My experience was of a trap-object minion spawner, the DM arbitrarily forbade any solution other than solving the complex logic puzzle, and it just ground on for 2 hours or so. It might have been ok in a computer game; as 2/5 of a 5-hour game session it was terrible. Especially as, after a nice 30-minute fight, we spent the remaining 2.5 hours grinding on a solo zombie dragon. Apparently we were supposed to use some stuff that was lying around. My INT 8 dwarf barbarian was completely unsuited for either encounter. Possibly the least enjoyable RPG session I've ever played, that I didn't actually walk out of.
Are minions dangerous enough?
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
My experience was of a trap-object minion spawner, the DM arbitrarily forbade any solution other than solving the complex logic puzzle, and it just ground on for 2 hours or so. It might have been ok in a computer game; as 2/5 of a 5-hour game session it was terrible. Especially as, after a nice 30-minute fight, we spent the remaining 2.5 hours grinding on a solo zombie dragon. Apparently we were supposed to use some stuff that was lying around. My INT 8 dwarf barbarian was completely unsuited for either encounter. Possibly the least enjoyable RPG session I've ever played, that I didn't actually walk out of.
Ryujin
Legend
See, that's the sort of thing that I don't like to do; railroad the players. If they can come up with a reasonable alternate solution, other than what I've worked out for the situation, then I'll let them use it. If they could drop a mountainside on the minion generator for example, blocking it from disgorging them, then that's fine. It's also more suitable for Grond the Anti-Paladin to do, rather than trying to work out some puzzle.
Joshua Randall
Legend
So your problem was a crappy DM, then.
That's *always* going to lead to a boring, bad game.
Yeah, I guess. Considering that 2 out of 3 encounters were just painful to play, blaming infinite minion-generators per se is probably wrong.
SensoryThought
First Post
I like to think: what is the purpose of minions? Making them just part of an xp budget for an encounter is a mistake. They are there to make your players feel awesome. Nothing says cool like your party taking down 15 baddies in 2-3 rounds!
Filler encounters for me are minion heavy and thus easily dispatched. They have an important story role too. Challenging bosses tend to get half hp double damage standard monsters to help them rather than minions.
Filler encounters for me are minion heavy and thus easily dispatched. They have an important story role too. Challenging bosses tend to get half hp double damage standard monsters to help them rather than minions.
Ryujin
Legend
They're also good at dramatically appropriate points in the adventure. For example those two guards at the keep's gates at midnight, that the PCs need to take out quickly and quietly, are probably minions.
Obryn
Hero
That's exactly how I normally run minions at Paragon, though I use a straight 10 as my threshhold, with any crit auto-killing. (I want to make sure Magic Missile remains an effective minion zapper.) They are still undeniably weak here, but they at least aren't a joke.
An exception is any minion that has an on-death effect. Those I always run normally. Ditto, ranged minions; they're quite dangerous enough as-is.
I also use "elite minions" in some cases. They have DR of 10 or 5+1/2lvl or whatever seems appropriate. Less than this does nothing, and more than this bloodies it. Double that - or any crit - kills it instantly. These are usually used for special cases, like major encounters.
Frankly, without doing something like this, minions become essentially worthless. Common powers like Beguiling Strands, Flurry of Blows, Storm of Debris, and so on (all of which are in my Dark Sun game!) make it so they're not even worth the XP budgeted for them.
-O
I find it interesting how often people say "crappy DM" or "crappy players" when the game doesn't work out like someone enjoys. Not all DMs (or players for that matter) will recognize inherent design problems with an encounter until the encounter is actually underway. A lot of the early 4E bad encounter design wasn't even recognized as such until a lot of discussion occurred here on the boards (and even the various Lair Assaults are not what I would actually call good encounter design, 3 years here down the road).
Some DMs do not want to just stop a grinding encounter cold, or don't want to change an encounter on the fly. If there is a set solution for an encounter, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Maybe not to every player's taste, but a different player might have had a great time in the same encounter.
Also, if players are having an issue with an encounter, few of them will speak up mid-encounter and tell the DM that the encounter is grinding.
With regard to the never-ending minion encounter (or at least a minion encounter that ends, but has a high number of minions), I think that these are some of the most challenging encounters that I have ever seen. The players quickly run out of multi-target Encounter powers and not all PCs have multi-target At Will powers. As long as slightly more minions are entering the fray than the PCs are killing each round, that forces the players to start judiciously using their Daily powers. I think such an encounter is often more threatening and challenging than most Solo (even with revised Solo rules and even with additional lesser NPCs helping a Solo) encounters that I have experienced.
I've also seen a lot of Striker builds that are designed for as much damage as possible versus a single target. Throwing a lot of minions at such a PC might force that player to re-evaluate the 'one trick pony damage machine' concept and learn to have a slightly more well rounded PC.
Not all classes have any multi-target potential at all. I don't think the E-Thief does, for instance.
Multiclassing? Paragon Path? I think the options are there, but the player has to work at it.
Actually, this is a WotC design flaw. All classes should have the ability to do certain things like multi-foe attacks. Granted, not everyone should be great at it, but everyone should have the option.
As an example, all classes should have the ability to do both ranged and melee attacks. It doesn't have to be a strong or even frequent ability to do both, but if one looks at martial types throughout history, every single fighting unit that I can think of has been trained in both melee and ranged combat of some sort. As an example, English Longbowmen still carried a sword and had the ability to fight hand to hand.
Some of the E classes are another case of WotC not looking at the big picture, but focusing instead on one set of specific mechanics.
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