Minions and hps

[Mad Hamish]

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).

Yeah, but while the Paladin might get to use an at will with Polearm Gamble and Heavy Blade Opportunist the Rogue won't on opportunity attacks.

Also the Paladin doesn't get a lot of benefit of it if he's wiping the minions out before they get to him.

 

[keterys]

There are two basic problems with minions.

1/ Auto-damage powers = auto-kill powers.

2/ Temporary hit points from Leader critters.

Any solution ought to address both.

Cheers, -- N

How about:

1. Any hit kills a minion.
2. Any damage not from a hit bloodies a minion.
3. Any damage to a bloodied minion kills it.

That way, autodamage takes two passes to kill a minion, but it's not useless or instant death. Area of effect spells will kill some, but not necessarily all minions, etc. And it's only slightly more work to track than current rules, plus gives the occasional bloodied-benefit.

Verily, I do agree.

 

[KarinsDad]

How about:

1. Any hit kills a minion.
2. Any damage not from a hit bloodies a minion.
3. Any damage to a bloodied minion kills it.

This seems more reasonable and less wonky than the current rules.

 

[Nifft]

Verily, I do agree.

You still need to address temporary HP, though.

Cheers, -- N

 

[deleteme123456]

Well, I guess it depends on how big the temporary HP is. For example, a Kobold Wyrmpriest can give 5 temp HP. That's not a whole lot even at first level... a non-striker is probably doing 1d6 to 1d10 + 3 or 4, so 6.5 - 9.5, call it 8 damage on average. The simplest way I can think of would simply be "temporary hit points of any kind remove the bloodied condition on all minions." A more complicated way might involve giving non-bloodied minions an extra hit, but that's a pain to track, since now you have to invent a new condition ("Shielded"?) and some way to track it. Bloodied is easy if you have bloodied markers already. Maybe non-bloodied minions should get a free shift (# squares = 1 per tier using Leader's level)... that doesn't have to be tracked and it's sort of related. This would be in addition to any shift granted by the power giving temp HP or other abilities that would grant shifting.

 

[Nifft]

Well, I guess it depends on how big the temporary HP is. (...)

You're getting closer to the (already posted) solution we ended up with in the earlier thread.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

You still need to address temporary HP, though.

Why? There is no reason that temporary HP cannot just work as advertised. There's no need to create special rules for them. Either the damage blows by them, or it does not. No different than if a Minion acquired Resist Fire 5 against a fire attack.

 

[cbbakke]

Plane sailing kind of scares me. Twice I have had an idea to post and twice he has had the same basic idea.

I think the auto of a hp threshold for minions vs auto damage is the easiest solution that I ahve read so far. This way aoe spells are not nerfed since they already need to do a hit roll so it would be a double whammy.

I kind of like the minions have hp threshold for all attacks but i think it would really screw over aoe and make minions a bit too tough.

I am thinking
a) any auto damage minions get 5+ 1/2 level in hp threshold.

b) CON mod + 1/2 for hp threshold.

These would only apply to auto damage spells.

 

[keterys]

You still need to address temporary HP, though.

Cheers, -- N

The rule addresses temporary hp just fine. If it's hit for damage, it dies. If it takes damage but isn't hit, it's bloodied. It then dies when it takes any more damage at all, hit or miss.

 

[CSK]

Verily, I do agree.

I knew I'd seen that before... great minds and all that.