Minions are alien visitors from another kind of game

[Irda Ranger]

If you don't like it, don't use minions.

Just to state once more (and for the last time), I like Minions as a concept; I just don't like the implementation.

For the rest of your points, see my response to John Snow.

 

[Irda Ranger]

A Minion when the PCs are not around is simply a ordinary being like anyone else. He doesn't gain any Minion status till the point in-game where his situation entails that he dies in a single hit.

So, in other words, a Minion is a Striker where the DM has decided ahead of time to reduce the range of possible outcomes of combat? Isn't that taking something away from the player? I think Korgoth made this point back on page 3 or 4.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Of course, but why settle for only fun? Aesthetics matter too.

For whom? The players aren't going to see these aesthetics - they're killing the minions, whether they have 0 hp or a handful of hp, like hp equal to their level (which would make them 4FS creatures again) - the small difference is in most cases not really visible to them.

Only behind the screen you're confronted with it over and over again. So the aesthetic benefit is mainly for the DM. That's similar to the PC-NPC symmetry issues many have.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

So, in other words, a Minion is a Striker where the DM has decided ahead of time to reduce the range of possible outcomes of combat? Isn't that taking something away from the player? I think Korgoth made this point back on page 3 or 4.

I don't think it does, since minions aren't supposed to be used as simply another monster, that goes through ordinary combat. They are a very specific and very precise point in a game, prior to that point a minion simply doesn't exist.

So it doesn't really reduce outcomes or takes anything away from the players when what it is fulfilling is what it was put their for, for that precise moment in time.

Thus why there is this narrative and DM designated control over when a monster becomes a minion.

To use the example of the river jump. My players have jumped in the river, the monsters jump after them. I as the DM decides to showcase how treacherous that jump was, designate 2 of the monsters as minions for this instance and bam! they land on rocks, get impaled on a uprooted tree, etc.

 

[Boarstorm]

Here's a question for ya, Irda Ranger, in all seriousness:

What, exactly, do you find inelegant in the implementation of minions?

I ask because I'm coming at this conversation from the opposite side -- I find their implementation to be pretty much spot-on.

WotC needed something easily disposable (for the reasons Jon Snow mentioned) but that remained a credible threat throughout a PCs's career. The simplest way of doing this is to give them a binary state -- alive or dead. Now, all this has been pointed out before, but I want to add something new:

Temporary Hit Points, miss damage -- the reason these things don't apply to minions is because they circumvent the entire reason for minions to exist in the first place. Making a level appropriate minion either harder to kill or easier to kill defeats the purpose for minions to exist. If they go down too easy, they aren't a credible threat. If they're too hard to take down, they ... well, they no longer serve their goal.

So, WotC gave us these minion rules (an admitted exception to the 4FS design you noted), and all they have to do is add two "sub-"rules to fix the problem, instead of making us do any clunky mathematics (div 4 HPs, for instance) or memorize a whole subset of rules.

Minions provide tactical variety with an absolute minimum of rules memorization.

They are... simple.

What could be more elegant?

 

[Shadeydm]

So are minions immune to AoE spells and abilities?

If they are not then. It's not elegant or tactically challenging all the minion rule will do is ensure that during any encounter that players suspect contains minions, it guarantees that those who have PCs with effective area attack abilities will spam them until the groups true enemies (non minions) are revealed. Wow thats exciting, and that or something very similar will be the default approach.

 

[Rex Blunder]

True, but tactics never sound very exciting when stripped down to the essentials. "We'll just always focus fire on the strongest living opponent." "We'll just run up to everyone and do full attacks." "I'll cast all my save or dies on the BBEG until he dies." Sure, none of this sounds very exciting, but 3e still manages to be tactically interesting.

 

[Kraydak]

You don't have to erase them; just give them Striker/4 HP, or whatever algoritmn you settle on. Isn't that the fix for you? If so, why are Minions in a module (or a Summoning Spell) a problem?

I think it is a fix for you, too. It makes the rules non-aberrant for minions, if you want them as such.

You still have the more basic problem of explaining what the heck a Minion IS within the context of the game. Why does he have Xth level BAB, AC and Dmg but only 1st level HP? How does a creature arrive at such an unbalanced state? It's a highly unstable configuration, not unlike being attacked by a highly poisonous soap bubble.

Similar to the question of a tree falling in the woods, what is a Minion when there aren't any PC's around? Does he exist, or is he merely the quantum possibilty of an particular kind of encounter that only materializes when a PC walks into the room? I don't like the second possibility.

The minion would be someone with striker/4 hp when PCs aren't around. When PCs are around, and the DM is lazy/overwhelmed, and there isn't any need to get more precise, you approximate striker/4 hp=1 hit. When it is important, you don't.

Note that striker/4 hp lets a minion take a hit from a comparable level standard monster and live. It gives him a the ability to be alive at negatives and everything else needed to survive.

*Without* minions having a non-unity default hp total, you run into problems. If you give them a non-unity hp total that is approximately 1 hit, then, they will expect to survive that 1 hit (even if the opponent rolls well) if they get medical attention. Remember, the monsters-die-at-0 is, also, a bookkeeping simplification.

While we could argue over the striker/4 number, I really don't see how my suggestion doesn't solve your issue. I also have a hard time understanding what the potential downsides are in general, and therefore why WotC didn't adopt similar mechanics. Thoughts?

 

[Kraydak]

Here's a question for ya, Irda Ranger, in all seriousness:

What, exactly, do you find inelegant in the implementation of minions?

I ask because I'm coming at this conversation from the opposite side -- I find their implementation to be pretty much spot-on.

WotC needed something easily disposable (for the reasons Jon Snow mentioned) but that remained a credible threat throughout a PCs's career. The simplest way of doing this is to give them a binary state -- alive or dead. Now, all this has been pointed out before, but I want to add something new:

Temporary Hit Points, miss damage -- the reason these things don't apply to minions is because they circumvent the entire reason for minions to exist in the first place. Making a level appropriate minion either harder to kill or easier to kill defeats the purpose for minions to exist. If they go down too easy, they aren't a credible threat. If they're too hard to take down, they ... well, they no longer serve their goal.

So, WotC gave us these minion rules (an admitted exception to the 4FS design you noted), and all they have to do is add two "sub-"rules to fix the problem, instead of making us do any clunky mathematics (div 4 HPs, for instance) or memorize a whole subset of rules.

Minions provide tactical variety with an absolute minimum of rules memorization.

They are... simple.

What could be more elegant?

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.

 

[Boarstorm]

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.

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.