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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ouronos" data-source="post: 4575338" data-attributes="member: 76909">Minions... got your minions, here!Greetings... I haven't played the 4e system that long, and I can say that I am presently firmly in the "combat... geez, there goes the gaming session" camp. Of course, some of this is my fault. In my games, I treat minions just like the normal creatures.  Not for hit-points, skills, and the like, but for presentation.  What this means is that minions are generally indistinguishable from the normal creatures in combat. Now, it might be possible to tell just who the solos and elites are (better weapons, armor, and powers can be very revealing), there is really no way to distinguish a 'normal' creature from a 'minion' at first glance. This prevents characters from targetting minions just because their minions (takes the ones over here out first, they've only got one hit point!), and makes every opponent a potential danger. Further masking is performed by having some normal monsters gain the ability to resist some forms of 'miss damage'; this way the characters cannot assume minion status just because their miss effect didn't kill the creature. I also mask some damage results.  If a character has a miss effect that does damage, I always determine that damage.  I am overly fond of announcing that a particular opponent "takes that much damage (scribble... scribble... scribble)" and not always revealing just how much damage is done.  This way, when an attack does less damage (damage reduction? resists?), it doesn't come as a great surprise.  So, if a character were to do a miss effect, get the "ahh.. you do.. that much... damage", and the creature didn't die, they have no way of knowing if it is because of some type of resistance, the creature having more hit points than expected, or me scribbling down "0 damage" because it was a minion. Keep in mind that in my campaigns (from 1e on up), I don't always announce hidden special effects.  There are some effects that can become obvious (tossing flame effects at fire demons is never a good idea), and some effects are only noticed by the perceptive players/characters (wait... don't use lightning! I suspect that lightning doesn't effect it, or might even make it stronger... not even the hair of this thing is singed when I use it...). These are just a few ways that minions can become more of a challenge.  The down side is that challenging minions will generally extend combat time. Giving extra hit points to minions is not that bad of an idea, as long as the hit points aren't overwhelming.  Giving minions hit points equal to their CON score plus their level (or twice their level) often approximates the one-hit wonders that they are. I do not reduce the experience that minions give any further simply because minions are treated as regular opponents by the party; they never know when a creature is 'just a minion'. Just my three cents - which I expect back. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Until that time...</blockquote>

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