DMG2 updated monster creation rules

I know that I tend to do it Keterys's way - okay, there attacking a hobgoblin patrol, and I want it to be a +2 encounter... okay, that's x XP. I want a couple of soldiers, a leader, an archer, some minions... okay, now I have y xp left over - that lets me add another minion (or I'm z xp over - let me subtract a minion).

That said, when I purposefully buy minions, I tend to buy them in sets of 4, as that makes the math easier, and really only deviate from that to add/reduce points to fit my XP budget - for one, I don't like how the MMs round minion XP values, and buying them in groups of 4 allows me to ignore the XP value in the MM.

And to address Abdul's point, I'm not firmly wedded to my XP budget, but do like to stay generally around that point level - if I'm over or short, I'll typically think about whether the encounter would suffer or improve from having an extra monster (typically a minion), and adjust accordingly.

One reason its important to me is that whenever I plan an encounter, I need to do it for 3, 4 or 5 persons, as I have a couple of players with a little one and I never know if both, one or neither of them will be attending - so, whenever I do an encounter, I do it for 4 players, then adjust that for 3 and 5 (so, subtract monster y for 3 players, add monster x for 5). I find that if I do this when I'm doing my planning its not really any extra work, and by sticking to my XP budget, it helps ensure that the encounter will be of appropriate difficulty regardless of the number of players.

So, when my adventure hits paragon (which will be a bit, as we are on hiatus and they only just hit level 6), I guess I'll just do them in groups of 5 instead of sixes - not decided whether for the ones I add/subtract whether I will modify their XP values - probably, as the math is pretty easy and I'll be sitting there with a calculator anyway.
 
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I am _positive_ there are DMs that go 'Level 13 party, so a level 14 encounter would be good, so that's 5000 xp. Well, I know I want the cyclops chief and his hellhound, and how about that shaman. And some minions, lessee, 1200 xp left so I guess that's 6 of them' rather than the, what, 7.5 they'd be under the new math? ;)

And if you use 7 or 8 of them its going to do what to the encounter level? Raise it by 1/10th of a level? I mean really, its below the radar. I say total the XP and award the exact XP, sure, but if someone is obsessing over their encounter being +/- 2% of the budget, they need a new hobby (accounting?). A level N encounter is roughly X experience points, if it sums up between halfway of N-1 and halfway of N+1 then its N by gosh. The system isn't exact and really is by no means exact at all when you consider variations in the party you'll be running the encounter against vs some generic idealization of level N party capability. On top of that you've got terrain and other factors that 4e doesn't even PRETEND to factor into encounter difficulty in any mathematical way.

An encounter give or take a couple of minions is simply the same difficulty encounter within the resolution of the encounter generation system. That's why DMG2 just says "Oh, go ahead and throw in a couple more minions at high level" because it could make things more interesting but it is highly unlikely to be a significant difference in the grand scheme of things.
 

Yep. And when it's epic and they put in 12 minions, and it should be _18_ then it's a difference of a level and a half to the combat.

Nevermind that even then it should probably be 24-30 minions to be worth that xp ;)
 

Personally I design all encounters in Excel so that it totals up the xp for me, when using minions I recalculate their individual XP value using my own system so that I have already taken into account "how many are worth a standard creature".

As for encounter balance I generally create all the encounters for an adventure at the same time so that I can estimate how many encounters the players will run in an adventuring day, and fine tune level progression. Using an Excel spreadsheet I also have a permanent record of all the encounters for my campaign.

As for balance it is also worth noting that I personally create 99% of the creatures my group are fighting so that probably has an effect on the overall balance because what I consider a standard creature (or standard minion) to be might be slightly different to what the MM's consider a standard creature to be.
 

With three players I found minions to be creditable threats in almost every encounter. They just didn't have the numbers to easily expend attacks to wipe 'em out unless the cleric could hit a group of 'em all at once (no wizard back then).

Now I've got 6, with a wizard, a hybred warlock-wizard and the same cleric (but with many more AoE attacks). And when I use minions I throw waves at them, really huge numbers. I think part of it is just the player action economy: my theory is that the number minions you want depends on both the level AND the number of PCs.

Of course, it's been a while since I used minions that didn't have an aura, or stack some sort of nasty debuff, or explode when they die, or could be eaten by the big bad to reduce the damage from attack. Better minions helps a lot.
 

There's a small problem with reducing XP for Paragon/Epic minions to correspond to the 5 minions= 1 normal monster at Paragon, or 6 normal monster at Epic, in that the transitions between tiers won't match up evenly. If you have 10th level PCs, you shouldn't be reducing the XP on 11th level minions- by 25%- then they'll be worth almost the same experience points as 10th level minions!

If you want to use an abrupt shift in the value of minions, it should be when the players hit a new tier, because the ease with which players kill minions reflects their new abilities. However, this isn't how the XP system works.

One solution would be to linearize the XP values for minions at levels 9-12 and 19-22 so that this doesn't occur and you end up on the 5 minions=1 normal monster at Paragon and 6 minions=1 normal monster at Epic track.
 

Yep. And when it's epic and they put in 12 minions, and it should be _18_ then it's a difference of a level and a half to the combat.

Nevermind that even then it should probably be 24-30 minions to be worth that xp ;)

Yeah, well, if you're making encounters that are ALL minions basically then you've diverged so far away from the envisaged encounter design parameters that all bets are off. It isn't that hard to devise ridiculous encounters that obviously won't work. I don't have to use minions or twiddle with any of the parameters of the system at all to do that. So what exactly whas your point? ;)
 

Yeah, well, if you're making encounters that are ALL minions basically then you've diverged so far away from the envisaged encounter design parameters that all bets are off. It isn't that hard to devise ridiculous encounters that obviously won't work. I don't have to use minions or twiddle with any of the parameters of the system at all to do that. So what exactly whas your point? ;)

In what way is an encounter that is made up of only minions breaking the "envisioned encounter design parameters"?

I can see encounters comprising of only minions being exciting and fun, especially as an encounter that is part of a 3 to 5 encounter a day set up.

A simple and probably quite common example of this would be the classic waves of undead set up:
encounter 1: zombie horde encounter (loads of minions)
encounter 2: an elite and some standard creatures
encounter 3: another zombie horde
encounter 4: a solo within further minion support arriving during the encounter.
 

In what way is an encounter that is made up of only minions breaking the "envisioned encounter design parameters"?

I can see encounters comprising of only minions being exciting and fun, especially as an encounter that is part of a 3 to 5 encounter a day set up.

A simple and probably quite common example of this would be the classic waves of undead set up:
encounter 1: zombie horde encounter (loads of minions)
encounter 2: an elite and some standard creatures
encounter 3: another zombie horde
encounter 4: a solo within further minion support arriving during the encounter.

I don't see anywhere in the encounter design section of the DMG anything even faintly resembling an encounter template made up of nothing but minions. It isn't a type of encounter that is advertised as being balanceable by the encounter design system.

In your examples encounter 1 and 3 are throw-aways that exist for dramatic effect. They could be challenging or not of course depending on how big the "horde" is, but the XP system isn't going to balance them well. I wouldn't count on those encounters doing much and if I wanted them to have an impact I'd probably make them initial waves followed immediately by encounter 2 and 4.
 

If you have 10th level PCs, you shouldn't be reducing the XP on 11th level minions- by 25%- then they'll be worth almost the same experience points as 10th level minions!

My question is how much is almost? If 11th level minions are only worth a little more XP than 10th level ones I don't have a big problem with that. As people have noted, this is around the point where minions start being less effective.

I wouldn't be too worried that a 10th level party gets to face one or two more 11th level minions, it shouldn't cause too much of a problem.

I've seen a lot of minion houserules and so far I think the easiest solution is to go for the xp budget. At epic 4 minions per monster is not in the same ballgame of difficulty...but 8 might be....or even 12....whatever it takes. WOTC seems to be taken down the infinite autodamage combos (poor warlock), and even a wizard with massive area attacks is going to miss a few minions out of 12.


Also, for those who haven't tried it, use aid another with minions. You'll be amazed how much stronger they seem when they are giving an elite monster a +8 to attack almost automatically!
 

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