ImperialParadox
First Post
Just a little setup first...
I tried 4th edition by the book for a while, and (some) of my group and I determined that we had issues with some of the rules that didn't fit our style. After taking a break from D&D for a while to refresh my gaming energy by trying other games, I've determined I'm willing to give 4th ed another shot, by modifying some of the rules to better suit our tastes. What follows is the first of several things I am considering changing...
Minions. At first I really liked the idea of minions, the images of the heroes battling hordes of villians seemed epic and very appealing. However, after playing for a while, I've determined that while the rules for minions are simple and easy to grasp, the limit of minions only having 1 hp produced some percieved wonkiness in my view.
I think a lot of my problems arise from the way minions are basically either alive and fine, or dead. This binary state creates the necessity for special rules concerning minions, due in part to the fact that they do not experience a 'bloodied' state. Also, the ease with which they die was fine with me for the lowliest of monsters (kobolds, goblins, etc.) but really bugged me for higher level minions (legion devils, ogres and the like) which I feel should be a bit harder to kill.
I mulled over a few solutions, the simplest would be to give minions some formulatic increase in hit points that could bring their total hp to a value greater than one. While this is perhaps the easiest solution to implement rules-wise, I wanted to maintain the simplicity of keeping track of minions, so I decided to try for something less bookeeping intensive.
In the end, I came up with Minion Damage Threshold, or MDT for short. Admittedly I need a better acronym, but it will do for now.
MDT is a damage threshold value assigned to minions, used to determine the results of damage accrued by a minion.
MDT is equal to 5 + the minion's level + the minion's Constitution modifier.
For example, a level 1 kobold minion with a 12 Constitution would have a MDT of 7 (5+1+1).
The rules for MDT are rather simple:
1) If a minion suffers damage from a single attack equal to or greater than it's MDT the minion is killed.
2) If a minion suffers damage from a single attack less than it's MDT value the minion is bloodied.
3) If a bloodied minion suffers damage from any other attack, it is killed.
The idea is too keep things relatively simple. Minions are now a little sturdier and thus they come in three states - alive, bloodied, or dead. If a minion is bloodied I mark it with the appropriate chit, and if a bloodied minion is damaged again I remove it from play. This has the side effect of allowing powers that affect bloodied creatures to have a chance of working on a minion, and also allows minions to use powers that require the bloodied condition. Also, I think it can be appropriate to removing the rule that minions take no damage from attacks that miss, which is at odds with the way 'normal' monsters suffer damage.
The first goal of this modification is to make minions of the party's level fairly easy to dispatch, while removing the 'guaranteed kill' factor of minions. The second goal of this change is to make higher level minions a little more dangerous by having a slightly longer presence on the battlefield, and to make said higher level minions less vulnerable to attacks from parties who are lower level.
I'm fairly confident that this idea can work in play. What I'm most concerned with is making sure that the math behind determining the minion's MDT value provides the results that accomplish what I want. I arrived at my initial formula (5 + Consitution modifier + minion level) by comparing the results given to parties in the heroic tier of the appropriate comparitive level. I think at fist glance that this forumla will work in the paragon tier, though I know it will hit a mathematical bump in the epic tier where PC base damage increases. As my experience with 4th ed so far only resides in the herioc tier, I was hoping to get opinions from people more experienced with the game.
Critique away!
I tried 4th edition by the book for a while, and (some) of my group and I determined that we had issues with some of the rules that didn't fit our style. After taking a break from D&D for a while to refresh my gaming energy by trying other games, I've determined I'm willing to give 4th ed another shot, by modifying some of the rules to better suit our tastes. What follows is the first of several things I am considering changing...
Minions. At first I really liked the idea of minions, the images of the heroes battling hordes of villians seemed epic and very appealing. However, after playing for a while, I've determined that while the rules for minions are simple and easy to grasp, the limit of minions only having 1 hp produced some percieved wonkiness in my view.
I think a lot of my problems arise from the way minions are basically either alive and fine, or dead. This binary state creates the necessity for special rules concerning minions, due in part to the fact that they do not experience a 'bloodied' state. Also, the ease with which they die was fine with me for the lowliest of monsters (kobolds, goblins, etc.) but really bugged me for higher level minions (legion devils, ogres and the like) which I feel should be a bit harder to kill.
I mulled over a few solutions, the simplest would be to give minions some formulatic increase in hit points that could bring their total hp to a value greater than one. While this is perhaps the easiest solution to implement rules-wise, I wanted to maintain the simplicity of keeping track of minions, so I decided to try for something less bookeeping intensive.
In the end, I came up with Minion Damage Threshold, or MDT for short. Admittedly I need a better acronym, but it will do for now.
MDT is a damage threshold value assigned to minions, used to determine the results of damage accrued by a minion.
MDT is equal to 5 + the minion's level + the minion's Constitution modifier.
For example, a level 1 kobold minion with a 12 Constitution would have a MDT of 7 (5+1+1).
The rules for MDT are rather simple:
1) If a minion suffers damage from a single attack equal to or greater than it's MDT the minion is killed.
2) If a minion suffers damage from a single attack less than it's MDT value the minion is bloodied.
3) If a bloodied minion suffers damage from any other attack, it is killed.
The idea is too keep things relatively simple. Minions are now a little sturdier and thus they come in three states - alive, bloodied, or dead. If a minion is bloodied I mark it with the appropriate chit, and if a bloodied minion is damaged again I remove it from play. This has the side effect of allowing powers that affect bloodied creatures to have a chance of working on a minion, and also allows minions to use powers that require the bloodied condition. Also, I think it can be appropriate to removing the rule that minions take no damage from attacks that miss, which is at odds with the way 'normal' monsters suffer damage.
The first goal of this modification is to make minions of the party's level fairly easy to dispatch, while removing the 'guaranteed kill' factor of minions. The second goal of this change is to make higher level minions a little more dangerous by having a slightly longer presence on the battlefield, and to make said higher level minions less vulnerable to attacks from parties who are lower level.
I'm fairly confident that this idea can work in play. What I'm most concerned with is making sure that the math behind determining the minion's MDT value provides the results that accomplish what I want. I arrived at my initial formula (5 + Consitution modifier + minion level) by comparing the results given to parties in the heroic tier of the appropriate comparitive level. I think at fist glance that this forumla will work in the paragon tier, though I know it will hit a mathematical bump in the epic tier where PC base damage increases. As my experience with 4th ed so far only resides in the herioc tier, I was hoping to get opinions from people more experienced with the game.
Critique away!
