What happens when a minion crits?

[lukelightning]

Sheesh! How about if you want your minions to crit, you change them into regular monsters? Why do so many people feel the need to buff minions?

 

[DracoSuave]

Sheesh! How about if you want your minions to crit, you change them into regular monsters? Why do so many people feel the need to buff minions?

Or just accompany them with a leader, and watch the damage SOAR.

There's better ways to buff minions than to house rule them... and in ways that make the encounter -mean- something.

 

[Holy Bovine]

So there is no 'official' rule regarding minions critting? I actually think they should get something. +50% damage maybe? I wouldn't want to double it as that would be too powerful and a flat damage bonus would be too, imo.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

Minions do the same damage on crits as they do on normal attacks. This is a deliberate feature, not a bug. In 3rd ed, if you swarmed a PC with a bunch of weaker enemies, they'd all be ineffective or they would crit an take out the PC. The fight would be extremely swingy: all or nothing. In 4th ed, minions do a predictable amount of damage that doesn't randomly burst way high up and cause a PC to die when facing what should have been an easy challenge.

 

[lukelightning]

So there is no 'official' rule regarding minions critting?

The official rule is that a minion's crit is exactly the same as a minion's regular damage.

If you are going to give minions the ability to crit, then you should reward players with something when they themselves crit a minion. How about when you crit a minion, another minion of your choice drops dead from fear?

 

[generalhenry]

more dice = more random = more PC deaths.

since putting minions into encounters ups the amount attack rolls against the players, it was important to lower the risk involved.

having minions pwn you with lucky crits would suck.

 

[DracoSuave]

The need to make minions individually more meaningful is really counter-intuitive to their purpose in an encounter.

They aren't there to make the party go 'OH NOES A GOBLIN CUTTER!'

That goblin cutter does 4 damage. That's it.

However, FOUR goblin cutters do an average of 8 damage a turn on a 50% hit rate, whereas your goblin skirmisher (the equivalent of four cutters) will do an average of 6.5 damage per hit, with +1 to hit over the cutter, that's 55% X 6.5... still less than 8 damage. The equivalent level Lurker, if it has combat advantage, will do 50% X 9 damage... but the cutters will up their average by 2 to make 10 damage per turn average....


The cutters are already outdamaging other equivalent monsters, and are capable of damage spikes without crit-hit rules. That's without leaders coming in and upping their damage considerably. +2 damage to four critters is a LOT more potent than +2 damage to one.

Just because you can ignore -a- minion doesn't mean you can ignore a standard encounter with them in it. They don't need love, they got more than enough love as it is.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I just assumed that if the minion does 4 damage or whatever, it doesn't matter if one has a mace the other an axe, they do 4 damage. There's no crits, there's no figuring out modifiers, they're minions and their raison d'etre is that they're easy to run. It's an abstraction.

If you have minions that do double damage for some reason, I'd sure as heck award more XP for them.

 

[N0Man]

If you don't think minions are powerful enough, then don't make them minions. Use regular creatures instead.

Minions crit for the same damage as is their normal damage, by design.

 

[lukelightning]

Also, as far as I know there is not a double damage mechanic in 4e in any other circumstance, so house-ruling it into minions would be two house rules: That minions can crit AND that their crits do double damage.