Minion Fist Fights

[LostSoul]

Done.

Hang on - what's the CR? How much XP do you get for killing it?

 

[Rex Blunder]

You don't think it would be exciting to have a big, challenging battle against hordes of opponents?

Obviously it wouldn't be fun to roll a bunch of dice if there's no chance of failure. It would be a waste of everyone's time. My group would get impatient and say, "OK, what happens after we slaughter these orcs?"

It doesn't necessarily follow, though, that my group has no interest in fighting more than about 6 opponents.

 

[Lizard]

Also, Lizard, can you explain your poor-deluded-fools-at-gencon analogy?

People trumpeting things in 4e as if they were innovations in either game design or D&D.

Like: "Wow! In 4e, the DM is free to IGNORE THE RULES!"

Because, you know, I narrowly dodge the WOTC Ninjas when I just handwave stuff in 3e that gets in the way or strikes me as not working properly for a particular edge case.

 

[AllisterH]

What I find bizzare about the whole minion disscusion is everybody saying "I want that scene from (book/movie/videogame) where the heros cuts through 500 mooks. And I want those mooks to represent a credible threat to the party!"

... Make up your minds people! Are these minions are threat or aren't they? If they are set dressing for the party to mow down like ants then why do they need to present a greater threat than they would have in 3e? To give you an excuse to award XP for them? *pffft* Conversely if they are a threat then how does the ability to be killed by a stiff breeze enhance their function?

Um, but in the movies, the HEROES treat them as a credible threat even while they're mowing them down.

The problem with simply using lower level critters as pointed out before is that you could literally not do anything and the kobolds/goblins literally couldn't touch you. Furthermore, their defenses are so pitiable that even on a 1 you're probably hitting them yet when we see these scenes in books/movies, the hero looks cool while mowing down minions and many people consider rolling a 1 not being cool.

 

[Parlan]

I'm not claiming this is a good idea. I was just irritated by the absurdity of the "It can't be done in 3e! Prove me wrong." claim. 3e provides a nice clean set of tools for making monsters built in a concistent fashion. There is absolutely nothing that compels a GM to limit himself to that system however.

The point is, there no way to do it within the 3.x RAW, without relying on Rule 0.

By your logic, Minions can also be included in Texas Hold 'Em, Basketball and Hot dog Eating Contests with a liberal enough application of Rule 0 (or its respective equivalents). Technically true, but not exactly helpful to the discussion.

... Make up your minds people! Are these minions are threat or aren't they? If they are set dressing for the party to mow down like ants then why do they need to present a greater threat than they would have in 3e? To give you an excuse to award XP for them? *pffft* Conversely if they are a threat then how does the ability to be killed by a stiff breeze enhance their function?

That's the whole point: they are a threat *and* they aren't a threat.
They are enough of a threat that PCs can't ignore them (relatively high to hit bonuses)
They are not so much of a threat that a mass of them will likely overwhelm the PCs

Why the dichotomy? So combats with large numbers of opponents are fun:

When the BBEG sics his Horde o' Minions on the party they have a choice of strategies:

1. focus on the BBEG and ignore the Minions
2. focus on the Minions and ignore the BBEG
3. focus on both

Each strategy has pluses and minuses. Analyzing these is part of the fun of combat.

Without Minion rules, either the party just focuses on the BBEG because no other strategy is viable (the non-BBEG's aren't likely to do hit often or hard enough to warrant the PCs' attention).
One obvious strategy = boring.

Or the party gets wiped out by shear numbers.
TPK = sucky

Minion rules seem to allow these types of encounters by elegantly balancing the threat dichotomy and DM book-keeping.

 

[Lizard]

The point is, there no way to do it within the 3.x RAW, without relying on Rule 0.

How so?

Create a "minion" template which does things like drop hit points, or just adds:

Minion (Ex):The creature dies if it takes any damage from any player action. (Or any source, if you prefer). It ignores all other damage.

OR

Minion (Ex):The creature dies if it takes more than Hit Dice in damage from any player action. (Or any source, if you prefer) It ignores all other damage.

Or any other such thing. Give it a CR adjustment of whatever's appropriate: -4 seems good to me, though I'd want to playtest it.

3x allows you to 'bolt on' damn near anything, even metagaming concepts like minionhood.

I wonder how many of the people squeeling about the "freedom" 4e gives DON'T have (as I do) about twenty-odd feet of 3x supplements pulling the game in a thousand different directions. I guess if all you've seen is the SRD, 3e looks pretty constrained. Much like, I suppose, my problem with 4e -- when I look at all I have for 3e, it's hard to see how 4e could replace it for at least a year, and that's only if the third party folks really ramp it up.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

So... 4E is bad because it lets you do stuff you could do in previous editions.

No, wait, 4E is good because it lets you do stuff you could do in previous editions.

Clearly this must also be a postcount thing.

The only thing a higher post count seems to provide is an skill bonus to posting nonsense.

Clearly, the correct answer is "If you could do it (easily) in previous editions, it isn't really an improvement". In other words, the whole concept for minions could have been a short-ish article in Dragon magazine five years ago, or a section of a longer article on DMing. It's hardly 'revolutionary'.

 

[Hussar]

Orc Minion
HD: 10
HP: 1 (Because I'm the GM and I said so.)
Attk: +15 1d10+5 (Including Because I said so bonus)
AC: 32 10 base 4 armour 2 dex 16 GM said so

Done. Make a "favored of the GM" template if you want to. Or check out the "Paragon" template from the ELH. It's a bunch of utterly arbitrary +20 luck bonuses that amount to the same thing.

Also where are you getting 100 hp per attack at 22 lvl? That seems much higher than the flatter curve we've seen for 4e would indicate.

I see. So, to make 3e minions, you have to use 4e mechanics. Gotcha.

 

[Andor]

I see. So, to make 3e minions, you have to use 4e mechanics. Gotcha.

You do realize you're critiqueing me for provideing exactly the example you asked for while conveniently ignoring the counter example I offered that stuck with 3e mechanics.

Frankly if I wanted a bunch of low level orcs to provide a credible threat to a higher level party they would be part of a warband that included a cleric, bard, and Marshal to give them all some boosts. Maybe even an Orc warblade with some white raven powers. If they absolutely had to inflict some damage on the PCs they'd have a dragon shaman with a damage aura up.

 

[hong]

You do realize you're critiqueing me for provideing exactly the example you asked for while conveniently ignoring the counter example I offered that stuck with 3e mechanics.

Seeing that minion rules are, at heart, a formalising of the general rules of thumb that most DMs would use when running a big mob of mooks, what is your point, really?