Minions: Known or Unknown?

[Phoenix8008]

So, for those that have played or are planning to I was wondering how you are going to handle Minions. Are you using different tokens/miniatures to designate Minions? Or using the same token/mini to represent minions and non-minions alike so that the DM knows which of them are one hit kills, but the players don't?

Obviously, the players will quickly learn to to target the weaker minions in some situations if they can tell which are which. As DM, will you allow that or keep them secret? I can see them being different enough in skill that they'd be described differently, but also that they may be similar enough to not be able to tell apart from the stronger versions.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

For those interested, there has been a discussion going on about this here.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=227263

 

[Mort_Q]

I vote: Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Seriously, there are times when both make sense, and both are fun.

 

[bmcdaniel]

The players will only know what the characters see.

"In the room you see a half-dozen orc flunkies, wearing cheap leather armor and wielding an assortment of weapons. There's also huge orc wearing expensive plate armor and wielding a wickedly barbed axe covered in runes, and some sort of orc shaman dressed in furs with animal skulls hanging off him."

In most cases, it will be pretty obvious who is a minion and who isn't. However, in this case, there is a disguised orc assassin lurking among the minions, and a minion has been change-person-ed into the warleader.

BMM

 

[Treebore]

I'll handle them the same way I have for the last 20 years. The same way every DM I have known has handled them. Mixed in, kind of difficult to spot. The non mooks will wear better armor, or better maintained armor, etc... Something somewhat subtle, but easy to spot when they have time to look.

Plus I have "mooks", "tough guys", then the "bad guys", then there are the BBEG's.

Mooks are the easy quick kills.

Tough Guys require 2 to 3 good hits to kill, or a good fireball with a failed save.

Bad Guys are almost as powerful as the PC's.

BBEG's are either as powerful as the party, or more powerful, depending.


So there is nothing new about minions/mooks, its just formalizing something DM's have been doing for decades.

 

[Jack Colby]

Unless the books say or imply that players should know which ones are minions, they will be kept secret. I see no reason for players to know game terms like "minion" in regards to their foes. They will learn over time, and then that little bit of uncertainty and magic of the new rules will be gone forever. We can enjoy the thrill of the unknown while it lasts.

 

[Kraydak]

Minions work with a different rule-set then everyone else. I feel that changing rules on people without telling them is cheating. If the minion rules were more tightly integrated my answer would be different, but as it is, camouflaging minions is not kosher.

 

[FireLance]

I won't explicitly point out exactly which opponents are minions, but there will be context clues. Generally, the Sliding Scale of Mini Appropriateness will apply. Th goblin mini that I say is actually a kobold is almost certainly a kobold minion, for example.

 

[Henry]

Same thing for me -- I won't go out of my way to camouflage them, but I won't call them out as such, either. If twenty guys have spears and cheap armor, and two guys have something better, odds are very good they know who's a minion.

"Who's my minion? Who's my minion? YOU are!" *baby noises*

 

[Gargoyle]

I will neither try to make it obvious or hide minion-status. They will figure it out by descriptions, when one hit doesn't drop a bad guy, and common sense.

It seems a lot of DM's are concerned that playeres will metagame too much...saving daily powers for big bad guys and using weak AoE effects on minions....I have no problem with this. If anything, it makes more sense to me that heroes wouldn't waste their best stuff on some mook.