Minion fun! What do you plan to do with them?

[BASHMAN]

do d20 7th sea the right way. Not that drech called "Swashbuckling adventures". For the PCs, all the sword schools & sorcery would be done as feats.

 

[Snarls-at-Fleas]

Two ideas:

1st
An encounter with lots of minions and some entity wich jumps from one minion's body to another "empowering" it and "healing" himself. So you fiht him and when he is at 0hp he jumps to the next minion. So players have to figure it out or fight him for... well... 10-12 times at least.


2nd
"Exploding mininons"
LIke boneshard skeletons, which explode on death, but easiliy killed with their own death damage. So the room is full of critters, the 1se PC on initiotive charges and a chain reaction starts...

 

[Surgoshan]

(monty python)
Build a bridge out of 'em!
(/monty python)

Or play king of the hill.

I am a sexy shoeless god of war!!

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Or play king of the hill.

I am a sexy shoeless god of war!!

This is absolutely what I want to happen.

It will also make seige adventures more fun - wave after wave of minions, and then just when the players are feeling relaxed you can start sprinkling real threats in amongst them.

Trolls entering Minas Tirith in Return of the King, anyone? Orcs are minions, trolls have levels...

 

[fullchromelogic]

is it confirmed that ALL minions are dying in one hit, or is this just speculation based on the kobold minion? seems to me like some of the responses in this thread are extrapolating a bit too much

 

[Ipissimus]

HELL YES!

Yes, I want my PCs to stand atop a pile of corpses and scream their defiance of death to the heavens. Yes, I want that sense that my character is an action movie badass. Yes, I want to play a game that makes Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith look like a kindergarten slap-fight.

And by 30th level I suspect that your character should be able to whup Goku's butt. 640 Kobald Skirmishers might deal a ton of average damage but by then you should be pretty resistant to most of that damage.

 

[Set]

We need a new rule: Ocean of Blood. When the party kills too many creatures in one place, they change the terrain. First making it slippery, then boggy until eventually creating a small lake of blood in which they might drown. -chuckles-

In Hindu lore, the gods created a race of men that turned out to be disrespectful or corrupt or something, and Kali, eight-armed goddess of murder, was sent down to clean up.

She slaughtered this entire race of men, and the blood got so deep that she was drowning in it. The other gods had to rescue her! So your ruling even has precedent.

As for the minions rules, I've been using them for a year or two in M&M, and it's nice to see D&D highlighing the OGL's strengths by building off of the ideas generated by 3rd party publishers.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Which is what you had to do in 3.x

By making creatures that are basically a weaker version of a standard creature of the same level and having them be killed on one hit, you have a situation where you can put 20ish level 30 minions vs. 5 PC's and it is a reasonably threatening encounter. The fact that the minions are the same level as the PC's gives them the ability to hit and save vs. PC abilities and the fact that they die on one hit doesn't make them overwhelm PC's.

4 minions of the same level as the PC's, per PC, is a balanced encounter in 4e.

I took Voss' statement "used what was available" meaning that he used the 4e preview material (from he D&D Experience for example).

And I suspect there is a limit too how many minions you can or should use effectively. And as always, don't overdo it.
I guess 640 Minions would be overdoing it - though it might still be a memorable encounter, once in a life time.

I think generally it's good to mix monsters. So maybe pick 320 Minions and add one Elite/Solo monster that's leading them into the battle. Plow through mooks to get to the BBEG...


What else can you do with Minion Rules? Stat up Non-Adventurers. A Level 10 Master Half Elven Diplomat has level and skills to diplomance his way out of anything, but a well aimed sword blow, and he is dead.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

is it confirmed that ALL minions are dying in one hit, or is this just speculation based on the kobold minion? seems to me like some of the responses in this thread are extrapolating a bit too much

I think it is confirmed that this isn't the case. In the big Monster/Rules List Compliation PDF, I noticed a Vampire Spawn that is listed as Minion, but has 10 hit points.

From the XP values of Minions, they seem to generate 1/4 as much XP as regular monster. I suspect they usually won't have more then 1/4 the hp of a typical mosnter of their level, too.

n Hindu lore, the gods created a race of men that turned out to be disrespectful or corrupt or something, and Kali, eight-armed goddess of murder, was sent down to clean up.

She slaughtered this entire race of men, and the blood got so deep that she was drowning in it. The other gods had to rescue her! So your ruling even has precedent.

I don't know where this story came from (Greek Mythology?), but I think there was also a story of a river getting annoyed by the blood of soldiers pouring into him that he attacks the hero.

Let's combine these scenarioes. First, kill tons of minions and create a big pool of blood where you risk drowning in. The, the pool of blood awakens and attacks the epic heroes!

Didn't the AICN interview also contain the first part of an epic level power? "Once per day, if you die..." Probably there is another power starting "Once per day, if you have killed at least 100 monsters..."

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

I'd create some kind of leader that consumed its minions to power devastating abilities. You either try to take the leader out first while you soak up all the firepower it throws at you or you try to kill his minions very, very quickly.

I think you're describing the 4e Pit Fiend.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20080125