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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Proctor" data-source="post: 5181718" data-attributes="member: 78547">One of the ways that I handled this with my group is to buy some multi-colored index cards (each card is one of five different colors) and then cut them into little one inch squares (I used a punch from my ex's scrapbooking stuff).  I then organized the little squares by color and labeled them with different conditions.  Red squares became our "bloodied" markers, while yellow indicates ongoing damage and save ends effects.  Blue squares were used for marks, and then orange and green were various different status effects (things like deaf and blind, or slow and immobilize, were placed on opposite sides of the same square).  This way, you can glance at the color and tell if an enemy was under the effects of a mark, bloodied, a save ends effect or just something for a single round (till the end of target's next turn, or player's next turn, etc...).  That was usually enough to remind us of the specific condition, but if we just couldn't remember, then we would just look at the little index card squares to see the exact conditions.Another thing that's worked well since then is to use beer caps for marks.  One of our players is a Warden, and I was playing a Fighter, but we both drank different brands of beer.  So my marks were always indicated by a gold Miller Light cap, while the Warden's were indicated by a red cap for whatever beer it is that he drinks.  They're the perfect size to go under either the round bases of the D&D minis, or under the little glass stones that the DM uses for more generic monsters.  After a couple sessions we had more than enough to cover even the most gratuitous marking scenarios.Minions can actually be rather fun.  For one, fights with something like a 6 on 6 ratio are rather boring, since it's pretty easy to end up with guys pairing off one on one.  Why not go with something more exciting and threatening, like 6 on 12, or 6 on 18?  The end of the D&D/Robot Chicken videos had an awesome combat where Chris Perkins used like a dozen minions and a ton stirges to fight the party.  They were easily outnumbered by at least 4 or 5 to 1, and it really made the combat look interesting and exciting.If you find that your PC's are tearing through minions too easily, there's a couple things you can do to mitigate that.1) Don't line up the cannon fodder.  Seriously.  There's no reason for the minions to all be melee monsters that come at the PC's in nice little 3x3 formations, just waiting for that well placed Fireball to wipe them all out.  Use ranged artillery minions to backup your regular monsters, or just space them out all over the battlefield.  The players can still have fun using AoE's to take out a couple of minions while laying some damage on a normal enemy, but you can avoid losing ALL of them simultaneously to a single attack.2) Don't throw all of them out at once.  There's a great encounter in KotS where our Rogue opened up the wrong door and our Wizard got swarmed by 8 minions.  At the time, we didn't know these were minions and it created a lot of tension.  He threw up Shield to avoid all of their attacks, and then my Dragonborn Fighter had to peel off from the main fight to use an enlarged Dragonbreath plus a Cleave to clear all of them out.  Having them show up a couple rounds into the fight was very scary and exciting, and even though they died quick it still burned up a lot of actions and powers...in addition to be just a crowning moment of awesome for my character.Secondly, reserving some enemies for showing up later in the fight can allow you to slip reinforcements behind the PC's and keep them guessing.  By using minions you'll usually keep from totally unbalancing the fight while still presenting them with more enemies to contend with.  Plus, with them showing up later in the fight the PC's might have already blown some of their big AoE's, thus keeping them from blowing all the minions over in one attack.3) Minions can be a monster type, as well as just a neat concept.  If you find that your players just wipe the floor with normal minions, feel free to toughen them up a bit.  Using under leveled monsters with lower hit points can still present a threat, while not being as vulnerable to burst and blasts.  Or you can even just take appropriately leveled monsters or minions and just tweak their HP total to be something that a PC could take down in one or two solid hits.  The key here is to just increase the number of monsters in the fight, not just increase the number of HP's that the PC's have to slog through.  You could take a normal monster, cut it's HP down to 1/4 and then give them half the XP for it.  It will be a credible threat, but easy to take down, and a helluva lot of fun.</blockquote>

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