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

[JesterOC]

This is all completely made up by you. You're looking at these rules and trying to craft them in a way that makes sense to you. We've seen no evidence of the rules saying that minions morph depending on their opponents.

Yes we do it is right here.

A cool aspect of the minion idea is the way that you can scale your encounters as PCs progress through the Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers, while still using similar creature types throughout the campaign. An 8th level encounter might involve battling ogres, but later in that campaign you might have an earth titan that has enslaved an ogre tribe, and thus create a 16th level encounter with an elite earth titan and a bunch of ogre bludgeoneer minions.

Perhaps you should read the article again. It is quite clear if you have an open mind.

Hrothgar the Mighty has made his name with his great axe, Dragon-hewer. But those who follow the saga of Hrothgar the Mighty have noted a peculiar quirk that Hrothgar exhibits in battle. At times he is seen to discard the axe he values so highly, and pull out a wicked dagger that he calls Minion-Poker. When asked about this behavior by a brave bard over many cups of ale, Hrothgar said:

'What am I, an idiot? I've got an extra 10% chance to hit with this thing, and it doesn't matter how much damage I do!'

If I detect a player pulling a stunt like that against a rule designed to speed up play and make it more fun, then I guess I would switch them isntantly to real ogers and let him deal with them with his dagger of metagaming.

JesterOC

 

[ForbidenMaster]

The biggest issue with the argument at hand is that people are trying to fit a meta game aspect of the game into the world part of the game. If you are going to complain about minions then you must also complain about every other aspect of D&D that is meta game based (which comes out to pretty much everything) because if you can accept one meta game concept then why cant you accept another?

IMO its pretty simple, when in game minions do not exist what so ever. They just dont. They dont have 1 HP, they dont do fixed damage, nothing. Saying they do is where you go wrong because once you say they do you are applying rules not intended for in game in to an in game scenario. Its like trying to play a pnp with a joystick. It doesnt work because they are two different things and they are incompatible with each other.

Now if minions dont exist in game, what are they? They are whatever you wish. Fluff is Fluff, and its up to you to make it as realistic as you like. You want to call a minion a very weak and very easy to kill opponent, go ahead. But keep in mind that its because of fluff, not because its a minion. You could just as easily called it a god, it doesnt matter. Fluff is fluff and has nothing to do with the meta game. Proof? I can have a level 30 fighter who just killed a perimordial and I can fluff the fighter as a really lucky wimp. Fluff is fluff and is compleatly seperate from the meta game.

 

[Bill Bisco]

Yes we do it is right here.

What Stephen Schubert writes and what the game rules (which we don't have) say are 2 different things. Again we have seen no evidence from the game rules that creatures transform back and forth from being minions and not being minions

Perhaps you should read the article again. It is quite clear if you have an open mind.

Most respectfully, it's quite clear that many people are interested in adding their own opinions and self-justifying them into the game.

If I detect a player pulling a stunt like that against a rule designed to speed up play and make it more fun, then I guess I would switch them isntantly to real ogers and let him deal with them with his dagger of metagaming.

JesterOC

Ooh, so you're going to metagame right back? Interesting.

 

[Rex Blunder]

What Stephen Schubert writes and what the game rules (which we don't have) say are 2 different things.

Ooh, deconstructionism! The author's intent is irrelevant and unknowable.

 

[Bill Bisco]

Ooh, deconstructionism! The author's intent is irrelevant and unknowable.

Indeed, we've had a lot of fun at the CharOp boards in the past talking about the Sage's rulings which go against the rules.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

If I detect a player pulling a stunt like that against a rule designed to speed up play and make it more fun, then I guess I would switch them isntantly to real ogers and let him deal with them with his dagger of metagaming.

JesterOC

I disagree. I think it depends on the fluff. First let me set some ground rules. Fluff wise, IMO, there are two types of minions. Minions that you know are minions, and minions that you dont know are minions.

If you are an epic level fighter and you are about to face a bunch of extremely weak kobolds (minions you know are minions), it makes sense for a fighter to switch to a weapon with which he is more proficient with (that is a dagger, or another such weapon with which he would be more likely to hit). Because the fighter knows that all he has to do is get past their defenses in order do dispose of them and it makes more sense to use a more accurate weapon.

On the other hand, in situations where there are minions that you dont know are minions, the situation wont come up and therefor doesnt matter.

For categorizing the minions I think, when going for a level appropriate encounter, it is best to describe large numbers of minions as known minions and small numbers of minions as unknown minions.

 

[AllisterH]

So to Voss and Bisco, do you think D&D should be able to model LotR and Conan? If so, how would you do it?

 

[JesterOC]

I disagree. I think it depends on the fluff.

Yes I agree also. I just wanted to deal with the specific scenario that Voss used, where the player was clearly meta gaming. In reality, players should be rewarded for using a quick more accurate weapon if that is what it seems they need. But calling a weapon a minon sticker well that just invites non minons to show up to the party .

JesterOC

 

[Bill Bisco]

So to Voss and Bisco, do you think D&D should be able to model LotR and Conan? If so, how would you do it?

D&D already modeled LOTR in 3.5, the Fellowship just wasn't that high of level.

But if a scalable minion effect was requested I would give the players scaling damage. I might for instance give players a +2 damage bonus per level and give minions a subsequent +2 hp per level, thus a minion 5 levels higher than the player would not be subject to an autokill, but a minion of their level would. This is just one idea of solving the issue, let's play with it and see if we can find other solutions.

 

[AllisterH]

D&D already modeled LOTR in 3.5, the Fellowship just wasn't that high of level.

But if a scalable minion effect was requested I would give the players scaling damage. I might for instance give players a +2 damage bonus per level and give minions a subsequent +2 hp per level, thus a minion 5 levels higher than the player would not be subject to an autokill, but a minion of their level would. This is just one idea of solving the issue, let's play with it and see if we can find other solutions.

Um, that at a quick glance has some SERIOUS problems...If a monster is designed to suffer 4-7 hits (according to the minion article), dependant on role) , then a standard monster at level 20 at its BASE is going to need between 160-280hp. THEN add in the regular HP for level....

Looking at an elite and solo creatures, that's a massive number of HP