Kobold Minion -- Where?

[Ruin Explorer]

For goodness sake, have you never seen minion/mook rules in any other game? This is no difference to how mooks have appeared in everything from Bushido onwards.

I think the only problem is if the GM refuses to allow the players to be aware of the differences between minions and non-minions. In every other game I can think of that uses minions, we have "named" characters and mooks. The players know who are mooks and who matters (I can't think of one game where this is untrue). Yet in AICN's description of 4E (the latest one), the GM is gloating about sticking a level 3 zombie in with a bunch of minion zombies. That seems really ummm, anti-cinematic or something to me, and kind of defeating of the style-purpose of minions.

Maybe this is a play-style thing, but I hope it doesn't become standard practice in 4E to have monsters hiding in blocks of similar-type minions. It'll get awful old awful fast.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Indeed. Having kobolds that can stand up to multiple axe blows and ones that explode if you poke them with a stick makes it better.
...
or it makes the game look inconsistent and utterly lacking in believability and verisimilitude.

For goodness sake, have you never seen minion/mook rules in any other game? This is no difference to how mooks have appeared in everything from Bushido onwards.

Not to mention no different than giving your kobold non-mooks a couple more levels in 3.x. Does the fact that a 5th level human fighter is so much "tougher" than a 1st level human commoner make you raise eyebrows?

 

[Voss]

Sometimes, yes, particularly when there is no way of distinguishing between the two.

And yes, plane, I have seen mook rules in other games. I've never liked any of them- largely because of the inconsistency and believability factor. Not that it has any real bearing on their presence in D&D.