Minions with 1hp - Can anyone justify this?

[Celtavian]

re

On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'

Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?

Before you guys rush in, can anyone tell me in both mechanical combat terms why I should keep them, and *also* how the hell do you explain this in a roleplaying or 'realism' sense? (note that 'realism' is different from 'realistic' and we all know D&D isn't supposed to be 'real' blah blah let's not go there).

*PS, my own DM who's running KotSF has already decided to give minions more than 1hp because 'it makes no sense' but he has almost no clue about the rules at all for 4th edition so his opinion is 'questionable' at this point.

I thought 1 hp minions was a pretty smart move. It used to take a wizard one or two fireballs to wipe out a ton of orcs or kobolds working for a dragon or the like. Those orcs and kobolds couldn't do much. They couldn't hit the protagonists. They were never a threat, they were just there to be annoying until the fighter could cleave through them or the wizard blow them up.

Now they are handmade for that purpose but can still be a threat to a character. I like how that works.

It's really a matter of suspending your idea of old minions. And simply looking at minions as a mechanical way of rendering the following idea:

A weak helper of a big bad evil guy that is there to die, but might land a useful hit or give a useful benefit to his master before doing so.

Players still have to account for minions, but they are easily beaten once accounted for. I like the mechanical rendering of the idea of a minion in 4th edition.

 

[CountPopeula]

It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.

Isn't this true of anything you do in the game? I mean, you could say a wizard can cast fireball specifically because of a provision in the rules, not on your own merits. This just doesn't seem like a very good argument to me.

 

[Runestar]

It is somewhat odd that especially at higher levels, minions still only have 1 hp, while foes easily have hundreds of hp. This means that a PC would have little problems quickly disposing of 4 minions by using some area-affecting power like breath weapon or stormwarden's aura, even though the same attack would barely put a dent in the hp of a normal foe.

I am dubious as to how internally consistent the concept for minions is. At much lower lvs, it still seems okay, since the disparity between 1hp and the 30 odd hp a kobold has is still fairly minior (4 attacks to dispose of 4 minions ~ 30-40 damage anyways). At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.

 

[A. Smith]

First, you are doing much MUCH more damage at the epic tier. Second, the 1HP rule is only there to guarantee that they fall fast. The might as well have 10 HP at high levels; you're going to be doing at least that much damage at that point. However, it's simpler to just "heh, they die when they get hit". Apparently, that was how it was initially: minions had a very small ammuont of HP, but it was still higher then 10. They changed it because they thought it was unnecessary bookeeping: they die in one hit anyway.

 

[Lurker37]

Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?

Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.

Impossible encounter. The minion encounter mechanic is to replace one monster with four - not to have a one-hit wonder at large in the world! Such misuse of minions is going to result in some rather silly situations. And what does making this tax collector a credible but frail combatant add to the game? And what fun is a trivially-dispatched major villain?

For this encounter, I'd just make the tax gatherer a noncombatant NPC.

 

[CountPopeula]

At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.

I would say at paragon and especially epic gameplay it is MORE appropriate to be felling foes in one hit. Odysseus could kill three men with a single arrow. Django mowed down a village full of bandits, and Tequila Yuen killed hundreds of people without a scratch. This is what 4th edition combat strives to emulate.

If you want to see exactly how a D&D encounter with minions should work, pop in Kill Bill Volume 1 and skip to the Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves. Is it appropriate for Beatrix Kiddo to kill or incapacitate eighty-eight well armed, trained assassins, all deadly in their own right, sometimes more than one in a single sword slash, but still have so much trouble dispatching Johnny Mo, GoGo Yubari, and O-Ren Ishii?

In a lot of ways, Beatrix Kiddo is the prime example of a 4th Edition D&D hero. She even has a magic sword.

And in role-playing terms, minions aren't weaker. Minions are the norm. Anyone with more than 1 HP is exceptional, possibly supernaturally so.

 

[Celtavian]

re

It is somewhat odd that especially at higher levels, minions still only have 1 hp, while foes easily have hundreds of hp. This means that a PC would have little problems quickly disposing of 4 minions by using some area-affecting power like breath weapon or stormwarden's aura, even though the same attack would barely put a dent in the hp of a normal foe.

I am dubious as to how internally consistent the concept for minions is. At much lower lvs, it still seems okay, since the disparity between 1hp and the 30 odd hp a kobold has is still fairly minior (4 attacks to dispose of 4 minions ~ 30-40 damage anyways). At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.

You're looking far too literally at the minion and thinking of the 1 hp.

If you look at how they design encounters, it's just like a movie or book featuring a cinematic fighter.

You have the main big bad evil guy who is as tough or tougher than the PCs.

You have a few more powerful servants who can give the PCs a tough fight and are harder to kill.

Then you have the minions. Little guys who fall to one kick, punch, or bullet, but can occasionally land a lucky shot or do something useful during the combat.

I don't see the problem with it at lvl 1 or lvl 30 considering that everyone does less damage in this edition. You get in essence the same feel as previous editions as an epic level archmage unleashing an empowered or maximized fireball to take out the 20 lvl 10 or 20 big bad evil guys the lvl 30 Pcs must face.

Look at the old rules. A lvl 20 bad guy wouldn't have an easy time hitting PCs at lvl 30. It was just an exercise in paperwork to kill them all. They didn't really threaten the PCs or do much that could severely damage a prepared party.

4 E went in different direction. The minion is a threat, but it is also an easily eliminated threat so the DM doesn't have to keep track of 30 creatures hit points during one battle. I think it was a brilliant way to render minions that makes life much easier on the DM while still capturing the feel of a fight against a ton of somewhat dangerous creatures.

 

[Snotboy]

Minions probably don't think they're minions. If they knew how fast they'd go down, they wouldn't rationally attack the PCs. Their mindset would look more like this:

Minion 1: "KILL YOU!!!"
Minion 1: *splat*
Minion 2: "That idiot. Attack smart, not hard!"
Minion 2: *splat*
Minion 3: "While he's distracted by those two, I can get a shot in!"
Minion 3: *splat*
Minion 4: "A worthy opponent... I'll have to use my special move!"
Minion 4: *splat*

 

[icarusfallz]

You can almost look at all of the baddies in an encounter as a "pool" of HP. When you carve into the "pool", certain pieces fall off. A minion dies when you do 1 point of damage to the "pool".

Think Sci-Fi. You are fighting a capitol ship. You do 1 point of damage to one of it's weapons, and you stop that weapon from shooting you. It takes more damage to get through it's hull (Brute), it's fighter ships (Skirmishers) and it's bridge (Controller).

Minions are just weapons. Cannon fodder. Peons. FUN!

 

[Switchback]

You're looking far too literally at the minion and thinking of the 1 hp.

If you look at how they design encounters, it's just like a movie or book featuring a cinematic fighter.

Then you have the minions. Little guys who fall to one kick, punch, or bullet, but can occasionally land a lucky shot or do something useful during the combat.

HP in D&D has long since been explained as an abstraction. Yet there was always something more definite in damage it seemed. A critical hit was a massive blow, or a fireball that did 50 damage was laying waste on a grand scale, regardless of how enemies abstracted their health. Players had a way to judge that which felt solid.

Now in 4e, Minions cause damage to be an equal abstraction. Especially dealing with Minions at high level. It is entirely understandable that a 20th level character could one-shot a high level minion, because he is putting out just that much damage. When the Fighter smacks one down for 20 damage the mechanic seems entirely satisfying and fine. Yet when the wizard uses his staff to take an opportunity attack on one, and nicks him for 3 damage and the Angel of Valor Veteran (level 16) collapses at that deathblow, it can be a little more head-scratching.

But there is not much to be done for it. It adds something very useful in the DM's toolbox, and they can be fun for players. But it should not be lost that the mechanic was somewhat indebted to easy bookkeeping more than any other concern.