Solving the minion problem: Waves!

[Bayuer]

Wait... There's a problem with minions?! I'm glad no one told our group this startling news.
I DM for group of three: Dragonborn Paladin, Eladrin TacLord, Halfling Rogue. The Dragonborn has his breath weapon(Encounter), which seems to miss way more often than 50% of the time. The Rogue has Blinding Barrage(Daily) and recently picked up Cloud of Steel(Encounter). So they have three AoEs that they can use, and one of them is a Daily. I prefer to use a decent mix of units, and due to the smaller group size, I tend to use at least a couple of minions to round out the encounter group. So far for us, minions are working exactly as expected. You can ignore them for a litle while, but that damage adds up fast. Ranged minions have been particularly annoying.
Granted, we don't have any of the Autokill options that were mentioned, such as Flaming Sphere, Stinking Cloud or Armor of Ag, but I still don't see those as problems. Those are Daily powers! They're limited to one use per day, and supposed to do cool things. I don't think ripping off your group by reducing the XPs they actually earn for killin minions simply because you deem them too easy to kill is the correct answer. If they use their resources correctly, they should be rewarded, not punished. A better "solution", if you feel you must have one, would be to use fewer minions.
Later!
Gruns

Just wait when they will have autodamege powers or even worst they get acces to tempest whetsone

 

[ObsidianCrane]

2) Minions can only be killed by a successful attack roll.

This is the solution I'm considering, though currently I'm using;
Minions can only be killed by a damage dealing power.

This is to stop the Rod combo for Warlocks getting out of hand. I don't really mind a PC clearing away a bunch of minions with an attack power of some sort, but I think their dramatic purpose is ruined if a curse or similar kills them.

 

[Phaezen]

This is the solution I'm considering, though currently I'm using;
Minions can only be killed by a damage dealing power.

This is to stop the Rod combo for Warlocks getting out of hand. I don't really mind a PC clearing away a bunch of minions with an attack power of some sort, but I think their dramatic purpose is ruined if a curse or similar kills them.

I am condisdering giving minions a death save against auto damage effects myself. Will see how that goes.

Phaezen

 

[Artoomis]

Minions are wel... minions. You are SUPPOSED to be able to wipe them out instantly if you only do the right thing.

It seems to me one of the primary fundtions them minions is to force party balance - you need to be able to do small damage to lots of things in addiiotn to everything else.

I think what we have here is no problem at all.

 

[Wish]

Basic psychology, my friend. Giving the controller lots of weak foes he can blast to smithereens is NOT hosing the controller.

Now, if you TELL the player of the controller that you're increasing the number of enemies every time he kills a bunch of them, he might FEEL hosed. That's why you don't tell him.

Hosing the controller would be if you made most or all of your battles against elites and solos so that his area of effect spells mostly didn't work.

It is hosing him if blasting his foes to smithereens has absolutely no effect on the combat. In fact, the controller "killing" minions has a detrimental effect on the outcome, since he has spent an action "killing" minions that he could have spent debuffing a bad guy, or just chipping in his magic missile damage. "Killing" in quotes there because all he really did for all his effort is teleport them just off the battle map for a round. And you don't have to tell him, he just has to have the intelligence of a slightly dim turnip to eventually realize that every time he fires off his Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere, well gosh and golly, there's a second wave of minions. But when the ranger kills them one at a time, no second wave. Wonder why that might be? And about that time the wizard charges into melee with the dragon and the player decides to make a striker for his next character.

 

[James McMurray]

I think what we have here is no problem at all.

Have you run an epic level encounter with minions in it? How did it work out? Was there no concern that the tactics used to kill real monsters kill minions as a side effect, with little to no loss of actions on the party's part, and little to no danger as well? Was there no concern that because of that, minions are effectively free experience points because there's no risk and little change of strategy needed to kill them?

We've had lots of fights with minions in the hero tier and they've been fun. The PCs don't have a lot of automatic damage effects, and the controller gets to shine.

We've had a couple at paragon tier and one was very boring thanks to some good positioning and a paladin with polearm gamble.

We had one epic level fight with minions before I introduced a house rule, and the minions may as well not have been there. The standard strategies used to kill real monsters (auto-damage stances, come and get it, and area nukes with status effects) also kill minions almost on accident. The 8 slightly modified (i.e. tougher) legionnaire devils turned into free xp. IIRC one of them managed to do a little damage before they died. Had they been two standard monsters or if we'd been using our house rule then they'd have lasted a little longer, survived the collateral damage, and had a chance to actually affect the battle. Instead their primary purpose in life was to make the players say "Crap! that's a lot of large monsters. double crap! They can teleport! Oh, nevermind. They're dead."

Our house rule is:

Minions do not always die from a single hit. If a minion would be destroyed, it is instead knocked down. A critical hit destroys a minion, and an attack which would deal damage on a miss still deals that damage to them. Should such an attack hit, the minion is destroyed. If it takes any damage while knocked down, it is destroyed. Otherwise they make a saving throw on their turn. If they fail, they twitch one final time, attack an adjacent target while prone, and they die. If they succeed, they act normally.

To avoid the massive amounts of condition tracking this could add, any status effects caused by an attack will instead count as a hit. For example, Crushing Titan’s Fist deals damage and immobilizes those hit. Minions in the area would be destroyed. Some examples:

• The fighter hits a minion twice, cleaving into the minion next to it each time: both die.
• The fighter crits a minion with cleave: it dies, the other one he damages is knocked prone.
• The warlock hits a minion with Eldritch Blast and triggers Warlock's Curse: the minion is knocked prone (the amount of damage doesn’t matter, so strikers do not gain a benefit against minions that they did not have under the core rules).
• The wizard fireballs a bunch of minions: Since it does damage on a miss, it'll count as a hit no matter what. Any minions hit by the attack will die. Minions that are missed will be knocked prone.
• The cleric traps some minions inside a Fire Storm: they die at the start of their turn (one hit when it lands, plus one hit when they start their turn in it).
• The artificer hits a minion with Burrowing Projectile: it's almost guaranteed to die because the initial damage plus one round of ongoing count as two hits.
• The artificer misses a minion with a natural one for Runic Resistance: No change in it's status.

 

[Herschel]

While I'm still playing hero tier, it looks to me like an XP ratio for minions should be n:1 where n is the number of PCs in the party if yoiu are too worried about xps.

Or just play them spread out and nasty.

 

[-Avalon-]

Well, how about this... a strange idea that may or may not work...

When making a module, I start off thinking how much xp I want to give out during the course of the adventure and then figure out how many fights that gives me to work with (modified with the different levels of difficulty and all)

So, what if I take one of the fight's worth of xp, and just allocate that to minions entirely, giving me a pool of minions to work with, then in each encounter I can use them when I want, having them either start in the fight or show up at certain points during the encounter.

Basically making minions be the "extra" power of a real monster.

"Call For Help : (Free Action:Encounter) Calls for 4-8 extra buddies in the form of minions who show up on a predetermined initiative count"

Something akin to that, but more freeform =)

That would answer the "wave" theory, and also allow the DM to say, "Nah, that was too easy, they can take more!" lol

 

[Syrsuro]

It is hosing him if blasting his foes to smithereens has absolutely no effect on the combat. In fact, the controller "killing" minions has a detrimental effect on the outcome, since he has spent an action "killing" minions that he could have spent debuffing a bad guy, or just chipping in his magic missile damage.

Minor Point (not to be construed as support for recycling minions)...

If the controller blasts the minions and the DM 'recycles' them to bring them back, the controllers action was not wasted as some have implied above.

In fact, what the controller has done is exactly what the controller is supposed to do - he is filling his defined role.

By killing them, he has denied them actions.
By requireing them to 'respawn' and move back to the combat, he has delayed their ability to act.

Essentially killing a minion and then having that minion recycle is identical to a) a one round stun denying them any actions combined with b) a forced movement to the edge of the map.

That's a pretty darned effective controller effect if you ask me.

Just because he didn't kill them outright, that doesn't mean he wasn't effective.

Note: This does not change the problems stemming from the Sysyphian futility of killing them only to have them respawn, which remain a valid issue (with deception one proposed solution).

Aside: And for those who are in favor of recycled minions - a question: If the players are having difficulties eliminating the minions that are there, either through bad luck or bad play, are you going to somehow eliminate some to reach the desired balance? If not, why not? Why is it OK to punish the players good luck/good play by tossing more minions at them but not appropriate to reward the bad luck/ bad play by eliminating some?

Carl

 

[Cadfan]

It is hosing him if blasting his foes to smithereens has absolutely no effect on the combat. In fact, the controller "killing" minions has a detrimental effect on the outcome, since he has spent an action "killing" minions that he could have spent debuffing a bad guy, or just chipping in his magic missile damage. "Killing" in quotes there because all he really did for all his effort is teleport them just off the battle map for a round. And you don't have to tell him, he just has to have the intelligence of a slightly dim turnip to eventually realize that every time he fires off his Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere, well gosh and golly, there's a second wave of minions. But when the ranger kills them one at a time, no second wave. Wonder why that might be? And about that time the wizard charges into melee with the dragon and the player decides to make a striker for his next character.

What do you mean, no effect?

Look, there's a bunch of bad guys. BOOM! The wizard makes them asplode! Now there's a lot fewer bad guys. And its a good thing, because here comes EVEN MORE bad guys! Man, its a good thing the wizard asploded all those guys, because if he hadn't, we'd be completely outnumbered!

These are basic DMing skills 101. When you have an encounter that is of a type you know your PCs aren't well equipped to handle, you lower the difficulty. When you have an encounter that is of a type your PCs are extremely well equipped to handle, you increase the difficulty.

And when your PCs have an ability that's really powerful, and that really blasts through an encounter of a particular type, you have two choices. One's good, and one's bad.

The bad choice is to nerf the ability in some way. This can be done by either making up circumstances where the ability can't be used (in 3e, this is the clumsy anti-magic zone answer to overpowered spellcasters), or simply never using the sort of challenge the PCs easily overcome.

The GOOD way is to embrace the powerful ability. Balance the encounter so that after the PCs use their particularly powerful ability, a balanced, fun encounter remains behind. A 3e example of how to do this is my answer for Turn Undead. Turn Undead can really toast an encounter in 3e, if the cleric in question has invested feats in improving it, and has the right ability scores. It can actually render an entire fight moot, or ruin the challenge of a climactic battle. What's the solution? Well, you only get so many Turn Undeads per day. And they always destroy the weakest undead monsters first. So, I simply make sure that, when the climactic battle arrives, the number of weak skeleton and zombie minions is calibrated to match the number and strength of the cleric's remaining Turn Undeads.

Why is this a good solution?

Because the cleric gets to feel like the ULTIMATE BADASS! They walk into the room, and there's like THIRTY SKELETONS AND ZOMBIES milling about! Behind them there's a skeletal dragon, and a necromancer controlling them all! And the cleric called out to his god, and just, BOOM! The skeletons and zombies started melting into dust before the holy light of his god! A few short moments later, and there's a clear path right through the now demolished throngs of undead, and the fighter and ranger are charging the terrified looking necromancer, who's reaching for his tome of magic in a last ditch effort to save himself from righteous vengeance!

Now, look, obviously you can't TELL the cleric's player what you did. That wrecks it. But D&D is always like that. You can't TELL the pcs that the reason they didn't find anything particularly amazing in the necromancer's treasure is because they came up with that really good idea last night that got them all that high powered treasure, and you need a few short nights to rebalance things. You can't TELL the pcs that the challenges they face have subtly changed because previously they had a Bard in the party and now they have a Rogue.

There are lots of things you can't tell the players. That's how it goes. It doesn't mean those things are bad.