Minions: Do players know about them?

[SnakeNuts]

I've got a bunch of players that don't trawl the forums that much and as far as I know haven't picked up on the Minion phenomenon yet. (I played the first encounter from KotS with them and they didn't twig that if they'd killed the weak monsters first they'd be in a whole less trouble...)

So I'm wondering: Have any of you told your players (who wouldn't know otherwise) about the minion mechanic (1HP, fixed damage, etc.) or have you thought 'they'll figure it out themselves'?

Or am I just a very mean DM?

 

[hong]

The general consensus seems to be "don't tell them outright, but make it fairly easy to figure out".

 

[Mort_Q]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=227328

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=227263

 

[Argyuile]

I've got a bunch of players that don't trawl the forums that much and as far as I know haven't picked up on the Minion phenomenon yet. (I played the first encounter from KotS with them and they didn't twig that if they'd killed the weak monsters first they'd be in a whole less trouble...)

So I'm wondering: Have any of you told your players (who wouldn't know otherwise) about the minion mechanic (1HP, fixed damage, etc.) or have you thought 'they'll figure it out themselves'?

Or am I just a very mean DM?

/shrug its thematic I think its awsome that they don't know yet, keep playing it like that till they figure it out. You can never go backwards with knowledge (without an amazing space age tube to the head anyways)

I would assume that generally the players wouldn't know if an particular encounter has minions (since not all of them will) and even if they do that doesn't let them figure out who the minions and who the std monsters are.

 

[SnakeNuts]

Thanks for the advice and the pointers to older threads guys! Much appreciated.