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

[hong]

I think the concept of minions is going to quickly be made irrelevant as PCs keep an area effect damage spell/power (however low level) in reserve for the end encounter.

Presto! All minions removed from the board.

Watch how quickly PCs adapt to counter the concept of minions...

This is undoubtedly the exact reason for the "minions take no damage from a miss" rule.

 

[DandD]

I think the concept of minions is going to quickly be made irrelevant as PCs keep an area effect damage spell/power (however low level) in reserve for the end encounter.

Presto! All minions removed from the board.

Watch how quickly PCs adapt to counter the concept of minions...

Ehrm, yes? Isn't that intended? That the players come up with smart tactical choices and decisions to remove the annoying minions as fast as possible? To use their area-effect powers (and hopefully hit) them so that they go down fast?

 

[Wormwood]

You could change "minions die from a hit that does 1+ hp" to "minions die from a hit that does X+ hp", where X increases with level. That way a kobold is like straw, but a legion devil could withstand lots of little hits.

Until this article, I'd suspected that minions would have something like 1hp/level (not tracked, of course).

 

[Saragon]

Quite fond of minions, actually

My current DM loves mooks in our 3.5 game. Only one problem -- with 3.5's rules, the typical "Adventurers vs. horde of weak but dangerous creatures" fight takes forever. For mooks to be at all interesting, they have to have several Hit Dice, and that means enough HP to quite possibly NOT drop in one hit. On the other hand, they can't actually hit us except on a natural 20 if they're weak enough to count as "mooks", so we tend to ignore them. Should the DM increase their strength enough to actually threaten us, then they have enough HP to absorb several hits and are no longer mooks. See the problem? A single battle like this can take all night.

The "minions" idea in 4e is unquestionably one of my favorite refinements from 3.x. I know some of you may have done something like this before as DMs, but we haven't, and it's very good to have it written out for us. I know it'll speed up our DM's planning a lot, and that alone is worth it.

Not sure why there was a problem bringing up the Helm's Deep scene from The Two Towers, because that's a scene that has informed fantasy tropes pretty much since the book's publication. It's something players want to do, and something DMs want to throw at players, because it's such a classic idea. (Forget Helm's Deep, actually -- this goes back to the Battle of Thermopylae.) That it's a naturally cinematic trope doesn't reduce its value.

 

[Cadfan]

This is undoubtedly the exact reason for the "minions take no damage from a miss" rule.

Its even more thorough than that. Most area of effects already do no damage on a miss.

 

[hong]

Its even more thorough than that. Most area of effects already do no damage on a miss.

If fireball doesn't do half damage on a miss, I'll be shocked. Shocked, I say!

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I think the concept of minions is going to quickly be made irrelevant as PCs keep an area effect damage spell/power (however low level) in reserve for the end encounter.

Presto! All minions removed from the board.

Watch how quickly PCs adapt to counter the concept of minions...

... if the AOE hits every minion. Since one has to roll an attack roll for each creature in the effect, that should make that an unlikely outcome. Combine this with dynamic encounter areas, and I doubt we're going to see all minions swallowed up in a single fireball.

 

[Cadfan]

If fireball doesn't do half damage on a miss, I'll be shocked. Shocked, I say!

You're thinking of Lightning Bolt.

 

[hexgrid]

Xena usually one-hits minions. And it's so cool!

Minions are a great addition to 4e and although I'm planning to keep my players in the dark, I'll describe the non-minions enemies as "fearsome". That should be enough to tell them apart.

Seems like rolling or not rolling for damage would also be a dead give away.

 

[Voss]

But 1st level standard monsters almost *never* hit. At least the minions have a greater chance of actually hitting the PC's. And, as stated, minions are supposed to be just a *minor tactical problem*, but become a *major tactical problem* in large groups.

I don't think they live up to this, however. They're a minor tactical problem in large groups, and completely irrelevant in small ones.

In short (and the following numbers are just hypothetical):
-1st level Kobold Standard Monster: Say +6 to hit and 1d8+2 damage vs. Level 10 Fighter's AC 26 and roughly 90HP. The Kobold needs a 20 to hit and does a max of 10 pts. Meh.

-9th level Kobold Minion: Say +12 to hit and 5 damage vs. Level 10 Fighter's AC 26 and roughly 90HP. Needs a 14 to hit and does auto 5 damage. Not great, but better than the Standard monster and can potentially be deadly when in groups.

That strikes me as a particularly unreasonable comparison. Take some monster stats that we actually know about: the goblin picador is attacking at +9 at level 2, and the level 6 legion devil minion is attacking at +11. That isn't a large difference, and they goblin also averages about 5 damage, same as the devil's set damage. And the goblin doesn't break the versimilitude of the game, as he won't explode when a small child standing off to the side calls it a meanie and gets a lucky roll when it throws a rock at its head.