damage as a dragon would only have 1 HP.

 

[mamol]

I would introduce the minion concept at higher levels (actually my group is still level 2 in 5th so I got no real experience) and just throw some Goblins in the group of the big evil guys. So the Goblins would pretty much work as minions in 4th: one hit and they're dead, do at least some damage (minions in 4th did a nice amount of damage, weren't there those orc minions who did double damage when charging or something? Once they nearly wiped out the PCs...), and consume some of the groups resources.
In addition, your players get this feeling that some enemies are "minions" to them at later levels, which contributes to the feeling of their rising power.

 

[Nebulous]

For 5e, I'd just go with the idea of easy minions (1 hit), moderate minions (2 hits), tough minions (3 hits). If you wanted to go the minion route. OTOH, giving monsters minimum hit points by their HD might amount to nearly the same thing. At worst, an ogre has 28 hit points. Versus higher level parties, a whole MOB of 28 hit point ogres is going to die very, very fast, so it would still fill the minion role without adding new mechanics.

Just bear in mind they're still going to hit and deal damage like normal.

 

[Sunseeker]

Instead of making 1HP minions and throwing lots of them at the party, why not make a "Swarm of [minion]"? Say you have a group of 30 kobolds; instead of keeping track of all 30, it could be a Gargantuan swarm of Small creatures, that has a CR of 7 (30 kobolds times 25XP each times the mob multiplier of 4 makes 3000 XP, round down to 2900). Using the rules in the DMG, we can build that REALLY easily!

So it would have AC 12, 150 HP (sum of the kobolds' HP), and resistance to bludgeoning/slashing/piercing (for being a swarm), giving us a defensive CR of 9. An offensive CR of 5 makes up the difference, so if we make its attacks +7 to hit and two attacks for 19 (6d4+4) damage (11 [3d4+4] when below half HP), we're perfectly in the CR 7 range.

And why did I show off my epic (okay, not really) monster-building skills? Because building "minions" in this way has a few benefits over the 4e style. First, it speeds up play. Instead of having 30 enemies to keep track of initiative, HP, positioning, etc. you have 1. And who'd rather track 30 enemies than 1? Secondly, you balance the XP of the group of enemies vs the threat they pose: in some cases not having given XP the same as effective XP makes sense, but not when using large (>20 members) groups. Third, it provides better internal consistency: it makes almost no sense that an enemy powerful enough to deal the same amount of damage as a dragon would only have 1 HP.

My only problem with this is the coordination makes it seriously more dangerous. Instead of Bob, James, Frank and Jane taking 1d4+1 each, Bob will take 6d4+4. On a crit that's 12d4+4, whereas a single minion critting on Bob would have only been 2d4+1.

You could alter it to be a single "area attack" like a spell, with damage divided among the number of targets hit, but you're still left with the problem that one guy could be taking 6d4's to the face. Which even as minions REALLY hurts.

 

[SteveC]

I am going to echo one of the things that Paraxis mentioned and suggest the 13th Age Minions rules.

Taking a group of low level creatures and having them share a pool of hit points tends to work a little better in my experience than the straight 4E minion rules do. In this way you don't have to deal with all of those corner cases about killing them: they're real monsters, just with fewer hit points and a spillover damage mechanism.

You can find the 13th Age Minion rules here, but they're really pretty basic.

 

[FowlJ]

My only problem with this is the coordination makes it seriously more dangerous. Instead of Bob, James, Frank and Jane taking 1d4+1 each, Bob will take 6d4+4. On a crit that's 12d4+4, whereas a single minion critting on Bob would have only been 2d4+1.

You could alter it to be a single "area attack" like a spell, with damage divided among the number of targets hit, but you're still left with the problem that one guy could be taking 6d4's to the face. Which even as minions REALLY hurts.

I don't think that's actually a concern? I mean, first off, the mob is, as stated, built like a creature. Any other CR 7 creature would have similar power. Second, it is stated to represent 30 kobolds, which is more than enough to do a bunch of damage to all party members if they were run as individual creatures. I think it's an pretty nice way of handling it, really.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I am going to echo one of the things that Paraxis mentioned and suggest the 13th Age Minions rules.

Taking a group of low level creatures and having them share a pool of hit points tends to work a little better in my experience than the straight 4E minion rules do. In this way you don't have to deal with all of those corner cases about killing them: they're real monsters, just with fewer hit points and a spillover damage mechanism.

You can find the 13th Age Minion rules here, but they're really pretty basic.

I agree, if you want to use a minion like rule, I would go with 13th Age mooks.

But I think using low level monsters through to the higher levels works fine (minion wise) if you want horde fodder. You can always switch out heavier weapons for more damage, or put armour on them for more AC. Then just add as many as you think you need to reach that threat threshold. I've added 20-30 extra low level guys to 5th-6th fights with no issues, especially if they have missile weapons. It's great fun to throw tonnes of dice at the PCs, and great fun for them to mow down the low level berks who they used to struggle with when they first started adventuring!