Big combats take too much time for us.

[Vadriar]

So, my players found out about some bandits hiding in a nearby nearly ruined keep. They cleared the place. Since they took a few extended rests during it, the town who sent them sent 6 guards after them to check.

Anyway, the guards stumble into 2 returning bandit patrols (and their leader) and luckily run towards the players. They lose 2 on the way, so I had 2 sword and board and 2 crossbow guards survive and come to the keep.

Recognising them from the town, they let them in, just closing the drawbridge as the enemies appear while the ranger is raining arrows in their general direction. The melee wait inside the keep. The Dwarven fighter decides it would be cool to wait until half the enemies are across the moat and then lower the drawbridge, run up it while its falling and jump over to attack the weakly armored archers of the enemy party.

Great so far. They ran up as it aproached 45 degree angle, and he jumped off. Very cool move. The Paladin faceplanted. The Warlord decided to just ride it out.

Anyway, long story short. My point is, the players really liked the Helm's Deep feel of this encounter. I liked what they came up with to defend the keep. I want to do some more larger scale combats. They, however, complained that it took ages for them between turns. Is there any way I can speed up the meaningless combat between say a sword and board guard and a bandit? I liked the concept of the guards myself, but I think it pushed the encounter from fun into tedious.

I prefer to not use minions, because my 4-player party has a hand of destroying those in 1 or 2 rounds and leaving a 3 monster encounter.

 

[Flipguarder]

if your 4 player party can get rid of 20 or so minions in 1 round then they deserve to feel awesome.

My advice
1. use minions
2. use minions with a MAXIMUM of 2 attack options,
3. Make their attacks very damaging and more likely to hit.
4. Make all the minions go one one initiative count.

 

[IanB]

You don't actually need to dice out all the back and forth between NPC guards and NPC bad guys, keep that stuff sort of off to the side and abstract it out a bit. If your players feel the need to run over and help the guards you can always shift that stuff into regular combat.

 

[mneme]

Keys to using minions and not feeling cheated:

1. Hey, sometimes when the party offs 20 minions in a round an a half, that's a good thing! Go them!
2. Don't have all your minions enter the fray simultaneously. They exist to act as support for the non-minion characters, and there's no reason they can't be arriving in waves, so the PCs don't get a good chance to kill off all of them at once. They can also be hiding at the beginning of the fight, and only reveal themselves as needed.
3. Use minions where it's ok if they die. Go, go explosive minions.
4. Provide reasons not to use big area spells. Friendlies mixed up with the minions do a god job here, as long as the minion clearers are arcane bursts and blasts, not a fighter with come and get it/Rain of Steel or an Invoker.
5. Terrain. Minions in a maze last a lot longer than minions in a big empty plain.

That said, ++IanB. If you're going to be lining up NPC vs NPC in more than just one or two, just figure out average damage on the pairing and have them do it every turn; you don't have to play out the entire non-PC fight in extreme detail; the PCs are the stars here. (the only reason to do that much is in case the PCs decide to interefere, but it's easy enough to do. Figure out who will win and in how many turns (and how much damage they do per turn); if the PCs interefere, just use a round counter to figure out how much damage each has taken and run from there. As long as the PCs don't mess with the subfight, you're just counting rounds until someone falls over.

 

[Vadriar]

Those are good ideas. I had the Ranger do the crossbow combat rolls (since he was commanding them, and that player is very quick with dice). The Paladin did the 2 sword and boards. He's not as fast as the Ranger-player but does come close. Since they were ordering the guards around, I couldn't use any NPC vs NPC abstractions.

As for minion clearing, the Fighter has Rain of Blows, the Paladin is Dragonborn and has Enlarged Dragon Breath, the Ranger is Archer and Twin Strikes every time. Only Dragon Breath can hurt friendlies, but its low damage.

Only the Warlord isn't speedy at AoEing a bunch of minions down. The added disadvantage to the Fighter is that his Rain of Blows automatically hits so higher AC minions would not help me. He shreds them. Minions are cool but in my opinion they need to live just a bit longer.

 

[Squire James]

Experimental Minion House Rule From Someone Else on Another Thread:

Give minions Resist All value equal to their level. They probably won't go down from anything less than a standard action, but a good whack with a normal at-will should do the trick, though. The lower the level, the more like "classic minions" they are.

There is still no bookkeeping involved: if the minion takes damage higher than their level, take it off. If not, it lived somehow. In most cases, a striker or striker-like build will wipe out all minions with just their damage bonus anyway.

 

[Saeviomagy]

T
As for minion clearing, the Fighter has Rain of Blows, the Paladin is Dragonborn and has Enlarged Dragon Breath, the Ranger is Archer and Twin Strikes every time. Only Dragon Breath can hurt friendlies, but its low damage.

Rain of blows is a daily, and it can kill a max of 8 minions per round IF they're silly enough to surround him. Also note it doesn't work if he's dazed, stunned, or otherwise unable to make OAs.

Enlarged dragon breath could potentially kill 25 minions: but what are your minions doing piling up in a 5x5 square?

Two minions per round is not all that impressive, and if there are non-minion targets on the battlefield, the ranger isn't being as effective as he could be.

Effective minion use relies on the following:

Minions know they're minions. They're the cannon fodder, and they know it, and they don't really want to die.
1. They attempt to avoid being hit, even for tiny amounts of damage. Once they've seem the fighter start wildly flailing his weapons all about him, they're not going to go stand next to him.
2. They don't clump up. They know that area effect attacks exist, and try not to stand in 5x5 densely packed squares.
3. They go for the easy targets if they can. They try to gang up with more powerful foes if they can.

Minions don't fight on their own unless there's a massive amount of them.
1. Non-massive groups of minions will tend to scatter and flee combat looking for their superiors.
2. Massive groups will rapidly become non-massive, then see step 1.
3. Minions act to support non-minions. They'll block squares to prevent escapes, move to supply flanks etc.

 

[Amaroq]

You don't actually need to dice out all the back and forth between NPC guards and NPC bad guys, keep that stuff sort of off to the side and abstract it out a bit. If your players feel the need to run over and help the guards you can always shift that stuff into regular combat.

Amen.

Our DM came up with d6-shaped-dice from somewhere that have three sides: Plus, Blank, and Minus. He abstracts out most NPC-v-NPC encounters by simply rolling these. If its minion-v-minion, typically a "+" will kill a bad guy minion, and a "-" kills a good guy minion. If its real-character-v-real-character, typically a "+" damages a bad guy some arbitrary amount, and a "-" damages a good guy some arbitrary amount.

Alternately, you can simply focus on the player characters, and allow that as they do well, that forces the off-to-the-side encounter to follow the same general plot as the PC's encounter.

You may also find it worthwhile to run the PC's actions as a scene within a major encounter: in my games, I plot those kind of combats out as "this is what happens if the PC's do nothing."

For example, enemy minions of uncountable numbers are storming the keep. Every round that passes by, the bad guys make progress: you can describe the battering ram breaking the gate, the orcs scaling the walls, etc. If, say, eight rounds have passed, the gates have broken open and the bad guys are flowing in through them.

The PC's can turn the tide by killing off the bad-guy-leaders (think, killing the king and his elite bodyguards), which causes the enemy to break and run, or causes the defenders to rally.

Particularly clever PC actions can stymie progress: e.g., if the gates break open and the Fighter goes and jumps to stand there, maybe he's battling minions .. but he's preventing them from making another round of progress into the interior.

The key here is to have milestones where worse and worse things happen:

In Round 1, the defenders are doing well but the orcs on the south side get ladders up.

In Round 2, Orc foot soldiers gain a foothold on the south wall.

The battering ram arrives in Round 3.

On the South wall, a favored NPC falls, at Round 4.

More seige towers arrive for the north wall in Round 5. The orcs have captured the south wall, and are beginning to fire arrows down.

The orcs breach the gates in Round 6.

In Round 7, the orcs have taken the North wall, and the king and his men are hard-pressed on the steps of the main keep by the orcs who have breached the gates.

The king dies in Round 8, and the good guys break and run on all fronts. Also, another group that has snuck around the backside manages to climb over the back wall.

In Round 9, the main keep catches fire.

By Round 10, the orcs have reached the helpless civilians and are slaughtering them.

The PC's actions can slow, delay, or stop those actions entirely - for example, investing time on the south wall might save the favored NPC. Getting to the king's side in round 6 or 7 can save him, and prevent the good guys from breaking and running. A leader with sufficiently high Diplomacy or Intimidate can rally the troops after they break.

And, of course, the PC's can win the encounter outright by stopping the enemy leader - the earlier that they do so, the less permanent damage has been done that needs to be fixed.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I don't know if this has ever been suggested, but...

Let's say you have a big scene with 30 or 40 minions. Could you just rule that only a fraction of them take an action? The others are all petrified by the battle (raw recruits) or find that in the milling throng they can't figure out what to do, or they just do something so ineffective that it's not worth showing.

So maybe you randomly pick 1 out of every 4 or 5 or 8 (or whatever) minions, and amp up their attacks in some way -- higher attack and damage for those who DO act. (Granted, this will change the relative effectiveness of resistance a bit.)

Once the minions get thinned down to manageable numbers, you go back to handling them the normal way.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Heh, in our session Saturday before last, we had a swarm of enemies come at us and I was fortunate enough to get a high initiative roll (I usually suck vacuum hard at my initiative rolls).

My Avenger has Radiant Servant for the PP, and I immediately dropped Solar Wrath. I took out 7 of 8 minions on my first turn of the first round. DM was flummoxed. He quickly got over it though, next fight, against a Hydra and 8 super large "Flies", he had them hold in a circle covering all the compass points, then come in one at a time and *explode* burst 3 when they got so close - no chance to take them out. Evil DM... lol