Minion Fist Fights

[Rex Blunder]

4e works on the Ninja Rule, whereby there is a fixed amount of Ninja Power in the universe, and the more ninjas there are in any given scene, the weaker each ninja is.

So does 3e.

Are you forgetting that 3e has encounter level guidelines for constructing encounters? That's not new with 4e. If your 3e DM throws 15 ninjas at you, you can guess that they're a lot lower-level than if he throws 1 ninja at you.

Or is your argument that 3e is so much worse at balancing encounters that the 3e encounter-level guidelines might as well not exist? In which case, I disagree with you - 3e is not THAT bad.

Or is it that, "but in MY 3e game I ignore the EL guidelines when building encounters - which, for some reason, is impossible in 4E"? In which case I disagree with you: "Houseruled 3e is better than stock 4e, so 3e > 4e" is a fallacy.

 

[Lizard]

But of course no one can blame WOTC for the possibility that someone might customize their campaign in a way that you don't like.

Can you tell me why 22nd level devil minions make more sense than mammoth minions? If "Minion" is a storytelling aspect, as is usually claimed, there's no reason for anything to NOT be minion, if the story calls for hordes of them to be flung at the players mostly so the players can show off how bad-ass they are.

As another example, consider the uber-vamps from season 7 of Buffy. When there was one of them, it took one very experienced slayer and a dozen proto-slayers an entire episode to kill it. By the season finale, there was an army of them, and newly-empowered slayers were killing 2-3 a round. Cearly, in the first appearence, it was a solo uber-vamp, and in the final episode, they were all minion uber-vamps.

But if one had escaped the slaughter and appeared in a hypothetical future episode, it would be back to being uber.

You can't have it both ways. You can't have simulationist logic and story logic both ruling the world. Either you allow for wooly mammoth minions, or you have to rethink the whole 'minion' idea. If we accept that 'minion' is a plot aspect, not an innate aspect, it all makes sense.

 

[Lizard]

So does 3e.

Sure.

Are you forgetting that 3e has encounter level guidelines for constructing encounters? That's not new with 4e. If your 3e DM throws 15 ninjas at you, you can guess that they're a lot lower-level than if he throws 1 ninja at you.

Yeah, I'd forgot that, which is why when the 8th level PCs encountered a bunch of gnolls, they were all 8th level.

Oh wait...only the boss was. The rest were 2nd level warriors on top of the normal gnoll base.

Why are you assuming I'm trying to make an anti-4e or pro-3e argument? I'm pointing out that mammoth minions make perfect sense in 4e, and no one has yet shown that they DON'T. I even gave what I consider to be a perfectly reasonable example of a scenario where you'd have mammoth minions, to show it wasn't a ridiculous edge case that would never come up in actual play.

I'm reminded of the famous argument between an atheist and a believer. The believer denied the existence of Odin, Zeus, and so on, but claimed to believe in his deity of choice. The atheist then noted that he was much the same as the believer, except that he believed in one fewer god.

If you can accept devil minions but not mammoth minions, you're just one minion away from being a simulationist.

 

[Vendark]

Why are you assuming I'm trying to make an anti-4e or pro-3e argument? I'm pointing out that mammoth minions make perfect sense in 4e, and no one has yet shown that they DON'T.

The problem with the mammoth minion idea is that killing gigantic monsters in one hit is anti-climactic in the vast majority of cases, and thus detracts from drama rather than building it. So while you certainly could make mammoths minions, it probably isn't advisable unless the campaign is aiming for a truly gonzo epic feel.

 

[Lizard]

The problem with the mammoth minion idea is that killing gigantic monsters in one hit is anti-climactic in the vast majority of cases, and thus detracts from drama rather than building it. So while you certainly could make mammoths minions, it probably isn't advisable unless the campaign is aiming for a truly gonzo epic feel.

Any evidence all minions in the DMG are medium or smaller?

Here's the scene.

The mammoths charge down the narrow valley, blocking the only path to the necromancer's dread ziggarut where, even now, eldritch lightning is crackling as the dread ritual approaches its climax. If the heroes cannot stop him before the three moons align, this alien world -- and their own -- is finished.

The paladin, of course, is first in, charging boldly on his steed. He stands in the saddle and slashes open the underbelly of the first beast, the divine radiance which trails after his sword emboldening his comrades. The next to move is the tiny halfling, who dodges beneath the feet of the giants. His small dagger barely nicks one, but as the maddened brute tries to gore the diminutive pest, his target ducks to one side, and the beast's tusks instead impale another hairy giant.

The warlock is not be left out. Dark forces glow around his hands as he warps space and time by will, appearing for a moment in the air next to one onrushing enemy's head. With perfect timing, his bolt smashes into the creature's eye, and it falls with a terrible howl of pain. Behind it, another collapses as the clerics divine lance explodes its throat. The warlock, now covered in mammot gore, sneers at the cleric's poor aim; this has been a longstanding feud between them.

Etc.

 

[Korgoth]

Sure you do:
One troll=Grendel
Twenty trolls=Urkel

4e works on the Ninja Rule, whereby there is a fixed amount of Ninja Power in the universe, and the more ninjas there are in any given scene, the weaker each ninja is. If you face 100 ninja, you can mow them down like butter, if you ever ran your lawnmower over butter. If you face one ninja, make out your will.

Of course. I can't send 100 Chuck Norrises after somebody, because I've only got one Chuck Norris. On the other hand, if I've got a Chuck Norris, I might not even bother sending any lesser ninjas. Unless Chuck needs somebody to hold his coat while he kickboxes the target into the next life.

I'm saying that Minions are those examples of whatever dude or critter that "are a dime a dozen", as it were. If, in my world, every troll is special and of the Grendel caliber, then there are no minion trolls. But if Grendel is an exceptionally tough troll and there are lesser trolls, then maybe those lesser trolls are minions. Likewise, if Ol' Tusky the mammoth is an exceptional mammoth, maybe he stands out as a non-minion among a herd of minion mammoths. On the other hand, if I intend all mammoths to be as slipperly as Ol' Tusky then I won't use minion mammoths at all.

Just like orcs. The way I see it, the vast majority of orcs are minions... they have no special destiny to avoid life-threatening blows. Their only defense is to keep their heads down. But every once in a while you run into the Audie Murphy of orcs... an orc hero. He is a tough customer, and well-placed slashes and thrusts that should have killed a creature of his size (and remember that even a dagger is quite a deadly weapon if it gets stuck in your chest) end up not striking his vitals. That's a non-minion orc for you.

It's like the Iliad. You have to mow through a lot of fine Trojan warriors before you get to a Hector or a Sarpedon. There's "capable" and then there's "heroic". Multiple hit points are for heroes.

 

[Vendark]

Any evidence all minions in the DMG are medium or smaller?

Adult mammoths are Huge, at the least. I don't have any more idea what's in the MM than you do, but I don't expect to see many Huge or larger minion write-ups.

Here's the scene:

Reads more like a hazard than a fight.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Oh, I just got confused because you said "4e works on the Ninja Rule" instead of "D&D works on the Ninja Rule".

I personally have no problem with the PCs fighting mammoth minions, as long as the PCs are high enough level to make normal mammoths routine. Others may disagree, of course.

You're selling me on that lost-world campaign, Lizard. Is your GURPS sourcebook all like that, or is it boring ol' simulationy stuff? *flush* What was that sound? Was that your opinion of me going down the toilet?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I agree with Lizard that there is nothing wrong with Mammoth Minions. If you have a high level campaign where the characters are to stop a stampede of Mammoth, well, do it with Mammoth Minions.

What, off course, you'd better off not doing would be trying to send four of these Mammoth Minion against a low level group. I think it would work out mathematically okay, but it just doesn't feel right.

Off course, the interesting thing is you could use the rules to explain how when a herd of Mammoth runs through a village, the villagers managed to kill a few. In 3E (or with 4E regular mosters), they probably wouldn't have had a chance to ever deal enough damage to the typical mammoth, since they'd need the ability to concentrate their fire on a specific one. The occassional stray spear now can actually bring down a Mammoth.

Poor Mammoth... They probably have gone extinct just become someone decided to make all Mamooth Minions, and thus they could be easily hunted down to death...

 

[Cadfan]

What's wrong with mammoth minions?

Again. The test of whether something is a minion, I predict, is whether or not its reasonable for a player of a particular level to kill the creature in one blow.

So I suppose if you are running a campaign where the characters are so powerful that killing a mammoth in one shot is the likely outcome of a player character attacking a mammoth, then they should be minions.

Now, a 3e elephant has over 100 hp. So I'm doubting that's going to happen.

What's NOT going to happen is that 4e will have rules declaring "if the story requires the PCs to slaughter a herd of mammoths, then VOILA! They're minions!" This will not happen because D&D is a game where players have stats, and fight monsters based on those stats. Minions allow for certain types of fight scenes, certainly, but that happens in the overall context of the D&D game.

The argument that 4e design principles magically transform monsters into minions willy nilly based on what the story demands without any outside context of consistent gameplay is Lizard-logic at best.