Minion damage

[Anubis1369]

What formula, if any, did the guys over at WotC use to determine the static damage output of any given minion? I ask because I sat down and wrote up a chart of all the minions in the MM from level 1-30, writing down Str, Dex, size, level, and damage, not including secondary effects like ongoing damage or paralysis, and could find no common ground for the static damage at any given level. For example, IIRC, all the level 1 minions had a static damage of 4, regardless of size or stat layout. I thought at first that the numbers started at a base (i.e. 4) and ramped up every x level. I even acknowledged that x level might change from bracket to bracket (i.e. levels 1-6 are 4 damage, 7-9 are 5, 10-17 are 6, and so on) bet even this didnt seem to be the case.

I only ask because at some point in the future I might want to design my own minions, and while playtesting is an intristic part of game design, flipping through the mm 20 or 30 times and comparing to other creatures of similar level could get kinda old after a while.

On a side note, I did think of a hidden creature role possibly changing damage output, even though their 'role' is minion, but without analyzing each one, this may be just a figment of my imagination.

Anyhow, if any of you have had a similar problem, or know of another forum that already answered this, I would appreciate the help.

 

[Anubis1369]

*Bump*

 

[77IM]

If you post your chart, maybe we can reverse-engineer the formula.

My first instinct is that it is based on the Damage By Level table. Lv1 Medium Normal Damage is 1d10+3. The average of that roll is 8.5, and half of that is 4. So maybe it's half the average damage of a monster of your level? That would make a little sense considering minions are equal to 1/4 of a monster. (They do 1/2 damage instead of 1/4 damage because the assumption is that they are going to die really fast and have less opportunity to deal damage than a normal monster.) The paragraph describing how to use the Damage By Level table fits in with your ideas of minions having "pseudo-roles" -- do the minions at higher levels have damage equal to 1/2 the average damage of one of the expressions on the Damage By Level chart?

-- 77IM

 

[keterys]

While not the formula they used, 3 + (lvl / 3) gets you pretty close, and you can think of spending damage to buy other benefits (like a ghoul's immobilize or a lich vestige attacking reflex or weaken, or legion devils' resistance and higher AC)