keterys
First Post
How is using encounter powers, stances and movement = little/no effort?
It's no effort to incidentally kill any minion that moves into melee range (where they're supposed to be), nor effort to kill any minion that stays at ranged for the warlock's minor action two-fold curse to pick up.
It's a little effort to happen to include some minions in the area effect of your encounter powers. Presumably when hitting other things than minions too. Or for the warlock who gets to teleport every time he kills something to move up near to minions, then take his minor action... then to teleport right back where he started if desired.
Those figures weren't including the use of stances or much attention to the minions.
Clearly, that party is taking the obstacle that is the minion horde seriously, choosing powers and taking actions to eliminate them before they become a problem.
Except for the fact that the party isn't taking suboptimal powers. Or even taking powers that matter for minions when doing that. The ranger is just taking the optimal paragon path for a ranger. The warlock is taking a no brainer feat and the only paragon path available for Fey Pact. Fighter is just taking the optimal powers for him. Wizard is taking the best encounter power for 7. I wouldn't consider Frostburn the best for 13, because I like Prismatic Burst's blind an awful lot, but it is the best for raw damage and terrain control so it's a very good option.
Almost every automatic damage ability in the game is _awesome_ against everything other than minions, too. In fact, with the exception of a couple effects you could make minions immune to automatic damage and those abilities would still rock and be the top or close to the top abilities at their level.
If your minions are sucking up actions and getting in the way of movement, then they are doing their jobs. They do not need to do damage or survive even one round for this. Just obstructing a charge lane for a turn or getting in the way of a warlock's curse is plenty. If the party is intelligent enough to deal with this obstacle, using powers, movement, actions and such, then good on them!
It's very easy to charge around things. It's easy to incidentally hit minions with area effects. Two-fold curse tends to "get past" that problem. There's no particular intelligence required, and increasing the amount of (melee) minions to the point where they can survive long enough implies putting in more XP, but also XP levels that would be too difficult if they weren't minions. If you have that disparity, it implies a system problem. It also implies that DMs less experienced with 4e could easily hit problems (deaths, TPK) due to not realizing how much of a fight their group can handle.
Though I'm more worried because of fights being too boring. Cause I've been in two fights as a PC - at level 2 - where all the minions died without acting and without effort. And it didn't exactly make for a gripping fight.
Their DM should step up to the challenge instead of looking for the nerf bat.
While I have to say that was one of the much more subtly and well given "Lrn2Play" I've seen, I don't think implying a desire for change means that a DM is less skilled or lazy is helpful.
On the nerfing aspect, my proposal allows misses to work on minions so it also makes them easier to kill in that respect. In fact, my proposal was an entirely voluntary option given to my players that they could take or not, and made at least one player very happy and no players veto-ed it, as is their option.
Cause, yeah, if they didn't want it, I'd just alter how I design encounters to deal. I'd also probably never put a Reaving Rod into a treasure bundle.