How often do you use minions?

[Shin Okada]

I use minions once per 3 or so of encounters, I guess.

There are powers and abilities which are made to deal with minions. So if a DM don't use minions, players who took such powers will frustrate.

In regard to the effectiveness of minions, it depends largely on terrains and width of the battlefield. Also, there are some non-minion monsters who are tailored for co-working (and even summoning/creating) minions.

Also, encounter's setting and DM's tactics may make minions more important. For example, you can place minions so that PCs (especially controllers) have decide if eliminate as many minions as fast or concentrate fire on stronger monsters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I use them all the time. Probably at least 50% of encounters have a few minions. Some have lots, a few have none. They add interest to encounters and spectacle to the game. I have to say though I don't really care too much about minions and encounter budget unless they have a particular shtick.

 

[bbjore]

I use them all the time as well. My group is 8 players at full strength, and now that they're mid-paragon, the combinations they can pull off are starting to get really powerful. Minions allow me to increase the numbers of threats without making things any more complicated for me to track. My key, is that I mostly use them as fancy kind of hindering terrain. A way to split the party, harass the back line, and ensure that 8 PCs don't suddenly mob and destroy my BBEG in the first or second round.

They can really add a thematic element to an encounter. Sure four or five of them isn't all that spectacular. But I make sure if an encounter has minions, they either spawn every round, or there's a ton of them, and it's led to some memorable encounters.

Besides I love watching my players faces when they invade a vampire's lair, and suddenly 20 vampire spawn start crawling down from the ceiling, or I throw three or four handfuls of glass counters on a map of a quarry, and tell them their NPC friend is about to be sacrificed in front of a crowd of undead minions. Suddenly, the druid is performing an aerial assault on the group's leader, the fighter is parting the red sea with boulder charge, and the wizard and morninglord can't stop laughing as they nuke 10x10 squares clear of zombies. Five rounds later, the group gets to feel like the biggest heroes ever because they've assaulted over 100 bad guys and won.

The key to using them, is like fanboy2000 said, as salt and paper, a way to add flavor to the encounter, and not as carefully calculated XP fodder.

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

Never

 

[Inez Hull]

Thanks for the responses, it tends to support my gut feeling that fairly frequent use of minions can be a good thing. I also like the idea of two-hit minions.

 

[KarinsDad]

Thanks for the responses, it tends to support my gut feeling that fairly frequent use of minions can be a good thing.

Minions are a fairly good mechanic to use for the DM.

Whether they are enjoyable or not for players is player dependent.

 

[KarinsDad]

Minions are super dangerous when utilized properly, and an ever-escalating minion war vs the PCs is actually a fun hobby for a creative DM, because no matter how hard you try, they shouldn't ever be TPK dangerous, but can easily be "this fight is going to cost us a daily and a bunch of surges."

By level 9 and sometimes earlier, every encounter, minions or not, for smart players costs a few dailies. At that level and higher, a group of 5 PCs has 15 dailies plus quite a few item dailies. It's worth it to have different PCs blow off 2 dailies per encounter to speed things up and to use up fewer healing surges. The number of encounters per day at that point are limited to healing surges, so it doesn't make sense to try to save dailies for a BBEG fight. Even with a 6 encounter day, that's 2 Dailies per fight for the first 5 non-BBEG fights and the group still has 5 Dailies plus item dailies left over for a BBEG fight.

It's worth it at level 5 to have a different PC blow off one Daily every encounter as well.

Minions are not a factor in this at all since most players won't waste dailies on them anyway. As for minions being super dangerous, they are not unless the DM decides to throw 50 at the group or some such. The chance to hit minions is typically greater than 50%, so it makes sense to even include the PC Defenders in large area effects and not worry about it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Minions are nice for what they are made for... fill the ranks...

when i think about older editions, standard orcs have been especially squishy minions all the time as a single fireball killed them instantly even if they made their saving throw... Maybe they don´t give the right amount of xp... but from a mechanical standpoint they have their niche...

and even if it is just using them as hindering terrain that dazes your controler (as he will use up his standard actions to fire off at-wills) and that slows your defender or striker and maybe grants combat advantage or does a little damage (maybe indirect by having your controller include you in a large area of effect spell)

Also they effectively reduce your PC´s overall power by forcing them to pick their powers with possible minion encounters thrown at them...

@Karin´s Dad:
Minons are super dangerous WHEN UTILIZED PROPERLY... (but not all minions have the potential - especially MM1 minions... but that´s a general MM1 problem)

 

[Piratecat]

I use them in about two out of every three fights. I like them a lot, but add 50% more (six instead of four) than normal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would agree that GENERALLY minions aren't too dangerous, but I don't really care. Its fun when they DO present a hazard, but I never feel bad when they just go down. Last night we had an encounter where I wanted to have a bunch of orcs but not more than an even level encounter. So I threw in 4 orc minions. They didn't DO much, but they let me make the scenario more plausible. The wizard jumped in and zapped one with an MM (player didn't wait to find out what was what) which was nice for the other monsters. Another one managed to get in the way of the rogue on her way to bringing the hammer down on my custom artillery monster. The warlock squashed the other two by dropping stuff on them off a balcony, so they actually lasted a total of 2 rounds and never got in a shot, but it was OK. Tactically it gave the other monsters (which were surprised) a chance to move around a bit.

A couple weeks back some minions managed to do a pretty good number on the rogue by lurking in a spot where they could hide, they hit her 4-5 times. The week before that some artillery minions taught the wizard about the utility of AoEs (kind of a new player).

Overall though I don't expect more of them than to be set dressing and a minor speed bump. As others have said they often fill the same role that a few orcs or whatnot did back in the old AD&D days, no real threat but they can gum up the player's plans or just be a nice general nuisance.

MM2/3 minions are a nice refinement, though sometimes I actually would rather use the more vanilla ones. The new ones are more dangerous but there are just times when dangerous isn't really the point.