Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game
- Thread starter Irda Ranger
- Start date
Aria Silverhands
First Post
If the minions weren't there... it would have been 1 orc instead of 4 orc minions. Minions are simply there to provide numbers on the battlefield without adding to the craptastic bookeeping crap dm's have to go through.Shadeydm said:
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Precisely. If you have a 4 square wide hallway/room, you need 4 creatures to completely block it. They can even somewhat stop people from walking past them in a 8-10 square wide hallway/room because people have to provoke OAs from moving past them. Most people won't.Aria Silverhands said:
One enemy in either of those situations can't stand in any place that will allow him to prevent the movement of the PCs past him.
Shadeydm said:
Don't be sorry, I'm sure you'll get it of you think about it, tactically.
Aenghus
Explorer
There have been "minions" in the previous editions of D&D. In 1st and 2nd ed adventure modules there were often hordes of low HD humanoids in encounters, hanging around essentially as flavour. Both stats and combat options were limited, battlemaps often weren't used, and the game was able to cope with the numbers, more or less.
While AC and damage didn't ramp up as quickly as in 3e, nethertheless the average PC party would become immune to 1 HD orcs and their ilk fairly quickly (barring wussier magic-users who could keel over if coughed on even at appreciable levels). Typically they would die to fireballs or other area damage (whether they saved or not) or make the melee types "waste" a single attack to kill each one. Hell, area damage was good in 1e and 2e because of the wussy creatures that would die in droves to such attacks, which gave a psychological payoff to the player of the wizard even if the creatures were mostly harmless.
3e massively increased the amount of stats for monsters, and upped both hp and damage. This increased the DM workload, and significantly decreased the number of monsters a DM could efficiently run in the average encounter. Also, the spread of AC and damage over levels increased as well, so that monsters became obsolete quicker. Lower numbers of encounters with a smaller number of tougher creatures became the order of the day, and the disposable hordes all but disappeared. The general increase in HP without a corresponding increase in spell direct damage made blasting a lot less appealing.
The problem with minions in D&D so far is they were generally lower level monsters that weren't a direct threat to the PCs. For the DM it could feel it was wasted time running them, rolling buckets of dice in the hope of a 20, and them dying automatically to any area damage.
To me it looks like the 4e designers came up with some desired characteristics for 4e minions to make them easy to run for the average campaign - low book-keeping overhead, represent a small but credible threat to the PCs, easy to kill but not too easy.
So orc minions have appropriate AC, attack values and (fixed) damage for their level, but 1 hp so they are killed by any successful PC attack. However, they are immune to auto damage, again to make them a small but credible threat. Otherwise PCs would just focus on the non-minions and use autohit and splash damage on the minions - cleave etc.
Their availability makes it possible to raise the average number of opponents in an encounter without overwhelming the DM. It also makes area damage once again useful - while it won't autokill minions, it's still the most efficient way of dealing with them. Dealing with minions is what the controller is best at and what makes him look good. The other classes with single-target effects then won't waste their better attacks on mere minions.
The existence of minions may changes 4e tactics from previous editions. Novaing the best powers first in encounters, often practical in 3e, may be wasted on minions in 4e encounters, leading to problems when subsequent waves of reinforcements with the true opposition arrive. With the increased HP buffer, it may be better tactics to use at-will or encounter powers initially, resorting to dailys only when you know they are worthwhile.
And again, the minion rules are another step in separating PCs from NPCs/monsters rules-wise. The exact same monster may have different stats when encountered at different levels. The tough orc representing a significant challenge to the PCs when encountered first, may be represented as a mere minion in an encounter a few levels later.
While AC and damage didn't ramp up as quickly as in 3e, nethertheless the average PC party would become immune to 1 HD orcs and their ilk fairly quickly (barring wussier magic-users who could keel over if coughed on even at appreciable levels). Typically they would die to fireballs or other area damage (whether they saved or not) or make the melee types "waste" a single attack to kill each one. Hell, area damage was good in 1e and 2e because of the wussy creatures that would die in droves to such attacks, which gave a psychological payoff to the player of the wizard even if the creatures were mostly harmless.
3e massively increased the amount of stats for monsters, and upped both hp and damage. This increased the DM workload, and significantly decreased the number of monsters a DM could efficiently run in the average encounter. Also, the spread of AC and damage over levels increased as well, so that monsters became obsolete quicker. Lower numbers of encounters with a smaller number of tougher creatures became the order of the day, and the disposable hordes all but disappeared. The general increase in HP without a corresponding increase in spell direct damage made blasting a lot less appealing.
The problem with minions in D&D so far is they were generally lower level monsters that weren't a direct threat to the PCs. For the DM it could feel it was wasted time running them, rolling buckets of dice in the hope of a 20, and them dying automatically to any area damage.
To me it looks like the 4e designers came up with some desired characteristics for 4e minions to make them easy to run for the average campaign - low book-keeping overhead, represent a small but credible threat to the PCs, easy to kill but not too easy.
So orc minions have appropriate AC, attack values and (fixed) damage for their level, but 1 hp so they are killed by any successful PC attack. However, they are immune to auto damage, again to make them a small but credible threat. Otherwise PCs would just focus on the non-minions and use autohit and splash damage on the minions - cleave etc.
Their availability makes it possible to raise the average number of opponents in an encounter without overwhelming the DM. It also makes area damage once again useful - while it won't autokill minions, it's still the most efficient way of dealing with them. Dealing with minions is what the controller is best at and what makes him look good. The other classes with single-target effects then won't waste their better attacks on mere minions.
The existence of minions may changes 4e tactics from previous editions. Novaing the best powers first in encounters, often practical in 3e, may be wasted on minions in 4e encounters, leading to problems when subsequent waves of reinforcements with the true opposition arrive. With the increased HP buffer, it may be better tactics to use at-will or encounter powers initially, resorting to dailys only when you know they are worthwhile.
And again, the minion rules are another step in separating PCs from NPCs/monsters rules-wise. The exact same monster may have different stats when encountered at different levels. The tough orc representing a significant challenge to the PCs when encountered first, may be represented as a mere minion in an encounter a few levels later.
Last edited:
Rex Blunder
First Post
I'll grant you that a 1st edition housecat could kill any number of 4e minions. In an early Dragon magazine, there was a story about a cat who stalked and killed a party of 6 0-level carpenters armed with hammers.
I've always disliked things that do small amounts of HP damage, but that seem like they couldn't kill you without you suffering some embarrassing mishap.
The first time I remember encountering it was in the Basic Expert set. There was some spiky cave floor that you walked over that did 1-2 points of damage. Sure, that's fine if you're reasonably healthy, but if you're at 1 hit point, it's hard to explain how you die from cutting your foot. (Sure: you trip and impale your brain. But it's ridiculous.)
Same thing with housecats. In 1e, cats did like 1-3/1-3/1-4 or something damage. In 3e, they do 1/1/1 damage. Either way, it was possible for a housecat to kill a wounded 10th level fighter, or an unlucky commoner.
A cat bite draws blood. But it is very, very unlikely to kill you. So it shouldn't do damage.
So here's my suggestion for the cat stat-block for 4e. I hope the WOTC designers think the same way I do:
A CAT DOES NO DAMAGE.
I've always disliked things that do small amounts of HP damage, but that seem like they couldn't kill you without you suffering some embarrassing mishap.
The first time I remember encountering it was in the Basic Expert set. There was some spiky cave floor that you walked over that did 1-2 points of damage. Sure, that's fine if you're reasonably healthy, but if you're at 1 hit point, it's hard to explain how you die from cutting your foot. (Sure: you trip and impale your brain. But it's ridiculous.)
Same thing with housecats. In 1e, cats did like 1-3/1-3/1-4 or something damage. In 3e, they do 1/1/1 damage. Either way, it was possible for a housecat to kill a wounded 10th level fighter, or an unlucky commoner.
A cat bite draws blood. But it is very, very unlikely to kill you. So it shouldn't do damage.
So here's my suggestion for the cat stat-block for 4e. I hope the WOTC designers think the same way I do:
A CAT DOES NO DAMAGE.
