Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game

[Xyl]

Minions don't have hit points. They have spares.

In other words, the "dead in one hit" effect doesn't matter for minions because you fight them in groups - getting lucky against a few doesn't end the fight. Instead of grinding down a monster's HP, you grind down the number of monsters.

 

[Hambot]

Meh. I can see myself rolling a d10 whenever a minion gets hit, and if they get a 0 they survive. Just so its not impossibly easy to know who are minions and who aren't, and there's an element of uncertainty and risk, which should be what an angry mob of monsters should be all about.

And if a minion survives twice like this? I'll stat him up on the fly - he's the 1 in a 100 exception to the rule, the monster equivalent of a PC and he needs a chance to survive so he might escape, or upgrade to a chieftan or something.

Or just have a couple of look alike minions whose hitpoints you DO keep track of, who have way more hit points than normal monsters of that level to better represent the most die, some live nature of war.

Considering how many people die in the first 5 minutes of every land war ever, I have absolutely no problem with the minion rules. The only reason the PC's don't have to put up with these odds is that nobody wants to roll play the Fortesque who gets shot through the eye on the first charge.

 

[SaffroN]

I don't really get what the big deal is here...

Basicly there are two options for 'mook's:
- Low hp
- variable damage
OR
- One hit kill
- static damage

I am glad that the designers chose to go with the latter, it is just far easier to run minions that way. There is no need to get into the math of it...

 

[LFK]

Minions don't have hit points. They have spares.

In other words, the "dead in one hit" effect doesn't matter for minions because you fight them in groups - getting lucky against a few doesn't end the fight. Instead of grinding down a monster's HP, you grind down the number of monsters.

And in this regard I will take minion rules over 3e's mob rules any day of the year.

I've only just begun reading about "minions" and like a lot of the other 4e rules, I don't like them because they seem to be an arbitrary means for the game designers to solve a problem the easiest way possible. They want a particular effect in the game (large attack by a horde of easily dispatched creatures) and they've manipulated the rules arbitrarily to allow the effect to happen.

I don't at all see what's arbitrary about it. Your "low level goblins" example only works if the PCs are a high enough level that they can one-shot low level goblins and at that point your low level goblins become worse than filler: useless. They can't hit the PCs or be missed by the PCs. Unless, of course, you up their stats, but not their HP. At that point it's welcome to the dark side, you've re-created a minion.

There's nothing at all arbitrary about it, it's entirely intentional and deliberate and well thought out.

 

[AllisterH]

One problem I forsee having with minions is the fact that a player can easily burn a daily or encounter power on a minion. Now some will say in reality a character wouldn't be able to tell a minion from a regular monster type, but then alot of per-day and per-encounter abilities should, in reality, be attemptable and even successful by a trained character more than once per day or encounter.

Anyway I just see this as leading to unexpected TPK's or even back to 15min adventuring days through what is essentially an unidentifiable wildcard that causes PC's to waste more powerful abilities, especially when mixed with non-minions. Add in the fact that the damage from a miss can't kill a minion and there's a very real chance PC's can accidentally mistake a minion for a more powerful creature. I guess I would feel better about this if it was in some way a strategy or tactics based problem...but it's really just a a guessing game unless players memorize the MM.

You know, tactically, this should tell players "open with your at-will attack first". Hell the system itself kind of plays to that strength.

Generally, The best option at the beginning of combat is to open with an at-will. Many of the monsters have a "bloodied" threshold where they change in some fashion. Either get weaker or become more vicious like the gnolls we've seen.

Given that encounter and even daily powers won't one shot many monsters of the same level, it makes tactical sense to use your at-wills to take the monster down to the bloodied limit and THEN open up the can of buttwhop with the big guns (encounter/daily).

 

[Xyl]

I've only just begun reading about "minions" and like a lot of the other 4e rules, I don't like them because they seem to be an arbitrary means for the game designers to solve a problem the easiest way possible.

"The simplest answer is usually the correct answer."
--Occam's Razor

 

[ForbidenMaster]

"The simplest answer is usually the correct answer."
--Occam's Razor

Took the words right out of my head.

 

[ShockMeSane]

I'm not really sure what the big issue here is. You shouldn't let your players know they are fighting minions. You should describe a missed encounter/daily with on-miss damage as "scorching/injuring/whatever" on the minion, so as to not obviously give away their minion status. Hey, you should probably even pretend to roll dice for minion damage and then pretend you are the worlds fastest mathematician.

Minions are not a special subset of the race in question that dies whenever a strong gust of wind hits them. Others have described this well enough. They are the orcs who are destined to not block your successful attack. As D&D's HP system has never, ever modeled wounding in any kind of Core way, the difference between 300 and 0 hps is and always has been only a lot of dodging, getting scrapped, and losing your will to fight on. Minions are in fact, a tool so that you can create a suitably heroic encounter for your heroes IF YOU SO DESIRE.

Minions are not designed as a special kind of pitiful version of that race that is somehow very adept at striking, damaging, and dodging, but still dies to a peasants attack. As a RESPONSIBLE DM you need to decide when minions are appropriate to the scenario YOU WANT TO CREATE.

I realize some people will never get past the bag-o-rats syndrome. This seems impossible to me in reality, as anything other than a way over the top example to try and prove a point on the internet rather than anything a sane DM would allow at his gaming table. But hey, you may play with a whole bevy of insane people and over at the asylum throwing the spirit of the rules to the wind and arguing over ridiculous rules minutae that is clearly against anything the game designers could have possibly had in mind may be the order of the day.

There is nothing forcing a single person here to make use of minions. Hey, even if you like buying adventure modules because you are too busy/lazy (I can relate to the former some games) to do your own, you can swap out 4 minions for a like-leveled foe.

Even if it is an addition that you simply cannot wrap your mind around, for whatever reasons I'm sure are completely legitimate to your enjoyment of the game, there is absolutely nothing that makes you use minions. Even if you want to use non-minion Orcs at level 1, we have the rules available to scale them down to your desire.

It is simply an addition to the game, and one that no specific DM must ever take part of. In fact, it is so easy to remove from your adventure/campaign/module altogether that the anger I've seen towards it seems beyond nitpicky.

There are a lot of legitimate concerns people might have about 4E, things that a DM or players can't easily handle without some serious work and discussion. This is not one of them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

1st: nice reasoning irda

2nd: I would add that also their attribute modifiers seem to follow a very strange rule, their damage too...

3rd: I still think minions are necessary for 4e to work. It may be an ugly fix, but in play it worked fine so far.

What i would have liked is a minion template, which increases the Level of a monster by 8 and makes appropriate changes...

 

[Aria Silverhands]

2nd: I would add that also their attribute modifiers seem to follow a very strange rule, their damage too...

Minions are treated as if they were three or four levels lower than their actual level. This affects the Lvl / 2 modifier that all creatures have to attacks and skills.

3rd: I still think minions are necessary for 4e to work. It may be an ugly fix, but in play it worked fine so far.

It's hardly necessary for 4e to work. It's an elegant solution to the problem of creating cinematic combat scenes, allowing PC's to look like badasses, and still allow certain foes to be dangerous in numbers.

What i would have liked is a minion template, which increases the Level of a monster by 8 and makes appropriate changes...

Eh? Minion usually means something weaker than the normal creature they serve. Why would adding a minion template make them jump up eight levels?