Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game

[Scribble]

Making minion rules that allowed you to move outside of the minion rules if you had cause to. People will run into situations modelled very poorly by minion rules. By making minions 1hp/immune to misses rather than some hp/extra damage on hit, you keep yourself from being able to treat them as non-mooks when (not if) the situation comes up.

Such as?

 

[Mort_Q]

The simplicity of the system is that when you need "to move outside of the minion rules", you use a non-minion.

This seems the easiest.

 

[Kraydak]

The simplicity of the system is that when you need "to move outside of the minion rules", you use a non-minion.

Edit: If I'm missing the point of your post, Kraydak, please posit an example for me, so I can better wrap my mind around such a situation.

I have a character who is built around beating people up, and then sucking their life force out (e.g. Orc Bloodrager). I want my foe to be bloodyable, even to the point of killing them more slowly. Minions under current rules=no go. Minions under mine=fine.

The above goes for all character builds which conflict with minion rules, including people who do damage on misses, who can give temporary hp, who can heal, who want to take prisoners, things like that.

Further, if a minion's miniature is already on the board, it is too late to change him if the players decide they don't want to treat him like a mook. Under my suggested rules, you can swap seamlessly.

If you don't allow minions, then you need to rewrite modules. You will (probably) have to drop entire rule sets (in time, you will certainly have to drop entire rule set). Summoning is almost guaranteed to run off of minions, because most of the problems with MS power levels are due to it being hard to find high AC/BAB, low hp/damage creatures.

So, you gain flexibility, and lose... nothing? Nothing that I can see at least. Even if *you* would gain no advantage from it, can you see that others would, and you would lose nothing? If not, I am curious as to why not.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Kraydek is ably answering for me in this context (excep the 1/4 Striker stuff).

Well, off to ICLE. I guarantee anyone reading this will have more fun than I during the next four hours, barring force majeur events or dentistry without the benefit of anesthesia.

 

[Boarstorm]

I have a character who is built around beating people up, and then sucking their life force out (e.g. Orc Bloodrager). I want my foe to be bloodyable, even to the point of killing them more slowly. Minions under current rules=no go. Minions under mine=fine.

The above goes for all character builds which conflict with minion rules, including people who do damage on misses, who can give temporary hp, who can heal, who want to take prisoners, things like that.

As I pointed out earlier, minions aren't MEANT to receive temporary hit points, healing, etc. That is, in effect, why they are minions. While your rules could circumvent some of these things and allow these situations, it also circumvents the whole point of having minions in the first place.

Further, if a minion's miniature is already on the board, it is too late to change him if the players decide they don't want to treat him like a mook. Under my suggested rules, you can swap seamlessly.

Err.. why not? That orc minion on the board just do something really cool and you want him to stick around for a little while? Turn him into a warrior on the fly. Why should he look different?

If you don't allow minions, then you need to rewrite modules. You will (probably) have to drop entire rule sets (in time, you will certainly have to drop entire rule set). Summoning is almost guaranteed to run off of minions, because most of the problems with MS power levels are due to it being hard to find high AC/BAB, low hp/damage creatures.

I think summoning utilizing minions is far less likely than you believe, and I would say that the problems with MS power levels are more due to turn economy than AC/BAB.

So, you gain flexibility, and lose... nothing? Nothing that I can see at least. Even if *you* would gain no advantage from it, can you see that others would, and you would lose nothing? If not, I am curious as to why not.

You are, of course, free to do whatever you want at your table -- I'm certainly not arguing that! But as for applying your ideas to the system as a whole, I think it both unnecessary and counterproductive.

 

[Scribble]

I have a character who is built around beating people up, and then sucking their life force out (e.g. Orc Bloodrager). I want my foe to be bloodyable, even to the point of killing them more slowly. Minions under current rules=no go. Minions under mine=fine.

The issue is that I would guess that your bloodrager character would, even under your system, be better off finding another opponent as you'll most likely kill it before it gets bloodied anyway.

The above goes for all character builds which conflict with minion rules, including people who do damage on misses, who can give temporary hp, who can heal, who want to take prisoners, things like that.

Again the issue being... ok so you missed and should have done damamge anyway... Assume you only did half of it's HP in damage. If the chances are so low that you will miss on your next attack that the half damamge you did wouldn't add anything to the situation (except to make the foe extra dead?) why make the DM do the extra tracking?

I think that minions will prove to be a case of, it looks wonky on paper, but once we actually start playing will prove to be just an easier form of doing it by tracking HP and accounting for average damage and such...

Further, if a minion's miniature is already on the board, it is too late to change him if the players decide they don't want to treat him like a mook. Under my suggested rules, you can swap seamlessly.

Why are the players deciding this? If the DM decides he wants to treat the minion as a bloodrager say... just change the stats you're using and pretend like you just never had him use his powers for some reason?

 

[Kraydak]

As I pointed out earlier, minions aren't MEANT to receive temporary hit points, healing, etc. That is, in effect, why they are minions. While your rules could circumvent some of these things and allow these situations, it also circumvents the whole point of having minions in the first place.

If someone wants to use these abilities on a "minion", then they don't want to treat that NPC under full mook rules. Clearly, many people are bothered by minion rules. A obvious solution is to include mook rules and non-mook rules. It turns out that this can be done at no cost.

Err.. why not? That orc minion on the board just do something really cool and you want him to stick around for a little while? Turn him into a warrior on the fly. Why should he look different?

Because it takes extra time to readjust his stats? Because players *do* notice if monsters get changed on the fly and many players *get pissed* when it happens? Because there is a good chance that the monster you are morphing him into has different gear than he started with, you already described him and people have already taken actions based on the previous description? Please.

I think summoning utilizing minions is far less likely than you believe, and I would say that the problems with MS power levels are more due to turn economy than AC/BAB.

The whole "turn economy" thing was blown completely out of proportion. The issue isn't the raw number of turns, but rather the number of turns X the value of each. If you have relevant AC/BAB means competitive HP/Damage then monster summoning brings in a PC equivalent creature, which in turn does mess of the turn economy. Minion-like rules allows for relevant AC/BAB without messing up the turn economy. Hence my prediction.

You are, of course, free to do whatever you want at your table -- I'm certainly not arguing that! But as for applying your ideas to the system as a whole, I think it both unnecessary and counterproductive.

Unnecessary for you. This thread and other say that I am not alone in having issues with minions. If you have an argument for it being counterproductive, I am actively interested. If not, I have to consider your argument a badwrongfun one because you would then be arguing against something that would fix things for some people without breaking it for others.

 

[Scribble]

If someone wants to use these abilities on a "minion", then they don't want to treat that NPC under full mook rules. Clearly, many people are bothered by minion rules. A obvious solution is to include mook rules and non-mook rules. It turns out that this can be done at no cost.

But I think in the end this will just be a case of simplifying the math.

You COULD do the math and find a ratio where minions have more then 1 HP, and take damage from misses... But my guess is if you keep them the same power level, and account for average damage and AC and stuff... you'll end up writing a lot of numbers but still essentially tracking dead or not dead.

 

[MarkB]

You know, one of the reasons I like the Minion rules as I've seen them so far is because I feel it better simulates some of the fantasy source material that I've been influenced by. There often seems to be a scenario in the "young farm boy gets thrust into the role of a hero" trope where that young farm boy picks up a sword to help defend his loved ones from some terrible monster and kills it, against what seems like all odds, often in one blow.

I agree. And one place I'm going to have fun using minions as solo monsters is as perimeter guards of camps or buildings that the PCs wish to sneak into.

Finally, I can use fully-RAW D&D to simulate the sort of cinematic covert-infiltration where the protagonists manage to sneak in by creeping up behind the guards and stabbing them, or taking them out with a lucky arrow shot - and yet, those self-same guards will have PC-level-appropriate perception and defense scores, and will pose a credible threat to them if the alarm is raised.

 

[Jhaelen]

Actually it's this very glass-ninja aspect of the monster which is part of my problem with the concept. A natural 20 will always kill it. So you can have 21st level Demon Minions fall to a rank of 0th level human archers

Well, I'm not sure yet if I've already fully wrapped my head around the minion concept but I think this is a situation that will (or should) never happen.

Several posters in this thread have already mentioned what I consider the key-point about minions: They're only minions to the pcs.

I'd go one step further and say: Minions are only minions to pcs with a level at least equal to the minions'.

While in theory a first level party encountering a single 18th level minion could be considered a balanced encounter (if you're only looking at the xp values) it's a pretty bad idea to do this. It's not the role minions are designed to fill. I don't think it makes sense to have the pcs encounter 18th level minions until they are actually level 18 or higher.

If a 21st level party should ever be accompanied by a rank of 0th level human archers (assuming such a thing even exists in 4E...) I don't think they should be able to have any (mechanical) effect on a 21st level demon minion. To them it's an almost invulnerable solo threat. They'll pepper it with arrows (which will mostly simply bounce off its skin) and maybe inflict some superficial wounds until one of the pcs comes along to slay it with a single hit.

If it makes for better storytelling the DM can choose to narrate the battle in a way that the archers actually had an important part in weakening the demon so the pcs could kill it more easily. I.e. the presence of the archers is the explanation why this demon is a minion for the pcs!

I'm pretty sure it won't be difficult to ignore the presence of minions in 4E if you don't like the concept. I think they present an elegant solution, though. They allow for adding variety to tactical situations without adding to bookkeeping.