Minions with 1hp - Can anyone justify this?

[Celtavian]

If we're talking melee only, I'm pretty sure the fighter will kill more minions in a twenty round period, and take less damage in the process.

True.

And given that the wizard has to rely on basic melee attacks with a much lower str, his overall chance to hit is much lower. But he can still smack an epic level demon minion with his staff and kill it the same as a suped up fighter with a huge str slamming into a demon minion. That is quite a strange idea to reconcile as far as imagining it.

 

[Lurker37]

Minion: Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo). Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly.

From the monster manual glossary. Being shock troops or cannon fodder to a standard creature lets us know that minions are weaker and subservient to even the standard creature, they are not themselves just standard creatures that for the fun of the game, have 1 HP. Their role in monster societies makes sense as equal to the role town guards or militia played in previous editions, in civilized lands. Now we have roles like that for monsters.

It's not that minions don't exist in the world outside of combat, its just that they don't exist *with only 1 HP* outside of combat vs the players.

Your quote proves my point. Or would you like to explain how, in character, a particular Kobold is "designed to fill out an encounter"?

It's an encounter design concept, not a world simulation one.

 

[Celtavian]

re

How readily are players supposed to be able to recognize minions for what they are? For example, is there any chance a fighter might say, be suckered into using a key encounter or daily power on a minion because he mistook it for a normal foe? Or are players supposed to know which are minions and possess perfect knowledge with regards to how best to take them down?

If a 1st lv rogue went nova and dealt a blow dealing 30 damage to a minion, then it won't really matter if it had 1 hp or 29 hp then, would it.

A group of players will recognize minions as a weaker creature amongst the masses theoretically. From a metagame standpoint my players recognize minions as soon as the drop the first the minion. No other creature in the game dies like a minion.

Our warlord got a crit hit with this daily encounter and didn't drop a regular enemy with one hit. Our wizard launched an at will scorching blast on a couple of human rabble, they died. They immediately knew everyone one that looked like human rabble was most likely a minion.

So they'll pick up on it pretty quickly from both a metagame and in-game point of view.

 

[Lurker37]

What's a noncombatant NPC?

One with no fighting skills. Never picked up a weapon or strapped on armour. Doesn't have divine investment or arcane power. Just a weedy little clerk with delusions of grandeur. Easy to hit, easy to kill. Except, in this case it's probably a really, really bad idea. ( Killing tax collectors was a capital offence back in the day. )

Look at the NPCs in the sample town in the DMG. Most of them do not have combat blocks.

 

[Dausuul]

Well - yes. If taken that literally. But what if that one PC has a friend.

To take Zombies as an example (either Rotters from the MM or Pack Zombies from Treasure of Talon Pass; and it has been pointed out elsewhere that zombies make poor minions) - with their best defense of 13/14, and a reflex defense of 9/10, you are typically going to take out 3/4th of them with any attack - so after two area attacks (usually versus reflex) you are going to have only 1 in 16 (<1 out of a dozen) surviving.

So lets consider Kobolds instead. Now we have a reflex of 13, so your first levels dragonborn and wizard are going to kill half of them per attack. Better, but the odds of any surviving to reach the PCs is still pretty slim. Barring an ambush, 3/4ths are dead before they reach the party. And when they do, those members of the party who won initiative will have delayed an attack until they get into range and will kill (statistically) half of the remaining before they get into range. Which means that 7/8ths of any group of minions will die before they can reach that party, with only the expenditure of a dragonborn breath (encounter, pretty much only good for minions) and a few at wills. And the one or two remaining from the original dozen get one attack before they die.

Your math here assumes that the PCs can hit all of the minions with each area attack, which is wildly untrue. My experience is that a burst 1 (blast 3) will typically encompass two minions, and a burst 2 (blast 5) will encompass three, sometimes four. Believe me, the minions survive to reach the party.

 

[CountPopeula]

I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weapon. So he could go on a melee beatdown spree, which is kind of not cool to imagine. Your two-handed sword wielding fighter wandering about hacking down minions is believable, the robe wearing wizard doing the same is one of those images that makes you laugh.

But most players won't play that way. So hopefully won't come up too often.

Like this?

 

[jimtillman]

Agreed, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got spanked for it. Fair enough. My problem is with the idea that 4th Ed forces you to have a certain party composition which I'm not keen on and the mooks symptomatic of this.
I like the idea of a bunch of players getting together and creating whatever group of characters they want and then the GM running a game for them. It's why I've never gone in for pre-written adventures; they can't really take into account the group you've got and I find it less work to write it myself than to buy one and then alter it to fit. Looking at my collection, pretty much every game can easily support unorthodox groups but I've found that 4th Ed is built from the ground up on the assumption you've got 4-5 players and they're each taking one particular role. If you've only got two players (as our 4th Ed group had) then you're at a severe disadvantage and I can't think of any other game that suffers this same problem. Sure, you can get around it but in the end we found it was more hassle than it was worth and canned it after three sessions. I'm kind of dissapointed with that, I was really looking forward to 4th Ed; the lack of Vancian magic and the idea of mooks had me really interested but it just fell flat for the entire group. Kind of sad. But now we're playing cops in Chicago in Kult so things are looking up.

3.x has this exact issue also if using a premade.
if your playing 2 characters then the dm is better off making his own campaign and structering the fight for those 2.
it is no diffrent then 3.x in this regard

 

[jimtillman]

Thats what NPCs are there for, not minions. Minions are there to promote players taking area of effect classes and abilities and reward them with massive amounts of free XP for doing so.

The idea of removing level/HD as a measure of an NPC's survivability by making a "class" of opponent who have 1 HP regardless of level has caused more problems than it will ever solve as shown by these threads. I don't even want to think about what conceptual contortions will need to be gone through in order to add pets, companions and cohorts to the game now. Minions not haveing a relevant HP stat is already cause headaches with terrain that causes damage. I mean, if the party's torch bearer uses caltrops those won't kill a minion, but if the party's ranger drops some in front of himself minions explode on contact... UUUUUUGH.

3.5E had mob rules, I'm not sure if they were from Dragon, but variants showed up in some of the Dungeon adventure paths I think like Shackled City. Anyway, they weren't perfect, but I far prefer them to the minion rules.

how is it free xp? minions can actually kill party members

 

[CountPopeula]

how is it free xp? minions can actually kill party members

It's not, unless they're very very lucky. Although I seem to remember skill challenges were free XP before they were too hard to complete, too.

The problem isn't the game, it's people trying find things about it to complain about. Have you seen some of the "look at what customer service said about X" threads? They're insane minutia for the most part. I'm convinced a lot of people just want to be the person who proved that X mechanic they don't like is broken, so they can tell everyone they found 4e's "bag of rats." Just like the obstinate player who would rather be playing Runequest so he sets out to make everyone miserable and refuses to concede a point.

We come at this from every angle and explained how minions are a credible threat, and how they're not meant to be examined singly, but in a group of at least four. And all we've heard back is "but it's so dumb, they only have 1 hit point."

Some people just get off on ruining everyone else's good time.

 

[Switchback]

Your quote proves my point. Or would you like to explain how, in character, a particular Kobold is "designed to fill out an encounter"?

It's an encounter design concept, not a world simulation one.

That means what exactly in relation to the fact that Minions exist in the game world outside of combat? Which is the point I am making.

I don't think we are in disagreement about the way Minions should generally be used in encounters. However, the way you suggested playing sort of fast and loose with minions or doing bait and switches with other related monster types, would be suspect at the least, and downright dishonest or unworkable in some cases.

I.e. It might indeed be possible to catch a Legion Devil on a errand or messenger mission and if it were engaged, there is simply no way to morph it into anything other than it is, because all Legion Devils are minions. There is no such thing as a standard version and they look entirely different physically than other demons.

Likewise, if players chased a minion out of one battle and into a building where it hid, such that it triggered a entirely new encounter, that creature should remain a minion when it is found and the new battle is begun, regardless if the players knew it was one beforehand. The DM knew and should retain consistency and regard for what these separate monsters roles are in the world.