Minions & PC Powers that have auto damage

[aco175]

Something came up in last weeks game that made me wonder about minions taking auto damage and thus killing them. I think it was the paladin's power that deals damage to everyone adjacent to the creature hit. It got me wondering about one of the other powers that the thief has in his assassin path where he deals damage when a creature misses him. Right now he walks past all the minions to get opportunity attacks on him so he can kill them if they miss. I know that I do not have to have them attack him, but I would tend to think most would the first time or the undead ones would always attack.

It seems that the rules would mean for the damage to happen and kill the minion in all these cases, similar to the fighter cleave power, but it also makes me think about a minion having more than 1 hit point, or even 10 if these powers do upward of this much. Part of me would think these types of damage would not kill the minion similar to if it hit a regular monster.

I would hesitate to take away from the player powers and nerf them just to make a few examples more realistic.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Use a treshold to kill a minion. Constitution modifier +1/2 level (you find it in its statblock) should work quite well.

If the treshold is not met. Minion is only bloodied.

So cleave at level 10 will do (with 20 Strength) 5 points of damage to a minion.

Take a minion of level 10. It survuves if its constitution is above average. Otherwise it dies. If you like you can also add enhancement bonus when you check, if the minion survives.

An even simpler method is just rolling a saving throw. (maybe with a penalty equal to the damage dealt)

 

[Infiniti2000]

Don't do anything. They're minions! They're supposed to die easily. For crying out loud let the player have fun. If you really have a problem with it don't use minions. But don't changes things just to gimp the PC.

 

[OnlineDM]

I've personally been making my minions into two-hit minions just because regular minions have been pretty boring in my games. More details are on my blog, but in a nutshell:

• Minions have two hit points
• Whenever a fresh minion is dealt any amount of damage, it goes to one hit point and becomes bloodied (thus triggering effects on bloodying a bad guy, etc.) Any damage dealt to a bloodied minion kills it.
• If something cool happens to an unbloodied minion (a crit, being hit with damage that it's vulnerable to, etc.), it dies in one hit.

This has made minions a little more durable and a little more fun. I'm up-front with my players about it - I don't surprise them with it or anything.

 

[Stalker0]

A few things I recommend for minions.


1) Use more minions. As levels get higher minions do lose some of their luster due to auto damage attacks. So...use more of them!

At heroic, 4 minions per monster is fine. A paragon, 5-6. By epic, I say 8 or more is fine.

2) Use aid another. Minions don't always have the best attacks, but aid another can give your big monster a big +2 to hit. Or with flanking...+4. This allows your minions to be more effective in the fight.

3) Use MM2, MM3 minions. These are generally better designed. The high level ones often do something after they die so they are still contributing.



There are a lot of houserules people have applied to minions, and many are well thought out. However, before you apply them, i would play around with minions as is and see if still work to your satisfaction.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I too thought that 'secondary damage' should not take out minions in one go, but have since thought better of changing rules.

As pointed out by others I agree: minions are minions - they are supposed to go down easily (note I didn't say die - see below); use more of them; don't nerf powers - downing foes/minions in one hit is probably why the players chose those powers.

I still have a slight problem with the 'main' enemy standing up to the hit of a sword and surrounding enemies (read minions) dropping due to secondary damage. This is NOT a game/rule problem to me - more a 'visual' concern. Hence I see no need to change the rules. Instead I have changed the way I view hps, especially with minions.

I don't always describe minions as dead - simply out of the fight (but indicate to players they are out). So the cleave may follow through and wreck a minion's leg - it spends the next few rounds rolling around in pain and if ignored eventually passes out. They can be KOed, run, in pain, badly hurt, etc.

This also came up with a fireball, where a friend Dm described some hobgoblin targets as burnt to a crisp and some unhurt. After a conversation re this we decided on better ways to 'describe injuries to minions'. The others should have also been burt, but just wounded like any other creature taking hps (only the stats don't change, though I would imagine making them bloodied would be cool. I'd rather boost player's choices, than take away from them. There are so many powers they have neglected to take these minion-downing powers).

Just some thoughts...but note that my thoughts also went full circle before arriving here too .

 

[Aegeri]

1) Use more minions. As levels get higher minions do lose some of their luster due to auto damage attacks. So...use more of them!

Actually the RAW scales exactly like this. It's overlooked, but the DMG2 says that 4 minions = 1 heroic monster.

5 minions = 1 paragon monster.

6 minions = 1 epic tier monster.

So they've already built this into the game anyway. Your numbers aren't too far off at that.

Also, to the OP counter the PC with the autodamage provoking attacks of opportunity by having minions with death effects. For example, in my game one of the minions was a creature that gave a stacking +3 bonus to attack and damage to an ally when it died. If you popped 5 of them, you would give a nearby monster +15 attack and +15 damage until the end of its next turn. Let's just say that quickly makes PCs revise their tactics. This also means the creatures want to die in spaces convenient to them and not the PCs. So if he's giving them OAs they should oblige and then tactically boost the best ally.

When said creature was a Marilith with a six attack 3d6+9+15 damage scimitar at +44 vs AC, let's just say the next turn was absolutely brutal. The PCs became immensely cautious about minions for the rest of the campaign after that.

 

[Connorsrpg]

@Aergi - what, so they weren't meant to kill the minions? I don't get this. How did this 'death bonus' take place? What did the minion 'do' to grant the leader such a bonus. (Obviously I don't need to go into bonuses from the same source not stacking - clearly this was a decision on your part).

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see how doing this helps the 'situation' in the OP. (A situation, that of course several posters, such as myself, don't think is a worry at all).

 

[Aegeri]

@Aergi - what, so they weren't meant to kill the minions?

Essentially. Killing all the minions at once either meant they needed to use forced movement to move them away or some other method (isolating them elsewhere).

How did this 'death bonus' take place?

Daemonic Fury; No Action; When reduced to 0 HP; Encounter
Close burst 3; Targets an allied elemental or daemon within the burst
The creature gains a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls until the end of its next turn. Multiple Daemonic Fury bonuses stack.

Creatures were arranged close together, so they were within the close blast 3 of the Marilith. Basically perfect bait and meant the minions - by dying - enabled an enormously powerful first turn for the daemons.

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see how doing this helps the 'situation' in the OP. (A situation, that of course several posters, such as myself, don't think is a worry at all).

Makes them think twice about automatic damage. For example, the rogue is running around deliberately provoking an OA to autokill minions. If the minions do something nasty on dying, as is common with MM2 minions and above, it makes this a completely silly tactic. Especially if they deal automatic damage or boost their allies with their death.

You don't need fancy houserules to make minions relevant. Just power design and making sure the encounter makes killing them off trivially with automatic damage a tough decision. In the above encounter, the PCs had to isolate the minions or keep the actual monsters away from them. Just trivially blasting them to bits with automatic damage was a very poor strategy - it meant the Marilith gained a massive bonus and tore them to shreds on her turn. As such, minions get treated with a bit more respect than "lol autodamage makes them irrelevant". They even draw arcana, dungeoneering and nature checks before slaying to make sure they won't do anything nasty on death.

Basically if something is intended to die, make that death important and it becomes a relevant part of the encounter.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I am cool with minions having 'dying powers', I was just having trouble 'visualising' this one. The encounter set up also seems odd in that PCs are meant to know that they have to move minions away initially. Pretty horrid for a wizard or such that opened for a large area attack! Was there any hint for the PCs to do this? Did dark energy move from the dead minions to the lead demon?