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

HeroineIs said:

For level 11 PCs, I’d give your CR3-4 minions around 6–10 HP. That way, a normal attack will usually take one down, but a low damage roll won’t insta-kill them. It keeps the combat feeling fast and heroic without completely trivializing the encounter.

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I ended up giving them 12 HP and the "save to stay up when dropped to 0 hp" ability.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

4E take was that Minions have 1 hit points, but never take damage on a miss.

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Yep this is my approach.

1 hp, and then if you use a fireball and they pass their save, they are up. They fail, they die. I use that rule in my current dnd game.


For speed, you can also just use % probabilities. If there are 10 minions, and they pass the save 33% of the time, kill 7 and leave 3 alive, something like that. Whichever you prefer.

Tigris said:

This does add another roll for minions though. One reason minions have only 1 health originally is to make them as fast and simple to handle as possible.

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Yes. But a roll is easier to track than fiddly hp.

Tigris said:

With this rule you need a damage roll + another roll. (+ anothet stat on minions). In a vtt its easier but even there you need to have and show these rolls such that players can understand whats happening


This can work well especially since it can really easily be tracked with 2 sided tokens. (Or minion images getting red on vtt).

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