Minions and fixed damage

[Ravingdork]

What I want to know is the forumla to use when determinging a minion's damage. It isn't minimum weapon damage like was previously thought.

 

[Khur]

To be clear, it's important to note that minions can get critical hits. They just get no mechanical benefit from doing so—unless they or another monster in the fight is designed to benefit from that critical hit in some fashion other than the normal max damage. PCs get no mechanical benefit from critical hits on minions either; they instead get the same net effect as a normal hit. The minion dies.

That seems like parity to me. Where the parity ends is the fact that a few PC powers trigger on that PC taking a critical hit. To me, that's all good. If a minion triggers your power, you should be able to use that power if you want to.

Those who have said that minions have an unfair advantage in the probability they will get a crit in a combat are right. More rolls = higher probability of a crit. That's where the problem of having rolled damage that exceeds the minion's flat norm might become a problem. The thing is, those who say that minions' numbers tend to flatten the damage across the duration of the combat are also correct. Rolled damage will create a few spikes, though.

I disagree with those who equate using mechanical ramifications to recognize a minion with metagaming. Heroic PCs should be able to tell that mooks are inferior threats, especially after a short time engaging those mooks. If the DM doesn't do the job in a narrative sense, the mechanical ramifications of a minion's attacks and HP will do the job instead.

I might not tell the players who's a mook right away, but I give hints and I reward those who bother to assess their foes. A PC should rarely be led to use an encounter power (or better) on a mook, unless that character intends some overkill. I might allow it in the opening round of the fight (when it's often a bad idea to use a powerful power anyway), but by round 2, everyone knows who the lightweights are and who are the heavies.

In my game, that knowledge has created an atmosphere or more fun. Sometimes PCs ignore minions, even taking opportunity attacks to get to the main bad guys. To me, that's a fine example of cinematic heroics—plow past the palookas to get to the real enemy.

 

[Blackeagle]

Rabbit Season!

Duck Season!

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

In my game, that knowledge has created an atmosphere or more fun. Sometimes PCs ignore minions, even taking opportunity attacks to get to the main bad guys. To me, that's a fine example of cinematic heroics—plow past the palookas to get to the real enemy.

That is exactly what I'm hoping for. The PCs wading through the mass of minions, dropping the ones directly in their path and ignoring the rest as they make their way to the BBEG at the other end of the room. From a narrative sense, the BBEG doesn't know these minions will drop on a single shot from the PCs. He watches with dismay as the PCs continue to move towards him steadily until he angrily sends his personal bodyguards into the fray to do what his pathetic minions cannot do - stall the PCs while he completes his dark ritual.

 

[Jhaelen]

Those who have said that minions have an unfair advantage in the probability they will get a crit in a combat are right. More rolls = higher probability of a crit. That's where the problem of having rolled damage that exceeds the minion's flat norm might become a problem. The thing is, those who say that minions' numbers tend to flatten the damage across the duration of the combat are also correct. Rolled damage will create a few spikes, though.

The thing is: I don't see why you couldn't let minions crit AND let it affect their damage.

Four minions are supposed to be a threat identical to a single standard foe. So they should do the same average damage as a single standard foe. Now there's two ways to calculate the average damage:
By taking crits into account or by not taking them into account.

In general, if you're doing the former, minions shouldn't do increased damage on a crit since it would change the math. If you're doing the latter they generally _should_ do increased damage.
Even in the former case minions _could_ get increased damage on a crit without changing the math:
If the average damage of a standard monster divided by four results in a fraction and the standard minion damage is rounded down. Taking that fractional damage into account by allowing for increased crit damage will then actually make the math more accurate!

What you probably wouldn't want to do is let four minions do _significantly_ more maximum damage in a round than a standard monster could do with a crit. A bit more damage might be okay since the chance of four minions critting in a given round is much lower than a single standard monster critting once.

 

[Lanefan]

Four minions are supposed to be a threat identical to a single standard foe. So they should do the same average damage as a single standard foe.

Now that I've read through KotS (yes, I picked it up first thing this morning) and seen how things are intended to work, I'm even more of the mindset that minions should a) have a variable (but not very large) number of h.p., b) be vulnerable to crits, and c) be less obviously "grunts" than they appear. Even the descriptions given indicate a difference, where it should in fact be hard if not impossible to tell one Zombie from another until you've hit them a few times. Still, easy enough to alter to suit, I suppose.

While sometimes there could be a case made for there being such a huge difference between minions and regulars, there needs, I think, to also be a middle ground...something better than a minion but not up to regular status; something that has 10 h.p. instead of 1 or 35.

That said, KotS looks like a fine adventure, easily enough tweakable to any edition.

Lanefan