Minion Fist Fights

[IanArgent]

It's an interative process, of course. One the story is in motion, narrative law predominates. But the setup and worldbuilding is my favorite part of DMing.

Gah - I hate setup (and to a lesser extent worldbuilding). I'd rather buy a world and make it my own than start from scratch. And I don't have time to make sure that each of my challenges for the PCs are correctly crafted if I have to depart from the presupplied challenges. Give me the math, make sure it works in the majority of cases, and explain what cahnges are critical, and what changes are less so. That seems to be the design philosophy for 4E; so I'm buying it.

 

[occam]

Unfortunately, minions undermine that idea. You aren't outsmarting or outfighting them. They aren't individually a threat, because they are too fragile. They are paper targets. They are training wheels. They are toddlers with foam bats.

Everyone will put one down per hit. In fact, it discourages teamwork, because concentrating more than one person on a minion is a terrible tactic. The Wizard will plink at least one per round with Magic Missile. The Eldarin Rogue will drop one, teleport and drop another. Finish off the minions, take your healing surges and get to the real fight.

It really doesn't feel that way when you're getting swarmed by minions, smacked for 5 points of damage multiple times, and still only hitting them about half the time. Remember that minions are a real challenge to PCs in every way, except that they go down easier (with "1 hp" being an abstract stand-in for "too few hp to survive a direct hit, but enough to handle ancillary damage"). To me, in my so-far-limited experience with 4e, minions were plenty scary. Have you played 4e combats with minions yet?

 

[occam]

This is flat wrong. As I pointed out before, it's perfectly possible to make an orc horde where the swarm of 1st level Orc Warriors are still capable of hitting higher level PCs due to a series of buffs from some mid level Orc with levels in classes that buff like clerics, marshals, bards, and dragon shamans.

Is that more work than using the minion rules in 4e? Yep.

Does it work for all monster types and woolly mammoths? Nope.

Is it something you want to use every session? Nope.

Are minions therefore easier to do in 4e? Yep.

So minions can only be used in 4e? Nope. See above.

Andor wins the thread.