Let's talk about minions...

[wally]

Really? Is this your best example against minion use?

This has nothing to do with minions, this is just a bored player acting OOC and silly to sabotage the mood of the adventure.



If you don't trust your GM why play with him at all? And you said it correctly it's a "cooperatively playing a game" , a player doing silly stuff to break the inmersion is not cooperating with the game. A player acting like the previous example or your 'barbarian pokey stick' example is not only defeating the "intention" of the DM, but defeating the intention of the game.

I refer you to my 'sig'.

Actually, it was in response to someone else's example of how to view the minion rules in game context.

I don't think it has anything to do with bored players. If taken as written, you can attack with anything that can cause damage, and the minion will drop. This doesn't specify that the character needs to use their favored or not so favored weapon. In fact from what I have seen, and what everyone is saying, it doesn't specify whether you have to use a weapon at all. It is up to the DM, as you make it sound, on whether he wants to use the rules as written, but it didn't sound as if this thread was about what DMs should do, but whether the minion rules were good or not.

Which leads to a different discussion. Whether the DM has the authority to make changes to the minion rules or not. Okay, that isn't a path that this thread should go down, as there are many other arguments about DM authority elsewhere on this board.

-wally

 

[Cadfan]

Actually, the system 1) hasn't got dragon minions, and 2) doesn't say anywhere that poking someone in the eye with your fighter deals any hit point damage at all.

Criticizing the minion rules because of how they interact with hypothetical dragon minions is like criticizing the power system because of the broken nature of first level fighter powers that deal 15[W]+Str damage on a hit. Yes, that power is broken. Yes, the elder dragon minion is silly. They're also both not real.

 

[Stalker0]

I think Henry summarized my feelings on the subject quite well, there's a good reason the 1 hit/1 kill rule exists.

I still don't understand the argument of the farmer vs the legion devil scenario. I don't get what the big deal with saying that a monster is only really a minion when the pcs fight it.

And heck, even if you don't use it. Even if you take a hoard of farmers vs a horde of legion devils you aren't going to lose many devils.

1) the devils go first in initiative, so they get the first swing, meaning they will kill a whole lot of farmers on the first round.
2) the farmers actually have to be brave enough to stand their ground and not run screaming into the night.
3) They all still have to roll 20's, and the chances of that will quickly drop as their lines get massacred.

So out of a horde of legion devils you lose a few...go farmers. I'm sure they are all very proud as their entire force got annihilated.

 

[Dausuul]

Actually, the system 1) hasn't got dragon minions, and 2) doesn't say anywhere that poking someone in the eye with your fighter deals any hit point damage at all.

Criticizing the minion rules because of how they interact with hypothetical dragon minions is like criticizing the power system because of the broken nature of first level fighter powers that deal 15[W]+Str damage on a hit. Yes, that power is broken. Yes, the elder dragon minion is silly. They're also both not real.

Well spoken.

I get really tired of hearing about the little kid who drops a legion devil by throwing a rock at it, or the minion who dies from crashing through brambles. Anything that inflicts hit point damage is by definition potentially lethal. If it isn't plausible for a given attack or effect to result in mortal injury, then that attack doesn't inflict hit point damage and can't kill minions.

A thumb-poke to the eye cannot plausibly kill anything. If you're a PC who's just been through a hellacious battle (that is, you're down to 1 hit point), and somebody walks up and pokes you in the eye, will you fall down and start bleeding out? Of course not. Therefore, a poke in the eye does not inflict hit point damage. Therefore, minions do not die from it.

(In 3.X, of course, this principle was roundly ignored. Housecats dealt lethal damage and were easily capable of killing the typical peasant. Aside from the super-magic-powered housecat that pops out of a bag of tricks, you won't find any of that garbage in 4E... and yet 4E is the one criticized for lack of verisimilitude.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Thanks.

Getting rid of the natural 20 rule seems to solve a LOT of the versimilitude (sp?) ssues and it doesn't affect the PCs versus the world so I'm not seeing any down

Hell, even in previous editions of D&D, I'm not sure the natural 20 rule makes any sense. Really, if you're only hitting on a 20, you're kind of screwed...

I wonder if the auto-hit part was not always some excuse for "if the math fails us, you might at least have luck". It did sometimes work that way in 3E - if all that a Rogue or Monk could hope for was a 20 to ge ta hit, he could try at least to get as much rolls as he could (flurry, two-weapon fighting, rapid shot)...

 

[Fifth Element]

Actually, the system 1) hasn't got dragon minions, and 2) doesn't say anywhere that poking someone in the eye with your fighter deals any hit point damage at all.

Criticizing the minion rules because of how they interact with hypothetical dragon minions is like criticizing the power system because of the broken nature of first level fighter powers that deal 15[W]+Str damage on a hit. Yes, that power is broken. Yes, the elder dragon minion is silly. They're also both not real.

The wisdom of Cadfan could fill a book. Seriously. Presumably a Tome of Understanding.

 

[Spatula]

I wonder if the auto-hit part was not always some excuse for "if the math fails us, you might at least have luck".

I think rather it was a mechanism to keep the PCs from being able to completely ignore hordes of low-level monsters. In 1e & 2e, you pretty much stopped getting HP from levels after 9th or 10th, and Con bonuses were harder to get, so an army of kobolds archers could conceivably do some damage to you regardless of your AC. In 3e, not so much, thanks to the HP inflation.

 

[Cadfan]

The wisdom of Cadfan could fill a book. Seriously. Presumably a Tome of Understanding.

What you don't know is that my post was supposed to talk about poking someone in the eye with your finger.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I get really tired of hearing about the little kid who drops a legion devil by throwing a rock at it, or the minion who dies from crashing through brambles. Anything that inflicts hit point damage is by definition potentially lethal. If it isn't plausible for a given attack or effect to result in mortal injury, then that attack doesn't inflict hit point damage and can't kill minions.

And this is why minions don't work. When is a hit point not a hit point? When it belongs to a minion of course. Since sudual damage was (effectively) removed from the game there is no longer any difference between a poke in the eye, a dagger thrust, or magical fire damage. Everything causes general hp damage and a player can simply decide if the foe is knocked out or killed. This makes capturing enemies an easy mode operation that does not require planning, care or any extra degree of challenge.

Either the minion has 1hp or it doesn't. If the DM simply gets to decide if a minion drops depending on how serious he believes the player's intent to be then why roll dice? Have the DM describe all the action and tell the players how things turn out.

 

[The Little Raven]

I saw a post once (Sorry I am ripping someone off here!) that proposed using minions for disorganized groups of weaklings, but using the Swarm rules for organized formation fighters.

It might have been me, though I have seen other people propose the same idea. We recently tested the idea with a small series of battles, and the difference between minions (the untamed barbarian hordes!) and swarms (regimented fighting units) was pretty noticeable, and really helped the flavor of the encounters.