ryryguy said:
Hey KarinsDad, please, I was not trying to attack you at all.
As for suggesting that you just use a regular monster instead of a tough minion: It just seems that if your Tough minion no longer goes down in one hit, and you have to roll damage for them like a regular monster, you've taken two big steps back towards it being a regular monster. It seemed your main goal was to hide the "minionness" of the standard minions which I think you could do equally well with a regular monster. Thus my inquiry about what the Tough minion adds because I honestly though a regular monster would serve just as well. No snark intended.
Well, thanks for being a straight up guys. I apologize for getting frustrated when the nth person told me to ignore my houserule because the main rule is better. The main rule has definite pros, but I see cons with it, at least for my game, as well.
And for 2 successful attacks out of 3, what you said is correct. In order to hide minionness, the players have to roll the damage dice once for a Regular Minion and twice for a Tough Minion.
But remember, a Tough Minion is worth 2 Weak Minions XP-wise. That means, it will not be used in every minion fight. So although the players have to roll the damage dice against it twice, I do not have 2 Weak Minions to roll to hits (and damage using this) in this system, I only have 1 Tough one (if I balance out the encounter XP-wise). So, sure there are some additional dice rolls, but to me, that's no big deal. And, the players never have to roll dice on the killing blow against Regular and Tough Minions like they often have to do with regular monsters. So, these minions still have some mechanical advantages over regular monsters.
I still gain the advantage of not adding or subtracting hit points with the minions. I still gain the advantage of Weak Minions falling over. The Minions still save dice rolls for the most part overall compared to regular monsters and the minions still allow me to throw 10 monsters at the PCs. So, I still gain some advantages of the core rule.
For a slight cost, I gain many of the advantages of minions, but do not have what I consider some of the larger disadvantages.
Note: I will probably also throw one or two Regular Minions in every 2 or 3 minion battles and a Tough Minion in every 3 to 5 minion battles. It will not be an every minion battle type thing. Just enough to keep the players from absolutely knowing that if a monster can take a single hit, that it is not a minion.
That fact that I now have two more monster Roles to use in my game system is a good thing, not a bad thing. I am not forced to use them in any given encounter. I'll just make sure I use them is some encounters, just like any other monster Role in the MM.
Basically, I view this as an advantage over DMs who limit themselves to the standard minion rules. At least, IMO.