DMG2 updated monster creation rules

[keterys]

Perhaps, but I wouldn't be surprised if minions see less play in the LFR campaign since I believe they aren't really allowed to handwave xp budget (shame, really). Thankfully, by addressing Reaving they did solve one of the larger problems with minion survivability.

 

[Elric]

Sorry Elric (and Rovin), but I don't see what's so difficult by just adding in one or two extra minions for every four there is in the encounter, without them yielding any XP or changing the encounter budget in any way.

Seems like something that doesn't need a full-blown response to me. You simply add in a few minions; everything else stays the same. Easy.

This is just a "stealth XP reduction": give the XP for four minions, but where you used to use 4 minions instead use 6 of them (at epic). How would you know to do this other than this sentence in the DMG?

If you saw an encounter with 3 level 30 regular monsters (19K XP each) and 12 level 30 minions (4.75K XP each), should this be 1) a 114K encounter (Encounter level 31), which is what you get if you add the monster XP? Or should it be 2) 95K XP (Encounter level 30), because this line in DMG 2 indicates that 1/3 of the minions are "free" and don't count as adding a challenge or adding XP?

There's just no way to make published products coherent under this second standard (indeed, E3, the most recent epic adventure I've seen, simply adds minions XP in normally). The XP/EL totals on epic level encounters containing minions wouldn't add up, and unless DMs had read this one passage in DMG 2, they'd have no idea why. When a DM created an encounter like this, unless they'd read this one passage in DMG 2, they'd still treat it as 114 XP, EL 31, and so on.

Edit: It may be unclear, but my concern is that the lower value of minions needs to be reflected in the XP system for encounters to balance correctly. It's not about the pace of leveling.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This is just a "stealth XP reduction"

Yep.

That's not all that terrible. Unless the only way you can have is if everything has to be mathematical precise, it won't affect the gameplay experience.

 

[Turtlejay]

Wow. First, XP is not everything. XP is a mechanism for delivering reward to players. The most important thing is whether or not each encounter that rewards XP is also entertaining. In fact, you can change how you give out XP in a boatload of ways, and have little or no impact at all on gameplay.

Secondly, minions don't have much XP. A minion has a fraction of the XP of a full monster, and that is further divided by the number of members in your party. The impact of a minion or two in an encounter or two will not seriously change the pace of leveling. If all your PC's ever fight is minions, then sure you might run into something, but in that case I'd say you have a much bigger problem.

Jay

 

[Elric]

Secondly, minions don't have much XP. A minion has a fraction of the XP of a full monster, and that is further divided by the number of members in your party. The impact of a minion or two in an encounter or two will not seriously change the pace of leveling. If all your PC's ever fight is minions, then sure you might run into something, but in that case I'd say you have a much bigger problem.

It's not the pace of leveling that I'm concerned with, it's the encounter balance.

As I said before,

However, once you have an XP system for balancing encounters, you can't ignore it in favor of "count minions less when planning the difficulty of combat at higher tiers." If WotC feels that minions should be worth a fifth of a monster at Paragon and a sixth at epic, their XP values need to reflect that. What if you don't get DMG 2 and just go by Monster Manual 2's XP values for minions? You won't build encounters appropriately, if 6-1 at epic is the intended ratio.

If you haven't seen DMG 2 and are trying to balance an Epic encounter with minions, you'll use 4 minions in the place of one regular monster, as that's what the XP budget suggests. Or alternately, if you have an Epic encounter with minions and you're trying to figure out how difficult it will be, you'll add up those minions' XP values as written.

This is a problem; minions are systematically worse combatants than their XP values suggests at Paragon (and the problem gets worse again at Epic), but the XP system used to balance encounters isn't taking this into account.

Well, with all fairness, the XP curve rises ever faster, and minions are just a small part of overall XP. I can imagine it's more important in practice to get encounter balance right rather than fixing a few percent error in the XP system. In any case, I agree an XP change isn't a bad idea, but it's not a big deal by any means.

Now that I read this again, you seem to have taken away a different point than the one I intended to make. My concern is that the lower value of minions needs to be reflected in the XP system for encounters to balance correctly. It's not about the pace of leveling. Sorry if this was unclear.

 

[keterys]

Minions being the right xp is actually more than just a matter of handwaving. They're an easy way for a DM to end up with combats that are far too easy or too hard, by not properly understanding the capabilities of their players.

Last night, for instance, I ran two combats in a row. One was N+4 difficulty (lots of minions) and the other was N+2 difficulty (no minions) and the second combat was much harder for the party.

And in my notes I made before the session I actually rated the first combat as N+1, with N+4 worth of xp. And hey, that's how it worked out. Thankfully, I do happen to know that, but many a DM won't, and will do things like throw a few N+4s at the party, have them walk all over them, then throw another that has no minions and has some dangerous critters in it, and poof, TPK.

 

[Jhaelen]

Wow. First, XP is not everything. XP is a mechanism for delivering reward to players.

Unfortunately XP are ALSO used to measure the difficulty of an encounter. They're used as a budget to populate the encounter, so it _is_ important. If adding/removing two minions didn't matter, then why does the DMG2 recommend to add 2 minions (for every four) to an epic encounter?

Also, using the 'Stealth XP reduction' only works if you use the full amount of minions, i.e. how many additional minions should you add for no xp when your epic encounter has three minions?

Apparently, noone at WotC thinks it's an important issue, so maybe it isn't. Luckily it's also not really important for my game since I don't track XP. I still feel confirmed in my initial impression that the DMG2 fix is sloppy work.

 

[Turtlejay]

Okay. That's fair. Your post seemed to indicate a dissatisfaction with the fix as a whole, and I was only adressing the XP side. As far as balance goes, 4e is easier to work than CR was, but it is not 100% perfect. You will still need to tweak for party makeup. If you have a party filled with Controller primary and secondaries, then by-the-book minions will not work as advertised. This is analogous to some of the recent threads in which healing is addressed. If your party is strong or weak in an area, to make combats smooth and keep grind or death at bay, the DM should make adjustments.

I can't speak to the math of the fix or it's impact, since I don't DM much anymore, and I am positive my DM uses a more 'holistic' encounter building design.

Jay

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I can see the "this doesn't quite add up" point. However I think in practice most DMs aren't sitting around with a calculator saying to themselves "Oh no, I don't have the budget for another minion!" No, they're creating the encounter they want to create and using XP totals to cross check that its what they want. They may do that by using a budget, but all encounters are just roughly graded by level +/-, its not like people only deploy exactly 1,500 XP worth of monsters for a level 5 encounter. Maybe its 1397 XP or maybe its 1622 XP and if the DM thinks to himself that maybe the 4 minions he's tossed in aren't going to cut it, then maybe he tosses in a couple extras, its still the same level encounter give or take.

I don't know, maybe other DMs are more math fiends than I am about encounter budgets. I just see them as a general rule of thumb. I'm really not even sure why the DMG2 bothered to toss in that 2 extra minions thing, it seems kind of like "duh, use what you want".

 

[keterys]

I am _positive_ there are DMs that go 'Level 13 party, so a level 14 encounter would be good, so that's 5000 xp. Well, I know I want the cyclops chief and his hellhound, and how about that shaman. And some minions, lessee, 1200 xp left so I guess that's 6 of them' rather than the, what, 7.5 they'd be under the new math?