The Little Raven
First Post
If a level 1 wizard is facing off against level 30 minions, then the group needs a better DM, since it's not an appropriate encounter for that level.
Using common sense usually avoids issues with silliness.
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Minions with 1hp - Can anyone justify this?
- Thread starter Ninja-to
- Start date
If a level 1 wizard is facing off against level 30 minions, then the group needs a better DM, since it's not an appropriate encounter for that level.
Using common sense usually avoids issues with silliness.
Exactly.
If you completely ignore all the rules for how to use minions, you're going to get some bloody strange results. One of those rules is: don't use minions that aren't appropriate for the party level.
I've said this so many times I should put it in my sig:
MINIONS ARE NOT A CREATURE TYPE.
If you have something that would otherwise be used as a minion wandering around by itself, it's a normal creature with level-appropriate hit points and damage. If you then place it into a combat encounter where it and several of its peers need to fill the role of minions, then it has one hit point and flat damage.
'Minion' is purely a mechanic for building encounters with large numbers of enemies, instead of throwing in a dozen level (party level-LargeNumber) creatures whom the PCs can safely ignore. The only reason we have minions in the MM is to allow a GM to build such encounters quickly, not to suggest that such creatures can be found wandering around the game world by themselves.
Highly unlikely. A minion has comparable Defenses to other monsters of its level and takes no damage on a miss. The highest-level minion in the MM is the lich vestige (level 26), which has AC 40, Fort 36, Ref 40, Will 38. A first-level wizard only hits it on a natural 20. And in any case, this is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 1st level wizards up against 26th-level minions.
This is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 1st level wizards up against 26th-level minions.
This is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 5th-level clerics up against 26th-level minions.
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Minions certainly do die easy. But they also travel in packs and so the danger isn't from the 1 that the wizard killed, but the other 3.
Let's say a first level wizard goes first and kills one level appropriate minion per turn. The minions will attack three times on their first round, twice on their second, and once on their third round. Six attacks total, of which three hit. That's maybe 12 or 15 damage on the wizard.
Oh, wait, opportunity attacks. The first time the wizard casts, no one is nearby and a minion dies. The second time, there are three pissed off minions nearby, for another three attacks. The third time, there are two. And the last has one soon-to-be-dead minion near the wizard. That's another six attacks. Except lets call it two because of clever shifting on the part of the wizard. Of those two attacks, one hits. So we're up to 16 or 20 damage.
That's a lot for a 1st level wizard to take. Of course, I'm just approximating heavily here, but I hope it illustrates how a pack of minions might not be a total pushover even against a character with a auto-kill power.
Besides, if a DM is complaining that a first level wizard is one-shotting level 30 minions, the DM should really consider why the wizard is running into lone level 30 minions in the first place.
Switchback
First Post
Except that there is a real creature named "Kobold Minion" in the MM, and other minion types likewise have their own unique names, and often lore. They are every bit a unique monster and different a monster as a Kobold Dragonshield is to a Kobold Wyrmpriest. Thus, you don't see Kobold Dragonshield Minion or Kobold Wyrmpriest Minion. A Minion is a new creature role just like artillery or controller. It is not a template that goes over other existing roles.
Minions are *not* meant to be doubles of Brutes or Soldiers or other monster types, but only just with 1 HP. If they were they could have very easily simply told you to use the Soldier, or Skirmisher, or Brute stat package, but assume however many you wanted only had 1 HP and reduce exp by a certain percentage.
But instead, they made it a point to give Minions usually weaker armor or weapons or describe them as the most raggedly, or runty creatures of their race. And Mike Mearls further encouraged for the DM to play up the difference and make them recognizable in battle, so that we know they are weaker monsters not just standards that are heroically one shotted into oblivion.
They are fodder, both for players and likely in their own clans or tribes.
Another way we can tell that minions don't abstract into 'standard' or tougher creatures of their type is because we know the developers initially wanted them to have some actual small amount of Hit Points. Maybe 10 or 15 or so, maybe more for higher level minions. But the only reason they have 1 instead of a real number is to make bookeeping easier. That decision did not change that they are weaker creatures designed in 4e to replace the 'mook' or lower level filler from earlier editions.
Now while it is true that the 1 HP is an abstraction, these creatures are still the weakest of their lot. When they return to their clans and are not in combat, they certainly do not die from falling over or being scratched by a cat, but they would get beat to a pulp in a royal rumble with Brutes or Soldiers, because while in theory have more than 1 HP, its not much more.
If they had stuck with the low HP number for minions I think it would have made many people much more clearly understand what they were going for with Minions. It's not that these creatures don't exist in the world, its just that they don't exactly have 1 HP like they do when they face players.
From the monster manual glossary. Being shock troops or cannon fodder to a standard creature lets us know that minions are weaker and subservient to even the standard creature, they are not themselves just standard creatures that for the fun of the game, have 1 HP. Their role in monster societies makes sense as equal to the role town guards or militia played in previous editions, in civilized lands. Now we have roles like that for monsters.
It's not that minions don't exist in the world outside of combat, its just that they don't exist *with only 1 HP* outside of combat vs the players.
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There are a lot of abilities that automatically cause damage. Cloud of Daggers, Cleave, and Consecrated Ground just to name a few that come to mind. All of those will insta-kill most minions in one round because they do damage automatically without needing to hit and can never "miss".
Given how insanely easy it is to kill minions, why wouldn't an adventuring party hire a handful of level 1 wizards to follow them around to handle the minions they might encounter? The only real answer is "the DM wouldn't let that happen."
If you think about it, minions were created to easily give the bad guys very cheap actions, while summoned creatures and animal companions were cut to prevent the good guys from getting cheap actions. The combat system is built upon this faulty premise. That faulty premise can be exposed immediately without even trying by finding a way to give the good guys a few extra actions, and combine it with the fact that killing a minion is child's play; it's the work of a 1st level at will attack.
The way I play, I want the things I do to make sense. I want internal consistency. Level 24 minions that can be killed by any average Joe Wizard right out of Adventuring Academy without breaking a sweat breaks internal consistency. In fact it shatters it into microscopic pieces.
Heck, it doesn't even have to be a 1st level wizard. It could be 20 militia members with throwing knives. Between them they'll get about 1 critical hit a round, which will kill one minion.
I think Wizards went too far with this one. I'm OK with the idea that some monsters are very weak compared to other level appropriate monsters. But making all minions have 1 hit point is just too ridiculous.
I guess my objections can be boiled down to one question:
Why shouldn't an adventuring party hire a bunch of 1st level wizards for the express purpose of minion killing?
It's win-win, the wizards very easily gain levels and the party gets to save their actions killing actual threats, thereby vastly increasing their survivability. If a few die, Raise Dead is chump change to a high level party.
DandD
First Post
Because the adventurers don't know if those monsters are minions. Only the players know that. And your characters only know this too if you metagame and can't separate character-knowledge from player-knowledge.
If you're playing in a Order-of-the-stick-campaign world, where you treat game rules as physical laws of the world with all the absurdity that arises, go for it, and metagame the crap out of D&D 3.X and 4.0.
A game master with normal common sense would make the wizards instant-die to the higher-level minions, because the level 1-wizard NPCs don't matter in the game.
If you really want to play out armies against armies, then I rather suggest you go play Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
The Little Raven
First Post
1. Because heroes aren't pansies that hire schoolchildren to do their dirty work for them, and because said high-level minion can pulp said Wizard in one hit. The game assumes that you're going to play a hero that will perform deeds, not sit back and collect the reward while some NPC kid does all the work for you.
2. Minion is a meta-game construct, not a factor of the game-world laws of reality. It's an abstraction for players and DMs, not a fact for characters.
3. This ain't a simulation game, and was never intended to be one.
Uh, no. Minions were created to allow for encounters in which creatures are a threat to your health, but have a glass jaw. Summon-type stuff was removed because it effectively multiplied the amount of actions a single player received by the (amount of summons + 1). Having one player take two, three, or even four times the amount of actions and game time as others is part of the whole "20 minutes of fun in four hours of play" problem.
There is internal consistency. A minion is a class of monster that dies when it takes 1 damage. Monsters are designed to be encounter challenges for characters of the appropriate level. No inconsistency present there.
Is it simulation you are after?
I'd say that if the players do hire a bunch of lesser wizards to help them out in a dungeon, then the wizards become minions too (and since monsters lose most of their powers when they convert to minion status, the wizards would too and would just have basic ranged attacks).
Except that it's already been stated that players are supposed to know which monsters are minions.
Nice straw man. Your argument might make sense if I was actually making some sort of absurd munchkiny argument, like "the rules never mention anything about gravity, therefore it doesn't exist."
Instead I'm just using one, level 1 at-will power as it is intended to be used. I'm not abusing anything at all. Nothing I'm arguing is opposed to the intention of the rules in any way.
Except that the highest level minion, the level 26 Lich Vestige, can't even kill a level 1 wizard in one hit. It can do 15 necrotic damage with Shadow Ray, and it will do 5 necrotic damage if the wizard is within 2 squares. That's 20 damage; a wizard with any sort of above average Con will survive that.
Why have rules if you're just going to ignore them? Why even bother with the dice, and classes, and powers?
I'd argue that you can have the "feel" of minions and ditch about 95% of the absurdity by just having minions have about 10% of the hit points of their non-minion counterparts. It's still a little sketchy, but it's significantly less sketchy than all minions having 1 hp.
Perhaps 4e doesn't support simulationism at all. I'd argue that 3.5e does a decent job of simulationism. Then I would argue that switching from 3.5e to 4e results in a net decrease in gaming experience. But that strays away from my main point, which can be summarized as 1 HP minions are unnecessary and silly.
If you have to change all the rules for everything else just to make the minion rules "fit," then perhaps it's the minion rule that needs fixing.
