D&D 5E Minions and cleave optional rule dmg 5e?

[Nightbeat84]

Ive been using minions for awhile and i can say its a great mechanic for DM's everywhere i first seen this idea on Matt Colville's channel and have been using it ever since. The only thing i'm not sure of is having minions in a fight and using the optional rule of cleave from the DMG page 272 at the same time has anyone tryed it out?

 

[jgsugden]

You don't really need minion rules. There re a lot of low hp monsters that can be dropped in one blow and provide a reasonable chance of hitting the PCs, even at high levels. If you want to use the cleave rules, this will work better. If not, treat a minion as 4 hp for purposes of the cleave rules.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ive been using minions for awhile and i can say its a great mechanic for DM's everywhere i first seen this idea on Matt Colville's channel and have been using it ever since. The only thing i'm not sure of is having minions in a fight and using the optional rule of cleave from the DMG page 272 at the same time has anyone tryed it out?

Not in 5e, but in 4e the cleave fighter power was a great minion killing tool. Should work fine - having disposable creatures that you don’t have to track HP for is the point of minions. I suppose if it becomes a problem you can always rule that minions don’t take damage from a cleave, same as they don’t take damage from failed saves.

 

[Charlaquin]

You don't really need minion rules. There re a lot of low hp monsters that can be dropped in one blow and provide a reasonable chance of hitting the PCs, even at high levels. If you want to use the cleave rules, this will work better. If not, treat a minion as 4 hp for purposes of the cleave rules.

Minions serve a purpose low-hp monsters don’t, in that they provide canon fodder enemies that you don’t have to track HP for.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Minions serve a purpose low-hp monsters don’t, in that they provide canon fodder enemies that you don’t have to track HP for.

I assume jgsugden was intending the same thing... that even if you used CR 1/8 monsters as-is, their HP is low enough that they are essentially minions and are killed with a single swing.

In the end it doesn't really matter-- if the monster is auto-killed with a single attack, whether you said they had 1 HP or kept it at 4 HP to begin with is going to have the same result.

 

[Nightbeat84]

I assume jgsugden was intending the same thing... that even if you used CR 1/8 monsters as-is, their HP is low enough that they are essentially minions and are killed with a single swing.

In the end it doesn't really matter-- if the monster is auto-killed with a single attack, whether you said they had 1 HP or kept it at 4 HP to begin with is going to have the same result.

True enought. The big take away is that the dm doesn't have to remember hp numbers. The other thing to is that if you want to use minions on higher level party you have to scale up there attacks and damage for 1/8 cr where it's just easier to take a higher level cr and just give them 1 hp

 

[Garthanos]

Minions serve a purpose low-hp monsters don’t, in that they provide canon fodder enemies that you don’t have to track HP for.

they also were simpler with fewer distinct effects usually than counter parts ie there is more to being a minion than the drop in one hit. It also created implicit scaling on pcs the same kind of ogre that pushed you around and threw the party for a loop is forced to fight with more desperate less disruptive techniques or for that ogre he cannot land a blow solid enough to smash you across the field.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I actually liked the idea of minions as a concept and used them relatively frequently when I ran 4E. Especially at low-levels in the game, the minions rule was a time-saver. The only thing that I eventually came to have problems with was that as monster CR / HP got higher, the disparity between the HP of a regular version of the monster and the minion version just felt wrong after a while.

A "powerful" orc and a "minion" orc were close enough in HP that the idea of "one-shotting" an orc (via the minion mechanic) felt good. Cutting through large groups of them did make the PCs feel powerful. But when you started facing off against things like ogres, hill giants, or even more powerful creatures... the fact that a party of PCs would need to hit a regular version over and over and over, round after round after round again to kill it, but a "minion" version was still one-shottable... just didn't feel the same or sit as well with me.

Had there been a very distinguishable narrative reason as we described them as to why these specific ogres could be one-shotted (they were non-combatants, they were children etc.) it might not have felt so weird. But that usually wasn't the case. Instead you were presented with a perfectly typical warband encounter of supposed ogre warriors, but when you then faced off against them... some of them had these huge pools of HP that you had to slowly whittle away round after round, but others dropped in a single shot. When that happened I no longer felt the same feeling of being powerful and carving through large swathes of enemies... instead I felt like the game was gimping my enemies and thus my achievement for no logical reason. A couple creatures requiring 10 to 12 hits to kill alongside a few that only needed 1 hit was just too disparate for my sense of reality.

So I can understand the desire to just use standard HP totals for low-level enemies to achieve the same effect. If you can cleave through goblins hordes by one-shotting their normal HP level but then sometimes facing off against a boss that requires only two or three hits? That feels okay and I'm happy to go with it. I just don't want the separation to be too great.

 

[Garthanos]

Had there been a very distinguishable narrative reason as we described them as to why these specific ogres could be one-shotted (they were non-combatants, they were children etc.) it might not have felt so weird. But that usually wasn't the case. Instead you were presented with a perfectly typical warband encounter of supposed ogre warriors, but when you then faced off against them... some of them had these huge pools of HP that you had to slowly whittle away round after round, but others dropped in a single shot. great.

The side effect of huge amounts of hit points being skill. Picture this ... they are out classed and fight differently because of it.
A minion is already in over their head their desperate attacks in order to even have a chance leave them seriously open if we weren't using a system with advancing hit point picture taking the desperate defense as doubling how much damage you deal if you succeed but improving their defenses by a chunk. These things open them up another so double the effectiveness of your retaliation. The combined effect is better to hit and better defense but they take 4x damage when hit.
You can make that half as much if you note that when they are defeated they are often actually utterly demoralized not dead they know how much they are pushing it and I treat them as already bloodied any way. Now on top of that assume that a significant number of times they are hit by even a small amount they flee quitting the fight after they get hit. Make that a save in 5e land because the first hit really hits home they are truly over their head. Which with the number of things which trigger off of bloodied means that works even better in 4e. Intimidating them to quit the fight become a very real choice as per the intimidate skill even without hitting them.

Not thinking that is clear or if I over expressed lol but I cannot english today

 

[Nightbeat84]

The side effect of huge amounts of hit points being skill. Picture this ... they are out classed and fight differently because of it.
A minion is already in over their head their desperate attacks in order to even have a chance leave them seriously open if we weren't using a system with advancing hit point picture taking the desperate defense as doubling how much damage you deal if you succeed but improving their defenses by a chunk. These things open them up another so double the effectiveness of your retaliation. The combined effect is better to hit and better defense but they take 4x damage when hit.
You can make that half as much if you note that when they are defeated they are often actually utterly demoralized not dead they know how much they are pushing it and I treat them as already bloodied any way. Now on top of that assume that a significant number of times they are hit by even a small amount they flee quitting the fight after they get hit. Make that a save in 5e land because the first hit really hits home they are truly over their head. Which with the number of things which trigger off of bloodied means that works even better in 4e. Intimidating them to quit the fight become a very real choice as per the intimidate skill even without hitting them.

Not thinking that is clear or if I over expressed lol but I cannot english today

Interesting concept have to think about but I do like it