Minions and hps

[Nebulous]

One possible solution, if this were to come up in my campaign and be a problem (which it will eventually) would be to assume that a large amounts of minions are going to die very, very quickly, and compensate for that with extra minions who i expect to actually reach the battle. I'd rather not start changing rules if i don't have to.

 

[lukelightning]

At higher levels Warriors get an encounter power that anybody who starts their turn next to them takes 1d10+1 damage (meaning any minion who startst the turn next to them dies). This lasts for the entire battle.

Clerics get a similar power that they can sustain with a minor.

Rangers can do wisdom mod to one person at the end their turn.

This just means that the minions should just keep moving around and tossing javelins/shooting arrows/spitting darts/etc. at the fighter.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, I really don't think it's that hard to track bloodied (especially in Maptools, which I'm increasingly falling in love with) and I think your players will be magnitudes happier to bloody stuff than for minions to ignore even more of their attacks.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm very tempted to include a 'bloodied on a miss that causes damage' rule for my minions in the future. I'll probably want to get some kind of tokens for bloodied (which I've been avoiding), but I like the feel of it. The big change that would make is that 'misses' still hurt the minions, which is nice for the players.

I would like to do something about the auto-damage powers, and I think I agree with those who propose a damage threshold for use in that particular case. Maybe even something really simple like 'damage threshold = 1 + half level' and a power which does automatic damage will only kill them if it does damage greater than that threshold.

Tying this in with the above item, I might allow the auto damage powers which don't breach the threshold to bloody their targets (but it does at least mean that the minions get one action to attack or scatter before they get auto-minced).

There have been some really good thoughts in this thread!

 

[brehobit]

Heh.

I brought the issue of auto-damage attacks and minions up right after 4e came out. And they said I was crazy....

I think I'm going to go with: Autodamage attacks that do more than CON modifier (con bonus + half level) result in minion death. Those that do less allow the minion to save (an extra roll, but no state).

Is the roll less of a problem than the state? For me, yes. I suck at tracking things. I'm not sure my exact proposal is the right one, but I think using a save is the best way to go.

Mark

 

[Gort]

I must say, I still like the idea of minions. In practice, though, they just die too easily to really be equivalent to the amount of XP they're supposed to be worth. At-will blast powers and sustainable auto-damage powers are a large part of this. Between powers like Dragon Breath, Flame Burst, Cleave and pretty much anything from the Swordmage class, minions don't last a single round.

I can't really think of a way to fix it though, really. Half of the job description of "Wizard" is "minion-killer", and I think controller is already the least desirable role of the four. (meaning that if a party only had 3 players, I'd definitely recommend a defender, leader and striker as opposed to a controller) Sure, everyone can think of a time the wizard was awesome, but the defender and leader are the core of the group, and "doing tons of damage" just makes fights so much more fun.

 

[Stalker0]

I must say, I still like the idea of minions. In practice, though, they just die too easily to really be equivalent to the amount of XP they're supposed to be worth.

Then perhaps the simplest solution is to simply make the minions worth less xp. Instead of getting 4 minions per normal monster, make it 5 per normal monster.

I will agree with some posters that if there is a problem with minions, it probably the autodamaging powers in the game.

I'm curious how many there really are though. The biggest one's I know of are warlock one's, like the pact blade which autokills a minion that tries to hit it. That's pretty strong. But for example if the fighter is using his daily to be able to autokill minions right next to him, I don't see that as overpowered necessarily.

 

[mlangsdorf]

There's an encounter in one of the Dungeon adventures in which the party faces 10 higher level cyclops minions. The minions are behind cover and are supporting a wyvern and a pair of cyclops impalers. The PCs have to cross a narrow bridge while under fire and aerial assault.

Or, alternately, the Warlock can just Two-fold Curse the minions with a Rod of Reaving +1. If 3/4s of the monsters in the fight can be killed by a minor action without an attack roll, there's something wrong with minion design.

The DT/Bloodied combination would have nicely solved this problem.

 

[keterys]

It doesn't need to be overpowered to be boring, and it still makes minions of limited usefulness.

I started noticing this the most in my level 12 campaign, so I'll look at what a warlock and wizard of that level could do:
Warlock:
At-Will = Two-fold curse plus rod of reaving to kill 2 as a minor, pact blade to kill any that attack you (can use both, only need a +1 pact blade in the off hand), Slashing Wake Paragon ability to damage all those around where you teleport
Encounter = Doomsayer's Action (use an AP to damage all cursed, best used after triggering Rod of Corruption)
Daily = Armor of Agathys (Daily 1), Avernian Eruption and Hunger of Hadar (Daily 5),

Wizard:
At-Will = Cloud of Daggers
Encounter = Winter's Wrath (Encounter 7), Frostburn (Encounter 13), Burning Blood (Blood Mage uses Second Wind to damage every enemy within 10 squares), Storm Cage (Spellstorm Mage Encounter 11)
Daily = Flaming Sphere (Daily 1), Stinking Cloud (Daily 5), Wall of Fire (Daily 9), Wall of Ice (Daily 15), (technically also Acid Arrow 1, but whatever)

I believe that you can add more items to that list, but that's a pretty solid initial list.

 

[Anguirus]

It's not that the minions' defenses were too low (they were straight out of the book)

Doesn't mean they aren't poorly designed. It's been known for awhile that the zombie minion sucks terribly.

I get the feeling that a lot of people in here just don't like minions. In that case, I heartily recommend not using them. I have a feeling that trying to make them something they are not will lead to frustration, but YMMV.

Minions are very vulnerable to auto-damage and area-effect damage, intentionally. They are supposed to go down fast when one concentrates on them, but be too dangerous to ignore. In my opinion they accomplish this admirably. I don't personally use minions as the primary threat of an encounter, though I may try at some point. Rather, I use them as 8-12 distractions from the real threat. If the wizard spends a round killing minions instead of Webbing the Elite Soldier, then the encounter is much more challenging. And if the Wizard doesn't take the bait, I cheerfully have the minions gang-up on somebody and really make nuisances of themselves.

Granted, I don't have much experience in paragon tier, but in Epic and Heroic they are useful in this exact fashion, I've found.