Minion Fist Fights

[Heselbine]

Similarly the name may still be D&D but it doesn't support the playstyle or design philosophy that has kept us with the game through 3 or more editions in some cases.

Having played through all those editions, from the early days of 1e through the unplayable 2e, and DMed throughout, I can only disagree with you. All I care about is having fun. Minion rules allow me to have more fun.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I find this debate about "minions" very interesting, because as far as I'm concerned, they're nothing new. Like many of you, in my 3e campaign, I used "minions" (though I didn't call them "minions", I called them "redshirts"). In fact, I used the exact same rules that 4e seems to be using (1 hp, immune to indirect damage), and it worked like a charm.

On the battlemat, whenever minions were involved in combat, we used Smarties instead of minis. Whoever killed the minion ate the candy.

It was a high-level campaign, and using minions saved us A LOT of die-rolling and bookkeeping, which, in my opinion, is the best argument in favor of minions.

 

[AllisterH]

The problem isn't understanding it's that D&D has never in previous editions really been modeling an action movie. Other more narrativist games like Feng Shui and Exalted have, and have had rules for minions. But moving the design space of the game so far from where it's always been is kind of irritating to all the people who liked it where it was before. It's like saying that if you slapped the name Ranger on a Miata it would have become a Ranger. Clearly it hasn't, no matter that it may say Ranger on the trunk you aren't going to get 800 pounds of fertilizer in it, cause a Ranger it ain't. Similarly the name may still be D&D but it doesn't support the playstyle or design philosophy that has kept us with the game through 3 or more editions in some cases.

Hmm?

My understanding of D&D was that it was intended NOT to model Middle-Earth, Cimmeria or any other specific country/setting but to model the CHARACTERS that we read about. Elric, Conan, Aragorn all have done the "hero vs the minions" scene.

I think you might want to read more of the fantasy novels (elric, conan, LotR) that influenced D&D. This is partly why I find this discussion frustrating...What's wrong with D&D actually modelling scenes from the novels that actually inspired us to play D&D in the first place?

 

[hong]

But 4e was.

And it is.

 

[D.Shaffer]

When you can explain how Stormtroopers are considering elite troops and yet get mowed down like wheat by anyone with a name in the Star Wars movies, I think you're ready to consider the use of minions. Minions are the stormtroopers to the PC. It doesnt matter HOW elite a stormtrooper is, against a PC they're going to get mowed down like wheat.

If you dont like that cinematic trope, you dont use it. Replace 4 minions with 1 non-minion. The amount of hand wringing over this is rather amusing.

 

[Cadfan]

*snip*

Those were actually sarcastic straw man arguments, aimed at what I perceived to be a trolling OP.

It wasn't until later in the thread that people began actually making arguments I originally intended as straw person claims that no intelligent person would possibly believe, and no sincere person actually say.

 

[Scribble]

I'm running a "Seven Samurai" scenario and the peasants are out fighting to protect their village from the demon hordes, while the heroes take on their leader?

And you're rolling all the dice and running this scenario while you're players sit there and wait for you to finish a battle between 100 npc villagers and a demon? I still find this crazy. If you don't, then more power to you.

There's a demon horde ravaging the countryside, and I want a good sense of how many villages they can tear through before being weakened?

And minions somehow prevent this? If you're answer is not "however many need to be to serve the next adventure" then that's a math thing.

A demon horde presents x challange. A bunch of villages present x challenge. Go at it.

I'm writing the history of my world, and I want to know if it's sensible to have an army of average soldiers hold off a demon horde for...a day? A week? A month?

See above.

That's fine. I want to be able to figure out the numbers if it matters.

You still can!

I think it actually makes a lot more sense to just decide what you want, unless you're actually going to sit there and play every battle.. Compairing numbers is great and using dice averages great... but when's the last time you ran a game where the average always came up?

Just because there's a 50% chance to get a heads or a tailes result on a coin toss doesn't mean it's going to actually play out that way...

Why am I a tubby computer programmer and someone else is an Olympic boxer?

You tell me? You can borrow my latest copy of men's health if you want.

My point was, fighters have more HD and HP then Wizards. Some people in your D&D ant farm have more HP for some mysterious reason. Why can't the same be true for monsters?

It already was to a degree in 3.5... your monsterness determined how much you had... before 3e everyone was exactly the same...

Yes, it would be, because then I wouldn't have to deal with things like minions can't be bloodied, don't benefit from healing surges, and can be killed by peasants with stale muffins 5% of the time.

If the math works out the same, then all you're dealing with is more paperwork. Ok the creature benefited from a healing surge... Great Fighter didn't miss the second time! He's still dead!

 

[Scribble]

So demands for consistency aren't merely aesthetic demands, which is how some folks seem to be treating them. A demand for consistency is a demand for a playable game.

It is consistent... I can say 2/6ths or 1/3rd it's the same number.

D&D hit dice is just dealing with percentages and amount of time a challenge should exist/ be able to exist.

D&D Fighters have more HD then D&D Wizards. It doesn't matter if that thing is an elf or a human. What's the difference here? A minion has less HD/HP then another monster class.

 

[Lacyon]

If the math works out the same, then all you're dealing with is more paperwork. Ok the creature benefited from a healing surge... Great Fighter didn't miss the second time! He's still dead!

The math probably doesn't work out the same when using creatures of vastly different level. In which case, you should use a different model.

20th-level minions (by extrapolation that may not hold in the final game) have XP values equivalent to something like 12th-level normal monsters or 8th-level Elite monsters, and a bit less than 3rd-level solo monsters.

So, against 1st-level commoners, you should probably treat each of them more like a 3rd-level solo monster if you were actually going to play out the fight and try to have it be interesting. If you're not going to play out the fight, that's still probably a better baseline for gauging how many such creatures the Million Peasant Army "ought" to be able to defeat before they die horribly.

If the math has really been fixed, there's not really a good reason to keep the nat-20 auto-hit or nat-1 auto-miss rules in the game.

 

[med stud]

OK, let's say that a level 22 minion has AC 25 and AB +20. That means that 95% of the time it will kill a peasant, while the peasant will kill the minion 5% of the time. There you have your numbers, the demon minions will kill peasants by the score.