If that were fully the case, they wouldn't be worth any XP. Usually when people give minions more oomph, it's to try to make them a challenge commensurate with the XP earned for defeating them.
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
June Errata
- Thread starter Neverfate
- Start date
Zaran
Adventurer
I think Minions are fine as they are. I also believe they are there to die in droves and aren't meant be much a challenge. The whole purpose of things like Cleave is to take out that minion as well as attack and mark the main monster.
Infiniti2000
First Post
Kind of. I think people do that to account for powers that weren't properly designed with respect to minions. Basically, with the current design of minions, no multi-enemy auto-damage powers should exist.
DracoSuave
First Post
I wasn't aware minions were such an XP exploit that they were destroying the system. I mean... what, that 5XP after splitting its death destroying encounter math?
I mean I understand fixing effects that trigger off of deaths so that minions don't break those... but fixing minions so they can't be killed en masse defeats the entire purpose of having things that exist to be killed en masse.
keterys
First Post
Depends - stuff like "Pure Glow" can make a mockery of minions as early as level 11. And if you have a DM who doesn't know better (or are writing modules for any table), there's a big play difference between a fight with an elite, a standard, and 8 minions against the pure glow table where the minions never get to act, and the all melee/ranged single target table where minions live for several rounds and really pile on damage.
Some of that is okay under "different tables, different fights" - but at the same time an encounter power shouldn't take out 2 standards worth of xp without hitting
Now, that said... part of the problem is with auto-damage effects (the zone should be for ending turn), part is with minion defenses (often too low), part is with some encounter powers being too good (burst 5 at 11th), and part is with minion xp generally being too high unless some of that other stuff is addressed.
Cleave fine. A lot of other autodamage stuff not so much. Hence why Vicious Rods got nerfed.
Some of that is okay under "different tables, different fights" - but at the same time an encounter power shouldn't take out 2 standards worth of xp without hitting
Now, that said... part of the problem is with auto-damage effects (the zone should be for ending turn), part is with minion defenses (often too low), part is with some encounter powers being too good (burst 5 at 11th), and part is with minion xp generally being too high unless some of that other stuff is addressed.
Cleave fine. A lot of other autodamage stuff not so much. Hence why Vicious Rods got nerfed.
I don't think they are breaking the system, no. But minions are still intended to be part of the fight, and the xp budget reflects that. If I have a group of 5 PCs, and want an even level fight to feature a mob of foes, that might mean 12-15 minions and 2 standard monsters as 'mob leaders'.
Except that with the right auto-damage powers/items/etc, those dozen minions might die almost instantaneously and automatically - or be unable to approach some PCs without auto-dying, etc.
The answer might be to instead bring them on in waves, have them spread out, have them only use ranged attacks, etc... but that can get old when you have only one way to use them in every single fight they show up. And not especially fun with raging orc berserkers minions have to fight the same way as crafty elven archer minions.
The goal for minions is to, yes, be enemies whom the PCs can cinematically wade through en-masse. But it wasn't for them to provide no threat at all - hence why "damage on a miss" attacks don't hit them. "Damage without an attack roll" does, though, and yeah - it feels like an oversight.
I tried out a couple different approaches in a paragon-epic game. One example was to have auto-damage attacks only knock them prone, not kill them - unless they were prone already, in which case it did. So auto-damage was still useful against them, but not an immediate combat-ender. Yet it still left silly situations like a pack of them charging the sorcerer (who had spark shoes) and all getting knocked down when they got near him.
I switched over to the damage threshold system, and it worked quite well. Big damage would still take them out, which felt appropriate. Casual auto-damage did not. And suddenly the PCs had to actually acknowledge the presence of minions, rather than being able to dismiss them entirely.
DracoSuave
First Post
Or you don't expect minions to do heavy lifting they're not supposed to be doing.
If you have a team that kills minions en masse like that, you don't create encounters with 15 minions and 2 normal monsters. You also don't put solitary solos against a stun-lock group.
You just don't put together 'easy mode groups' for the players.
That's not a fault with the minion mechanic, which works just fine for most groups. The DM chooses the encounter, and not all encounters are appropriate or challenging for all groups.
This fact hasn't changed in decades of gaming. No system has been made where it isn't true. I don't expect 4th edition to be different.
If you have a team that kills minions en masse like that, you don't create encounters with 15 minions and 2 normal monsters. You also don't put solitary solos against a stun-lock group.
You just don't put together 'easy mode groups' for the players.
That's not a fault with the minion mechanic, which works just fine for most groups. The DM chooses the encounter, and not all encounters are appropriate or challenging for all groups.
This fact hasn't changed in decades of gaming. No system has been made where it isn't true. I don't expect 4th edition to be different.
One option for avoiding easy mode for such a party: tweak the minion mechanics so that you can have a battle with a horde of weak monsters that isn't over in one round. Is there something offensive about that?
DracoSuave
First Post
Offensive no. Counter productive, yes.
It's like complaining chocolate ice cream is too chocolatey. Don't use chocolate icecream. Use vanilla instead.
I get what you're saying, but I don't think it's like that for all tables. Picture the following comment from a player following a battle with a minion horde:
"That was underwhelming. I mean, I like mowing down large numbers of monsters, but if there's no challenge to it, it's kind of a waste of time getting out the minis for."
By your reasoning, the DM's response should be "Thanks for the feedback. I'll never use minions against this group again. We'll just handwave those encounters."
An equally reasonable response would be "Thanks for the feedback. I'll see if I can come up with some way to make those monsters a little tougher."
Sometimes the solution is a chocolate-vanilla swirl!
Similar Threads
