Minion Fist Fights

[I'm A Banana]

Thus, we would be saying not that a cut is a damaging wound that nonetheless doesn't put you down, but that hit points (above 1, at least) are your ability to turn killing blows into those inconsequential cuts that in reality would do zero damage to a 1 hit point character. If that were not so, then a 1 hit point farmer could not sustain a mere cut, which surely as a farmer he can do.

OK. That seems to follow. Thanks for taking the time to deal with my skepticism. I'll ponder this some more.

Yup, that works. Glad it made some sense eventually.

 

[AZRogue]

That's what bothers me about Minions. They're a statement by the DM that "This isn't a serious challenge. These guys only have one purpose, and that's to make you feel cool as adventurers." Well, I don't like playing those games. Both from a DM's point of view and a player's point of view it's a hollow victory, with a predetermined outcome. It's like a fixed boxing match, or WWF Wrestling (neither of which I can't stand).

The thing is, how would you ever know which monsters were monsters that you were able to kill and which were minions? The PCs don't know that the Minion dies in just one hit. He only knows that some of the monsters he fought he was able to crush and a few others were made of sterner stuff. PCs aren't looking under the game's hood all the time, only at their sheets, your table, and the imagery the DM creates in their heads.

 

[Cadfan]

But I also expect everyone to have their awesomeness abstracted away using the same algorithm. They may come at them from a different angle, and I appreciate the "shortcuts" by which Brutes and Artillery determine HP, but the Minion rules suddenly have 1 HP, which just screams to me "This isn't a real creature, it's just a movie prop." It's as believable as a plywood F-22 with a bad paint job.

Secret- all monsters are movie props.

Your argument takes the form of "The more I look behind the curtain, the less I believe in the Wizard of Oz." The solution should immediately recommend itself.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Secret- all monsters are movie props.

Your argument takes the form of "The more I look behind the curtain, the less I believe in the Wizard of Oz." The solution should immediately recommend itself.

Buy more curtains. ^_^

 

[Aria Silverhands]

I know HP are an abstraction. Since D&D is a heroic fantasy game (not gritty), I'm fine with them. Heroes have lots of HP. I'm actually a (tongue in cheek) fan of renaming them "Awesome Points", because you survive crap like being bitten by a Tarrasque out of sheer awesomeness.

But I also expect everyone to have their awesomeness abstracted away using the same algorithm. They may come at them from a different angle, and I appreciate the "shortcuts" by which Brutes and Artillery determine HP, but the Minion rules suddenly have 1 HP, which just screams to me "This isn't a real creature, it's just a movie prop." It's as believable as a plywood F-22 with a bad paint job.

I disagree with this. I need both. You can see my sig below, and it's very true of my playstyle. I like things to be "emergent", where simple but consistent rules create complex systems and stories. I don't approach any D&D campaign with a predetermined story which I'm going to "tell" to the PC's. The "narrative" is jointly discovered, and it can take surprising turns when combats or RP take unexpected twists.

That's what bothers me about Minions. They're a statement by the DM that "This isn't a serious challenge. These guys only have one purpose, and that's to make you feel cool as adventurers." Well, I don't like playing those games. Both from a DM's point of view and a player's point of view it's a hollow victory, with a predetermined outcome. It's like a fixed boxing match, or WWF Wrestling (neither of which I can't stand).

Have you seen the lvl 9 orc minion? That's hardly "not a serious challenge" when you have four of them attacking, and you can have four of them per pc in the encounter. Numbers and damage output provide the challenge. Not merely slogging away through a slew of hit points.

Mathematically there's not much difference between one 8 hp monster you wound 1 hp at a time and eight 1 hp monsters that take one hit to kill. Thematically and "visually" however, it's a whole different ball game. As someone who has played games using minion style npc's, it's a helluva lot more fun and interesting and challenging with minion monsters. Even if they go down in one hit.

 

[Mad Mac]

That's what bothers me about Minions. They're a statement by the DM that "This isn't a serious challenge. These guys only have one purpose, and that's to make you feel cool as adventurers." Well, I don't like playing those games. Both from a DM's point of view and a player's point of view it's a hollow victory, with a predetermined outcome. It's like a fixed boxing match, or WWF Wrestling (neither of which I can't stand).

Minions aren't pushovers just because they die in one hit. Their armor class and attack bonuses are viable against equal level opponents, their damage is decent, and you can put 4 of them in place of a normal monster. I mean, yeah they're fun because players can mow them down in one hit, but it's not like they're all armed only with nerf bats and hugs. Used tactically, they can be a serious threat.

Also, it's worth mentioning that when the Kobold minions were first previewed, they didn't have HPs at all, just a "This creature dies on a succesful attack" clause. This of course led people to griping about how minions were invulnerable to all kinds of crazy stuff and could just throw themselves off cliffs to attack the party because they wouldn't be hurt, ect. So it changed...and people are still griping about it. Oh well.

 

[Zil]

Maybe so. But when I get interested in a fantasy game, part of it is imagining the world. I have to be able to do that somewhat consistently.

Imagine a bar full of minions. They get into a fight with each other. When some guy hits another guy with a chair or beer mug, does that guy automatically die?

It just seems strange. Like some people are way too tough and others are way too fragile.

Well, the whole minion thing is kinda cheesy to start with, but I can see what they are trying to do. You need to think in terms of Hong Kong martial arts movies or something like 'Kill Bill'. When the hero faces a large crowd such as in Kill Bill Vol 1, most are just minions - little more than mirror images that do have some bite until they are dispelled (dispatched) with a single hit. They mostly fill the spaces between the real opponents and are left scattered about in a frightful body count as the heroes cut their way through to the real opponents.

Now in the absence of the players, I would assume some other rules better approximating reality apply. Say 3E. ;-)

 

[Fanaelialae]

I know HP are an abstraction. Since D&D is a heroic fantasy game (not gritty), I'm fine with them. Heroes have lots of HP. I'm actually a (tongue in cheek) fan of renaming them "Awesome Points", because you survive crap like being bitten by a Tarrasque out of sheer awesomeness.

But I also expect everyone to have their awesomeness abstracted away using the same algorithm. They may come at them from a different angle, and I appreciate the "shortcuts" by which Brutes and Artillery determine HP, but the Minion rules suddenly have 1 HP, which just screams to me "This isn't a real creature, it's just a movie prop." It's as believable as a plywood F-22 with a bad paint job.

If there are creatures that are awesome (have "awesome points") then it seems reasonable that there are those that don't. The awesomeness could come from skill or it could come from luck, but it seems reasonable to me that a creature could be quite unlucky yet still be skilled (this just might be it's unlucky day).

I disagree with this. I need both. You can see my sig below, and it's very true of my playstyle. I like things to be "emergent", where simple but consistent rules create complex systems and stories. I don't approach any D&D campaign with a predetermined story which I'm going to "tell" to the PC's. The "narrative" is jointly discovered, and it can take surprising turns when combats or RP take unexpected twists.

That's what bothers me about Minions. They're a statement by the DM that "This isn't a serious challenge. These guys only have one purpose, and that's to make you feel cool as adventurers." Well, I don't like playing those games. Both from a DM's point of view and a player's point of view it's a hollow victory, with a predetermined outcome. It's like a fixed boxing match, or WWF Wrestling (neither of which I can't stand).

I don't think that minions are about giving PCs easy victories (unless you pit them against a single minion, but that would be silly). I forget the exact equivalency, but a normal creature is worth about 4 or 5 equivalent minions. That many minions can probably put out equivalent or even more damage than the single creature they replaced, assuming they all hit of course (but the odds are that at least some of them will hit in a given round, meaning that damage should be more consistant overall). In some ways they're harder to kill (you can't take them all out with a really hard hitting single attack like you might with a singular creature, though of course they're easier to kill using AoEs if they're clustered together). I could totally see a group of 20 minions being as deadly as 4 or 5 regular enemies (though I imagine the best combats would occur from mixing multiple types). They're just one way of adding variation to combat and keeping your players on their toes. IMO, of course.

 

[Zil]

Okay, so a minion is a guy who dies / is incapacitated by a single enemy attack. Apparently the Fates don't favor him or something. Is the problem from a simulationist perspective? Plenty of people in RL die / are incapacitated by single stab wounds, gunshots and the like (and yes, I realize that D&D is a fantasy game and not RL). I'm merely pointing out that having someone that gets taken out by a single attack isn't out of sync with realism

Um, but take your typical orc tribe. Wading through that mob, some 90% or more of them will die from a singe attack, no matter how small the blade or wound. Clearly there has been no attempt to simulate our objective reality there. Rather, what they've done is simulated a certain type of movie....but is this necessarily a problem?

If you like Hong Kong martial arts movies you'll probably have no problems at all. If you're strongly attached to the style of play in previous versions of D&D or you want to see things as being a simulation of our objective reality, maybe you will have more problems wrapping your head around this shift in the game.

 

[Vaeron]

That's what bothers me about Minions. They're a statement by the DM that "This isn't a serious challenge. These guys only have one purpose, and that's to make you feel cool as adventurers." Well, I don't like playing those games. Both from a DM's point of view and a player's point of view it's a hollow victory, with a predetermined outcome. It's like a fixed boxing match, or WWF Wrestling (neither of which I can't stand).

Most minions do additional damage per adjacent minion, or provide attack or damage bonuses to adjacent allied monsters, or provide other benefits to their presence above and beyond just being scenery. If you can't appreciate that, for example, kobold skirmishers get +1 to attack for EVERY kobold adjacent to the target, and then imagine a fighter surrounded by 6 or 7 kobold minions, giving the kobold skirmisher +7 to hit, and +1d6 for it's combat advantage in this situation, then you are greatly underestimating the value and power of minions.