Creating Minions

[JVisgaitis]

I don't have my books on me and the D&D Compendium isn't turning up anything. I know they only get 1 hp and they have fixed damage, but I don't recall seeing guidelines for making new ones. Are there guidelines for creating minions somewhere?

 

[Staffan]

No.

 

[James McMurray]

They tend to do the same damage and have the same attack bonus of an equally-leveled brute. The guidelines are just that though, so even brutes aren't going to be uniform across the board.

When I've wanted new minions I've grabbed another type of minion at that same level and just changed the flavor text (and maybe an ability if they had resistance or immunity). If I'm changing the melee attack to ranged I drop the damage by 1/4 in order to make up for the fact that they'll be able to get a lot more attacks off than they would if they had to charge into the fighter's reach. That plus the level adjustment guidelines has worked well.

 

[frankthedm]

Decrepit skeleton works well for reskinning.

 

[Griogre]

They tend to do the same damage and have the same attack bonus of an equally-leveled brute. The guidelines are just that though, so even brutes aren't going to be uniform across the board.

I would say soldier instead of brute actually, a brute's defenses other than fort are a little low. They are set to be hit point monsters with crappy defenses vs. the minion who is suppose to be "average" defenses. One thing I do is if I can't find a soldier of about the right level is just level or delevel a similar minion for Defenses. I don't think I would do this for more than about 2 levels.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Minions I've made I give about skirmisher defenses and attack.
I make the damage within one or two points of 5+1 per 5 levels.

 

[Griogre]

Out of curiosity, why pick a Skirmisher? Won't it have a higher Ref defense than would be average? I'm just curious on your logic. There is really enough "slop" on defenses because of stats at heroic levels it probably doesn't really matter what you role you pick to model your minion on, but I wonder at the upper levels (ignoring general minion problems at the upper levels).

 

[Henry]

My and others' analysis of Minions turns up these general traits:

--Minions seem to be most likely made from Brutes, Soldiers, and Skirmishers as the base creature;
--Their damage is usually equal to the minimum normal damage of their type (if a "soldier" minion would have 1d10+4 damage from page 185, then their damage is 5; if their damage is 2d6+7, then 9 damage, etc.);
--Their hit point score is 1.

There are some variations in some minions, especially for damage, but I chalk that up to the idea that the Monster Manual was being written at the same time as development on the rules was occurring, and some variations slipped through.

There are no hard and fast rules yet, but those three tenets seem to make minions well within the ballpark of all known minions.