June Errata

[MrMyth]

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.

Every single group I've played in has had some trick to minimize minions. Sometimes without even expecting it. Early in 4E, we were playing through Thunderspire Labyrinth. We ran into a room where dozens of demons or some other minions were summoned against us, in a relatively small space. One character had a Lightning Weapon from earlier in the adventure, and unleashed it against the boss - and we discovered that it fried pretty much every minion in the fight.

It is true that every group has its own strengths and weaknesses. But I'm not sure why you think "Just don't use minions" is a better solution than "find a house rule that allows minions to still be used." I mean, I like the concept if minions. I enjoy using them, and players enjoy fighting them. Why shouldn't I try to find a way to keep using them?

Similarly, why shouldn't I find ways to present challenging solos to groups that can stun-lock?

If all of these encounters and elements work for you, that's fantastic. But for those who have had problems with them - and, clearly, quite a few folks have - it seems far more useful to brainstorm ways to use them, rather than just dismiss it as an issue and tell people to just stay away from that element.

 

[MrMyth]

Offensive no. Counter productive, yes.

It's like complaining chocolate ice cream is too chocolatey. Don't use chocolate icecream. Use vanilla instead.

Again - in my group, we pretty universally were bored with minions. The group almost incidentally had too many powers that trivialized them, and fights involving them stopped being cinematic and became dull.

We played around with the rules and found a way for them to fill their roll as minions - remaining weaker than regular monsters, but no longer trivialized by a few unusual powers and items. And, since then, they were largely ignored, and the players had quite a few memorable encounters involving them.

How was that counterproductive? Do you really think that the minion's dying to automatic damage is the core of their essence - is what makes them 'chocolate'?

Being easily killed, yes, is a key aspect. But note there are already built in limits - the fact they don't take damage from attacks that miss them. The fact they are actually worth a set amount of XP. The fact that WotC has tweaked with their design to try and keep them interesting and challenging at higher levels, and has directly offered advice over the course of the edition on ways to avoid these sorts of problems.

This one aspect of minions - dying to automatic damage - doesn't strike me as an integral part of their design. It is there, I suspect, simply to avoid the complexity of designing more exceptions into their rules - you don't want to make them too complicated.

And that can work as a general rule, sure. But it isn't a reason to avoid trying to fix the problem, either, for groups that wish to do so.

 

[DracoSuave]

I counter that if you want more interesting encounters with minions, use more interesting minions. Use more interesting traps and hazards. Use things that don't undermine a minion's fundamental fragility, but make the encounter as a whole more interesting.

Besides, again, minions aren't heavy lifters in an encounter. 15 minions and 2 normal monsters isn't exactly an encounter with a lot of inherent variance, unless you're using some special minions that have something to do other than move, flank, and attack for 6 damage.

 

[Marshall]

I counter that if you want more interesting encounters with minions, use more interesting minions. Use more interesting traps and hazards. Use things that don't undermine a minion's fundamental fragility, but make the encounter as a whole more interesting.

Besides, again, minions aren't heavy lifters in an encounter. 15 minions and 2 normal monsters isn't exactly an encounter with a lot of inherent variance, unless you're using some special minions that have something to do other than move, flank, and attack for 6 damage.

...and its irrelevant how interesting those minions are when the BloodMage action points and every single one on the board pops from 1 damage before he spends his bonus action

 

[DracoSuave]

...and its irrelevant how interesting those minions are when the BloodMage action points and every single one on the board pops from 1 damage before he spends his bonus action

I like the paragon and epic level ones that explode for damage in an area when the bloodmage does that. Kill 10 minions instantly, take 100 points of damage on top of what you already have taken.

 

[bbjore]

The best fix I've found for minions is to really understand how they work and what they're used for. They're not the meat and potatoes of an encounter, they're the garnish, essentially just mobile difficult or hazardous terrain. A way to block areas, slow down the party, or grant CA for the real monsters. As for their survivability, of course they die quick. That's what they're suppose to do. Do your best, spread them out, and try to ensure they soak up the four actions their XP suggests it should take to remove them.

That can be difficult at times, but an easy fix is to introduce a spawning or respawning mechanism. At the beginning of their turn, if there aren't enough on the board, a few more respawn. Or at a set initiative or at-will monster power, a few more spawn automatically. Then, handling the horde of minion becomes an actual task that becomes part of the encounter, and they will have a genuine impact.

While the respawning may seem kind of meta at first, in encounters where minions are appropriate it works well. Household guards run into the room. Vampire Spawn crawl down the wall. Zombie minions burst forth from the ground, rise from the slain, or crawl from the cauldron. Dragonlings fly down from the cavern's openings. Ghosts fly through the wall. The sorcerer summons a few more every round...

The only way to stop the minion horde is to complete some task, a skill challenge, defeat the solo or elite leader, block off the door; whatever is appropriate to the encounter. I've always liked this fix more than two hit minions which require more tracking or requiring more damage to kill them since it still requires a damage roll. An added to the respawn mechanism is that it requires the controllers and defenders to work a little harder, since the arrival of new minions ensures at least some of the group is never tied down or blocked of by them.

 

[RLBURNSIDE]

exactly...

what happens after the first round when the controller killed all the minions with an action point : More minions!!

Spawn more underlings

Just watched Fellowship on Bluray last night, and man o man, this thread reminded me of the hordes and hordes of goblins crawling out from the ceiling and cracks in the floor in Moria, down the pillars to surround the party. I like also, the mechanic where, they are afraid of the Balrog. When the DM wants the minions to clear, have them be a different faction of evil...so the BBEG scares them away (they have at least as much wisdom as to want to hang around when it shows up).

Plenty of ways to keep combats dynamic and so on, with creative use of crawl spaces, entry ways, spawn zones, teleport pads, summoning hex zones (need to run arcana skills to disable them).

 

[Nullzone]

What's the slide/zone problem?

1) Place zone that causes damage when you enter
2) Use power that slides 3+ squares
3) Pingpong monsters in and out of the zone repeatedly to stack up absurd amounts of autodamage

Same concept with spark slippers, except you just slide the monster in a circle around the person wearing them.

 

[MrMyth]

I counter that if you want more interesting encounters with minions, use more interesting minions. Use more interesting traps and hazards. Use things that don't undermine a minion's fundamental fragility, but make the encounter as a whole more interesting.

Besides, again, minions aren't heavy lifters in an encounter. 15 minions and 2 normal monsters isn't exactly an encounter with a lot of inherent variance, unless you're using some special minions that have something to do other than move, flank, and attack for 6 damage.

It's true, though that will always be somewhat true with minions. Even then, though, one tries to give them varied tactics - some use range, some melee, some try to grab PCs, others might assist their leaders or attempt to make use of the terrain. (Minions trying to interact with terrain effects are a great way to remind the PCs they can make use of them too.)

And yeah, having minions with special tricks - like exploding on death, or having a chance to not die, etc - can help punish PCs who blow them all up at once. But, honestly, that feels more counter to the goal of them than adding in a small damage threshold needed to kill them.

Seriously - a minion not dying to a few points of automatic damage doesn't "undermine their fundamental fragility" any more than their built-in mechanic of not taking damage on attacks that miss them. Your wizard will still kill vast swathes of them with area effects. They'll die in droves if trying to charge past the fighter to swarm the wizard. Etc.

But, as noted - one triggered use of a magic item, or one action point, won't kill every minion on the field. One character with a damage aura isn't totally immune to them. Minions will remain fragile but not trivial, and you can actually use the xp system to figure out how many work in a fight, rather than just throwing waves of them at the PCs and no longer adding xp for them.

I agree that all these other suggestions are certainly good ways to use minions, with or without a party that can auto-kill them. Send them in waves, don't leave them clustered, don't depend on them as the sole enemy or threat in a fight. Use interesting minions, use them as part of a larger encounter, use them with terrain and obstacles and other fun stuff.

But at least for me, the game has worked best when I used all those pieces of advice... and also made it so the minions were still relevant, as intended by the system.

 

[Marshall]

HAHAHAH!! That's AWESOME!! I never thought about that -- and if I had, I would have just assumed it wouldn't work.

Most groups are going to read it that way. Heck, the devs themselves seem to think it works that way. Technically, it can be read that way....but the cleanest way to read it is that those zones/areas do multiple instances of damage.
The sad thing is that this is a known issue that is a one-line fix to the system.

The only thing I can figure is that the Devs are busy working on 5e and actually fixing the problems with 4e is counterproductive to future sales. If 4e works right, why buy 5e?