Minion option

[Flipguarder]

Im trying to make it so whenever my groups see more than 6 enemies they can't eliminate a bunch with a area attack so I was thinking about this template for minions:

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I'm not fodder!
Prerequisite: Minion
The monsters defenses are each lowered by 1 for each tier (1-10, 11-20, 21-30)
Monster is immune to area attacks.
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Could also be something like area attack rolls against the minion are lowered by 2 for each tier.




Other ideas to help minions be more of a threat?

 

[keterys]

Why would you want to make it so they can't eliminate a bunch with an area attack? Isn't that the point of the area attack?

 

[Kordeth]

Just don't have minions arrive on the scene in convenient fireball-sized packages.

 

[keterys]

Many minions' defenses are too low, so upping their defenses some can certainly help. Having them come in staggered helps. Reducing their xp cost helps. Always giving them ranged attacks help.

You can give them saves to avoid falling down (zombies, say) or penalties to being hit from afar (distortion-ish thing, say) or force attack rerolls (halflings). You can give them the ability to dodge out of areas (imm. interrupt to shift, or things like ants that can free action shift out or centipede swarms which immediate reaction shift, which could allow a minion to disperse if missed).

Give minions immediate interrupts to push allies when targeted by AoE/Close... all sorts of things that aren't "and it's just immune for no explicable reason".

 

[Garthanos]

Many minions' defenses are too low, so upping their defenses some can certainly help. Having them come in staggered helps. Reducing their xp cost helps. Always giving them ranged attacks help.

Are you talking about that nobody notices them they are not significant armor class bonus?

People in real life do a lot more ranged attacking than the game normally seems to encourage... so yeah! Minions as the true leveler for the BRV fighters who get arrogant.

 

[Flipguarder]

I suppose Im the only one who's upset by the decimation of an entire army by a wizard.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Minions are there for the PCs to mow down. That's why they have just one hit point. They're the speed bumps of the Monster Manual.

Minions are the most threatening when they work with other "real" monsters. They can be flanking buddies or fodder for leaders that can misdirect attacks to adjacent minions.

Also, you can think of them like mobile, damaging terrain. PCs can't move through a minion's space and he still gets to attack them.

 

[Garthanos]

Minions are there to make the heros look good and act as a minor obstacle... to flesh out the battle. There are lots of people who want to improve on how well they do what they do...

Check out all the threads on tough minions and bloodiable minions... the idea of making them bloodiable is to allow more interesting things to happen...they can be intimidated they can flee or be healed and distract vampires or whatever.... If they are explicitly targetted and hit they may still go down in one shot (tough minions are only bloodied even then) but if its automatic damage they are bloodied. Note if I have a bunch of minions all who would be bloodied I have 1 in 4 go down 1 in 4 is fine and two are bloodied. An already bloodied minon goes down from any damage they take.

Anyway there are other house rules...some involve using 5+level death thresholds and similar things. Do a google search on enworld for tough minions

site:enworld.org tough minions - Google Search