Minion Status: Private or Public?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would never inform my players that an NPC is, in fact, a Minion.

The ninja outfits are a dead giveaway, however.

I see it already.

"Perception 30. Yay!)
"You see a lone guy in black robes, a shuriken in his right hand, is hanging from the ceiling."
"Oh, no, it's a Solo Ninja! Anyone has any dailies left?"

"Perception 15. uh-oh!"
"16 guys in black robes, armed with nunchakus and shuriken are walking between the Bushes!"
"Oh, Minions - quick, we need a fireball!"

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think it would be weird to outright tell players they are facing minions. Feels like meta-gaming. However, if you describe the Chanting Necromancer, and the large well-armoured Skeleton, and then say "and twelve more skeletons with rusty swords and raggy chainmail" They should be able to figure it out.

Honestly, it's their problem if they feel they "wasted" an encounter or a daily on minions. I doubt they'd do that too often if it bothered them, they'd learn better. It's a DM's job to make the game fun for the players, but if you cater to them too much, they just get lazy. Lazy is not fun.

This would be a different story if you ALWAYS hid the bosses in a pile of minions, indistinct from them. That would be unfair to players. Occasionally when the story suits it is fun, though.

Fitz

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I would never say "These guys right here? Yeah, minions." Much more appropriate to convey that with general descriptions and highlighting the differences between them and the tougher guys in the crowd.

 

[frankthedm]

I do not feel PCs are entitled to know who is and who is not a minion, but they may have tell tale signs easy enough to recognize.

Sometimes it will be visually obvious

"That unit of Warrior Vixens have no armor on their midriffs, one good slice there should spill their guts to the ground."

“What idiot taught these orc to hold their shields right below their chins? Glance the blow upward and you'll be able to cut their throats effortlessly.”

Sometimes you will have to watch them fight.

"That daft fool seems to have never learned how to guard his neck, plucking his head from his shoulders will be easy"

Sometimes you might need an area of expertise

“The Necromancer skipped some of the ritual components, those zombies should drop like flies. Never mind how I know that, Mr Smite Makes Right”

 

[DM_Blake]

In my game it will be easy to identify them. They will be wearing red shirts.

LOL, it took 30 posts to get to a red shirt comment

Really, though, there should be NOTHING that tells the players who is and who is not a minion.

There may be clues, and the players might make some accurate guesses, but I like to think of it as if the monsters/bad guys were real in a real world. If so, minions would not call themselves minions, or think of themselves as minions. In battle, they will still use the best equipment available to them, and use the best tactics they can.

All this would make it hard to tell a minion from a non-minion.

Cinematically, sometimes it's obvious. When Han and Leia led a bunch of ewoks against the imperial forces, those imps could be fairly certain that Han and Leia were heroes and the ewoks were minions. But, if there had been an ewok hero, some elite ewok with levels of fighter, then he would still look and act like all the other ewoks and would be indistinguishable from those ewoks. After a few rounds though, when most of the ewoks are bouncing spears and rocks off of storm trooper armor and barely causing any damage, but that one ewok over there has skewered a half dozen stormtroopers and is standing on their heap of plastic-armored corpses, the imps would most likely figure out their mistake and re-evaluate their initial impression of that particular ewok.

A similar situation in Lord of the Rings. The orcs and cave troll bust through the door and find a few humans, an elf, a dwarf, and some hobbit minions. They naturally assume that everyone over 3' tall is heroic, and almost immediately the elf, dwarf, and all the humans start massacring them to prove their initial assumption was right. But then those little hobbit minions start killing them too. Enter the cave troll. He eventually decides to kill a pesky minion, and stabs him with a giant spear. But lo, that little minion doesn't die. Maybe those hobbits weren't minions after all.

My point is, some things that look like minions might not be, and some things that look like heroes might really be minions.

Putting them all in red shirts, or speaking less figuratively and simply telling the players "these guys are minions, but these guys over here are not minions" would be a mistake.

It eliminates the mystery for the players, it reduces much of the strategy of the encounter, and it's unfair to the minions themselves - they don't think of themselves as minions at all.

Not to mention, it lacks even a basic sense of verisimilitude. Might as well tell the players which enemies are pawns, which are knights, biships, rooks, queens, or king.

Hey, if a minion gets all the way to the back of the PCs side of the battlefield, does it get to promote to a heroic queen?

 

[Stilvan]

these minions sometimes wind up with a name before they die ("You think you can kill Vogroth?"), maybe an impromptu battlecry ("None can vanquish Vogroth the Unvanquishable!"), and may even get the chance to beat a hasty retreat as the odds turn against them ("Vogroth left something in the oven! Vogroth will see you later!"), only to show up once again down the road. ("Crud. Not Vogroth again. We NEVER vanquish him!")
.

Love it! Stolen.

 

[D'karr]

It eliminates the mystery for the players, it reduces much of the strategy of the encounter, and it's unfair to the minions themselves - they don't think of themselves as minions at all.

Not to mention, it lacks even a basic sense of verisimilitude. Might as well tell the players which enemies are pawns, which are knights, biships, rooks, queens, or king.

Hey, if a minion gets all the way to the back of the PCs side of the battlefield, does it get to promote to a heroic queen?

Hey, my minions might not know but they pretty much suspect it. They are the ones with no names... LOL

I agree, I don't like giving metagame information to the players, when I really want them to be immersed in the game. So I prefer to use descriptives that will give them in-world clues(those over there fight like pregnant yaks) rather than in-game clues (yeah, the ones with the red shirts; minions.)

 

[SteveC]

Good question!
I tend to give out as much information as possible to the players, so I'm one of those people who tells you who the mooks are, and even gives out skill check DCs much of the time.

Why? Because in the real world there are so many clues about how difficult something is that we take in using our senses that you can't get across in a typical tabletop RPG. In real life you generally can assess how difficult a task something will be without too much trouble, and I don't have much trouble assessing how threatening someone is when I'm in that situation.

Trained adventures would be much better at it than I am, in my estimation, so I give out the info.

--Steve

 

[Vaeron]

Think of a great fantasy book you might have read. Maybe something by R.A. Salvator, Robert Jordan, or Weis/Hickman depending on your tastes. Now imagine a heroic fight scene where our protagonists are hacking through swarms of creatures, taking them out with their impressive skill and combat prowess. Now imagine the chief bad guy watching from a hill, shrugging, and saying, "Eh, they're only minions."

What would that do to your enjoyment of the battle you were reading about?

If you want to destroy all sense of suspence, drama, or tension in your game, identifying minions (or implementing any sort of WoW or EQ-esque /con function) (would be a great way to go about it.

 

[Victim]

Think of a great fantasy book you might have read. Maybe something by R.A. Salvator, Robert Jordan, or Weis/Hickman depending on your tastes. Now imagine a heroic fight scene where our protagonists are hacking through swarms of creatures, taking them out with their impressive skill and combat prowess. Now imagine the chief bad guy watching from a hill, shrugging, and saying, "Eh, they're only minions."

What would that do to your enjoyment of the battle you were reading about?

If you want to destroy all sense of suspence, drama, or tension in your game, identifying minions (or implementing any sort of WoW or EQ-esque /con function) (would be a great way to go about it.

Well, the audience already knows those hordes are basically minions.