Minions and fixed damage

[Plane Sailing]

I'd love to know at what stage in the development process they went from giving minions normal rolled damage for their weapon/strength etc and changed it to a fixed amount that scales by level. Hopefully once NDA's are ended some playtesters might be able to reveal something about that!

The minion excerpt tells us that it was done to reduce die rolling for minions "The damage for minions is always flat instead of rolled, which again helps speed up play as the DM only needs to roll one die for each minion." but how much extra impact would it be?

Something that I'm just idly thinking about - what would be the impact of giving minions rolled damage rather than fixed damage? The DM would roll a few extra dice, sure... but would it would make the minions tougher for the heroes? would it make them too much tougher? The legion devils would all presumably do 1d8+2 with a longsword and +2 for their strength (although would there be an implied bonus to damage for equivalent level/HD? I can't remember)

Cheers

 

[Blackeagle]

In addition to ease of DMing, I'd guess that another reason minions have fixed damage is to make a fight with a ton of minion somewhat less swingy than if they did random damage. The DM knows exactly how much damage minions can do and exactly how much the PCs can handle.

 

[Scribble]

My guess is not too much of a difference. maybe a few spikes here and there, but overall you'd end up doing average damage anyway.

Kind of like when they put average hit point next to the monster HD... you CAN roll HP each time, but overall you end up with about the average.

 

[baberg]

I'm not sure fixed damage makes it that much faster either. In any case, I plan to roll a damage die for my minions and just ignore the result - If the PCs see me rolling a d20 for a certain mob and then saying "5 damage" they'll metagame and know they're fighting a minion.

As long as the damage dice were limited to 1d6+(whatever is needed to get an average equal to the "fixed" damage) I don't see much swinginess entering into the mix.

 

[Wormwood]

Hmmm. I'm seriously considering fixed damage for non-minions as well.

 

[Piratecat]

It'd be fine, I think; just a little slower. The point of minions is to provide a whole lot of foes without the normal brainpower needed to track a whole lot of foes. Rolling damage dice for them slows things down a bit, but wouldn't hurt anything.

 

[djdaidouji]

If you roll attack and damage dice together, you get both attack and damage at the same time!

Though I'll probably use the average anyways, mixing it up a bit. He does 5 on the first hit. 4 the next. 6 for another. The PCs are running out of resources too early, so the next attack is 3, the next is 5 again for equality...

 

[FadedC]

If you roll attack and damage dice together, you get both attack and damage at the same time!

Though I'll probably use the average anyways, mixing it up a bit. He does 5 on the first hit. 4 the next. 6 for another. The PCs are running out of resources too early, so the next attack is 3, the next is 5 again for equality...

Depends how many d8s you actually have, we usually have more d20s then anything else. But your dice box quantitites may vary.

But for me even if it's the same number of rolls it's much easier to say....ok 6 hits at 5 damage each that's 30.....then to say ok that's 1+2, 5+2, 4+2....ok that's 16....now lets write that down while I roll the next 3 attacks....

 

[Fallen Seraph]

This is why once the books are out I would love to see another "Wizard's Presents:" book, but this time chronologically going through the whole development of 4e from conception to release.

 

[Scribble]

Depends how many d8s you actually have, we usually have more d20s then anything else. But your dice box quantitites may vary.

But for me even if it's the same number of rolls it's much easier to say....ok 6 hits at 5 damage each that's 30.....then to say ok that's 1+2, 5+2, 4+2....ok that's 16....now lets write that down while I roll the next 3 attacks....

Wonder if you could split the difference and say roll once for damage... Like if minions could do a possible 1d8 damage, then roll 1d8 and all of the minions that round do the result of that damage...