Judicious use and description of Minions [Edit-Now asking for stat analysis]

[Gort]

I usually make it fairly clear who is a minion, though I don't specifically say, "These guys are minions." It's usually pretty obvious after one round of dragon breath and fire burst.

 

[Cabral]

All my minions wear red armor ...

 

[Mirtek]

I am not sure how to describe them to the players, or even if they should be described differently than the other opponents. After reading another thread about having 25 minions and a few regular monsters in an encounter area, I began thinking about how I would describe them differently, and then wondering even if I should.

It depends whether or not there is a reason that the minions in this particular encounter should look any different from the normals.

As a rule of thumb I would say:

Minions are easier to distinguish in a martial warrior culture, where leadership of the clan/tribe is determined by personal progress.

Minions are less easy to distinguish in warbands of more civilized cultures where the leader of the force, equiped in the finest armor and armed with the best weapon, is the minion (and commands because he's favorite cousin of the king) while the soldier in the battleworn armor with the well used axe with the notched blade blade is his elite bodyguard.

Last but not least: Fell free to switch as you see fit and make cultured opponents whith the best armed guy truly being the non-minion and make brutish hordes with minions indistinguishable from the elites. Just look at these orcs and try if you can tell who is the minion.

Even in real life, soldiers and officers are clearly different one can ascertain the difference.

And like in real life the officer is not necessarily a better combatant than the lower ranked soldier


PS: My opinion as a player: Please do not tell me who the minions are

 

[Nifft]

I say it flat-out if they've encountered these critters before, or if the critters are common.

For alien menaces, I tend to withhold what the different minis mean until they've met this particular menace once or twice. Then, it's all out in the open.

Cheers, -- N

 

[GoLu]

Last but not least: Fell free to switch as you see fit and make cultured opponents whith the best armed guy truly being the non-minion and make brutish hordes with minions indistinguishable from the elites. Just look at these orcs and try if you can tell who is the minion.

Good point.

Although, lets say someone with no experience with Star Wars saw a picture of Darth Vader, a stormtrooper, Boba Fett, and one of those red imperial guard troopers. The four characters were just standing around, maybe posing a little. They all have weird, alien power armor, and all look very different from each other. Could that person distinguish who was the solo, the elite, the low level minion, and the high level minion?

And yet, in the movie, it's entirely clear that stormtroopers are minions and Darth Vader isn't.

 

[Switchback]

Not identifying minions to players opens up your combats to the possibility of tactics being decided by nothing but random chance. I think the dice provide enough of that element already.

Imagine entering a room with two groups of Orcs, one to each side. One group is standard even level challenge of 5 critters and the other is 5 minions. If the controller goes first and blows his AOE daily on the standard Orcs thinking they are minions, it might do a measly 10 damage to each and more importantly, the minion's are going to swarm around the party and become very difficult to kill in mass, suddenly making the encounter far more difficult than if he had guessed right. The character was unable to perform his role for no other reason than the DM set up a 50% chance for him to fail to be able to identify the targets his class is made to deal with.

Now 5 rooms down in the dungeon you might come upon the exact same encounter, only this time the minions and 'real' creatures have switched sides of the room with no way of the player's knowing. It's pretty lame.

D&D combat has always had as part of its strategy that players are going to learn about the powers and abilities of different creatures, including how hard they are to bring down, and use this knowledge to deal with threats more effectively. To use minions in a way where they are sort of like mirror image doubles of real and challenging foes, is just asking for trouble.

 

[Arbitrary]

The only thing I think you can really do wrong with minions is to use them the same way every time. I wouldn't do that with any monster type.

 

[Spirynth]

see - "minions" are one of the things in 4e that I'm having a hard time getting my head around. I understand the idea going for the "cinematic feel" (they go down like Stormtroopers!) - and the idea that they should make the players feel strong and confident as they mow 'em down. ...but if they KNOW that these things have only one hit point, doesn't that kinda defeat the "good feeling of accomplishment?"

...and Ogre Minions?

I could never bring myself to try and fool the players so they didn't know which was a 1-hp minion and who was a "real" monster - but to let them know "oh, yeah - these guys? they're minions" just seems to anti-climatic.

I've really just been figuring I'll avoid the whole issue and I just won't use minions at all.

(and I never even thought about the idea of them receiving extra temporary hit points!)

Not a rant though - just thought I'd throw that viewpoint in.

 

[Nifft]

...but if they KNOW that these things have only one hit point, doesn't that kinda defeat the "good feeling of accomplishment?"

Minions do present a real threat. They're non-trivial to hit, and they deal enough damage that you can't just ignore them.

Killing one really does make life better for you & your party.

I suggest you do try them, let your players figure this stuff out for themselves, and see for yourself how they work in practice. If your players think like you, the minions ought to be hell their first few fights, until they figure out how to deal with them.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Arbitrary]

A squadron of well spaced out minion artillery is probably more of a threat than a single artillery monster. Having minions attempt to bull rush people into traps/pits is also gold.