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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D'karr" data-source="post: 4444822" data-attributes="member: 336">Well, when the "rules" are taken out of context any rule could be said to "not really be thought out."  I do not think that is the case with the minion rules.  However, DM's should probably keep in mind the context for the minion rules.So what is the thought process behind the minion rules?  In other words, what is the existence of minions supposed to provide the DM?The idea of minions is to make combats more exciting by increasing the number of opponents that the party encounters.  So instead of encountering 2 or 3 opponents, all of a sudden they can encounter a heck of a lot more.  The DM should probably ask himself, What is more exciting for this particular encounter; two lone goblins or a situation like the Mines of Moria?  If what the DM is looking for is the Mines of Moria, then minions are one of the tools in the box he can use.  If two goblins is more exciting for this specific combat then minion rules are not what he should be using.So why are minions designed the way they are?  There are probably more, but I'll list 3 reasons.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Combat is supposed to be exciting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The threat should be real.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Using minions should not put undue burden on the DM.</li> </ul>If combat is supposed to be exciting it loses a lot of its exciting nature if there is little or no risk involved.  So minions have to present a real risk, and there have to be many of them.  This leads to the second design objective in that the threat must be real.  The minion must be a real threat or it can simply be ignored.If the minions can never hit the defenses of the party then they are not a challenge.  By the same token if the party can simply ignore them and not expect any risk, or if the party doesn't even have to make an effort to hit them, then minions are not a challenge either.So in order for minions to be a real challenge and present a real threat they must be able to hit the party and not be necessarily easy to hit themselves.  In addition this threat level needs to scale properly for the level of the encounter.  So using minions a few levels above the party (1-4) is still a challenge but using those of 5 or more levels above the party is not appropriate for the encounter.In order for a DM to use minions effectively they must not impose an undue burden on him due to bookkeeping.  So minions are supposed to go away on one hit.  Even the smallest amount of damage on a hit kills them.  But to keep the level of threat, if you miss them they are simply not affected.  Once again that is by design because of their purpose.  That doesn't mean that the DM can't describe the effect of a fireball that misses those minions as, "they are smoldering but still in the combat."  It's all in the presentation after all.With those things in mind then it starts making sense why minions that are not hit by an attack, specially one that does half damage on a miss, will still stick around.  Because if you remove them under those circumstances, then they are no longer a viable threat.  On the other hand if you start giving minions a bunch of hit points, scaling with the level of the party, you run into the situation where a bad roll in damage will not take them out.  That situation then makes minions more trouble to keep track of.Let's use two examples to demonstrate why the inverse does not work so well.  For the first example, let's say that minions do take damage on a miss.  If that is the case, then area of effect spells will kill minions instantly simply because a miss still does damage.  So minions under those circumstances pose no threat at all.So for the second example, let say that they do take damage on a miss, but they also have a certain amount of hit points based on level.  You have 20 minions on an combat and each has 10 hit points.  So that area of effect spell that just missed all of them did between 1-6 points of damage on a miss.  So now you have minions that pose a bookkeeping problem.  Can you imagine keeping track of that?If you look at it from that perspective the minion rules make perfect sense when used within the context of what they were designed for.</blockquote>

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