Minion NPCs for Paragon Tier Campaign

[S'mon]

As my Forgotten Realms campaign approaches its third calendar year and nears the Paragon Tier, I've been working on good, easy to use NPC
stats. So far I like what I've come up with and I wanted to share some ideas.

A) For damage, I'm replacing "miss never does damage"
with a Damage Threshold: Kill= Level+4 Bloody= ½ Level+2
So a 10th level minion is bloodied with 7 damage, killed with 14. This is much more intuitive for players and means that "half damage on a miss" type effects remain useful. eg A Fireball with a good damage roll can clear out a pack of
minions without needing any to-hit rolls, greatly speeding up
play.

B) Taking a hint from MT:TTNV I am giving minions extra
damage on a critical hit. What would be Encounter or Recharge powers on a standard monster can also trigger on a crit, adding some excitement
and keeping minions fresh, while not requiring any tracking.

Here are some standard Heroic Tier humans converted to
Paragon minions - take a look and let me know what you
think.

MINION NPCs.

Human Bandit Minion Level 10 Minion Skirmisher
Medium natural humanoid (human) XP 125
HP 1; DT 14/7 AC 24;
Fortitude 20; Reflex 22; Will 20
Speed 6 Initiative +12
Perception +7
Traits
Combat Advantage
The human bandit deals an extra 4 damage on melee and ranged attacks against any target it has combat advantage against.
Standard Actions
m Strike (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: +15 vs. AC
Hit: 9 damage, and the human bandit shifts 1 square. Critical hit: 12 damage, and the target is dazed (save ends)
r Dagger (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: Ranged 5/10; +14 vs. AC
Hit: 7 damage.
Skills Stealth +15, Streetwise +13, Thievery +15
Str 16 (+8) Dex 21 (+10) Wis 15 (+7)
Con 17 (+8) Int 14 (+7) Cha 16 (+8)
Alignment any Languages Common
Equipment leather armor, melee weapon, dagger x4

Human Guard Minion Level 11 Minion Soldier
Medium natural humanoid (human) XP 150
HP 1; DT 15/7 AC 26;
Fortitude 24; Reflex 23; Will 22
Speed 5 Initiative +11
Perception +12
Standard Actions
m Halberd (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: Reach 2; +16 vs. AC
Hit: 10 damage. Critical hit: 15 damage, and the target is knocked prone.
R Crossbow (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: Ranged 15/30; +15 vs. AC
Hit: 7 damage.
Skills Streetwise +13
Str 20 (+10) Dex 18 (+9) Wis 15 (+7)
Con 19 (+9) Int 14 (+7) Cha 16 (+8)
Alignment any Languages Common
Equipment chainmail, halberd, crossbow, crossbow bolts (20)

Human Guard Swordsman Minion Level 11 Minion Soldier XP 150
Replaces Halberd & X-bow with 1-handed weapon, Heavy Shield, & 2 javelins:
HP 1; DT 15/7 AC 28 Fortitude 24 Reflex 25 Will 22 Speed 5
Melee Attack Reach 1, +16 vs AC. Hit: 9 damage. Critical Hit: 12 damage.
Ranged Attack Range 10/20, +14 vs AC Hit: 6 damage.  

Human Mercenary minion Level 13 Minion Soldier
Medium natural humanoid (human) XP 200
HP 1; DT 17/8 AC 29;
Fortitude 26; Reflex 25; Will 24
Speed 5 Initiative +12
Perception +14
Standard Actions
m Longsword (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: +18 vs. AC
Hit: 11 damage. Critical hit: 14 damage and the target is pushed 1 square & dazed (save ends).
R Crossbow (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: Ranged 15/30; +17 vs. AC
Hit: 8 damage.
Effect: The mercenary’s AC drops to 27 and his Reflex drops to 23 until the start of his next turn as he limbers his shield.
Skills Streetwise +14
Str 21 (+11) Dex 19 (+10) Wis 16 (+9)
Con 20 (+11) Int 15 (+8) Cha 17 (+9)
Alignment unaligned Languages Common
Equipment chainmail, longsword, crossbow, crossbow bolts (20), heavy shield

Human Knight Minion Level 15 Minion Soldier
Medium natural humanoid (human) XP 300
HP 1; DT 19/9 AC 31;
Fortitude 28; Reflex 26; Will 27
Speed 5 Speed 10 when mounted on a warhorse Initiative +14
Perception +15
Standard Actions
m Broadsword (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: +20 vs. AC
Hit: 12 damage. Critical hit: 15 damage
M Lancer (weapon) • At-Will
Requirements: The Knight must be mounted.
Attack: Reach 2; +21 vs. AC
Hit: 12 damage, and a small or medium target is knocked prone. May be used as part of a charge attack while mounted. Critical hit: 18 damage, and up to large target knocked prone.
Triggered Actions
Hasty Parry • At-Will
Trigger: When an enemy attacks an adjacent ally with a ranged or melee attack.
Effect (Immediate Interrupt): The triggering enemy’s attack targets the knight instead of the ally, and the knight gains a +3 bonus to AC against that attack (AC 34)
Skills Athletics +18, Diplomacy +17
Str 23 (+13) Dex 17 (+10) Wis 16 (+10)
Con 18 (+11) Int 14 (+9) Cha 20 (+12)
Alignment unaligned Languages Common
Equipment heavy shield, plate armor, broadsword, longspear

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I always wondered if human minions, going into paragon, made all that much sense.

Having said that, I think the bandit is particularly well done. With a large number of them, one is bound to get a crit too, and that crit is dangerous.

The soldiers need a bit more. They don't have any marking abilities. PCs would feel free to mostly ignore them and go after the bosses instead. (Quite a few paragon soldier minions do lower damage but actually immobilize PCs on a hit, forcing a battle.)

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]
Minion Criticals are a two-way street, so if you give them crits, you may want to make PC crits against minions have an effect. Your Damage Threshold might accomplish this for really low damage builds, but I'm guessing that most high heroic or low paragon PCs can deal 14 damage oa hit pretty easily.

About Damage Threshold for minions generally...it works fine so long as you don't have a zone-based controller or a PC with an auto-damage build. In situations with lots of DT minions, these PCs get very frustrated when a minion survives three rounds in a zone dealing 9 damage per round.

Not saying that you would run this sort of situation that way, just pointing out that it does have pitfalls which depend on PC build.

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]
Minion Criticals are a two-way street, so if you give them crits, you may want to make PC crits against minions have an effect. Your Damage Threshold might accomplish this for really low damage builds, but I'm guessing that most high heroic or low paragon PCs can deal 14 damage oa hit pretty easily.

About Damage Threshold for minions generally...it works fine so long as you don't have a zone-based controller or a PC with an auto-damage build. In situations with lots of DT minions, these PCs get very frustrated when a minion survives three rounds in a zone dealing 9 damage per round.

Not saying that you would run this sort of situation that way, just pointing out that it does have pitfalls which depend on PC build.

Crits against minions tend to make them drop dead - obviously there's likely to be overkill, same as if you used an Encounter power vs them. But handy eg for my Twin Striking Ranger player who only does 1d10+2 at 10th level.

Zones - heh, I used to hate it when all my minions dropped dead before they could act!! I tend to find zone effects overpowered and fireball type effects underpowered in the game as written, so I prefer to encourage the latter; the Controller IMC mostly focuses on direct damage anyway. Anyway the zone damage would have to be pretty low not to Bloody my minions, eg an 11th level minion is bloodied with 15/2 = 7 damage so most Paragon Controllers would Bloody them quite easily with most zone effects. The 15th level Knight minion is DT 19/9 so a damage-9 zone would bloody him in round 1 and kill him in round 2.

 

[S'mon]

I always wondered if human minions, going into paragon, made all that much sense.

Having said that, I think the bandit is particularly well done. With a large number of them, one is bound to get a crit too, and that crit is dangerous.

The soldiers need a bit more. They don't have any marking abilities. PCs would feel free to mostly ignore them and go after the bosses instead. (Quite a few paragon soldier minions do lower damage but actually immobilize PCs on a hit, forcing a battle.)

Thanks for the comments.

I always think that human Minions make more sense at Paragon than at Heroic Tier, where Minion status only makes sense for untrained rabble, large rats and such. Depends a lot on campaign level demographics though; my Forgotten Realms game based on the FRCG has humans across all 3 Tiers (eg Shadovar Shadow Knights make 22nd level minions), whereas an Heroic-Tier-only setting would be statted very differently.

The minions above are the following standard monsters converted to minions 8 levels higher, keeping the same XP value:

Human Bandit Skirmisher-2
Human Guard Soldier-3
Zhent Soldier Soldier-5
Human Cavalier Soldier-7 (Leader)

I definitely don't want Soldier minions Marking, it's a trivial status effect that requires tracking. I'm keen to minimise the need for tracking effects. The knight's ability to draw attacks aimed at adjacent allies works well for a 'defender minion', though.
Immobilise seems a reasonable ability for a critical hit, but unless the minion has a lasso or net I'd probably prefer Slowed. Knocking Prone has a similar effect anyway, as potentially does Push 1 & Daze, since you can't charge 1 square.
In general I don't think minions need to draw fire from the boss; since they have relatively high damage output plus low survivability it usually makes sense for the PCs to kill them first, anyway.

 

[Quickleaf]

The 15th level Knight minion is DT 19/9 so a damage-9 zone would bloody him in round 1 and kill him in round 2.

Ah, so once bloodied they become one-hit minion?

Or are you actually tracking HP?

 

[S'mon]

Ah, so once bloodied they become one-hit minion?

Or are you actually tracking HP?

If they're bloodied twice they die, and he gets bloodied with 9 damage. No hp tracking!

 

[Balesir]

If they're bloodied twice they die, and he gets bloodied with 9 damage. No hp tracking!

I've been tempted to try this method of handling minions for a while - it looks really neat.

Could you expand on why you chose Lvl+4 as the base DT? I was thinking Lvl+2, since it seems to scale well from low level and still give reasonable numbers at Paragon/Epic (level 1 minion = DT 3/1, level 10 = DT 12/6, level 15 = DT 17/8, level 24 = DT 26/13, level 30 = DT 32/16), but maybe I'm missing something?

P.S. for [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] - I use reversible bases (the counters from the MV, actually) to display bloodied status already, so this method involves literally no HP tracking.

 

[S'mon]

Could you expand on why you chose Lvl+4 as the base DT? I was thinking Lvl+2, since it seems to scale well from low level and still give reasonable numbers at Paragon/Epic (level 1 minion = DT 3/1, level 10 = DT 12/6, level 15 = DT 17/8, level 24 = DT 26/13, level 30 = DT 32/16), but maybe I'm missing something?

Well I've been using 1/2 Level + 5 previously. The reason to start DT at 5 is so that non-brute minions don't normally kill each other with 1 hit - minion damage is 1/2 Level +4. But I'm finding that a 1/2 Level DT scales too slowly, since monster & PC damage goes up +1/Level, on average (more for Strikers & Elites).

By moving to Level +4, I retain not having 1st level minions kill each other with 1 hit (4 damage vs DT 5), they are Bloodied not killed. And then the DT keeps pace with the Bloodied value, so you don't easily get invulnerable minions (actually I'd let all damage inflicted in 1 round of coordinated attacks stack for DT, if it ever came up).

 

[Balesir]

By moving to Level +4, I retain not having 1st level minions kill each other with 1 hit (4 damage vs DT 5), they are Bloodied not killed. And then the DT keeps pace with the Bloodied value, so you don't easily get invulnerable minions (actually I'd let all damage inflicted in 1 round of coordinated attacks stack for DT, if it ever came up).

Ah, I see - thanks for the response!

I think I'm actually OK with minions downing each other on a hit - but it does bring up a good point about brutes. I think I might try with brutes having a slightly higher DT, like Lvl+6, say (2 damage per AC drop, per the norm for feats, et al).