Minions require attack roll to be killed

[keterys]

That's because it is

Correct - which will bother some players. I wouldn't think of it as a nerf, as a player - I'd think of it as either making the game more interesting or addressing a flaw or loophole in the game.

I bet there are players who'd be flat out upset.

 

[Asmor]

Correct - which will bother some players. I wouldn't think of it as a nerf, as a player - I'd think of it as either making the game more interesting or addressing a flaw or loophole in the game.

I bet there are players who'd be flat out upset.

Well, that's something every group's going to have to work out for themselves. I don't suspect any of my players would be particularly upset, though if they were I might consider not changing it.

 

[keterys]

Well, I know people who are upset that minions aren't affected by 'damage on miss' abilities. Players often don't like running into a wall of "No, it's immune to that."

Part of why I created the rule the way I did - the save is not as bad as a straight out immunity, but it's also out of the hands of the player and requires rolls for the DM, which may or may not require as much effort as tracking bloodied depending on the setup.

 

[Minigiant]

I go with the saving throw method. But the minion gets a -5 penalty to the roll if grants CA, cursed, quarried, or marked.

 

[David Sid]

The saving throw method gives minion a 55% chance to survive attacks that would otherwise have a 100% chance of killing them.

An idea to consider: standard monsters have no bonus to saving throws, elites a +2, and solos get a +5. What if minions suffered a -2 penalty to saving throws?

This would slightly offset the "nerf" of them no longer being auto-killed by rain of steel and similar effects with the fact that minions would have only a 45% chance of surviving such effects. The -2 to saves won't affect them much in other areas because minions are usually killed by effects that might later require them to make a save.

 

[Praesul]

I think minions work exceptionally well as is for their intended purpose. They are supposed to either fill in the corners of an otherwise normal encounter or act as a large mass of meat-shields for the real meat of an encounter. Making any changes to when and how minions die is really going to alter the difficulty of an encounter where they are used.

I recently ran an encounter with many kobolds including a lot of kobold minions and a kobold wyrmpriest. The wyrmpriest has an ability which gives all kobolds in a certain area temporary HP. So all the minions suddenly had 5 or 6 hp instead of the insta-kill effect (because that's what the rules say to do for minions with temporary HP). This made the fight a lot more challenging than it would have been otherwise, and if it happened every time the party encountered minions eventually something would fall apart in the design.

Personally, I think the following is a much more reasonable answer than drastically altering the rules of the game. If you don't like minions as they are written don't use them. There are pleny of other creatures in the MM which are not minions, make use of them instead. Minions are designed for a special purpose, if you do not want to make use of that rule-set, don't. Nobody is forcing you to build encounters with minions. If you're using an adventure designed by someone else, then you're on your own I guess.

In the end, to each his own, but I think minions work perfectly as is and changing them, as stated above, would be a huge nerf to certain classes and abilities.

 

[Asmor]

I recently ran an encounter with many kobolds including a lot of kobold minions and a kobold wyrmpriest. The wyrmpriest has an ability which gives all kobolds in a certain area temporary HP. So all the minions suddenly had 5 or 6 hp instead of the insta-kill effect (because that's what the rules say to do for minions with temporary HP).

And this is one case where I feel very strongly in saying that the rules, as written, are broken. Having to track minion hp at all defeats the purpose of minions entirely. Minions should be little dudes who I don't have to keep track of, don't have to differentiate, and whose entire state is encoded into their mini's position on the map.

 

[keterys]

I think minions work exceptionally well as is for their intended purpose.

Curious, have you played with them extensively at paragon and epic tiers? For example, do you have a stormwarden who hits 2 adjacent creatures for automatic damage every turn, or a warlock with two-fold curse and a rod of reaving, or a wizard with Winter's Wrath and Frostburn?

Or melee characters using Tempest Whetstones.

Making any changes to when and how minions die is really going to alter the difficulty of an encounter where they are used.

Only true if you alter everything - altering just how automatic damage works only affects a small subset of abilities.

At any rate, experience with kobolds is hardly illustrative of how minions work over the course of the entire game, especially once automatic damage becomes an aspect of _every_ combat.

I agree with you that temp hp for minions is against the design for minions, though

Personally, I think the following is a much more reasonable answer than drastically altering the rules of the game. If you don't like minions as they are written don't use them.

While your other opinions were worthwhile, this is honestly wrongheaded. People can certainly like minions while not liking one small aspect of how they work and suggesting that a slightly altered solution is worse than complete removal is misguided.

In fact, many of the people who object to automatic damage's interaction with minions like them _a lot_ so object that automatic damage means they can't use them as much as they want to.

In the end, to each his own, but I think minions work perfectly as is and changing them, as stated above, would be a huge nerf to certain classes and abilities.

Removing minions from the game would be a huge nerf to certain classes and abilities, too, curiously enough.

 

[Praesul]

In reply to Keterys:

I honestly have not had a lot of experience playing with minions above heroic levels as the group I DM only meets once a month and we rotate through a couple campaigns, so we haven't exactly progressed far yet.

I still think minions would serve their intended purpose at these levels. What is that purpose? To use up a standard action or three in an encounter or allows PCs to be rewarded for their ability/equipment/class choices. Minions are not supposed to be the meat and potatoes of encounters. Minions are supposed to be there to make the PCs just think for an additional few seconds when planning how to engage the enemy. PCs know that minions hurt just as much as most other bad guys, so they can't simply ignore them. That requires just enough actions on the part of the PCs to give the encounter a few more points of challenge while at the same time making things more interesting.

Minions also require the DM to deploy enemies creatively in encounters.

You are right though, dropping minions out of encounters entirely would also be a nerf, I hadn't considered that and it would change the system up.

In the end, I think my final statement (albeit slightly revised) still holds true. To each his own. If you feel modifying the rules for minions will benefit your game then by all means. My intention in replying is simply to restate the fact that some PCs may not appreciate the change, and in the end we all DM for the players enjoyment.

 

[keterys]

To use up a standard action or three in an encounter or allows PCs to be rewarded for their ability/equipment/class choices.

Unfortunately, minions do have an XP value so there _is_ a balance metric for how much effort they should take to kill, and many of the things I mentioned do not take standard actions.

Now, that does bring up one other option - drastically decrease the XP cost of minions as you move up in tier. Unfortunately, that favors ranged minions far more than melee minions and can lead to unbalanced situations where certain groups are still _far_ better at killing minions with automatic damage than some who aren't. Oops.

That requires just enough actions on the part of the PCs to give the encounter a few more points of challenge while at the same time making things more interesting.

Indeed - the problem becomes when they don't require those actions or increase the challenge sufficiently in the face of certain tactics.

For example, let's take Tempest Whetstones which are mostly fine _except_ when you consider minions. They're a minor to apply, last the entire encounter, and are effectively free starting in Paragon and Epic tier. They deal 2 damage to all targets within 2 squares of any creature you hit automatically.

So a twin strike archer ranger can be killing all minions with 2 squares of any other target, automatically. Similarly, the cursing warlock can use a +1 rod of reaving in his off hand (again, effectively free in Paragon tier) to kill all minions he curses, and two-fold curse means he can potentially kill two minions every turn. He can even do this while still blasting a different cursed target. If he's a feytouched warlock, with slashing wake he can also be killing every adjacent minion when he curses any minion as a free action.

These abilities I'm mentioning weren't designed to kill minions - they were designed to add cool effects and extra damage to characters, but they unintentionally _destroy_ minions. In fact, in the original minion rules we saw at DDXP, it required a hit to kill a minion (they were immune to auto damage), so it may well be that they were _really_ not designed with automatic damage in mind at all since all of these items and abilities were at least drafted by DDXP.

In the end, I think my final statement (albeit slightly revised) still holds true. To each his own. If you feel modifying the rules for minions will benefit your game then by all means. My intention in replying is simply to restate the fact that some PCs may not appreciate the change, and in the end we all DM for the players enjoyment.

Exactly - that's why I was suggesting not to just make it a pure nerf. My players genuinely dislike that minions are immune to half miss abilities, and some think it's cheap that automatic damage just kills them. I agree, so my proposal works for my game since I think tracking bloodied is easier than tracking temp hp or rolling saves. For others, not so much. Oh well.