Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What bothers me is that you could achieve the same effect as Minion rules by taking any X level opponent and giving them a +Y to BAB and AC and a +dZ to dmg. You're increasing everything except the HP.

This is an admission that X level opponents simply aren't a viable opponent once you're level Y. And that's entirely driven by the arms race between AC and BAB. If you simply turned those variables into constants you wouldn't need this kludge.

Ha ha! The first half of your post was so cogent I didn't even finish reading it before I started to reply. It looks like we're really on the same wavelength, and THANK YOU for helping me realize what the problem was. It's the shortcut in the game design I don't like. There was a more elegant fix, but they didn't want to eat that sacred cow I guess. So instead we have this mathmatical ugliness. It offends me, aesthetically, like a BMW with a plywood trunk.

No worries. The math backs you up.

I don't really understand the significance of this analysis. And I suspect it really isn't significant for most people.

In particular because I think that aesthetically I prefer a plywood trunk to a BMW.

Would you mind providing further explication on what you do or do not find beautiful in the math? Even by your 2FS vs 4FS criteria the minion system seems to me to be fairly elegant.

 

[Mistwell]

Minions are not creatures. They are traps and environmental challenges. Viewed that way, I think some objections will be less persuasive.

 

[Vaeron]

Minions exist to provide bonuses to other monsters, some extreme. This is countered by their being eliminated quite easily. Most people who post about minions, in a negative way, don't understand the point or mechanics of minions. They believe they're there to provide a fake sense of grand adventure by having the PCs wipe out mobs of minions. This may indeed be how some DMs initially use minions.

In way of an illustration, a Kobold skirmisher gets +1 to hit an enemy for every kobold adjacent to that enemy. If he has combat advantage (which he would with the enemy flanked like this) he does an additional 1d6 damage. In short, a kobold skirmisher would have +8 to hit a PC engaging 6 kobold minions and do +1d6 damage. This is significant, and dangerous to a 1st level PC!

The upside? Minions are easily killed. In RP terms what they do is try to expose PCs to another monsters attacks through their manuevering, or give damage bonuses based on the number of them by spreading a PCs defenses too thin, or any of the other different powers we've seen in minion statblocks.

So when I see people say that minions exist just to make PCs feel powerful, my jaw nearly drops. They dramatically increase the threat to PCs, when combined with non-minion monsters (or sometimes even with other minions). Kobold minions in particular act to "buff" the kobold skirmisher in the example I gave above.

I'm not sure where some of the confusion over their role comes from, but removing them from the game greatly (not just a little, but greatly) decreases the power of non-minion creatures who gain bonuses from having minions present.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm not worried about interaction with "bloodied"-trigger abilities.

Why aren't you worried about bloodied abilities? We don't know yet if that's even a choice as a PC build, but if it is, wouldn't that be like the 4E version of Sneak Attack, where so many opponents are immune to it? It's the same argument for "miss" damage that you reserve judgment on.

To be clear: If something can be dropped in one hit, then it shouldn't matter if you can use your bloodied-trigger abilities on it.

Assuming you roll average or better damage. What if you roll a 1? Can't Minions get lucky? I guess not.

(Of course, as you know, I should be quite happy to have opponents that die regardless of damage rolled - no one rolls like 1's like I do)

Some creatures don't need to be significant enough to use cool powers on ... The fact is that I wouldn't be TOO bothered if minions were unaffected by "x damage on a miss" attacks, because in effect, those attacks would be designed for an effect that isn't really about minions, any more than an attack that has an additional effect on a *hit* would matter for minions.

There's a horse/cart problem here, don't you think? Can't monsters be a diamond in the rough too? When a player is trying to guess the nature of his opponents, should "What would my DM do here?" be part of the analysis, or should it be limited to "What makes sense in this situation, given what I know of the world?"

 

[Irda Ranger]

Minions are not creatures. They are traps and environmental challenges. Viewed that way, I think some objections will be less persuasive.

Let me know when I can defeat them by beating a DC 23 Thievery check.

EDIT: I take it back. As ruleslawyer points out, this is essentially how it works (as I pointed out in the OP!, I just didn't make the connection then).

However, even if the rules treat them like a trap or environmental challenge, I'm pretty sure that I don't like such treatment at this time.

 

[pawsplay]

Minions are not creatures. They are traps and environmental challenges. Viewed that way, I think some objections will be less persuasive.

Then why give them hit points at all? "Defeat kobold minion: DC 5"

 

[ruleslawyer]

Actually, pawsplay: That's pretty close to how it works. They don't really have hit points. The "DC" is the attack roll needed, which as you know, works the same way as a skill check in d20 anyway (roll d20 + mod to beat DC/AC, with AC being the "DC" you need to overcome to hit your opponent).

And IR: Minions don't "get lucky" for the same reason that terrain features and obstacles don't "get lucky"; because they're not important to get lucky. Point out one dude in the Crazy Eighty-Eights battle in Kill Bill who gets lucky, other than Gogo, their leader-dude, or Lucy Liu's character.

And I highly doubt that being "immune" to miss damage is anything like being immune to sneak attack. Sneak attack is a core ability of certain classes in 3e; I find it highly unlikely that dealing desultory damage on a miss is going to be a core ability of any class in 4e.

 

[AZRogue]

One thing that I think 4E does, and does very well from what we've seen, is worry about what the RESULTS are on the players' side of the table WITHOUT worrying so much about how those results are reached. Which is great, since I've never had a player go through my notes after a game. They only remember what they did and how they did it and the memories they take away from the game.

I think this is a design goal and I fully support it. Instead of worrying that the internal parts match perfectly the focus is on making the results at the table important. It doesn't break down unless players are rolling their dice on the DM's side of the screen. The methods aren't the same and the mechanics have been reworked in areas with the goal of making it come together at the table.

It's a different approach, though, and I think that's bothering some people. Everyone has a different style when it comes to DMing and some of those styles evolved in very different ways. In previous editions, for instance, it was the norm for me (and those I've watched DM that are far better than I) to discover over time those rules that could be dropped by the wayside because they were pointless. You see what result the rules are trying to achieve and you just make that result happen. For instance I used to know that a tough enemy should roughly hit the highest AC in the party 50% of the time so I would subtract 10 from the highest AC and make that the enemy's BAB with no concern for hit dice, feats, or ability score. I did it with THAC0 and I did it when I ran 3E. It saves time and enriches play. It looks like 4E has a lot of that done for me and it seems like the designers play a similar style.

 

[pawsplay]

And I highly doubt that being "immune" to miss damage is anything like being immune to sneak attack. Sneak attack is a core ability of certain classes in 3e; I find it highly unlikely that dealing desultory damage on a miss is going to be a core ability of any class in 4e.

It still jukes balance in favor of one class in favor of another. And I thought controllers with firebusts would actually be good at destroying hordes of minions. Instead, the opposite.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

It still jukes balance in favor of one class in favor of another. And I thought controllers with firebusts would actually be good at destroying hordes of minions. Instead, the opposite.

You can't really say it is the opposite, since the same rules apply for other classes. It is still preferable for a controller to wipe out minions, since just because the miss-effect doesn't work doesn't mean that the ordinary attack will just miss every time.

You'll still get fireballs wiping out 10 minions at a time, there will be just that burnt, crisp minion left alive amongst his fellow minion's corpses.