Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 4383584" data-attributes="member: 9522">The trick to understanding minions is simple, but counter-intuitive.The MM does not contain Minions because you can encounter them 'in the wild'.The MM contains minions to allow DMs to build encounters quickly.You see, Minion is NOT a creature type.It's an encounter mechanic. It allows you to multiply an enemy into four enemies without making the encounter a TPK. In 3.X DMs used low-level monsters in a similar fashion, but this really didn't work well because these low-level creatures had trouble hitting or hurting the party - they really weren't a threat. Minions have level-appropriate defenses, attack bonuses and skills, so the party does have to take them seriously, but they're weak enough to be defeatable. (The no damage from misses is there so their defences still mean something). Because four minions take the place of one normal enemy, they need to do about 1/4 damage, and drop in 1/4 the number of solid blows a normal enemy requires. Normal enemies drop in about four hits, so minions drop in one hit. The easiest way to ensure this without introducing a complex system is to say 'they have one hit point'. i.e 'the first solid blow drops them'.So technically, minions are just the new way of throwing lower-level enemies into the mix. You explain minions the same way you explain throwing lower-level enemies of the same base creature type or race in. They may be weaker, or the hastily-trained cannon fodder militia sent in with low-grade equipment to soften the enemy while the well-trained troops with the expensive equipment stand back. They may be the runts of the litter, or sickly, or simply unlucky. They may be green troops without battle experience, or maybe they've overconfident because they've only really fought peasants etc, not hardened adventurers who can take a hit and fight back. Perhaps they're in some sort of battle frenzy, attacking wildly but leaving themselves wide open for a fatal blow if the PC can just time it between their swings. Or maybe they're all at an early stage of their training, and while it's good enough for terrorising peasants any experienced combatant (such as the PCs) can see the potentially fatal openings that could be exploited with just the right sort of feint...In other words, the justifications for minions are as diverse as the DM's imagination. Whatever the explanation, the bottom line is that an encounter contains minions using minion rules because the DM wanted the players to enjoy a battle where they faced superior numbers and were victorious, and have that victory mean something, rather than have the party say 'well, we were never in danger'.</blockquote>

Verification