Minions - do you tell players who are minions and who are not in-game?

Do you show players who are minions at the gametable?


Minion behaviour usually makes it obvious which ones are which, but I don't call it or use special mini's. For example, a horde of goblins rushes forward to attack the party while the hobgoblin and his priest stand back buffing and or/taunting the PC's... it's pretty clear who the minions are.
 

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So far I've not mentioned it, but I'm happy to use the same counters for the same sets of monsters in KotS. The players picked it up very quickly.

I quite like the idea of just running an all minion battle, though - and if I did that I'd probably tell them.
 

Minions are worthless little baloons easily popped and providing little to no challenge
From the point of view of my game, this is demonstrably wrong. Minion mobbing, especially with creatures that benefit from CA or the presence of nearby allies, has been absolutely lethal. And at the very least, they force the players to consider their resource strategy.

Besides which, minions for me are all about the spectacle. A wall of zombies, a horde of kobolds... obliterated by great sweeps of the fighter's axe or the frigid heart of a freezing cloud.
 

I announce minions after they hit someone, or they themselves get hit. This way players don't know right off the bat what to do -- I'm not giving out free information. But once they've interacted with the minions -- trying some stuff, risking their hides in violent conflict -- that's enough for them to figure it out so I just go ahead and tell them.

-- 77IM
 

Curiously, I think it takes fun out of the having minions if you obfuscate them - I want people to recklessly charge down to slash down several at once, swagger when appropriate, etc.
I agree.

I don't yell out, "These guys are minions!" but the players figure it out when they face 8 or more of the same kind of creature, and I haven't bothered writing numbers on their counters.

Personally, I think minions are fun, and having the players know who's a minion doesn't lessen that one bit. Sure, you can take out a load of them with a quick area effect, but if you don't, they come back to bite you.

I don't get Celtavian's assertion that they're balloons waiting to be popped - at least, that's not how it plays out in my games. It's all about where and how they are used... I know in the hobgoblin encounters I've been running recently, those minions give all kinds of advantages to their allies. When you include all the other stuff they can do - flanking, bull rushes, missile fire, etc. - they're an actual credible threat that the PCs ignore at their peril.

Just don't crowd them together too tightly without good reason.

-O
 

Since minions are a metagaming concept, then I see no problem informing players what are minions and what aren't.

As a player, I am weary of my DM pulling the boss-disguised-as-a-minion , or worse, minion-disguised-as-a-boss. Because this means the DM would be banking on me wasting my Encounter and Daily powers on a minion creature. I should be the one to make that decision based on pure information. If I wasted my good powers based on intentional faulty information, I'd be pissed at the DM making such a metagaming ploy.

Because of this concern, my gaming behavior has been altered to a very conservative style of play. I only use my At-Wills until a hit has confirmed that a creature is a non-minion. Only then will I use my Encounter or Daily powers.

For some, this might seem the opposite of the free-wheeling, seat-of-your-pants kind of play 4e appears to promote. I've applied this style to advising my teammates. I point strikers and those with area effects at specific targets to "test" their minion-ness. For me, each fight has become a kind of "hunt the non-minion" metagame anyway.

If DMs hide their minion-ness, then expect this kind of behavior. If DMs openly expose their minion-ness, then expect a more brave and free kind of tactical play.
 

Sometimes we get a Skill check with a high DC to find out who's a minions and we're never told outright.

I can't imagine telling players outright. All that suspense gone... even if creatures are treated like minions except for getting a couple extra hitpoints, the fact they don't pop right away makes players go "Oh man, we're in the think of it now."
 

I am positive that we are having vastly different experiences with minions.

Personally, I stopped even using them. The fight would begin, everyone would move about some, and then both Dragonborn with Enlarged Breath Weapon would use it, make another attack, and the Warlock would pop off a Mage power and that would be about it for the minions. The Ranger had a Thunderburst Bow as well so didn't mind randomly zapping a pack of 5+ guys if the situation presented itself and the Fighter was also capable of aoe damage on top of simple Cleave.

I started out using 5 minions per normal guy and would insert a batch into most combats, I tried a couple minion heavy encounters and different strategies with them.

Anytime a minion tried to Bull Rush someone into a pit he was damned useful, a battery of spaced apart artillery was damned useful, but for the most part they were just terrible. By level 4-5 getting anything out of them required so much planning and effort on my part that it was no longer at all even close to natural or even vaguely realistic. I'd rather not use monsters that require me to play a minatures game against the players using all of my knowledge of their abilities and the best possible tactics even though the minions themselves are some goblin or something.
 

It just doesn't matter if you tell the party who the minions are. Not even sure why this is being brought up. As I've stated in other threads, past 3rd level the wizard can drop AoE right on top of the fighter or other party members eliminating minions if they close with the the party. And if they haven't closed with the party, the wizard just drops AoE from behind.

Minions are worthless little baloons easily popped and providing little to no challenge.
This. They're only cool for Zombie hordes or Zvart swarms (like being dogpiled by piranha). Other than that, I never use them. They're just too meta-gamey and too easily meta-gamed by the PCs. "Minions? I switch to my +1 dagger for the extra +2 to attack."

Blech. Also, what Arbitrary said.
 

Something I'd taken to doing as a GM, though it's admittedly a little complex, is assign minion status on the fly. Its based from this concept.. but backward:
Giant In the Playground Games
Basically, nothing starts out as a minion. Things then become minions as a) they suck in a fight and don't roll well or b) the player comes up with a particularly amusing or heroic maneuver that - c'mon that should just kill the guy for good story or c) as a pacing issue to end the overlong clean-up phase. I have to refigure XP, sure, but I feel it's worth it. It also prevents wasted encounter and daily abilities well.
 

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