Excerpt: Minions. Go forth mine minions! Bring havoc with your 1 hp [merged]

[Crashy75]

I'd rule that a daily power kills a minion, miss or no.

I probably will as well. However, I'll be making it a point to differentiate the minions form the others. I won't say, "this is a minion", but make it clear who are the movers and shakers. Minions could easily get mixed with the regulars, however... Yeah, I think I will make dailies kill minions outright (even if fireball is a daily).

 

[Thasmodious]

I like that a miss doesn't damage them. It's a bookkeeping abstract of the abstract HP system, it works, it makes sense. In other words, it does damage them, just not in any way that is necessary to write down. If there are powers (haven't seen any) that still apply negative effects on a miss, like knocking prone or dazing or something, I will still apply those (and I'd assume the rule would be to apply those).

Minions are one of my favorite things about 4e so far. I love getting past the 1st level "heroes" fighting 1d3 rats or an orc.

"You open the door and step inside only to find two dozen kobolds eating dinner in a large mess hall. One spots you and yells. All heads turn to you, many are grinning."
"B-b-but we're only 1st level!"

Good times.

 

[catsclaw227]

I'd rule that a daily power kills a minion, miss or no.

I probably will as well. However, I'll be making it a point to differentiate the minions form the others. I won't say, "this is a minion", but make it clear who are the movers and shakers. Minions could easily get mixed with the regulars, however... Yeah, I think I will make dailies kill minions outright (even if fireball is a daily).

I wonder if someone from WOTC will pop in and clarify this topic. It seems to be relevant to the preview and won't be giving too much away.

 

[FadedC]

So if I understand right a monster can be reasonably "promoted" to a minion when it's no longer threatening to the party, but the DM still wants to use it.

For example when the 3rd level party wanders into the hobgoblin forest, all the hobgoblins are lvl 3 hobgoblin soldiers, archers, warcasters, etc. But if the lvl 11 party goes back there then they are now all just lvl 11(ish) minions, perhaps supported by a few powerful leaders they players were too weak to take on the first time.

So the players still get the feel of being way more powerful then these hobgoblins now without them being completely unable to hurt the party.

 

[sunbear]

I like the minion rules. I have been using similar (often times, house) rules in EVERY game that I have played the last few years.

However...
I really hope the legion demons also have regular, non minion stats. While it wouldn't be much trouble to make the creature yourself it would still be nice.

 

[Sojorn]

Interesting. The Legion Devils are way, WAY stronger than the orc minions. I was puzzling this out when I realized that the unique part about orc minions is they'll probably be lead by an Eye of Gruumsh type. Thus, they charge into combat as fast as possible, get one hit in, then get another hit in when their weak defenses fail them.

The Legion Devils are actually meant to be a wall.

So the players still get the feel of being way more powerful then these hobgoblins now without them being completely unable to hurt the party.

Yes. That the "scaling" use of them. The other is "plot based". Those would be the examples at the very start of the except.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I disagree on allowing a Daily to smoke a minion even on a miss.

Minions are one of the reasons (along with the bloodied threshold) I as a DM can use to ensure that players open with their at-wills and use those until they feel they need to use their big guns.

That means you're relying on metagame knowledge to regulate player behaviour. Not the best choice.

 

[ShockMeSane]

I'd rule that a daily power kills a minion, miss or no.

While I totally respect the reason someone might want to houserule this, I have a feeling it would impact the game in some undesirable ways.

1) Increases the relative power of "X damage on a miss" powers compared to 100% wiff-on-a-miss powers. This will lead to players making more obvious Power choices as they level, as minions surviving a miss almost had to be a balancing factor they considered during the design stage.

2) Decrease the relative value of minions for budgeting encounter exp. 4 minions that you hit 50% of the time will on average have 2 surviving an AoE spell. With the houserule, they'd all die all the time. This is going to be extremely problematic on any spell with burst 4+.

So yea, I'm not touching that one, though I am sympathetic when a daily wiffs and fails to kill a single minion. I just think the fix is more problematic than the flaw.

 

[Blackeagle]

It's that formulaic? Why didn't they just give one example and list the mods with maybe a little chart to say when the fire resist goes up? It would save a lot of space, and not be an implied insult to the intelligence of DMs everywhere...

Given how much WotC went on about having "ready to play dragons for the first time ever" and the emphasis on reducing DM prep time, I'm guessing that the MM will focus on complete stat blocks for monsters (versus tables or partial stat blocks that require customization to play).

 

[Sashi]

This makes minions almost exactly like Mooks from Feng Shui. If you beat a Feng Shui mook's defenses by 5 or more, they're down for the count. If you don't, they keep coming. No more tracking of mooks is necessary than this. They've basically taken this for D&D and made it the same thing: if you roll an attack and beat a (level appropriate) number, they're dead. If you don't, they keep coming at you. You could basically give them "minion" as their HP and be done with it. No zero HP at all.

On an unrelated note:
How much mileage do you think we can get from this single sentence?

a typical monster might take four to six basic attacks to knock out

For example, the level 8 angel has 88 HP and his basic attack is a 1d8+4 longsword plus a 1d4+4 dagger, which means that level 8 characters are going to be dealing ~14-22 damage each attack. If you assume that a single PC should be dropped in 6-8 basic attacks (PC's usually win), that means that a typical PC should have 102-136 HP (1d8+6 +1d4+4 * 6-8)

The level 13 giant has 159 HP, which means 13th level PC's should be dealing 26-40 damage. He deals 1d10+5 damage with a greatclub, which amounts to 63-84 HP for the PC's.

So it's interesting that the angel of valor deals far more damage than appears level appropriate, compared to the 5 levels higher giant. Or maybe this is the difference between the Brute and Soldier designations.