For the Record

[Rechan]

Another use for minions is drawing fire or providing support.

The PCs have to waste actions shooting at them, thus giving the higher level things more room. If the PCs don't clear them out first, the minions can flank with more serious monsters, or provide Aid Another.

I ran the end battle of KotS, and placed about 10 minions in the fight. They really annoyed the players, because they weren't clumped up, and just fired their bows at PCs who hurt the real monsters last. They rolled REAL well - characters were taking at least 10 damage a turn from the minions.

But then, I don't give a lot of XP for minions period. I just toss them in to add flavor to an encounter.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Beats my 42 minion soldiers I was able to kill with a stinking cloud (expanded from burst 2 to burst 3 thanks to the daily power of the staff of the war mage).

They were marching in ranks six abreast into my ambush position. Fireball in those same circumstances might have caught 56, but would only have taken down about 30 of them since minions ignore half damage on a miss and that is all fireball has to offer.

 

[Plane Sailing]

But then, I don't give a lot of XP for minions period. I just toss them in to add flavor to an encounter.

Most of the time I reckon that minions should be worth 1/10xp rather than 1/4xp.

The best minions I used where several levels higher than the party - killed in one hit, but landing that hit wasn't trivial. The only problem becomes the various minion-auto-popping powers which are trivial to obtain (the warlocks level 1 daily did it in that fight)

 

[Cadfan]

Out of curiousity, how did they nail 56 in one shot? At that level Fireball is about the largest AoE I can think of (burst 3) and that's not big enough (49 squares).

Solar Wrath: Close Burst 8.

Well, did the party encounter them all at once? Or did they come in waves?

All in one shot as they popped up from the ground while the PCs were traveling through a graveyard.

You know how to get around these sort of absurdities? Fluff-as-crunch.

Zombies are the undead. They cannot be killed by conventional means. Players have to deal coupe de grace to each zombie to make certain it doesn't ressurect itself on a 5-6 recharge roll per round.

Problem solved.

We didn't consider a hundred (and three, actually, a hundred and three, the DM ran out of counters) dead zombies to be a problem, per se.

Cleric PPs have some Close Burst 8 attacks too, which could hit a lot more than 50 guys if the party is surrounded.

Yep! Probably could have got more if the other party members hadn't beaten the cleric's initiative and killed a few. And about a dozen and a half were on the other side of a crypt that blocked line of effect.

As for Exploder Wizard's little side issue: this was not precisely intended as a serious encounter. The DM, and everyone involved, understood that these zombies were the weakest monsters of their level, and that their level was eight levels below that of the party. This was mostly done because it was fun, and we wanted to see what would happen.

The overwhelming victory of the PCs was not due to the fact that these were minions, but rather because they were level 3 minions against level 11 pcs. This is enough of a level disparity that the PCs hit the zombie's weakest defenses (reflex) on a 1, and the zombies needed a 19 to hit the majority of the PCs.

All in all, this was not a substantially different encounter than what I'd expect if a bunch of level 11 3e PCs ran into a bunch of level 3 monsters. The wizard would cast an evocation spell that was save or take half damage, and then the monsters would all die whether they saved or not because 11d6 divided by two still averages more hit points of damage than the typical 3 hd monster possesses.

 

[Ariosto]

Story reasons. You may want the heroes to ...

Tracy Hickman, you maniac! You blew it all up!

Erm.

Zombies packed like sardines in a handy shell-burst radius? Sure; they only eat brains. Orcs with pikes in a phalanx? Maybe.

But maybe as a general rule warlike people would know better than to send deep formations against wizards, at least if wizards have been around for a while.