At what point do players know they're fighting Minions?

[DracoSuave]

From the point of view of the threatened. We were talking about the actual threat as known by the omniscient observer (aka us players/DMs knowing their actual game stats).

If talking purely from the incomplete point of view of the threatened PCs, than the statement becomes untrue and a minion is not always less threatening.

However fallacious the argument 'A minion's threat to a character can always be perceived' is, understand that 'A minion's threat to a character can never be perceived' is equally as fallacious and that therefore, neither of those two outcomes are necessarily 'correct' in the context of what is right to do.

 

[KarinsDad]

My response is to ask you "why assume a mystery would be more entertaining or tactically challenging?".

Oh, I don't know. Maybe because knowing all kinds of information about one's opponents so that your tactical decision making is easy, is boring. How many players go "Oh Crap!" when hit by a breath weapon when they know the foe has it as compared to when they get surprised by that in combat? Which is more interesting and entertaining? In both cases, the PC got hit by the attack. In one case, it was a surprise and more fun for the entire group. In the other case, it's just another attack because the players know ahead of time that it's coming.

Discovering things and overcoming challenges (including the challenge of discovering things about your foes) is generally more interesting than the DM just blurting it all out in round one.


Do you find placing hidden traps in the encounter more or less interesting and entertaining than having traps lying around with the word "trap" on them.


I really think this concept of the player being heavily informed is a type of "WotC entitlement brainwashing". Somewhere along the line, someone there discovered that some players feel entitled to all kinds of things, so they wrote the rules and guidelines that way in order to sell more product.

This is an excellent marketing ploy to keep players happy and wanting more, but it's not how the game should necessarily work. The PCs should not be entitled, the PCs should earn what they gain. Blurting most of the info about foes out (which is no different than auto-identifying items during a short rest) has become the new mantra of "well, that's how it should be played". A good portion of the D&D gaming community has bought into this hook, line, and sinker.

It's like someone mentioned earlier in this thread. It's like candy. Keep handing out more and more candy to the players and they feel like they are entitled to candy every time.

An interesting anecdote to this. I had a special adventure for one of my players. She was trying to find a minor relic for her goddess and the actual side adventure for it consisted of 2 n+2 encounters and 1 n+4 encounter. I had no treasure parcels in the first two encounters, but had 4 treasure parcels in the final encounter. After the second encounter, one of the players said "Hey, no treasure for either of these fights. What's up with that?". Players are so used to acquiring treasure parcels most encounters that two in a row without was jarring enough for the player to comment on it. Now, he was probably kidding, but they do feel entitled to it anymore.

A DM can always obscure the minion status of an opponent, forcing players to discover their minion-ness through trial-and-error. Or through mechanism like a skill check. But neither of those result in particularly deep or clever play.

It's not the point to discover minion-ness. It will happen eventually, but that is not necessarily the goal.

The goal is to defeat the opponents.

Discovering minion-ness is no different than discovering elite-ness, or vulnerabilities or special attacks or anything else about the foe.

On the other hand, a well-designed encounter employing 'transparent' minions presents the player with more interesting tactical choices, ie clear the minions or go after the 'stronger' targets, questions which depend more on the current battlefield situation, change over time, and are therefore more complex.

Interesting? You mean like chess where you know which pieces are the pawns?

How is giving that information out interesting in any way?

It's actually less complex to give out minion status and makes the tactical choices a lot easier.

Your logic is backwards here. The Fighter doesn't make a tactical choice with regard to minions, he makes a no brainer choice. If he has a burst one power than can defeat a bunch of minions and he has the opportunity, he typically uses it. If he doesn't, he attacks a non-minion so that he doesn't waste damage.

That's like saying that paying taxes is a choice. Yes, it is a choice to either pay taxes or go to jail, but the choice is already made for 99% of people. They don't really make a choice, they just auto-select the proper choice.

Sorry, but transparent minionness results in fewer and less interesting tactical choices. The choices are limited by definition.

In the "hidden minion" game, the main tactical consideration w/r/t Minions is "don't accidentally waste a Daily on one". You could argue more complex tactical decisions depend on the ability to distinguish Minions from non-Minions. Sometimes giving the players more information rather than less makes for more tactically-rich encounters.

Most people typically wouldn't waste a daily on standards or elites either. The threat has to be perceived as serious before dailies are typically used. By telling the players minion status, you tell them "Oh yeah, there are 15 foes here, but it's not really a threat. Don't bother using your Dailies".

The DM for all intents and purposes auto-limits the choices of the players.

When the players do not know, they have to feel their way through the minefield and make their own choices including choices to do actions that may or may not find out if any of the foes are minions.

I'm not saying disguising minion status doesn't have its place. But to say it automatically adds some sort of beneficial mystery to the game is too simple.

It adds more of a mystery than just blurting minion status out.

 

[DracoSuave]

some stuff about the mystery being valuable.

Okay... so... some mystery in a campaign is good.

But... this is the important part...

Is the status of minions and its discovery such a thing that discovering its mystery is more enjoyable than knowing and planning around it from the get go?

Is the reveal 'Look! Something died in one hit!' such an awesome discovery and surprise that keeping it mysterious by default is interesting? Or... does the reveal lead to a 'Oh, they're just minions' moment?


Mystery is only worth keeping when what you are hiding is actually worth a bother.


By converse, would it not be more valuable to -normally- reveal minions as such, and occasionally disguise a stronger monster -as- a minion? That way the surprise isn't 'Oh, it's just a minion' but 'Oh god, that group of minions has an elite! DOH!'.

THAT is keeping mystery that players will care about. But if you keep everything hidden, you've denied yourself that ability from the get go.

Besides, when you bust out more figs than players, they're gonna know there's minions anyways. Discovering them is hardly a shocking moment in D&D history.


Regardling the use of dailies:

If you have 12 kobold minions on the table, and those models just happen to be between you and a blue dragon... well... let's just say that you're not going 'Well, don't need the dailies this encounter!'

Of course, some encounters being naturally easier than others, why is the idea that players can make informed decisions about when to use or not use dailies a bad thing?

I mean, in the end... is the mystery of 'Is that a minion?' fun for the players? Or is it just so the DM can go 'Gotcha!' when the player pisses away a daily on a one-hit-wonder?

Cause if it's the latter, it's not 'mystery.' It's the DM playing a game against the players that the DM cannot lose at... catching players making mistakes they could not possibly know to avoid. That's not mystery. Mysteries are to be solved. That's douchebaggery.

 

[KarinsDad]

However fallacious the argument 'A minion's threat to a character can always be perceived' is, understand that 'A minion's threat to a character can never be perceived' is equally as fallacious and that therefore, neither of those two outcomes are necessarily 'correct' in the context of what is right to do.

Interesting thought you pose here. Let me ask:

Can how threatening a foe is automatically be perceived?

If the PCs are faced by an n level encounter, should the DM describe the foes as not so threatening? If the PCs are faced by an n+5 level encounter, should the DM describe the foes as super threatening?

 

[DracoSuave]

Interesting thought you pose here. Let me ask:

Can how threatening a foe is automatically be perceived?

If the PCs are faced by an n level encounter, should the DM describe the foes as not so threatening? If the PCs are faced by an n+5 level encounter, should the DM describe the foes as super threatening?

I have no idea what you're rebutting here.

If you're trying to make the point that being automatically able to tell if a foe is a threat is not a good thing, I'd agree with you.

Players should not have 100% information in that regard.

However, if you're using that as the basis of a point that players should -never- be able to tell if a foe is a threat or not, I'd strongly disagree with you.

Players should not have 0% information in that regard.

So, given those two extremes, one can then conclude that sometimes players should know, and sometimes they should not know.

This is why my stance is 'Most of the time, players should identify minions easily.' Not even automatically, but -easily-. And not 'I hit it, it dies' easily.

The reason is that the information you DO conceal has to be valuable in its revelation. Minion-status is so mediocre a thing to hide that bothering to do so serves no real purpose. Therefore, consistantly revealing it is a good matter of course. When it is not revealed, that should be a -special- encounter, the exception, not the rule.



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Here is an example of this in practice:

You're going up against a team of human enemies. You make your monster knowledge check, and you get a decent roll.

1) You know the rabble have a basic attack and naff all else, and you know the others have more attacks, or basic attacks that mark. You also have played this game once before, so you know minions exist. You're not stupid. Figure out which the minions are.

2) As well, you know a bit about the 'monster' and their culture. So, you get told this is an organized mercenary unit called 'The Verdant Axe.' The enlisted men and officers are differentiated by the different hats they wear. You look. See different hats. And all the enlisted men are the ones with just the basic attack... hmmmm...

Seriously, you need to give -characters- and -players- more credit.

 

[Jhaelen]

I would never explicitly point out which enemies are minions and which aren't.

However, sometimes it will be obvious because of the way I'm describing them (e.g. inferior equipment) and sometimes there's no way to find out (a zombie brute hiding in a mob of zombie minions) except maybe with a good knowledge roll.

Luckily, I almost have no duplicate minis, so that's not something that gives away unintended clues.

 

[KarinsDad]

So, given those two extremes, one can then conclude that sometimes players should know, and sometimes they should not know.

This is why my stance is 'Most of the time, players should identify minions easily.'

So, one extreme is bad and the other extreme is good. Gotcha.


What's your take on easily identifying Elites? Controllers? Brutes? Lurkers? AC? Fort? Reflex?

I don't quite get what people think is so important or special about minions that the DM should throw it out most if not all of the time. It's a foe with a special game mechanic. Err, so?

 

[keterys]

Only that it has been specifically said to make it easy to figure out what is minions, KD. Much like it has been said to make it easy to figure out that a monster has an aura around it. Avoid "gotcha" moments that are antagonistic to the players.

Unless, of course, they want them that way. Then an experienced DM with a willing party can go against the DMG advice.

As for the rest - you actually should make it fairly easy to figure out a lot of that stuff. The elite guy should look more impressive than the others and shrug off attacks as if they meant less to him. A creature with an impressive AC should have more notable armor, and you should let players know when they're missing by a bunch to indicate it's really high. Faster creatures should be described as such, and tougher creatures as well. A reasonable level of knowledge skills gives you what creatures are and their power types, so knowing that a monster can go invisible or has lots of area attacks tells you a lot of how it fights... Not to exact numbers, certainly, but enough that the PCs can make tactical decisions with the use of their powers.

'He seems really slippery and fast, I'm going to see if I can knock him down with this Fort attack' kinda thought process. Rather than 'Umm, it's kinda evil looking and bites. Guess I'll use at-wills for a couple rounds til we see what sticks.'

Unless, of course, the group likes the exploratory part. Then it's fine to go that way. Again, there is no badwrongfun. As long as the group (and not just the DM) enjoys it that way, and you're cool with combats taking a little bit longer.

 

[Artoomis]

One other factor...

One other factor is the large number of conditional powers.

4e, more than ever before, assume players will know a lot about what they are fighting. indeed, this is critical for many powers that are conditional upon one thing or another - if a power, for example, is different if used against minions then if the player does not know they are minions how can they know to use that power??

That's not to say one always tells the players everything, but its another factor in knowing what to say, what not to say, and when to give clues.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Take a look at the picture of the assembled orcs in MM1, the minion orc looks in no way less healthy, equipped, whatever than any of his non-minion brethren. Without the text below the picture it would be pure guessing to tell them apart.

Did it never occur to you that maybe that was unintentional?

Let's say there's some artwork showing two orcs, both armed with greatswords. But, in their statblock, one is armed with a greatsword, and one is armed with a longspear.

Does the artwork take precedence over the mechanics? Of course not. Should you describe them both as using greatswords, even though one of them is actually using a longspear? Well, that depends. Are you going to give the longspear-wielder the benefit of reach? If so, should you not describe the longspear-wielder as wielding a longspear (or at least, if you're still going with the sword description) describe him as somehow being able to reach further? Or would you describe it as a greatsword, only to jump- AHA!- and attack an unknowing PC at range, even though said PC may have used different tactics if he knew the enemy had a reach weapon?

Obviously, something such as what weapon an enemy is using should be apparent, and I think it's no stretch of the imagination to convey to the players that certain enemies' weapons look more deadly than others (a pointy stick has got to be less deadly than a masterwork, glowing greataxe). And yet, when an enemy's stats (not their equipment) make them woefully sub-par compared to another enemy, somehow the players have no way of knowing that without proverbially getting hit with an invisible longspear?

But, I guess the artwork describes them as having greatswords, so unless a player has read the module, there's no way he can learn that one is in fact a longspear. Amirite?

Look, in my opinion, if the only challenge of an encounter comes from information being intentionally hidden from the players, then that is a poor encounter.