Minions and Temporary Hit Points

[jdpacheco]

There's only one monster that grants allies temporary HP.

It grants 5 temporary HP in a burst.

Note that 5 is less than the minimum damage from a hit at that critter's level (L2, so party should have +1 items). However, 5 is more than expected side-effect damage (e.g. Cleave's secondary effect should be 3 to 4).

So, here's what I am doing for minions with temporary HP:

Each minion only has three states:
--- Has Temp HP
--- No Temp HP
--- Dead

If you deal side-effect damage less than the temp HP that a minion has, it loses all of them anyway, and is one hit (or side-effect) away from being killed. If you hit, you probably kill it anyway: announce your damage, he's very likely to be dead.

I don't track temp HP for minions. They either have some, or they don't. One extra bit of information per minion, plus the number of temp HP they'd have at most, and I know everything important.

Cheers, -- N

I like this. Very clean and elegant, and keeps with the concept of minions without discarding Temp HP entirely.

I think I'm going to "borrow" this one...

 

[balard]

If a minion has temp hp, and yoy hit him for less than that, he losses it and survives.

 

[amysrevenge]

I'm gonna have to go with specific (a minion dies if it takes damage) over general (monsters die when they reach 0 hp) in this case. Give a minion 200 temporary hit points, but it still dies when it takes damage. The resistance argument doesn't hold up for me - if the resistance reduces the potential damge to 0, then the minion doesn't take damage and doesn't die.

 

[Khime]

I'm gonna have to go with specific (temporary hit points are a layer of insulation that attacks have to get through before they start doing damage to you) over general (a minion dies if it takes damage). Give a minion temporary hit points, it won't die until the temporary hit points are gone and it actually takes at least 1 point of damage.

 

[firesnakearies]

Yes, temporary hit points are not really hit points. Losing them is not "taking damage". You don't take damage until YOUR hit points are reduced, and temporary hit points are tracked as a totally separate amount of buffer damage that specifically shield your real hit points from being damaged until the temporary hit points are gone.

Thus, minions definitely benefit from temporary hit points.

 

[77IM]

Imagine, instead of being called "Temporary Hit Points" it was called "Ablative Resist All." Rules-wise, it would function exactly the same, except in regards to this minion discussion: resistance functions normally for minions, so ablative resistance should work for them to.

This doesn't settle the discussion (one could argue that they are called temporary hit points specifically because of how they interact with the minion hit-point rules) but it may help you think about the issue when deciding how to interpret the rules at your own table.

-- 77IM

 

[Armadillo]

Last weekend, we played out the Irontooth encounter in KotS. Irontooth had some ability that he used to grant the minions temporary hit points. Generally, this meant that the minions went down in two hits, and it certainly made the encounter more challenging.

 

[Nebulous]

Last weekend, we played out the Irontooth encounter in KotS. Irontooth had some ability that he used to grant the minions temporary hit points. Generally, this meant that the minions went down in two hits, and it certainly made the encounter more challenging.

I'm about to run this exact encounter. I can't recall if Irontooth had this power or not, I thought it was the wyrmpriest.

Regardless, i'm going to grant the bonus to the minions. Most likely, PCs will kill the majority of them in 1 hit. Only a very few will scrape by with 6 hit points.