(4e) How often do minions appear in your game?

[Switchback]

I play a controller (wizard) and my DM has admitted to ‘not liking’ minions, but states he will continue to use them due to their expectancy in the rules. His main beef is he feels they are hard to use in the context of his adventures.

Despite the qualification, this makes me naturally uneasy, as that is a strong point of having a controller around. Even though I think my wizard does fine with no minions around and can contribute in useful ways, I wonder how much a lack of minions (if a lack occurs) will put a crimp on my role. At the end of one adventure with no minions present and also in which the selected enemies were high on NAD’s and resists to some of my spell types, a different party member suggested I might roll another striker…

Which I am pretty vehemently not interested in. Going forward, I also think it should be possible to plan a power build suited to more standard enemies, if I know that is what will be encountered primarily.

So far our campaign has run limited encounters but faced minions perhaps in 4 out of 18 combats or something close to that.

So I am curious if there controllers out there playing in low minion (or even no minion) games and still getting the most out of their character? And just in general, trying to figure out how often most DM’s throw minions into their encounters. Is 50% a common figure, lower, higher, etc.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well I am the DM, so don't fit into your Controller aspect but I use Minions the vast majority of the time. They are incredibly useful for a ton of different scenarios that it is a no-brainer for me to use them in spades. As for actual percentage amounts I would say probably 70% of the time I use some manner of Minion.

 

[Nymrohd]

I'll agree with Fallen Seraph on about 70% of at least some minions per fight. Often I will have enough to round up the fight's XP total and because I have two controllers I don't shy from fights with a dozen minions or more.

 

[GenghisDon]

I DM also & I use minions in 50% of the encounters or more(often much more), controller present or not. I only tailor adventures slightly to player's class, what roles their chr are is their choice. They generaly play traditional well balanced groups, though I don't think that's as needed in 4e.

That said, your DM could never use a minion. If you think your wizard isn't being useful, I'd try a different class. I also think with the right spells you can be quite effective, minions or not. It depends on how much you need to "shine" I guess.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think I use them in at least 50% of my encounters.

If your DM doesn't particularly like them, I'd suggest that he check out the minions in the MM2. As the PCs rise in level my appreciation of minions tends to fall off (because they become so darn easy to obliterate for even the non-controllers) but the new designs have really refreshed my love of minions (minions that debuff, minions that heal/buff other enemies when they die, etc).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Well I am working my way through the H1-3 series as a DM and use minions as and when they arise, but I quite like minions and if i was doing my own stuff would probwbly use them even more.

 

[Switchback]

Thanks for the answers so far. I haven't DM'd in 4e yet, except to build some mock combats. But I think the minions are very nice options to have around. Great for focusing on strikers, for filling out encounters to make them feel larger and more epic, and all the reasons given for their creation.

I especially like that battles with minions seem to have a more natural flow because things are dying at regular intervals which adds a certain dynamism and feeling of progression that can be absent if you are just hacking away at large bags of HP. Minions are anti-grind.

Even so, I know some DM's don't like both their pathetic weakness and also their high contrivance factor. I have discovered several minion tweaks such as giving them 'strikes' or perhaps 2 hits (bloodied, and dead) so that they can at least hope to survive to make one attack in a fight. I'm going to show these options to my DM to see if slightly meatier minions would interest him.

What I have found in a relatively low minion game to this point, is control becomes ever more important. Disabling 2 enemies out of 4 for instance, cuts the enemies power in half for a while. Tactically, it can be more challening (in a good way) as well, as large minion combats often make your job as a controller quite obvious and easy at least for the early rounds.

Ideally, I think the game works best with a balance. More options are always good.

 

[exile]

As far as 4E is concerned, I play mostly Living Forgotten Realms. While I have not actually kept an accurate count, it seems that minions show up roughly once out of every 2-3 combat encounters.

 

[the Jester]

I use minions pretty commonly, but not every session and certainly not every fight.

 

[Piratecat]

I totally love minions, and use them in about half of my fights.