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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mneme" data-source="post: 5164865" data-attributes="member: 59248">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.</blockquote>

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