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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CrimsonNeko" data-source="post: 4224087" data-attributes="member: 66045">I apologize that I don't have the patience to slog through 26 pages of replies.  However, I can illustrate how flawed the "just use low level npcs" argument can be.  I was playing in a harn based game a while ago (if you know harn, kudos to you, you get a cookie).  The GM was a believer in following through with a scenario no matter how things changed.  We had a special sword in the group that did sunburst (the spell that annihilates undead in a radius) at will (it was basically a minor artifact).  We were planning on attacking the villians temple, which was an island with nothing on it but the temple and 100 skeletons.  We got it so everything was out of the way, and we were going to do the onslaught the next week.  Fast forward a week.  The guy with the sword is gone, and we can convince the gm to just transfer it.  The island having all those skeletons was an important detail, so he can't simply ignore it.  And, as a rule, he won't NPC players.  We spent 6 hours plinking level 1 skeletons to death.  The entire thing was boring as hell.  We were high enough level that we took next to no damage.  I think one person needed a cure light at one point, and that was it.  We never felt really threatened.  The session felt pretty much like a waste.  And the only person who leveled from fighting ONE HUNDRED skeletons was the level 3 guy who was hiding in the back.  What took probably near 100 combat rounds would of taken closer to 10-20 with minion rules (he gave us some NPCs, the local noble's personal guard, if I remember right....he wasn't completely heartless about it).  On top of that, the skeletons could of been an actual threat.  As I said, cause they were just level 1 skeletons, we only took like 10 hits total across the whole party.  Minions could of had atleast a chance to deal damage to us above the joke level.</blockquote>

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