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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5181979" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I have to agree with the above posters. I can hardly recall an encounter that didn't include at least a couple of minions. Typically I'm going to have something like an elite, 4 minions, a brute, and a couple skirmishers or something like that. Its hard to generalize but minions definitely factor in a lot of encounters. I'd say maybe 50% of the time the minions have little impact on the encounter, and the other 50% of the time they do something. Now and then the minions will actually present a really serious issue for someone. The two encounters I ran last week each had minions doing a considerable amount of damage. I don't really understand how a combat can involve having 4 effects on every enemy combatant either. I think in most fights in our group there will generally be one or two of the enemy that are being focused on that may end up say prone, marked, and with some debuff on them. Generally that monster is toast before it matters. Again last week the 2nd encounter we did was pretty condition intensive and there were 2 rounds where 3 of the enemy were really laid onto with conditions. There was one enemy that was prone, marked by the cleric, and had some debuff on it. Another was marked, slowed, and immobilized, and a third one was unconscious (and consequently prone). In this same encounter some of the party had slowed from an Orc Alchemist, but that was about it. IIRC one or two PCs got the stink bomb effect for a round as well (-2 to all attacks IIRC). I'd think if all the monsters have 4 effects on them then the fight is pretty much over. Its hard to imagine a monster that larded with conditions being able to actually DO anything. As for player special ability type stuff, that's up to the players. I mark each monster with its conditions and effects. If they don't know their character well enough to know they get extra damage vs a bloodied enemy or whatever then that's the player's bad. Often I remember this kind of stuff and I'll remind them if I do but the players all know its their responsibility to make sure they know about it and they're responsible to track whatever their character has for resources etc. Now, we have played a lot more heroic tier than anything else and I haven't run a lot of epic stuff, so maybe things are uglier at that point. I do tend to avoid using several complex monsters in the same encounter too, but even the tracking issues aside I don't think its a great idea to do that since it would tend to bog things down. A single controller and MAYBE one other monster that can do some sort of condition is usually plenty. If I want more monster trickiness than that I go for something more direct like minions that explode when they die or something like that.</blockquote>

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