Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game

[quindia]

And what happens when you screw up and put a really high level minion in a group for npc's to fight for whatever reason and the pc's kill it with a "miss"? BUKU XP! I prefer to keep the no death on a miss. Just describe them as singed, beat up, bruised, worn down, etc.

If I screw up as the DM, then they deserve the XP. I beat it out of them in the next session. I don't think I would accidentally include a level 18 minion in a 2nd level adventure anyway. As someone else pointed out the XP is not that out of balance even then.

We only have a couple of spells to go by at the moment, so it's hard to see what may cause problems. What about a Wall of Fire? There's no roll to hit to throw up such a spell. If the party wizard throws up a Wall of Fire to seal off a flank, can minions charge gleefully through it?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

[DISCLAIMER: There's not supposed to be any badwrongfun here, just game theory. The only intentional opinion in the post is clearly labeled as such below.

. . .

Minions are 2FS-gritty monsters living in a 4FS-heroic game. They ignore half the game's variables. IMO, this is bad. Choosing gritty or heroic fantasy are equally valid choices, but once you've made that choice I don't think mixing them together works. It just doesn't feel right to me (clearly a subjective judgment, but there it is) and I don't think it will "work" in the long run because too many of the game's constituent parts depend on all four factors being there, and Minions break all those rules. You basically need a "special case" rule for half the rules in the game that says "unless the target is a Minion, in which case X happens instead." That adds a lot of complication and requires a lot of weird requirements for little gain.

To me, this is exactly the wrong way to think about game theory. That is, one should not identify systems that have traditionally been used to implement certain types of game experience and then limit all implementations of that game experience to those identified systems.

Part of the heroic fantasy genre are events wherein the heroes deal a single fatal blow on their enemies. This is something that D&D has been very bad at implementing. Minion rules allow a system to include this element.

 

[Imban]

We only have a couple of spells to go by at the moment, so it's hard to see what may cause problems. What about a Wall of Fire? There's no roll to hit to throw up such a spell. If the party wizard throws up a Wall of Fire to seal off a flank, can minions charge gleefully through it?

One of the Ranger paragon paths also inflicts automatic damage to every adjacent enemy at the end of each of their turns, with no dice roll involved. I seem to recall Wall of Fire being in the Paragon tier as well, so I will, in adherence to my "assume 4e designers are not monkeys until proven otherwise" policy, assume that either Paragon-tier minions are written differently or there is some method I haven't thought of for making unavoidable damage effects neither hilariously overpowered nor hilariously useless against minions.

(Cleave inflicts technically-unrolled damage as well, but there's a roll and hit involved, so that's less problematic.)

 

[Lackhand]

One of the Ranger paragon paths also inflicts automatic damage to every adjacent enemy at the end of each of their turns, with no dice roll involved. I seem to recall Wall of Fire being in the Paragon tier as well, so I will, in adherence to my "assume 4e designers are not monkeys until proven otherwise" policy, assume that either Paragon-tier minions are written differently or there is some method I haven't thought of for making unavoidable damage effects neither hilariously overpowered nor hilariously useless against minions.

(Cleave inflicts technically-unrolled damage as well, but there's a roll and hit involved, so that's less problematic.)

I enjoy your policy

I'm not convinced that that specific ranger ability would enmonkey the designers, though -- I'm perfectly okay with the ranger under its influence being a mook-free-zone.

 

[Thaniel]

Edit: what I said was meaningless. Nothing to see here

 

[Irda Ranger]

Irda: Would minions having 1/4 the hp of a monster their level be much better?

If no, then it seems to me that you really have hit your reasons for disliking minions in the OP. I think minions were supposed to represent enemies that break the 4-Factor lockstep.

I know! Thank you for reading my OP closely!

Mowing down mooks of greatly lower level who pose no credible threat is boring to many. Mowing down mooks of credible threat with really low hp is more fun in my mind.

Yeah, I get that. I know why we have Minions: a high level PC has an AC that's too high for a "normal" 1st level opponent to hit. The threshold defense (AC) is so high that your ablative defenses (HP) are never in any danger. There's no risk, and it becomes boring.

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.

Do you have an issue with double and quadruple hp elites and solos?

If yes, than the real issue is the shortcut and the patch. Minions represent a shortcut. They represent Creatures that could withstand multiple hits from the lesser unavoidable ablative-defense damage, but cannot take a single avoidable hit on a consistent basis.

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.

I just don't have the math to back this up.

No worries. The math backs you up.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Hi all! I'm glad this thread has gotten some good discussion going. Just a few points from my point of view:

1.
I like to spin a good yarn as DM or PC, but I don't bend the rules to make the story end the way I want it to. Part of the challenge and fun for me is getting the results I want within the rule system as presented. If I can just break the rules (e.g., by saying "This guy will always die on the frst hit") whenever I feel like it then I feel cheated, much as Korgoth does. I don't want to fight Minion enemies any more than I want to bowl with gutter bumbers.

So, what I'm getting at is, all the arguments about "It's their time to die" or any other argumebnt where desired story result trumps rules results simply doesn't fly with me. As long as you and your group are OK with it I obviously have no objections, but I wouldn't be OK with it.


2.
Cleaving your way through hoards of mooks can be pretty awesome, but there's a better way to do it. You can guess what it is by reading my post to Charwoman Gene above. Perhaps more on that later once I have the DMG.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Yeah, I get that. I know why we have Minions: a high level PC has an AC that's too high for a "normal" 1st level opponent to hit. The threshold defense (AC) is so high that your ablative defenses (HP) are never in any danger. There's no risk, and it becomes boring.

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.

Except that this *is* how the minion rules work; it's not "the same effect." If they die in one hit, Occam's razor suggests that it's better to simply say they die in one hit.

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.

You lost me here. I thought that the entire point of the minion rules was to have viable opponents that nonetheless don't stick around long enough to turn combat into an endless grind. That seems pretty simple to me.

Really, we're talking a very elemental calculus here: As creature level goes up, hp, AC, BAB, etc increase accordingly as adjusted by role. Minions merely don't increase hp accordingly. How "alien" is this, really?

 

[Kraydak]

Except that this *is* how the minion rules work; it's not "the same effect." If they die in one hit, Occam's razor suggests that it's better to simply say they die in one hit.
You lost me here. I thought that the entire point of the minion rules was to have viable opponents that nonetheless don't stick around long enough to turn combat into an endless grind. That seems pretty simple to me.

Really, we're talking a very elemental calculus here: As creature level goes up, hp, AC, BAB, etc increase accordingly as adjusted by role. Minions merely don't increase hp accordingly. How "alien" is this, really?

Minions cause problems when you try to mesh them with other rule sub-systems. Have a player who wants to make a character who always manages to do *something* even if he rolls badly (and we know those players), and so chooses abilities with damage on miss? Rule sub-system mismatch. It isn't as big an abomination as the DMG2 mobs rules shafting Fighters who took cleave/whirlwind attack explicitly to attack mobs, but it is annoying.

Have a nice rule set keying off of the "bloodied" status (a la Orc Berserker guy)? As has been noted about that monster explicitly, sucks to be facing minions.

I would write more, but I have to do. So: minions don't mesh well with, well, the rest of 4e rules. It *will* matter at times, and it *will* be annoying.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I'm not worried about interaction with "bloodied"-trigger abilities. 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. Some creatures don't need to be significant enough to use cool powers on. Is finger of death for mooks in 3e?

The interaction with auras and the like is a problem, I'll grant, although we haven't seen the full picture. Cleave certainly suffices to drop a minion as written. "X damage on a miss" abilities *may* be important enough to matter, but I'd like to see how they play before I come to judgment. 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.