Using Quasi-minions

[MerricB]

My Castle Greyhawk campaign has recently been investigating RJK's module, "Dark Chateau". It's definitely one of RJK's more lacklustre efforts, and the maps are truly awful. When you have ten goblin skeletons in a 5'x5' room, you begin to wonder a bit.

In the first days of 4e, as I was planning my Castle Greyhawk (Zagyg) campaign, I went through the Mouths of Madness and Dark Chateau and converted all the encounters to 4e. This wasn't actually that difficult; in all, about 5 hours was spent on the two modules, which has given us many sessions of entertainment.

However, given I was doing this without playing 4e previously, there have been a few blunders. I happily wrote down "10 skeletons" for the aforementioned encounter, not realising what 10 3rd level soldiers would actually mean for a party of five 2nd and 3rd level characters...

Yes, 4e handles large groups better than 3e, but you don't need to increase the encounter level by very much to get to a very difficult encounter indeed. When I came to run this encounter on Friday night, I suddenly realised that I was looking at a TPK, which was not the intention. (In AD&D, it would have been a tough, but survivable, encounter).

So, in came a concept I'd heard suggested before: that of halving the monster HPs. I've been calling the resulting monsters "quasi-minions", because they have some of the features of minions, whilst being more of a threat. The combat ran, the PCs had a tough time of it, but were eventually successful with only one PC being knocked unconscious. (No leaders in the group at present, and it was the lone paladin that was KOed).

I'm very pleased with the result. I halved the XP award as well, and that seemed to be fine.

I just wanted to note a problem with some of the official adventures I've been running recently: they tend to not use minions at all, and are often 5 vs 5 encounters. There's something of a lack of variety in monster numbers.

Also, soldier types are just too difficult to hit most of the time; they slow the combat down into long, grinding, attritional affairs that aren't that much fun. The skeletons were going down in 2 or 3 hits, which was fine; but it would have been about 5 hits each if I'd played them as written; too much given that there's only about a 30% or 40% chance of your frontline fighters hitting them most of the time.

In the Sunday session, we had a fight against some brutes and they had ACs about 7 points under that of the soldiers of the same level, and the resultant combat was so much more fun as the chance of hitting was good.

Just wondering what your experiences with similar situations have been, and whether you've been using half-hit point monsters (quasi-minions?) as well!

Cheers!

 

[Mephistopheles]

I suppose an alternative to cutting down hit points would be leaving hit points as is and lowering defenses a bit, or some mixture of the two. Players would enjoy their characters succeeding on attacks more often, and fights would be over a bit quicker when they do so.

 

[MerricB]

I suppose an alternative to cutting down hit points would be leaving hit points as is and lowering defenses a bit, or some mixture of the two. Players would enjoy their characters succeeding on attacks more often, and fights would be over a bit quicker when they do so.

Interesting idea. Thanks for suggesting it - I may give it a try.

 

[Phaezen]

I must admit I sometimes do fudge monster hitpoints in a fight. Especialy set piece fights I want to be memorable. IF it is going to easy or to hard I adjust accordingly. I try to keep the tension at the right level, and it generally works quite well.

I use several tricks, like putting in zones that heal monsters if needed, giving solo's healing potions etc. The trick is to be subtle.

I will expand on this tomorrow a bit, after some sleep when I can think straight again.

Phaezen

 

[pawsplay]

Maybe you could "un-elite them" -- halve the HPs, reverse the bonuses elite monsters usually get, and nerf one or two abilities to look more like the minion version.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Just wondering what your experiences with similar situations have been, and whether you've been using half-hit point monsters (quasi-minions?) as well!

Cheers!

Mmm. No direct experience, but it's something I've given a lot of theoretical thought to.

Basically, there are two sliders you can move up & down - HP vs. Dmg and Attack vs. Defense. The first one is ablative (or analog) and the second one is a threshold (or digital). Minions as presented by the 4E Core are purely digital - you get a 0/1 result. Brutes are about as close as you get to a pure Ablative situation - you always hit and slowly wear them down.

But it all comes down to one number: (Results/Round)/Total Rounds. Put another way, the number of bad guys you make dead each round, averaged over the length of a combat. You can slide this number around either by increasing/decreasing the ablative factors (HP usually, but you get the same result by tweaking PC damage by giving the bad guys Resistance or Vulnerability) or the threshold numbers (AC/Defenses usually, but you get the same result by tweaking PC attack bonuses).

That being said, the choice to fiddle with the threshold numbers or the ablative numbers will effect the kind of game you get. Combats with high thresholds and low ablatives are "swingy". The d20 controls the flow of combat because a couple lucky (or unlucky) rolls in a row will succeed (or fail) to overcome the thresholds and suddenly 1:1 odds become 3:1 odds really fast like. You can FUBAR really quick. Combats with low thresholds and high ablatives are a lot more predictable because you do steady & slow damage each round to get your eventual desired result (someone kicking it).

Plus, and this is good for PCs, in "mostly analog" combats it becomes apparent that you'll lose a fight several rounds before the inevitable happens, which gives you time to retreat. You don't get that kind of warning in a mostly digital fight.

Personally, and this is a bit radical but you should consider it, I recommend freezing all attack and defense scores at 1st level. Only adjust upward for stat boosts as you level. Reduce the attacks and defenses of higher-than-level-1 monsters by ROUNDDOWN(-3/(5*level-1))** to compensate. The result is that you've taken one of the sliders off the table and only advance the HP/Dmg slider when leveling up. This will mean that bad guys slowly become "quasi-minions" and "true minions" as you level up, because a 1st level monster will still be able to hit you at 10th level (your AC is barely any higher than at 1st level) but your average damage from a single attack will exceed his HP total, making him a de facto minion. Before you get there though he'll be a quasi-minion by the time you're 6th level or so.



**There are four assumed sources of "digital leveling" built into the 4E game system. They are +1/2 per level, +1/4 level from stats, +1/4 level from items, and +1/5 per level from feats. Add all that together and you get a nice, neat +1/level progression (which, surprise!, is how you make Minions). I have proposed yanking the boosts from items and +1/2 per level, but that leaves you with boosting stats and feats. This flattens the power curve of 4E even more than it already is, but it gives MerricB what he's looking for.

 

[eleventh]

You had planned to have 10+ soldiers and had to scale that back. You achieved this goal by halving their hit points. That probably worked well enough, but why not just use real minions next time? That's what they're there for, and the work is all done for you.

Maybe you were worried that they would die too easily. They do only have one hit point, but generally their defenses are pretty high. Your players will probably miss a few times against them before landing a hit and putting them down. This allows you to have 10+ skeleton minions in a battle and not have them all fall down in the first round.

Maybe your concern was that they wouldn't do enough damage to threaten your players. You could either throw in an additional monster (maybe an artillery or skirmisher) to fill that role or you could increase the damage the minions do. That would be pretty easy.

But that's not to say that minions are a better option. I have a problem with minions too.

My problem with minions is the existence of certain powers/combos that auto-kill minions. Cloud of Daggers is a guaranteed minion kill at-will (at the start of the creature's next turn). Rod of Reaving takes a bit more forethought, but turns Warlock's Curse into a guaranteed and instant minion kill as a minor action! When I see my players start to head in this direction, I start making quasi-minions of my own. Essentially, I take whatever damage the cloud or rod's effect would do and double it. This value is the minion's new HP. Unless a player totally botches their damage roll, these creatures still function as minions and go down with one real hit, but are more resistant to cheap auto-killers (or at least demand a commitment of two rounds to be auto-killed).

 

[Zephyrus]

Borrowing somewhat on eleventh's idea about giving them extra HP's. simple empower them (via GM created ritual or similar) that grants them temporary HP's thus giving them like +10 HP. at 3rd level this is 2-hit kills even on bad rolls, 1 hit kills by strikers and no auto-kill due from powers like Rain of Blow's or Armor of (whatever its called) yes, they'll die in rounds instead but having the skeletons use ranged attacks would also mitigate the number that die to this tactic.

As Minion's you can have more of them if you wanted and/or mix in a pair of skeletal soldiers with 8-12 mininions. they all look alike and with them being 2-hit wonders the they wont know exactly who they are hitting. change the damage of the minions to a 1d4+2 or something like that vs fixed damage to prevent the PC's from catching too easily (the soliders will do more damage so they'll catch on fairly quickly but it adds to the ambience).

They'll sitll provide a challenge and their is precedent for giving mininons temp HP's allowing them to evade the auto-kill aspect of their nature and should avoid the grind of having a large group of soldiers (which in and of itself is makes for a dangerous battle as they support each other).

If +10 temp HP is not enough, make it +12-15. I would suggest mixing in real monsters with identical apperances to help spice it up even perhaps re-skinning other monsters with powers that would mesh well with that group such as a monster that gets an extra attack when it dies <grave hound?> and just say it looks like a skeleton.

Maybe make one that was a mage in its former life and it carries a wand that is still imbued with some magical energy allowing it to make a encounter fireburst (or have it Actually BE a magic item that the skeletal mook can activate).

Reskinning is quite possible one of your best tools as it diversifies the enemies (if players make their knowledge checks they get typical abilities, but suggest that certain ones seem a little 'odd' or are semi-unique so they 'know' these are not 'standard' creatures. they might be able to attempt their knowledge checks still but apply a higher DC to know their powers and resistances/vulnerabilities.

 

[Piratecat]

I have a deep and abiding love of minions. I also like mixing things up a bit with other monsters, making them old or lame and reducing their defense. It keeps the players guessing a bit.

A proper use of minions makes the wizard really useful, and it makes fights a whole lot more fun in my opinion. There's just something about describing dozens of skeletons that makes me a happy man.

 

[kmdietri]

I've really liked mixing standard rules minions with 2 hit minions.

By two hits I mean it takes two successful hits, regardless of damage, to kill them. First hit they get a checkmark, second hit they're dead.

It keeps the players guessing a bit, and it seems a little more theatricle to me in that some minions can struggle on just a little bit longer.