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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ninja-to" data-source="post: 4386517" data-attributes="member: 19551">The more I think about it, the more I like the resolution of 'DM decides whether the minion takes damage'. This is probably the intent, as I mentioned earlier with 'missed attacks never do damage' but it just isn't actually stated directly in the RAW.One other thing regarding the posts about taking along a bunch of level 1 wizards. That's really not a problem as far as I can see. Several reasons.1. Let the PC's take the lvl 1 wizards. Take a hundred. Then divide that encounter's xp by 100. Play that way until you're 90 years old. You might hit level 2.2. Divide the treasure by 100 for each of those wizards. Maybe you can roleplay out of dividing treasure, fair enough. Every time some of those wizards are killed, pay that 'nominal' fee of 500gp. Go right ahead.3. Don't like that lvl 1 wizards in the party can insta kill? Well... why not? They're PC's (or NPC's) just like the heroes. They can get lucky and kill in one hit. I don't see why that's not plausible. It goes back to the idea of hp's being abstract. Why shouldn't a PC of any level not be able to kill a creature in one blow? It's just like being coup de grac'ed. It's really no big deal. It makes sense in realism (not realistic, don't go there) that some creatures will die from being hit just once. Also, mechanically it makes sense that yeah you can kill some minions. But pretty soon you're very likely to die too, unless the PC's (who are taking xp penalties like crazy) bail you out. Anyway, so what? You're not doing anything particularly special. At the end of the day, no matter the minion you've killed, your lvl 1 wizard hasn't taken out Asmodeus. He's killed some of his minions while being backed up by high level PC's.So in both realism and mechanics, carrying around lowby NPC's to do their work on minions is just fine RAW. They suck up xp, can cost you lots of gold in Raise Dead, and can even be explained in combat as perfectly plausible IE yeah they can kill some minions, because they're 'heroes' just like the PC's. Anyway, so what? Why is that hard to believe? Seems just fine the way it is.I think what most naysayers are afraid of is some PC's taking advantage of the 1HP minion. The classic example is the 1st lvl kobold and the 30th level minion.The solutions seems fairly simple for this, as stated by others.1. The DM should not make an encounter like this.2. If the encounter 'happens' this way for whatever reason, the minion changes. It is no longer a 'minion' but a creature appropriate for that level.*The above assumes the seemingly general consensus that 'Minions' are meant to be, as stated by others, a tool. They're like a random encounter table or a name generator on a PC. When babies are born in Faerun, they don't go to their notebook PC's to come up with a name for the baby. Minions are an idea for the DM to make use of. They're not creatures that walk about with 1HP.As has been said many times, if you DM them correctly, they won't be abused in game. Encounters should never involve huge disparity between minions and their counterparts. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is exactly what they're designed to oppose. The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil comes to mind, where you had lvl 4 or so 'mook's walking around carrying potions of healing and masterwork weapons for the PC's to pick up. These guys in droves did nothing but take up time and carry a bit of treasure. In 4th Edition these would be minions. They'd have a purpose and a role to play in combat (no pun intended). They would now have a real use. Like I said, if somehow it so happens you end up with the situation where you have that lvl 1 Kobold with a lvl 30 minion in a combat situation, DM it so that the minion drops his 'minion' status and now has full hit points. Why? Because he's no longer a minion at all. A minion is only a minion when it serves you as a DM, it's not supposed to be a creature type (again as others have said) it's supposed to be something to make your life easier to run. Period.</blockquote>

Verification