Minions and hps

[cbbakke]

I agree on the book keeping part. The bloodied idea is ok but it is a lot of paperwork and prevents one shotting them which I do like the ablity of doing.

Scenerio.

Minions are on the battle field. Fighter pops his power and charges minions. On the start of their turn (minion) they take 1d10+1 damage. Minions dont get to go even and are dead.

 

[keterys]

I'm not convinced that bloodied is more bookkeeping than a damage threshold that varies from minion type to minion type or requiring multiple hits, and I think that it works far better with the system.

That is to say, anything that potentially stops the fighter's Reaper Stance dealing 1d10 + 2 (Enh) + 1 (WF), 4 minimum, 8.5 avg can seriously harm a wizard's scorching burst dealing 1d6 + 4 (Int) + 2 (Enh), 7 minimum, 9.5 avg.

And I totally think any solution that makes scorching burst ineffective against minions completely misses the point.

 

[Anguirus]

This isn't quite true.

The designers tested giving minions low number of hit points and didn't like the idea that they then had to keep track of hit points for the minions.

His idea is to give minions low number of hit points and if the damage does not meet the threshold, it does zero damage. In this case, there is no keeping track of hit points.

I stand corrected. I missed that part. In that case, though, I still think it makes minions rather more challenging and more frustrating to deal with for both the DM and the players.

The point was that the minion portion of the encounter consisted of a string of die rolls, and every die roll of 2+ for the paladin or ~5+ for the rogue converted itself into free XP.

Why on earth did they have such low defenses?

If a poorly designed minion has no defenses, well, then it is useless. But the idea of minions is to be nearly as hard to hit as any other monster.

I've used minions quite effectively against my players. The ones with ranged weapons can be downright scary with terrain, etc.

 

[Victim]

Zombie minions are especially poor in terms of defenses, IIRC. I think it be because they inherit some traits from the normal Brute (IIRC) zombie, without benefiting from the extra HP that brutes normally have. And the normal zombie isn't very good either.

Minions that spread out and stick to ranged attacks seem much harder than ones that melee and bunch up (and it's hard for minions to melee someone without bunching up around them).

 

[Regicide]

I have found these tactics are helpful when using minions:

1) Split them up. Have them attack from different sides.

That should be a very exceptional encounter and not the norm, otherwise the party has a spot check of what in order to be continually ambushed? Also split up their ability to deal damage drops to the point where they could very well not be a threat.

2) Use aid another. Have the minions aid their big friends instead of attack themselves.

Can't use aid another if they're dead.

3) Its all about the last few. Generally minions die by the bucketload early in the fight

Then thats a problem. If they're dying by the bucketload then the complaints that others in this thread, and what I've said in the past are valid, that they're not fun and they're just XP gifts. Very bad mechanic.

Games like Ninety-Nine Nights have never taken off while things like God of War have because killing a dozen monsters with one press of a button quickly grows tedious, but having some resistance to your foe can keep you entertained. While a single shot kill in a video game might be fun with a bit of skill involved like with a sniper rifle or rail gun, minion killing is more like pushing the button on a slot machine. *yawn* One gets tired of continually having to skim off the refuse before getting down to the real fight, even if, perversely, that refuse gives more XP than the actual mob they're the minion of!!!

 

[James McMurray]

Why on earth did they have such low defenses?

If a poorly designed minion has no defenses, well, then it is useless. But the idea of minions is to be nearly as hard to hit as any other monster.

You jumped to the wrong conclusion. It's not that the minions' defenses were too low (they were straight out of the book), it's that the PC's attack bonus was so high. I could be off by a point or two (maybe he only missed on 5's, and the rogue on 7's). Neither were my character, so I don't know their exact stats.

Whatever the actual numbers were, it was boring because minions die too easily.

I changed that in my game, and I'll be coming back to post how it went as soon as we play a scenario with the new minion rules. It's possible I went overboard, but a few of us talked about it for a while, and it seems like a good fix.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ummm - that sounds like a poorly thought out encounter to me. An encounter with nothing but minions should be a cakewalk no matter your level or what powers you have. Minions have to have something to be a minion to.

Too bad it came straight out of Pyramid of Shadows from WotC. It appears that at least one WotC designer disagrees with you.

And, there is a difference between an easy encounter and one where 12 minions out of 16 are auto-killed in round one using one encounter power (if played as per module design). That's beyond easy and into the "not worth rolling the dice" category.

Btw, they were rats, not zombies. I just forgot because we did not have all of our miniatures at the game and used zombie miniatures for the encounter.

 

[cbbakke]

Trog warrior minion level 12 pg 252
Viscera devouerer level 12 controler pg 68
foulspawn hulk level 12 brute pg 113

monster EXP AC Fort Ref WILL hps
Trogs 175 25 25 22 21 1
Devouerer 700 28 26 23 22 124
Fouls hulk 700 24 27 22 22 150

I just randomly picked a few mobs to show the stat difference.

4 minions is worth 1 mob as far as exp given.

Using NPCS smartly solution

As a GM we need to try to use all mobs as smart as the mobs or as close as we can. Zombies charge closest flesh. Drow look for their own safety first. a troll slayer charges the largest foe etc etc.

sure every encounter I could come up wtih a master plan to screw teh party and have all minions spread out and use range combat to make it suck for the party but not every encounter should be like that. Ogere minions arent useable then.

HP threshold would mess up AOE spells

I think this is the core of the balancing issue. If a level 12 brute minion for example would have 9 hps for threshold 1/2 level +3.

Meaning a caster using the spell used above for an example would kill a little over half the minions he hit. the fighter power would kill slightly less.

Using 1/2 level plus + CON mod (which would be 5) it would have 11 hps. Which would mean that the mage and warrior would kill far less of the mobs. The hard thing though is adding con mod makes more logical sense in many ways.

The other issue is a system that works at mobs of all levels.

my system would struggle at really low levels. a level 2 minions would have 4 hps so anybody who hit it would kill it (assuming they have +3 in their primary stat) which would lean more towrd the CON mod

 

[deleteme123456]

Trog warrior minion level 12 pg 252
Viscera devouerer level 12 controler pg 68
foulspawn hulk level 12 brute pg 113

monster EXP AC Fort Ref WILL hps
Trogs 175 25 25 22 21 1
Devouerer 700 28 26 23 22 124
Fouls hulk 700 24 27 22 22 150

I just randomly picked a few mobs to show the stat difference.

4 minions is worth 1 mob as far as exp given.

Using NPCS smartly solution

As a GM we need to try to use all mobs as smart as the mobs or as close as we can. Zombies charge closest flesh. Drow look for their own safety first. a troll slayer charges the largest foe etc etc.

sure every encounter I could come up wtih a master plan to screw teh party and have all minions spread out and use range combat to make it suck for the party but not every encounter should be like that. Ogere minions arent useable then.

HP threshold would mess up AOE spells

I think this is the core of the balancing issue. If a level 12 brute minion for example would have 9 hps for threshold 1/2 level +3.

Meaning a caster using the spell used above for an example would kill a little over half the minions he hit. the fighter power would kill slightly less.

Using 1/2 level plus + CON mod (which would be 5) it would have 11 hps. Which would mean that the mage and warrior would kill far less of the mobs. The hard thing though is adding con mod makes more logical sense in many ways.

The other issue is a system that works at mobs of all levels.

my system would struggle at really low levels. a level 2 minions would have 4 hps so anybody who hit it would kill it (assuming they have +3 in their primary stat) which would lean more towrd the CON mod

Remember that AOE spells like Scorching Burst have one die roll for damage. A Level 12 wizard should have a +2 or +3 implement, 1d6 damage + 5 INT, so that's 8 or 9 minimum (good incentive to have the +3 implement if 9 is the threshold). With the +3 implement, that's +14 (=+5 INT + 3 implement + 6 half level) vs Reflex, given at 22, requires 8+ to hit (65% chance). So the wizard will actually kill 2/3 of them.

If the threshold is 11 instead, then it depends on that 1d6 roll, so the wizard now has about a 66% chance of killing 66% and a 33% of just bloodying 66%. Assuming I can do math , we get 45% dead on average (assuming the same number in the burst).

So I guess it's up to what you think is good.

I try hard not to clump my minions such that more than 2 can be hit by a burst 1 attack, but this is really hard in dungeons (KoTS). I've found them to be rather ineffective when they don't have ranged attacks (Goblins)... the Kobolds were at least a threat with Javelins.

 

[Mad Hamish]

Too bad it came straight out of Pyramid of Shadows from WotC. It appears that at least one WotC designer disagrees with you.

Not exactly unknown for modules to have bad encounters in them.

And, there is a difference between an easy encounter and one where 12 minions out of 16 are auto-killed in round one using one encounter power (if played as per module design). That's beyond easy and into the "not worth rolling the dice" category.

Which is why it's a badly designed encounter.