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

[SirAntoine]

Minions would work fine, but they would also reduce verisimilitude.

 

[Sunseeker]

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.

I guess I see minions less as a way to actually threaten the players, but more as a way to keep them from focus-firing the important guys.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've only played a little bit of 4th edition, but one of the rules that stood out for me was the idea of having "minion" enemies (monsters that only have 1hp). I really like this idea and was wondering if people thought it would port over to 5th edition easily enough. Would it work?

It should be pretty easy. Start with pg 274 of the DMG. Give the creature a Defensive CR of 0. Give it Avoidance (Demi-lich ability that allows it to avoid damage on a successful save; remember that this increases its effective AC by 1). Then just bump up the Offensive CR until you have something you're happy with. Don't forget that large numbers of creatures will skyrocket the adjusted xp, so keep the Average CR relatively low.

 

[SirAntoine]

Just lower hit points to 1 and skim off a few special abilities if you wish. You don't need to do any work.

 

[pemerton]

I believe in 4th, minions could grant advantage to non-minion mobs, but not themselves gain it.

4e minions can benefit from combat advantage.

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.

This goes to the heart of what, if anything, hit points represent in the fiction of the game.

Smaug was powerful enough to deal the same amount of damage as a dragon, yet was killed by a single arrow. One way of modelling that is to say that he had a single hit point.

In the book A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged defeats young dragons with single spells, and with a single rake of his claws after shapechanging into a dragon. One way of modelling that would be to treat the young dragons as minions.

Furthermore, any dragon in any edition of D&D can be able to deal the same amount of damage as a dragon, yet have only 1 hp - for instance, if it has been in combat for a few rounds and had its other hit points ablated.

I see minion status as analogous to the creature suffering from the "unluck" condition - instead of having a buffer of good fortune and skill to protect it before it becomes liable to a fatal blow, any blow that is struck against it will be, without doubt, a fatal one.

Others, of course, see hit points differently. They probably shouldn't use minions! (And they have to deal with the opposite oddity - that it is possible for a person to kill a dragon, giant or whatever with a sword blow, but never with the first one.)

 

[SirAntoine]

The correct way to look at Smaug in a D&D context is to say he was being hit all the time. Only the shot that got him reduced him to 0 hit points.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Well, the DMG has rules for fighting Mobs (large groups, not the things in Minecraft...). So that's a good starting point. I've also seen people do 1-hit, 2-hit and 3-hit monsters. In a post in another site I created a Goblin Swarm as another example.

Basically, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. It works well for the horde of goblins like the movies, then a swarm works well. Its purpose is to do a little damage, and slow the PCs making them potentially easier to hit by the main enemy, as well as giving the enemy an opportunity to escape.

D&D, particularly when it started moving back to embracing miniatures, codified the 5' square as a single creature. But the movies show far more than the 8 creatures around (and in many cases on) a defender. So I found a swarm to be a more satisfying solution. They don't kill everything around them, just enough to get through to their real target.

As far as Smaug is concerned, a specialist (in that case a really good archer), with a critical hit and system shock rules plus falling out of the sky can account for a dramatic shot such as that. While not in the current 5e ruleset (although I have a similar house rule), it would also have been a called shot to hit a known weak spot in the armor, and a deadlier location to hit. The general D&D rules have never really been designed for this type of shot simply because if it was a possibility, it would happen too frequently. More importantly, since the PCs take far more hits than any single monster, pretty much every PC would probably be at risk for a single-shot death in their career.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Sunseeker]

4e minions can benefit from combat advantage.

Ah well, just goes to show it's been a while since I played 4th. Still I would probably not grant it to them in the name of keeping things simple in 5th and that rolling 2 d20's is decidedly more powerful than a +2 bump.

 

[pemerton]

As far as Smaug is concerned, a specialist (in that case a really good archer), with a critical hit and system shock rules plus falling out of the sky can account for a dramatic shot such as that.

Sure. There are all sorts of ways to model that in a fantasy RPG. Rolemaster and RQ can do it through their crit rules, for instance, and Burning Wheel through it's rules for adjudicating the severity of a hit.

I was just pointing out one option.

The correct way to look at Smaug in a D&D context is to say he was being hit all the time. Only the shot that got him reduced him to 0 hit points.

And the oddity, as I pointed out, is that the first shot can never be the one that got him.

4e minion rules are all about embracing, and amplifying, the pacing function of hit points (which Gygax alluded to when he said that part of the inspiration for the D&D combat system was Errol Flynn fighting Basil Rathbone). Making a creature a minion means that it will, by definition, not provide a long and drawn out battle.

If you don't want to emphasise this particular function of hit points, don't use minions.

 

[SirAntoine]

Sure. There are all sorts of ways to model that in a fantasy RPG. Rolemaster and RQ can do it through their crit rules, for instance, and Burning Wheel through it's rules for adjudicating the severity of a hit.

I was just pointing out one option.

And the oddity, as I pointed out, is that the first shot can never be the one that got him.

4e minion rules are all about embracing, and amplifying, the pacing function of hit points (which Gygax alluded to when he said that part of the inspiration for the D&D combat system was Errol Flynn fighting Basil Rathbone). Making a creature a minion means that it will, by definition, not provide a long and drawn out battle.

If you don't want to emphasise this particular function of hit points, don't use minions.

If that were true, the minions would need to have poor offenses, too.