Excerpt: Minions. Go forth mine minions! Bring havoc with your 1 hp [merged]

[FadedC]

As mentioned in the article, most monsters are out when subjected to 6-8 basic attacks. Encounter and Daily attacks are gnerally multiples of said basic attack. For simplicity, lets say an encounter power is 2xbasic attack and a daily is 3.

You're fighting a monster that has a Bloody threshold (what should we call monsters that "trigger" at bloody?").

Let's say it take 6 basic "hits" to take out the monster.
If you open with an encounter power and then follow up with at-will attacks, you're looking at the following
Round 1: Encounter = 2hits
Round 2 : At-will, Monster become bloody.
Rounds 3-5, you're fighting a much tougher creature as you'll need 3 more rounds to put the monster down.

If you open with at-will attack until the monster is bloody, you get the following,
Round 1-3: At-will, monster become bloody.
Round 4: Encounter = 2 hits
Round 5: At will knocks out monster

So instead of taking on a monster for 3 rounds when its super-strong, you only fight it for one round. Similarly the same thing even applies to the angel of valor. Your chance of HITTING with your encounter/daily power actually goes UP by 10% when it becomes bloody.

Thus, it makes more sense to open with at-will until bloody THEN go to town with the big guns. Which is why I don't think the *problem* of PCs using dailies on minions will actually occur at least after people get experience with the system.

Well I'm not entirely sure about that.....we haven't seen all that many monsters who become notably more powerful when they are bloodied. It seems more common for them to unleash some one shot ability on you. Some monsters even become weaker when you bloody them like the angels, and characters and races have abilities that can only be used on a bloodied opponent meaning you might want to try to bloody them as soon as possible.

 

[frankthedm]

I did, however, feel that the legion devils were... too much the same. I don't think the same monster should span the whole level range from mid-Heroic to low-Epic, without at least a general explanation for what the difference is between a Grunt and a Legionnaire. It has a bit of the treadmill feel--that sense that when you're level 1, the city guards are all 1st-level warriors, but when you're level 20, suddenly they've all turned into 18th-level fighters.

That is a pet peeve of mine, but it does not have to happen. Since 4e battles are expressly built with an XP budget, packs of lower level critters and armies of humanoids are far easier to use. ALso since PC AC is a LOT more controlled in 4e, lower level foes still have a chance to hit and thus matter.

Instead of deploying four Legion Devil Legionnaires, a DM could instead deploy two Legionnaires each with a dozen grunts at their disposal. I love the idea, but not everyone has the minis to do this. Nor is every DM patient enough to roll attacks with such a low chance of hitting.

 

[Blackeagle]

Which is why I don't think the *problem* of PCs using dailies on minions will actually occur at least after people get experience with the system.

Well, that depends how common monsters that hulk out when bloodied are.

 

[AllisterH]

Well, that depends how common monsters that hulk out when bloodied are.

Well, it's not just the monsters that get stronger, but also the monsters that get WEAKER.

Take the Angel of Valor. Until it is bloodied, opponents have a -2 to attack it. When would you rather use your encounter power? Pre or post-bloodied?

Keep in mind that there's also the tiefling which actually wants to get creatures bloodied but even for the tiefling, I wouldn't be surprised that using your encounter power AFTER the creature is bloodied works better with the tiefling's racial abilities.

 

[Blackeagle]

Take the Angel of Valor. Until it is bloodied, opponents have a -2 to attack it. When would you rather use your encounter power? Pre or post-bloodied?

Well, that depends on the encounter power. I'm sure there are some that don't provide (much) increased damage but increase your attack odds (basically an encounter version of the Ranger's Careful Attack). That would be a great power to use before the angel is bloodied.

But in any case, my broader point is there's no way to tell untell we see the MM (and even after we see the MM it's really going to depend on what monsters a DM actually puts in his campaign). So debating this now is kind of pointless. But hey, that's what the internet's for, right?

 

[TeutonicBerserker]

Yeah, Cleave+Minions makes me think of a character shouting "I am Cleave McCleaverson, Minion Killer Extraordinaire!" before rushing into a crowd and laying some serious waste.

Also, we shouldn't be asking whether the player knows if that goblin is a minion or not. The goblin should be asking himself whether or not it is a minion! Or maybe I'll have my first group roll up characters and then have them enter combat for the first time only to find out they were only minions. Maybe I'll even hint, "the enemy wizard attacks, but misses." "Damn, that power does half damage on a miss...how much do we take" "...no... you don't take any..."

I think that one of the problems with 3e and now 4e is that the designers have taken alot of the metagame design and brought it into the parlance of the players. Templates are a great tool for DM's to design a new monster, and the mook rules have aolot going for them as well, but this stuff should be kept behind the screen.

 

[hong]

That is a pet peeve of mine, but it does not have to happen. Since 4e battles are expressly built with an XP budget, packs of lower level critters and armies of humanoids are far easier to use. ALso since PC AC is a LOT more controlled in 4e, lower level foes still have a chance to hit and thus matter.

Instead of deploying four Legion Devil Legionnaires, a DM could instead deploy two Legionnaires each with a dozen grunts at their disposal. I love the idea, but not everyone has the minis to do this. Nor is every DM patient enough to roll attacks with such a low chance of hitting.

I'm planning to do that!

 

[Blackeagle]

Templates are a great tool for DM's to design a new monster, and the mook rules have aolot going for them as well, but this stuff should be kept behind the screen.

I think salting a crowd of minions with a couple of base monsters will be pretty common.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

Hmm, nice concept. But, attacks and powers that deal damage to many monsters at once, like i suppose, a basic fireball, will wipe out many or most or all minions from the battlefield in one hit, no?

That's not my reading of it (and please somebody correct me if I'm wrong). A minion doesn't automatically die if it takes damage -- it automatically dies on a successful hit. Even though a fireball might do half damage on a miss to a regular creature, that's still a miss, so the minion doesn't die. Thus any minion that the caster fails to hit with the fireball lives. Still, wide area, low damage effects (such as the Dragonborn breath with the expanded AoF feat) are going to be very popular with players as minion exterminators, I expect.

 

[Rowsdower]

Two things, if I may:

1) we'll have ways of recovering spent dailies. So it won't be that big a deal.

2)Noticed that in the excerpt they mentioned only giving minions one hp because there were situations the minions could survive taking small amounts of damage. What kind of situations I wonder, and will these situations play for other monster types; elites and solos? A level 21 minion with (oh, say) 10 hp could survive a hit from a level 21 player under the right conditions?

Anyway, already have big plans for minions. Big, sinister, evil plans. Mwuahahaha!