one hit kills, unsatisfying?

[op1983]

The players don't have to know they just killed a minion.
Infact if you flavor it the way Seraph was talkin about they wont know WTF they just killed.
Also if they get a really big hit on a normal badguy and he has 2 or 3 hitpoints left whynot let the badguy die? Just as good as them being a minion.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I have to agree with the sentiment of "it depends."

Being more of a Star Wars GM, I've seen it where the players have great fun taking out hordes of mooks (be they stormtroopers or battle droids) with a single attack. There's something to be said upon seeing a Wookiee pugilist charge into a squad of stormies and thanks to Cleave and Great Cleave, sending bodies all over the place. Or a Jedi taking out an entire battle droid squad with a single well-placed Force Slam. Heck, even a commando doing likewise with a well-aimed grenade toss.

AEG's ill-fated 7th Seas RPG had a great system for minions which lent itself to "whack-a-brute" scenarios where the expert swordsman quickly dispatches the lesser foes so that he can confront his true opponent (Inigo in Princess Bride wiping out the guards before challenging Count Rugen), and lets the PC showboat a little. And given the game was about swashbuckling heroics, it was a great fit.

Having a Big Bad that's been built up over several encounters go down in a single hit? That's deeply unsatisfying, both for the GM (who spent all this time building the BB up) and the players, who were expecting a dramatic confrontation.

Case in point: From the WFRP campaign I play in, my Knight-Errant (thanks to a very lucky damage roll) managed to impale the head of the Orc War Boss on his lance (dropped him past zero wounds with a headshot and a high-level crit), with said Orc having taken minimal damage (a magic dart attack from the apprentice wizard) beforehand. It was impressive, but in retrospect was kinda "meh." Yeah, I know that such a thing fits WFRP combat (can be very quick and very deadly), but considering this was the guy responsible for the raiding parties that had been attacking several outlaying villages... but at least the GM got a chuckle out of describing just how said War Boss meet his end. Think Steve Martin and arrow through the head

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I used to think that minions felt cheap until I ran my group through the end of KotSF this last weekend. In the next to last encounter there were a group of vampire minions with AC 20 and a decent attack bonus. The AC kept them alive for some time and in that time they managed to do a good bit of damage. They also allowed the non-minions to set up flanking attacks.

Nope... not anymore.

 

[Obryn]

I've been using minions on and off. I think the key to making them work 'right' is adding more of them.

No, really - I think that somewhere between 6 and 8 minions should be the equivalent of one creature. Yes, they can still be zapped by AoE's, and they can still be killed very easily, but they add a lot of tactical depth to combat. You can't just ignore them; they are honest threats - especially when they have missile weapons.

I am running my 7th-level party through Thunderspire right now. Minions have been lacking through most of the module, except where I placed them myself. Last encounter, a horde of

Spoiler

norker

minions really helped make the fight memorable. And yes, I doubled their numbers...

-O

 

[malraux]

For my game, the players have been dealing with a lot of zombie minions. Specifically, the zombie of Iuz, which explode with a bit of necrotic damage when they die. It really helped to keep the minion threat interesting, because the goal was to kill them ranged before they could get close enough to hurt the PCs, which also meant ignoring the bigger monsters running around the board. And of course, a bunch of easily killed opponents fits the zombie apocalypse genre pretty well.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

As someone else has mentioned, dropping a minion with one hit is not unsatisfying, unless you just wasted your daily on said minion. This leads to something else: Can the characters/players easily identify minions beforehand? Does the DM tell them "Those are minions, these are tougher bad guys"? Does the DM tell them freely? Does he make the players roll a check for it?

AR

 

[Mallus]

Can the characters/players easily identify minions beforehand? Does the DM tell them "Those are minions, these are tougher bad guys"? Does the DM tell them freely? Does he make the players roll a check for it?

I think it's strongly implied that the players can tell, if not immediately, then quickly after engaging.

 

[Obryn]

This leads to something else: Can the characters/players easily identify minions beforehand? Does the DM tell them "Those are minions, these are tougher bad guys"? Does the DM tell them freely? Does he make the players roll a check for it?

Different DMs have different opinions.

As for me, I just tell my players outright. IMO, minions are a game construct, and I don't feel the need to completely hide the rules from my players. I don't think there's any such thing as a "minion" in the game-world, only in the game's rules. A creature who's a minion in a high-level fight might be a regular creature in a mid-level fight, so as far as I'm concerned, asking for a Knowledge check is a bit silly.

Besides, it's generally clear after the first hit anyway.

-O

 

[Scribble]

As someone else has mentioned, dropping a minion with one hit is not unsatisfying, unless you just wasted your daily on said minion. This leads to something else: Can the characters/players easily identify minions beforehand? Does the DM tell them "Those are minions, these are tougher bad guys"? Does the DM tell them freely? Does he make the players roll a check for it?

I usually do, but not through "thats a minion." I usually just describe them differently. But that's just my style.

I look at it like a cartoon- Take GI Joe for example.

The regular Cobra army guys, the random guys in blue who yell out "COOOOOBRAAAAAAA!" then get blasted left and right by the Joe team? Those guys are minions. There is no way you'd ever mistake them for someone who might actually do something in the show. They're boring, nothing about them stands out, and makes you think "what's that all about?"

Destro- That guys not a minion. I mean he has a metal face. Right there you see him and know he ain't a minion, because you're thinking... "Dude what's with the metal face?" Minions don't have cool stuff like metal faces.

 

[billd91]

I think the OP is just running into the downside of minions. (I've loved the idea of minions since first encountering them in Shadowrun, where they went under the guise of rules for "Professionalism.") If there were some way to keep players from knowing that they were killing minions, minions would be awesome. Since there's no way to keep that knowledge from the players -- short of the DM rolling all combat dice -- I think it's natural that the killing of minions feel very flat.

I think you've got a real point here on the perception angle. If you don't know the thing is going to be taken out by one blow, and you roll well and it goes down, it's awesome. That includes taking down the BBEG too, though it may also be a little anticlimactic too. Still one-hitting a major opponent is the stuff gamers will talk about years later.

If you know the thing will go down with a single hit, even your weakest, it's not quite as fun.

I actually prefer minion rules where the minion might not go down in one hit. In M&M, if the minion makes the damage save, he's still up and kicking. He just goes down with any save failure. He's relatively easy and doesn't have to be bruised up a bit to soften his resistance, but he might shrug off quite a few blows before succumbing. In D&D pre-4e, I can approximate a decent minion by just assigning all 1s to the hit dice rolls and/or reducing it's Con compared to the average. The creature might be a 1-3 hitter depending, but still a lot easier to bring down. And they won't necessarily know until it happens when they may be pleasantly surprised.