Minions and hps

[James McMurray]

Last session our epic game had two fights with minions. The rule we used is the one mentioned earlier for zombies:

- A minion that takes any kind of damage is knocked prone.
- A prone minion that takes any kind of damage or a status effect is killed.
- A minion that starts its turn prone rolls a saving throw. If it fails it lashes out once with a basic attack and then dies. If it succeeds it acts normally.

The first fight was against an elite and three minions. The minions died readily, but got to do a little damage first.

The second fight was against 2 monsters capable of resurrecting minions (modified Skull Lords), a trap, and a bunch of minions. The minions got to do a bunch of damage in this fight, but nowhere near as much as the similarly levelled trap or the skull lords. I don't have my notes handy, but IIRC they made their death saves a few times, and failed them about as often.

The skull lords' presence definitely helped them out, as they raised minions at least five times.

IMO it worked out really well. One player expressed a concern that theoretically minions could take infinite damage. But since the odds of them saving once is 55%, and each added save cuts the odds roughly in half, I'm not too concerned about that. Plus any attack which would deal damage and also knock them prone or apply an effect that has to be tracked will kill them outright.

There's not even a 10% chance that a minion will survive four attacks. On average I expect them to survive one and a half hits. A standard monster seems to take four to six hits to drop, depending on level and who is hitting it. That seems about right to me. There are times when a minion might survive more attacks, but also times when a single attack is going to kill it, especially once the players know who are minions and who aren't.

The party's wizard just changed himself to a swordmage, and the terrain kept him from using his minion slaying at will attack. Also, the radiant cleric didn't make it to the session. Had either of those not been the case, the minions still would have dropped like flies, but not without a chance to do something first.

The player of the warlock may be changing to a wizard to fill the empty controller slot. If that happens, minions will still be dying in droves, but it'll be teamwork causing it instead of a single fighter stance.

 

[James McMurray]

My question is should the minion get to go before they die since saving throws are made at the end of their action or should this be treated as an interupt that just happens. I am thinking the second for simplisty sake.

Definitely do the save then and there. Otherwise you're having to track which minions took autodamage, which removes one of the biggest selling points for minions.

 

[cbbakke]

I dont run for a few weeks but I will give this a test run and see how it works out. The encounter I have planned is pretty minion heavy which is something I dont do a lot because of how weak they are so it should be interasteing.

Feedback will be provided after I run

 

[RigaMortus2]

The DM was going to have all 16 attack us in the same round, however, he suddenly remembered that my Wizard had just acquired Winter's Wrath. So, he had them attack in waves (over several rounds) so that my Wizard would not kill all 12 in the larger group with a single encounter power.

When the DM has to change his encounter design plans due to a game design element, it means that the game design element is flawed.

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all. What it means is that your DM is thoughtful, and knows how to play the NPCs and BBEG using the rules provided. You should be grateful of this.

 

[Zinovia]

How are you handling minions?

Have people had the chance to try out some of the suggested modifications to the minion rules? I see some very good ideas in this and other threads, and was curious to know how they have been working for your groups.

There is the damage threshold idea, with any damage less than the threshold bloodying the minion, and anything greater killing it outright. Or the rule that any hit kills a minion, any auto-damage or miss damage bloodies it. In both cases a bloodied minion that takes any damage dies.

I like the feel of the zombie minion falling to the ground and twitching, getting in one last attack before expiring. It's perfect for zombies as it adds to the creepy undead factor, but I don't care for the idea for any other sorts of minions.

I've been running KotS for the family group, and the minions have been useful to a degree, but I can see where they are going to be too easy to auto-damage when the players have more powers down the road. I also don't like the fact that minions currently don't take damage on a miss, even if the power normally grants miss damage.

For those using a threshold, how do you set that? I've seen various proposals based on the creature's CON, its level, its role, or various combinations thereof. How do you handle Cleave? The damage dealt by Cleave may well be below the threshold, but it seems to me that the intent of the power is to enable the fighter to pop a minion with that second hit. Do you say that Cleave always takes out a minion, or just bloodies it if the damage is less than the threshold?

For those using the any hit kills a minion, any miss or autodamage bloodies it, does Cleave damage count as a hit or an autodamage ability? The second target of Cleave is not "hit" inasmuch as no damage roll is made against it.

Thanks for your advice. I'm starting my main campaign (the one with the grownup players and not just my family) and have set up some house rules already, but would like to hammer this out before really getting into combats.

 

[KarinsDad]

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all. What it means is that your DM is thoughtful, and knows how to play the NPCs and BBEG using the rules provided. You should be grateful of this.

It means that the DM changed his encounter plans to correspond to the capabilities of the PCs and the metagame rules. It would have been perfectly fun for the PCs to wipe out 12 opponents with a single spell. Hence by definition, if the minion rules are not flawed (as per your response here to my claim that they are flawed) and designed for fun, the players should have fun and there is no reason for the DM to change his encounter plans, right? It's all good according to the rules, right?

 

[James McMurray]

I like the feel of the zombie minion falling to the ground and twitching, getting in one last attack before expiring. It's perfect for zombies as it adds to the creepy undead factor, but I don't care for the idea for any other sorts of minions.

We've had three fights using this rule and it's worked well so far. The first fight involved only three minions, who primary purpose in the fight was to die and give the almost naked PCs (they'd been captured) a weapon and some armor.

The second involved a whole bunch of minions, plus two modified Skull Lords who could resurrect them. The minions ended up doing slightly less damage than the trap and two Skull Lords, which put them pretty close to actually counting as 1/4 of a monster each.

The third fight had 16 minions in it, 8 troglodytes and 8 yuan-ti. The yuan-ti had melee weapons and so went down pretty fast despite the house rule. The trogs had 3 javelins each and good terrain to protect them, but still died before being forced to move into melee. All of the minions were 5 levels lower than an under-equipped party, and they did fairly decent damage because of the gear issues. Had they been the same level and the PCs had full gear, statistically it would have been about the same.

I'll definitely keep using the rule. One player expressed a concern about the mathematical possibility that a minion could end up taking more hits than a standard monster, or even infinite hits, but that hasn't happened yet.

 

[Bladesong]

Let me start by saying that I have not played a 4ed session and to apologize if this is a bit lengthy. We have used the concept of a “minion” for quite a while now. The details of how they work are as follows (and I will try to use some 4ed ideas/terms as I understand them):
The basic concept is that with 1 successful hit they can be killed or destroyed, but there are some easy to follow guidelines they follow:

Area attacks: if they make their save, they are unaffected (they look the worse for wear but are basically “ok”). If they fail their save and take enough damage that a normal, average creature of the same type would die, they die (i.e. if a non-minion creature of the same type has 28 hit points and a spell does 30, they die). If they fail their save and the damage is not enough to kill a non-minion of the same type, they are weakened (4ed term I guess would be “bloodied”).
Melee/missile attacks: When they are hit for the first time the DM rolls a Fortitude save with a DC 15; if they make it they can take 1 more hit (“bloodied” if you will), and if they fail it they are dead or destroyed. Strangely enough, with corporeal undead (I saw something in this thread earlier that was similar), if they made that Fortitude save but it would have been a successful Will save, they were knocked down and received one last “claw” type attack before being destroyed (we liked this because it was like those movies where the upper-half of skeleton is still crawling, trying to attack its target).
Cleave: Basically works as normal. If the first creature was hit and killed (or even knocked down in the case of undead) the character can roll to hit another adjacent creature, if it is hit you roll a Fort save just like the previous one and apply the same result.

We tried just 1 hit and dead, but the players did not like that. They literally felt like if they had used a spell against minions it was a waste of resources and that just wading through in melee without any resistance whatsoever was not “fun.”

Now I will try to briefly (too late) state how I would try to do this in 4ed if I ever actually play it. Remember, having not played, I probably will not be 100% accurate with my terminology.
Area attacks: Have the character make all attack rolls as usual and roll damage. If successful and the damage is enough to drop a non-minion creature of the same type, it is dead. If it is not enough, it is bloodied and another damage source will drop it. Misses will have no effect (though I would still have them look the worse for wear for “drama”).
Melee/missile attacks: With the first hit I would roll a saving throw for them (I believe I heard you are successful on a 10 or higher, though I would give them a +1 or +2 per tier on the roll) and if successful they are bloodied, and another blow will kill them. If they fail the save, they are dead. I will also probably still give undead a Charisma or Will check to get that one last attack for cinematic purposes.
Cleave: Really just the same as the attack although I believe I heard that cleave does damage whether the first foe drops or not; that being the case they would still get the save and you then have the possibility of the “cleaved” creature dropping before the original target (and I have no problem with that).
If any of you try this in a 4ed game, I would like to hear how it turns out. Happy gaming!

 

[Zinovia]

There are some big differences in 4E that preclude handling it in quite the same way you were doing in 3.x, but thanks for your post. The wizard has low level area attacks that would *never* take out a normal creature at full health, but that are designed to pop minions. Cleave now just does STR damage to the 2ndary target; it doesn't grant a second normal attack.

I've used minions already in my family's 4E game, and while I know they are supposed to die quickly, they seem to be a little too easy to kill. This will only get worse when we get into more effects that do automatic damage.

I agree that an effective way to use minions is at range, but most of them have few, if any, ranged attacks. If the minions spread out and use the terrain, they might be able to stay alive for a bit, but eventually they will need to get into melee and become cannon fodder as they were intended. If you can get them into the midst of the party, the wizard can't really drop an area spell on them without frying her group members, and they will have a chance to get in a couple actions before dying. Some of our combats have gone just that way, showing that the mechanic can work at lower levels.

From what I have seen minions do tend to encourage metagame thinking, and I'm not sure I like that aspect of them. Perhaps I need to view minions as the unlucky peons that fate has decreed will die today, and not distinguish them as much from their more-normal brethren when describing them to the players. Perhaps it won't be much of an issue once we stop fighting kobolds (KotS), since the players haven't yet learned what a lot of other minion types look yet, so they won't automatically know who the minions are.

Ignoring miss damage is a weirdness that will irritate players who drop a big daily on a group, only to see some of them ignore the "half damage on a miss" portion due to being minions. Automatic damage shouldn't be taking them out in a single hit either. Those are the main issues I want to address with some house rule or another.

The easiest way to do that is to adopt the rule (as suggested in this thread):
1) Any targeted hit on a minion will destroy it.
2) Any miss damage or automatic damage to a minion will bloody it.
3) Any damage to a bloodied minion will kill it.

I still like the zombies getting a last swipe in before they die, so may adopt the zombie rule suggested by previous posters (fall to the ground, save to get back up, otherwise get in one last attack against an adjacent foe and die).

Since the second target of a cleave attack doesn't require a to-hit roll, it is automatic damage in a way. I can see players using that to take out a minion with higher defenses, so that they don't have to make that attack roll. If the second target of cleave is a minion, should it be killed or bloodied? How have people been handling that aspect in your games?

I'm still contemplating the idea of a damage threshold, so that really low damage values won't kill a minion (just bloody it), but where to set that number is the big question.

 

[James McMurray]

If the second target of cleave is a minion, should it be killed or bloodied? How have people been handling that aspect in your games?

We use the "zombie rule" and a cleave will knock a minion prone.

I'm still contemplating the idea of a damage threshold, so that really low damage values won't kill a minion (just bloody it), but where to set that number is the big question.

I can't think of anywhere to put a damage threshold that is low enough to still allow for cleave, but high enough to matter. Either you shut down the fighter power designed to kill minions, or you shut that power and a whole bunch of others down. The only way I could see a damage threshold working was if specific powers were exempt from it, but then you get into way more complication than I think minions should cause.