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

[DandD]

The Devil Legion Minion PDF shows an advancement of those little evil rascals.

At level 6, they're grunts. Five levels later, and they're hellguards. Another five levels, and they become veterans. And with another five levels, they're finally legionnaires, the toughest of all devil legions at level 21 (but still minion-status).
Also, the rules from the DM-excerpt about how to improve monster stats are applied. Every higher rank of legion devil also gets +5 in AC, Fort, Will and Refl. The attack goes up by 5. The damage on the other hand goes up by 1 point for every new rank.

I guess minions might always come up in +5-level steps.

I do wonder however if there might be any other normal legion devil.

Oh, and food for the alignment threads: The legion devils are listed as only Evil, not Lawful Evil. That's definite proof that Lawful and Neutral Evil don't exist in the books anymore.

 

[VBMEW-01]

A great change in making them survive a miss. My sister's used her character's daily on a minion the other day (yeah, I know that one sounds odd but she didn't know it was a minion ) and when she missed it died. I guess in retrospect it shouldn't have, but I'm kinda glad it worked out that way because we had a near TPK on our hands there (she had 3 hp and the rest were downed)

 

[Family]

I wonder what poor sap had to stay in the office and update the site on a sunday evening?

I did, I had to bypass security and repel from the air ducts but I think it was worth it.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I can just imagine a line of Legion Devils marching forward then stopping and teleporting. Each of them teleporting around the party to form a reverse box-formation. Each would be beside another Devil so they would still have the Squad Defense while closing in.

 

[jeffhartsell]

Minions are exactly what we have been trying to model in 3e without much success. Basically giving minimum HP to the grunts but having to give them high HD to make their attacks meaningful. Plus then you have to deal with the feats, powers, etc of leveling them up.

Minions are so much better.

Yahtzee!

 

[Rechan]

I did, I had to bypass security and repel from the air ducts but I think it was worth it.

Fool! You should have pilfered a PHB while you were at it!

Also. HAVE AT THEE, Fallen Seraph's thread!

 

[LordArchaon]

Excellent yes, but I'm wondering if the wonderful vampire spawn minions with 10 Hp and regeneration were actually reduced to standard 1 hp or kept as wonderful as they were...

EDIT: I think I cracked the "natural AC", they actually have half their level as natural armor bonus to AC. 10+Dex mod(full)+5(plate)+1/2 level = Legion Devil minion's AC. And it's actually rounded up.

 

[keterys]

Seems pretty decent. The higher level ones do slightly less damage than I expected.

It's interesting that it's always Level + 5 attack, Level + 16 AC, Level + 12 Fort, Level +11 Reflex/Will, but we still get different stat blocks for each.

It's also cool that we do get a full range of levels for them to be over. And I'm glad that the legion devil legionaires can stand next to a pit fiend without dying, at least conceptually

 

[DandD]

Excellent yes, but I'm wondering if the wonderful vampire spawn minions with 10 Hp and regeneration were actually reduced to standard 1 hp or kept as wonderful as they were...

They probably got toned down to 1 hp without regenerative powers, I guess. Their stat cards back then were written for older iterations of the 4th edition rules that got changed later in the progress, I guess.

 

[ShockMeSane]

As I suspected--it's a plot device and not something a monster "has always been." I don't know why that was ever an argument

Some people are just born to argue I suppose. I'm glad they put that note in the rules though, as it gives one less meaningless thing to hear people whine about.