D&D 5E (2024) How Many HP Should 5E 2024 Minions Have

[THEMNGMNT]

I don't know the exact answer, but it really depends on their accuracy and damage output. If they can hit reliably and do meaningful damage, then they are worth calculating. If you're keeping low attack bonuses and damage output from the monster as published, then they are probably not worth calculating at all.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i run a5e when i run 5e, so i'd probably make the knights horde monsters with a base CR somewhere around that of the commander's. if i wanted a LOT of knights i'd see if i could start with them pressed together into squads.

alternatively you could, like, use the regular knight statblock and multiply the damage of your players' weapon attacks against them by the difference in proficiency bonus or something. that's an idea i had to help with HP bloat in low cr monsters when using them as minions a while back.

 

[Reynard]

I don't know the exact answer, but it really depends on their accuracy and damage output. If they can hit reliably and do meaningful damage, then they are worth calculating. If you're keeping low attack bonuses and damage output from the monster as published, then they are probably not worth calculating at all.

They are supposed to be potentially dangerous, but go down easy.

 

[Sulicius]

As someone who just ran a TON of 11th level 5e24 combats in the past few weeks, I found that 11 HP was very easy to one-shot kill. I used some bandits as filler, and those worked great. 33 HP (Pirates) definitely lived through most initial attacks. I guess your sweet spot would be somewhere along 20 HP if you want to make sure they can survive some things.

 

[Tigris]

The question is how many HP should they have. Initially I figured just 1 (any hit would take them out) but I remembered there being a few wonky spells that get OP fast that way.

If the spells are the issue, fix the spell problem, not add a patch by having higher number of HP.

Remember what the reason behind minions is:

1. To fulfill the power fantasy of fighting many enemies
2. To fight many enemies without that being a hassle / the storyteller takes too much of combat time.

Of course a VTT does do tracking etc. for you. But combat flow is still a lot faster if a minion is just alive or dead (not having people to figure out which one is the damaged one and if they should attack that one or another one), not needing damage mentioned at all (its just dead if it hits). And especially having minions the same initiative makes many "ok next turn X" unnecessary, which just steal time. Storytellers tend to take too much playing time in combat anyway (compared to other players), so you want to reduce that time as much as possible, especially when you run a lot of creatures.

So my default answer is a minion should die after 1 hit/ 1 failed saving throw. No HP, just hit and dead.

I figure I want a single attack from one of the characters to likely take a knight down, but maintain the possibility that a terrible damage roll could flub it. So maybe 8?

So if we would want to do this, then I would make it for sure in a way that Martials cannot roll low, because they already have the disadvantage for not having area attacks. So at level 11 Martial characters should have +5 damage from strength/dex and a +1 magical weapon, so I would give the minions 7 health, that a normal martial will always kill them, but weak area attacks have some small chance to not kill them. (Of course if your martial players all have

I like the way minions are handled in "Flee Mortals!" (Any successful hit will kill one; if you go over the damage threshold, you can kill another one.)
The damage threshold of a minion at 11th level is 18.

Well this, however, does make minions a lot less special. One cool thing about minions is that "DPR" or "damage per round" does not really matter, which normally is king.

So that number of attacks and precision matters a lot more. If they have a threshold, now you want again high damage attacks, the same as you want fighting other enemies and let the exact same thing shine as in every other fight.

 

[Zaukrie]

I like the way minions are handled in "Flee Mortals!" (Any successful hit will kill one; if you go over the damage threshold, you can kill another one.)
The damage threshold of a minion at 11th level is 18.

This.

 

[aco175]

You could just make them a 1-hit monster and the fighter can cleave another just fine. Allow him to have fun. Spells just kill half of them from a fireball or something. The others live with no tracking involved. Of course, I like to throw a lot of them at the party for this reason.

I want them to have noticeable offensive capabilities so the PCs can't just ignore them.

Have them attack in pairs with one giving the Help action to the other for advantage to attack. They might only be dealing 5 points of damage, but eventually it gets tiring.

You could also just make the damage something that grants a condition like slow or daze or something that is worse than 5 damage.

 

[Tonguez]

1 Hp. Minions should be about narrative not maths, the PCs still have to roll to hit AC, so have a chance of missing but rolling damage is just more time when the point is for the minions to steal actions and die epically not to be damage soaks.

If I want stronger minions I use hits instead of hp ie a Minion 3 takes 3 hits to kill it instead of 1

 

[Charlaquin]

The way minions worked in 4e, and I believe this was the correct way to do it, was they have 1 HP, but they never take damage from missed attacks (and in 5e this would translate to never taking damage from successful saving throws either). A few high-level minions also had damage thresholds, so they don’t take damage unless a successful hit (or failed saving throw) did at least 5 damage, or whatever. But if you meet or exceed that threshold, they always die. Because if you have to keep track of its hit points, it isn’t doing its job as a minion, which is to enable large numbers of individual enemies that don’t require much additional bookkeeping.

 

[Reynard]

This has turned into an interesting thread. SO many different ways of doing minions, and people seem to be REALLY married to the system they like best.