Minions and hps

[keterys]

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.

 

[Atropos]

...bad...BORING...not fun...boring...bad...boring...worse...lame...inferior...lame...
inferior...strange...sucks.

Lots of value judgements, no substance. Meh.

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.

Lots of assumptions here. In our game, minions do not blindly commit suicide on auto-damage effects, and always require the use of actions to remove. They are not "supposed" to be anywhere at any point except in the position where they inconvenience the party the most.

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.

I disagree. Many/Most automatic damage that does not come from daily powers/stances are of the Ability Modifier X Damage, which is pointless against regular monsters with 50+ HP. Minions give them a reason to be.

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.

I disagree again. Three minions can block every lane to a single square from charges coming from the front. 2-fold curse can get around a single minion, but not two, and area effects require actions and/or to-hit rolls, i.e. effort.

Again, if your party is packing the things they need to deal with minions, they are playing smart. Smart players should be met with more resistance, not with attempts to de-fang them.

And yes, this is a "L2P" argument at it's core, but it does occasionally apply, and doesn't need to be stated in the rudest manner possible, which is what I was trying to avoid. I play in a party with the offending abilities described in this thread, and our DM have used minions against us to great effect on occasion. You(rs) can too, but not if you insist that the rules are flawed and your usage of them is perfect. The encounters described certainly show usage that could be improved.

Discussing encounter design and minion tactics should come before rules hacking, IMO.

 

[Nebulous]

And, the convenience for the DM outweighs the fun of the players. The implementation of the minion rules are all about DM convenience, not about monster obstacles. Sure, they are monster obstacles, but that is not why they have one hit point. The main reason they have one hit point is so that the DM can more easily use them (they had more hit points in early 4E design and it was changed to one for DM convenience).

Sorry, but that's lame. That makes for an inferior game mechanic when the DM convenience rules force certain player game decisions.

And, a PC using attacks that do half damage on a miss do NO damage to a minion. That too is a lame rule (added on top of the first lame rule, a snowball effect). The player went out of his way to use up a powerful attack that is sure to damage, except because of the inferior minion rules, it doesn't. If you consider that FUN for the player, you have a strange idea of fun.

Bottom line: The concept of minions is great. It's great to have fodder enemies. The implementation sucks.

I have to completely disagree. Minions have been greatly enjoyed by both myself and the players in my campaign. For me, they are a strategic placement that technically can keep spawning for a long as i need them to, without the players having any knowledge of how many minions are around the corner. The fact that they go down in an eyeblink is counterbalanced by them attacking in hordes, which is not a trivial threat.

And we don't have a problem with the "half damage on a miss not affecting a minion." It's the only thing saving them from an autokill round by round. They die fast enough as it is with a controller in the group.

There are plenty of things that irk me about 4e but minion rules is not one of them. I like how they've been done. What you're calling "DM's Convenience" I call "DM's Tactics." Minions are a playing piece like in a chess game, they're pawns to accentuate the knights, bishops and Queen.

 

[cbbakke]

There is a lot of trolling on this post which is too bad. The saying people stink cause they dont know how to use minions is just not needed. Some minions only have melee attacks and have to enter the fray to do anything. Really as this thread has gone along my concern is the auto damage powers.

Mage aoe attacks have a to hit roll so them killing minions doesnt concern me very much.

Really the auto damage mechanic appears to be the problem. I am going to add a threshold hold for minions against only auto damage.

 

[keterys]

In our game, minions do not blindly commit suicide on auto-damage effects, and always require the use of actions to remove.

Is that due to player choice in not taking the abilities I've mentioned or due to melee minions standing around outside of melee (ie, not actually fighting) just clogging up movement? Cause, I mean... you could also just use obstacles. Rocks, for instance. Though something like a doomspore might be more interesting.

And just to verify - stand around not fighting but still get picked off by the warlock's two-fold curse killing... does that count as actions from your perspective?

They are not "supposed" to be anywhere at any point except in the position where they inconvenience the party the most.

This statement implies that they are game pieces rather than beings with thoughts (or lack thereof). While this is true some of the time, very often they _are_ supposed to be somewhere other than where they inconvenience the party the most. I'd even wager the answer is "most of the time".

I disagree. Many/Most automatic damage that does not come from daily powers/stances are of the Ability Modifier X Damage, which is pointless against regular monsters with 50+ HP. Minions give them a reason to be.

This statement shows a glaring lack of understanding of damage in this game - or is pure hyperbole to support your argument (or both).

I disagree again. Three minions can block every lane to a single square from charges coming from the front. 2-fold curse can get around a single minion, but not two, and area effects require actions and/or to-hit rolls, i.e. effort.

Three minions can block a charge only if they are standing in all 3 eligible squares next to a creature or there is some other terrain. Also, if the PC can't move slightly to the side with its move then charge, opening up another 4 or so squares of movement. Regardless, four creatures on top of each other is a good recipe for dead minions. For example, Slashing Wake from the warlock or Winter's Wrath which will hit at least one non-minion and kill all the minions even if all the attacks miss.

Area effects that you'd use on targets other than minions that happen to kill minions aren't a notable amount of effort. Especially if they're area effects that you don't need to roll the attack roll on the minion to know it's dead. If you're targetting just minions with your area effects, that counts as some effort. Sure.

Though, I'm not sure that a single standard action taken to kill, say, every minion in the battle is more than a _little_ effort even if it is an actual action using an encounter power.

For me, they are a strategic placement that technically can keep spawning for a long as i need them to, without the players having any knowledge of how many minions are around the corner. The fact that they go down in an eyeblink is counterbalanced by them attacking in hordes, which is not a trivial threat.

If you're using more minions than fit within the xp budget of the encounter, then you've already addressed the problem in your own way. Minions use up too much xp budget in "hordes", unless you define a horde as 4 to 8.

Still totally agree that having minions is awesome in play. That doesn't mean the system isn't slightly flawed nor besmirch minions' place in that system.

Again, if your party is packing the things they need to deal with minions, they are playing smart. Smart players should be met with more resistance, not with attempts to de-fang them.

This doesn't change the fact that the same party can _easily_ skate by a, say, level + 4 fight with heavy minion usage while almost TPK to a level +4 fight with no minions. That is a flaw in the system.

And yes, this is a "L2P" argument at it's core, but it does occasionally apply, and doesn't need to be stated in the rudest manner possible, which is what I was trying to avoid. I play in a party with the offending abilities described in this thread, and our DM have used minions against us to great effect on occasion. You(rs) can too, but not if you insist that the rules are flawed and your usage of them is perfect. The encounters described certainly show usage that could be improved.

Minions are still a lot of fun. It doesn't mean their design isn't partially flawed, particularly for groups other than your own. Which I guess is the equivalent of "Learn to game design", but I don't think that will ever catch on. Of course, I'd love if someone figured out a solution in this thread that was _perfect_. No extra tracking for minions, handles things easily, lets minions act at full XP value in those circumstances, etc.

So discouraging that discussion is extremely unhelpful.

Discussing encounter design and minion tactics should come before rules hacking, IMO.

You imply that it hasn't.

 

[radferth]

This may be lame, but how about a player still has to roll a to-hit against minions when using an auto-damage power.

 

[Atropos]

Is that due to player choice in not taking the abilities I've mentioned or due to melee minions standing around outside of melee (ie, not actually fighting) just clogging up movement?

No, this is due to the DM using minions with an eye towards tactics. They don't stand around in clumps waiting to get AOE'd, they don't all charge the fighter, and when they get into a position where they will certainly die, they always get at least one attack in or stands in such a way as to block a charge, engage a ranged character etc. Their presence forces us to decide whether to spend time clearing them out or concentrating on the real threats immediately. Making minions significantly harder to kill (and doing nothing else) would destroy this tactical consideration, as clearing the minions first would almost always become the suboptimal choice.

And just to verify - stand around not fighting but still get picked off by the warlock's two-fold curse killing... does that count as actions from your perspective?

Loaded question. Is maneouvering not fighting? Does the warlock not spend his curse killing minions instead of targeting the real threats on that turn?

This statement implies that they are game pieces rather than beings with thoughts (or lack thereof).

That is what they are. If you don't play them with tactics in mind, they will underperform, same as every other monster.

Regardless, four creatures on top of each other is a good recipe for dead minions.

Yes, combined arms rules. The wizard clearing out a clutch of minions to let the fighter charge is teamwork and smart tactics. This is not a game problem.

This doesn't change the fact that the same party can _easily_ skate by a, say, level + 4 fight with heavy minion usage while almost TPK to a level +4 fight with no minions. That is a flaw in the system.

I think your expectations of what the system provides is at fault here. Perfect encounter balance is not just impossible to achieve, it is deprotagonizing towards the players, because it removes the consequences of their choices. If gearing your party toward fighting minions, or undead, or solos, does not in fact make those fights easier, then your choices as a player cease to matter. Auto-damage abilities, or turn undead, or heavy debuffs and lockdown abilities, are not game problems, even if they make some fights easier than others with the same XP budget.

You imply that it hasn't.

If it has, the results have not been taken to heart by the providers of the examples in this thread, which are all examples of poor encounter design, poor tactics, or both. I have not yet seen an example where even proper encounter design and good tactics failed to challenge a group with a normal amount of minion-counters. All we get is the worst-case scenarios, and those are not proper cases to base a rules hack on.

 

[James McMurray]

If it has, the results have not been taken to heart by the providers of the examples in this thread, which are all examples of poor encounter design, poor tactics, or both. I have not yet seen an example where even proper encounter design and good tactics failed to challenge a group with a normal amount of minion-counters. All we get is the worst-case scenarios, and those are not proper cases to base a rules hack on.

Can you share with us some of the encounters where minions have faced down a high level group in your games and been more than a road bump with an inordinate amount of XP attached? There's a lot of "minions are ___" on both sides, but at least the side that doesn't like the way things are is putting up their experiences.

If minions are great, teach us how to make them so in our games. I'll happily avoid house ruling if I can figure out a way for the minions to challenge epic PCs.

 

[KarinsDad]

Lots of value judgements, no substance. Meh.

Yup. Just like your opinion that had no substance behind it, no examples, nothing, just WotC wrote it that way, so it must be good. Or, your opinion that people must not be using minions correctly if they disagree with you. Meh.


Auto-killing is lame. Paper tigers are lame.

I'm glad you think they're wonderful.

 

[KarinsDad]

There are plenty of things that irk me about 4e but minion rules is not one of them. I like how they've been done. What you're calling "DM's Convenience" I call "DM's Tactics." Minions are a playing piece like in a chess game, they're pawns to accentuate the knights, bishops and Queen.

DM's Convenience is not about tactics. It's about lack of bookkeeping.

Minions as pawns is a great concept. Minions as paper tigers is a lousy implementation. Auto-damage requires a special rule, miss damage requires a special rule, the fact that low level PCs can wipe out high level minions with one hit is an issue. The one hit point rule is a rules wart that requires thought on how to handle other aspects of minions. The one hit point rule is merely a bookkeeping convenience. It has nothing to do with tactics.

I like the concept of minions (which is a tactical consideration). It's the implementation which is so bad from my POV, all in the name of DM convenience.