At what point do players know they're fighting Minions?

[KarinsDad]

No, it DOES reveal powers.

So.

You have 8 monsters that have 'basic attack' as their power, 1 that has 'basic attack that knocks prone', 1 that has 'basic attack that deals ongoing damage', 1 that has 'shifts when you move adjacent and marks with basic attack', and 1 that has 'lobs fire balls, resistant to fire, heals his friends.'

I opened up one 1st level minion in the Compendium (Tainted Bat) and it has a Bite and a Flyby Attack. Two powers.

The next bat I could find is a 3rd level Shadowhunter Bat in the Compendium and it has a Tail Slash and a Flyby Attack. Two Powers.

Not much difference. Yup, the Tail Slash gains a +2 bonus to the attack roll and deals an extra 6 damage in dim light or darkness, but I wouldn't tell the players that specific information. I would say that the Shadowhunter is known to be nastier if it attacks from the dark.


The 1st level Fell Taint Drone? Three powers.
The 1st level Tainted Root? Three powers. (e.g. Drag (standard, at-will) Targets an enemy grabbed by the tainted root; +5 vs Fortitude; 2 damage, and the tainted root shifts 1 square and slides the target 1 square to a square adjacent to the tainted root.)
The 1st level Wererat Minions? Three powers.

There are minions with multiple powers all over the place and some of them are cool sounding.


I think your argument here is not too strong since minions do get multiple and sometimes cool powers, and I agree with Flipguarder that it is metagamey as well.

 

[Calzone]

You're looking at a group of soldiers. Eight of them are armed with standard issue AK-47s. One has a rocket launcher. One has a set of communication gear. One has a hat with the insignia of a lieutenant. One is sitting in a tank.

Which are the privates, and which are the noncoms and officers?

'These guys obviously have tricks these other guys do not' is NOT a metagame argument, it's common sense.

Especially in a game based on the concept of being able to take on armies of these guys and defeat them in one go.

Batman doesn't go 'Oh, these guys must all be supervillains' when he encounters normal mooks. The Bride doesn't flinch when she's taking on the Crazy 88. Heroes don't look at the rank and file and go 'Hey guys, we're out numbered by guys who are probably better than us.' Maybe after the first battle, but after the tenth battle like that?

And that's not even 'once they hit paragon tier.'

Your argument about doesn't support the proposition that "In-character differentiators(IC) (equipment, posture, other perceivable clues) should allow players to distinguish out-of-character(OOC) (or metagame, if you prefer) designations."

You talk about being able to distinguish privates from non-coms based on equipment, for instance. What this allows you to do is distinguish IC roles or designations, not out-of-character ones. Just because a guy is "armed with [a] standard issue AK-47" doesn't mean he is not a poor, great, or exceptional combatant. You may be able to tell that he is a private, an in-character role, based on his loadout, but it does not necessarily follow that he is a minion, standard, etc. enemy.

It is entirely possible the private's only experience with the weapon is the week of basic training he got when he was drafted (likely a minion). Then again, maybe he grew up on an isolated farm and has years of experience in using firearms to kill predators or vermin (likely a standard). You may not be able to tell that from a quick inspection of equipment and stance before combat, and even if you can discern their background in such a way, it just tells about in-character abilities, not game designations.

I view minions as enemies that pose a minor threat to a PC. This does not mean that they have to have poor equipment, poor health, or poor posture. A minion may just be exceptionally unlucky, or a swordsman with a limited repertoire of moves. An imperial palace guard may be impeccably outfitted, have a good combat stance, moral, and carriage, be more experienced than the PCs (higher level), and still fall to a single strike from a PC if he's a minion. The term "minion" is an OOC designator that has no affect on his in-character portrayal. It just means that he individually wasn't an important contributor mechanically to the combat. Fluff that how you want.

Note, even though designators like "elite" or "minion" don't affect IC portrayal, doesn't mean they mustn't. If you wish to portray minions as inferior looking, I don't think anyone will say you may not, but you don't have to.


As for telling players if monsters are minions, I may if they directly ask, but my goal as DM is to involve them so much in the story they are acting out that they would rather act on IC portrayals of the game world than OOC ones.

 

[Flipguarder]

I also agree with everything in the above post lol.

 

[keterys]

This reminds me a lot of the disconnect between "Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise" and early badassery taking the ship to their near bumbling "any random shot from a (PC) drops me" and "I have almost no chance of actually hitting you" antics later. Poor minions - such a vital part of modern cinematic concept, such a topic for endless argument.

 

[Garthanos]

I also agree with everything in the above post lol.

Now you would have at least been less ambiguous if you had specified a name ;-) --- Calzone perhaps.

 

[Flipguarder]

calzone. as in "right above."

 

[Infiniti2000]

For some reason, now I'm hungry.

 

[Garthanos]

My players sometimes do... really cool finishing moves style action descriptions when they have guessed that somebody is a minion...

But they also see the bad guy is bloodied and near the edge and can use that as a cue as well.

 

[DracoSuave]

You talk about being able to distinguish privates from non-coms based on equipment, for instance. What this allows you to do is distinguish IC roles or designations, not out-of-character ones. Just because a guy is "armed with [a] standard issue AK-47" doesn't mean he is not a poor, great, or exceptional combatant. You may be able to tell that he is a private, an in-character role, based on his loadout, but it does not necessarily follow that he is a minion, standard, etc. enemy.

No, what it means is that he is most likely rank and file soldier.

Rank and file soldiers are the minions. The other monsters are the elites of the world. The scary things that the town militia, and organized soldiers have trouble dealing with. Which is why players get involved in the first place.

See, this idea that minions are the dregs of the monster world, I don't buy it either.

I buy into the idea that the players are the superheroes of their world, and they defeat mooks swiftly because they are just that good. And they know it.

Other monsters are better than minions, don't go down so easily, and the players know it because that's what they are there to do.

I don't buy into the mentality that minions have to be dregs for superheroic characters to recognize they are not individually viable threats. Nor do I buy into the mentality that minions lack of supervillainous power isn't something that characters brimming with super-mojo, megatraining, or simply chosen to directly wield the stuff of gods could not pick up on fairly easily.

 

[Alex319]

I don't understand what's "metagamey" about knowing something is a minion.

There are many powers and abilities in the game that work differently against minions and non-minions. The most well-known example is miss effects, but there are other examples. For instance, the Rod of Reaving doesn't work against minions. Presumably, a character would be able to observe that the RoR works against some monsters, but not others. And with sufficient observation, he might also discover that the monsters the RoR doesn't work against are precisely those that always go down in one hit. So given the way that minions work, there is no logical reason that characters would not be able to deduce that this is a category of monsters that works a little differently than others. And if they did that, they would perhaps give a name to this category - why not "minion"?

Of course this does not mean that a character would automatically know, just by looking at a monster, whether he is a minion. But it does mean that if a character did know, he could say "Hey, that monster is a minion" in-character just fine. Just like if a monster had vulnerable 10 fire a character could say "he's weak to fire, hit him with a fire attack", if a monster is a minion a character could say "they're minions, hit them with your auto damage area effects."