Minions and hps

[KarinsDad]

If that's what you want from the encounter then the mooks aren't all minions.

Nonsense. At 2nd level, the 16 minions are fine. At 7th level, they are no longer fine. The minion rules break down as the PCs gain abilities that auto-damage foes.

It matters not if you have 16 minions out of 16 foes or 4 minions out of 7 foes.

Stating that the encounter design is at fault is a copout for inferior rules design. A DM should be able to throw any type of similar level foes at his party and expect the rules system to be balanced enough that the foes are not wiped out in a single round. That's the entire intent of 4E encounter design: balance that 3.5 encounter design did not have.

That doesn't mean that a given encounter won't be easier or tougher for a given set of PCs, it means that the game system does not have mechanical elements that auto-wipe out foes without a die roll. There is zero chance of a minion surviving Winter's Wrath (shy of having a specific resistance). That's bad game design and the claims that it's bad encounter design is obviously flawed due to the fact that it will work against any minion within any encounter designed by any DM.

7th level Wizard wipes out 20th level Minion with Winter's Wrath if the Minion does not have Cold Resistance 5 or higher.

WT?

How is that balanced or fun?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Both paladins and rogues have an at-will attack that's exeptionally good at hitting. Rogues have Piercing Strike (Weapon power vs Reflex - getting the weapon proficiency bonus against a non-AC defense is great), and paladins get Valiant Strike (+1 to hit per adjacent opponent - at least +1 to hit over a basic attack, and it would be extra juicy in a fight full of minions).

Neither should have been an issue when taking OA though, because (at least in most cases) you are limited to basic attacks, right? Rogues get a lot worse in those circumstances too, unless they are brutal rogues.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Not exactly.

16 lesser opponents is conceptionally a fine encounter, even a challenging encounter. This equates to fun. The concept of fighting 16 mooks is a perfectly fine FRPG concept.

The problem is that the 4E rules, especially as levels get higher, drop this perfectly fine concept on the floor due to badly designed game mechanics.

I'm afraid I disagree with your premise here, KarinsDad - the encounter is fundamentally designed within the rules framework of the adventure. In PoS it is written for the 4e system, and thus the encounter should have been designed with those in mind. i.e. an all-minion encounter at that level just isn't practical and useful.

That is a problem with the encounter design.

However, I agree with you that there is then a problem with the 4e rules design too - the presence of auto-damaging powers makes the destruction of minions too easy. A 1st level warlock with Armour of Agythys can automatically kill an epic legion devil* just by running up to it, and the legion devil dies at the start of its next turn before doing anything

* if this has cold resistance, swap for any epic minion that doesn't have cold resistance - I don't have books with me to give a specific example

Minions seem reasonably well balanced as long as people have to hit them; but because minions only have one axis of protection (defences) and are missing the other axis of protection (hit points), anything which bypasses the defences has unexpectedly "good" repercussions.

The problem, it seems to me, are the 'auto-damaging powers'. Naturally if I'd been a playtester like I asked, I'd have pointed that out to them during testing

Cheers

 

[Aristotle]

I'm going to continue using minions as-is, as I've not seen an issue with them yet... but I'm going to tuck the damage threshold concept laid out earlier in this thread away for special cases. It might be interesting to see the players squirm when the zombie rotters don't go down as easy as the kobold minions did.

 

[Nebulous]

7th level Wizard wipes out 20th level Minion with Winter's Wrath if the Minion does not have Cold Resistance 5 or higher.

WT?

How is that balanced or fun?

Maybe you're just grabbing some random numbers to use as an example, but a 7th level character should never be pitted against a 20th level ANYTHING. Per the RAW i suppose that a child with a pointed stick can kill any minion, but common sense dictates otherwise.

 

[cbbakke]

TIME OUT TIME OUT TIME OUT

I started this thread about the mechanics of minions and it has gone 32 different ways and is becoming a mess of people talking about too many things at once.


As a mechanic in the game, I agree with Plane Sailing that the auto damage powers appear to be the real problem in regards to minions. People are throwing out ways around dealing with that problem but in the end that appears to be the flaw in the system.

Does anybody have any other ideas besides the
a) HP threshold idea that I have
b) levels of injury for minions (blooded then dead). I dont care for this due to paperwork needed to keep track of an inability to killa minion in one shot

 

[keterys]

If the problem is auto damage abilities, you should target _those_, not every ability in the game. I can say that much.

Something like "abilities that damage without a hit roll fail to kill a minion unless they do at least X" rather than "minions are immune to Cleave and scorching burst and thunderwave often fail to work".

 

[Aristotle]

I'm sort of, of the opinion that a successful attack roll should be required to kill a minion. But that might make auto-damage attacks too weak. What about...

• Any damage from a successful attack roll kills a minion as normal.
• Any damage that is applied automatically without an attack roll bloodies the minion.
• Any damage that is applied automatically without an attack roll to a bloodied minion kills a minion as normal.

...so it would take two auto-damage attacks to take minions out, instead of one, and folks with features/powers that trigger on bloodied get more changes to use them in minion heavy adventures.

 

[keterys]

Well, yes, that's pretty much close to the rule I suggested, except I also addressed abilities that damage on miss so that it wasn't a pure nerf for the player. The OP doesn't want to track bloodied, though, so that's out for him

 

[Aristotle]

You're right, it is basically the same as your suggestion. Sorry.

I think I'm going to go with that. I use Alea Tools counters, so tracking bloodied doesn't really make things any more complicated/cumbersome. Throw a red magnet under the affected minions and move on.