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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4218287" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, I've been following this thread without comment for pages.Irda Ranger, basically, you're claiming that your concerns about minions are solely related to the game rules discrepancy between how the game treats minions. Moreover, you wrote a very impressive treatise with scientific sounding terms like "game theory" "Four-factor system" and "two-factor sytem" (and even some impenetrable jargon like 4FS and 2FS) to prove your point.However, the simple fact is that your fundamental point is incorrect. A minion is NOT, as you claim, a "2FS creature in a 4FS game." It's just an easily killable 4FS creature. That's it. Full stop.What they actually represent in game are obstacle opponents. With a single success (hit), they are removed from the game. Morover, they exist to provide tactical options for the DM and more variety in combat scenarios. Like Solo and Elite monsters, Minions allow you to substantically vary the tactical situation faced by the players. Because they have comparable attack bonuses and decent defense scores, they actually pose a substantial threat to characters of their level. As far as damage, it seems their damage levels have been decreased so as to make four of them on average about as dangerous as the single creature they're replacing.They're at the opposite end of the scale from the solo monster. A dragon (or other solo monster) has 4 times the hit points of a standard monster (or more) and can make multiple attacks in a single round, allowing it to actually fill the combat role of a number of monsters. Thus, it can actually pose a reasonable challenge to an adventuring group all by itself. Each of its attacks is about as damaging (again, on average) as any other creature of its level. Because of its higher hit point total, it also must be hit about 4 times as many times as a standard creature before it goes down.At the other end of the spectrum is the minion. By contrast to the dragon, a minion has not 4 times the hit points but, effectively, the opposite. If it were replacing creatures on a 4-to-1 basis, you might expect it to have one-quarter as many hit points. It should also do comparably less damage, since, if it has an equal chance to hit, our PC is going to be subject to 4 times as many blows. If we can normalize how many rounds a minion will last, we can calibrate its damage based on the assumption that half the minions will be present throughout the fight (all of them at the beginning, dropping at a constant rate to 0 at the end).Looking at the Orc excerpt, we can directly compare the 4 Orc Berserker (Level 4 Brute - 175 xp) with the Orc Drudge (Level 4 Minion - 44 XP). They have comparable attack and defense scores, but the minion does about half as much damage (5 hp vs. an avg of 11.5). The Berserker has, effectively, 82 hp (counting its 16 hp heal ability). If we assume our PCs have comparable to-hit bonuses as our orcs (+8, which seems reasonable), they will hit on a roll of 9 or better (60% of the time). Given slightly better average damage, they'll polish off a berserker in 6 hits (about 10 rounds). That's also about how long it would take them to finish off the minions, assuming they must only hit each one once.By varying the strength of the creatures we can use in a combat, we have created enough variety that allows us to provide an encounter for the group with anywhere from 1 creature in it to 16. Clearly, from a game theory standpoint, minions fit in D&D just fine.That's all game theory - simply put, minions allow one to create more tactically interesting encounters. Yes, that's often described as being more "fun" because isn't "fun" the point of playing a game? But it's not about "fun" so much as it's about providing interesting tactical situations.Like the different pieces in chess have different capabilities, the designers are creating a D&D game where different creatures have different uses in the game environment. That tactical variety should make for a more interesting (i.e. "better") game.Now, if you want to argue from a "gameworld verisimilitude standpoint" that minions are "unrealistic," you actually may have a point. In the "world simulation" aspect of D&D, minions are all about narrative flexibility. That has nothing to do with their role in the game system, however. Conflating the two is where people run into roadblocks and start having to do mental gymnastics. That's because they're, as hong would put it, "thinking too hard about fantasy."From a gamist standpoint, minions (like Elites and Solos) exist to provide tactical options to the DM.From a narrative standpoint, minions fill a crucial role - that of the opponent that you can not totally ignore, but that is only a serious threat in great numbers. This is the role filled by Stormtroopers in Star Wars, ninjas in many modern adventure stories, and the monstrous hordes of the dark one in so many fantasy stories (orcs in The Lord of the Rings, trollocs in The Wheel of Time and so forth...).You don't have to like them, but IMO, they certainly fit, both from a narrative and gamist standpoint.</blockquote>

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