Minion Fist Fights

[Kraydak]

Why I hate minions not taking damage on misses:

Character A is a fighter who deliberately spent scarce resources (an at-will) on an ability that does his str mod on a miss. He has Str 18. He misses a minion, but the 4 points vanish into the ether. Sucks to have spent resources on that ability.

Character B is Tira from the DDXP. Her basic melee attack does d4. She hits, killing a minion.

Character B, on a hit, crit even, cannot do more damage than A does on a miss. Except against minions.

Just give minions hp=level (or similar, maybe lvl/2+1 to make low level misses not quite guaranteed to drop a low level minion, but keep with the slower 4e damage growth), but die on any hit rather than hp=1, no damage on miss.

Let a character who focuses on doing damage on misses 1/round equal level minions, and those who incidentally do damage on misses need to spend 2 misses to drop one.

 

[Celebrim]

So D&D is now officially a Forge game?

If so, it is a sad day.

I didn't say I liked it. I'm just saying that's how it works.

 

[WhatGravitas]

It is entirely ridiculous to assume that a missed burst or blast that does half damage would not kill a minion.

Let's put it that way: It's an abstraction. The minion has hit points equal to the damage an average attack would do - so on a miss, he'd survive with half of his max. hit points, i.e. half the damage an average attack would do on a hit.

But if you do that, you lose the benefit of being easy to DM. So a minion who survives such a burst, hasn't taken no damage, but has instead taken damage - just not enough to bring it down instantly.

If you want to track it - a better rule would be, minions don't take damage from the first miss.

Cheers, LT.

 

[JesterOC]

It simply doesn't make sense for with HP reserves to take damage and potentially die from a missed roll whereas Minions can ignore ANY damage on a missed roll all together.

It seems to me that some people are going to have a very very hard time with some aspects of 4E. This is a perfect example.

To me this is a good example of the differences between 3.x and 4.0.

So lets look at it through 3E and 4E mindset.

1) Design goal. Design a monster that can swarm the party with numbers, have potential to inflict a decent amount of damage but can be easily taken out.

3E. Well define the monster type. Assign level give it low hit dice, and low AC. If you need to increase its to hit and damage increase its level and give it feats if needed.

Result: You have a creature that can be used in any situation that any other monster can. If can get in a bar fight, you can calculate skills. It is a well rounded monster. However you need just as much bookkeeping as any other monster (hit points) and if you wanted it to be skillfull in hitting and do losts of damage, it might have more hitpoints than you want but at least it fits in all of the rules.

4e. Grab a beer. Relax and think about what you want to do. Potential for lots of damage, give it the same damage as a standard orc. To hit and AC about the same. If you are going to have lots of them lets get rid of rolling for damage, just have them do average damage. Oh and we want them to drop when hit so instead of calculating the average hit points a character rolls at this level. Lets just give them 1 hit point. Oh that will make Mages with burning hands be able to kill far too many, so lets just say you need to at least hit it to kill it. Note to self: Don't use minons in bar fights, or skill challenges. But when we do use them feel free to a lots they have been optimized for mass chaos.

Result: A specialized monster whose purpose and use are understood. It does not do everything well, but that just means they should not be used in all aspects of the game.

I can see that some people will get stuck in an infinate loop of "what if this, or what if that..."

My suggestion is not to use minons if you don't want to use them for mass attacks.

Just trying to articulate my thoughts on this guys, as you can tell I like 4E style better but I am pretty flexible and don't need everything in my game to be a simulation. Oh and if some way powerful mage shows up and dropped a fireball that is many levels above the minons ability to handle. Of course I will have them drop. That is all part of the go with the flow DM style you need with 4E.

Funny but I think 4E may be more difficult to make into a computer game than 3E. So much for it being so much like WOW.

JesterOC

 

[Ginnel]

Nice LT exactly what I was going to say for my first post.

If your auto damage on a miss attack hits a minion it represents stabbing them in a not instantly leathal way and you give the minion in want of a better explantion the bloodied state, thus on the next missed auto damage attack they now die.

This would sound like a nice solution.

you could bring in the arguement of why is it that a wizard's boppy stick is killing them in one while my sneaky rogue/fighter riposte takes two hits to kill them but do you really need to?

 

[Celebrim]

I'm guessing that unlike BBEG who's ability to be hit will be a challenge, actually missing a minion will be more of a challenge then hitting them...

This actually looks unlikely to be the case now. If the orc preview is any indication, minions are often going to be higher level (and hense higher AC and better to hit bonuses) than thier leaders. For example, despite having 1/200th as many hit points, the orc soldiers have better to hit modifiers (+14) than the orc chieftain.

 

[Celebrim]

Funny but I think 4E may be more difficult to make into a computer game than 3E.

Is that your professional opinion?

Because it isn't mine.

 

[Scribble]

This actually looks unlikely to be the case now. If the orc preview is any indication, minions are often going to be higher level (and hense higher AC and better to hit bonuses) than thier leaders. For example, despite having 1/200th as many hit points, the orc soldiers have better to hit modifiers (+14) than the orc chieftain.

But what's the average hit bonus of a character of a level where fighting minions is appropriate?

Sure the AC might be the same or slightly higher then your BBEG, but you also have to factor in that:

1. BBEG has a HP pool.

2. BBEG hides behind minions.

If a minion and a BBEG are next to eachother it might be just as easy to hit the BBEG as it is to hit the minion... but the minion dies, wheras the BBEG can last a few hits. (Which is essentially the same as missing the minion.)

We have to keep in mind that damage doesn't scale like it does in 3.x nor do the attacks seem to do as much overall damage.

 

[Raith5]

I really hope that when we get the rules we can point to this as an example of "Good Guess, But Wrong." I'm OK with some gamist shortcuts, but you can take it too far. This is too far.

The Minions rules better be really good, or else they'll be dropped in the "needs a house rule" bucket.

QFT

Why dont we just give minions 1 or 2 hp per level and leave it at that?

It avoids 'conceptual' questions about minions being killed by missed attacks/bar fights/shaving accidents/bags of cats.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Let's put it that way: It's an abstraction. The minion has hit points equal to the damage an average attack would do - so on a miss, he'd survive with half of his max. hit points, i.e. half the damage an average attack would do on a hit.

But if you do that, you lose the benefit of being easy to DM. So a minion who survives such a burst, hasn't taken no damage, but has instead taken damage - just not enough to bring it down instantly.

If you want to track it - a better rule would be, minions don't take damage from the first miss.

Cheers, LT.

What about: if it takes damage from a miss, it is bloodied.
Bloodied minion: any damage kills it.