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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 4389432" data-attributes="member: 55846">I must say that I disagree with both of your points.  I have a hard time thinking of a prominent example of heroic genre fantasy fiction in which the heroes *don't* find themselves fighting against foes that are slain in a single mentioned attack in the book, but a menace in numbers.  Certainly, the classic touchstones of D&D all have this: Lord of the Rings, Elric, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and others.  I would assume that these are considered among the better exemplars, as the founders of the game felt they were the primary inspirational material.I also think minions are definitely not "sopping toliet paper foes" that aren't even a marginal threat.  In fact, I believe that they can be significantly more than a marginal threat.  Note that their defenses and their attack bonuses are level appropriate.  If the PCs are hitting minions 90% of the time, something is out of whack.  They should still be having to roll above 7-10 to hit a minion at pretty much all tiers of play, unless they are choosing to expend resources that are usually conserved for potent foes to clear them out.  In my own games, I've seen minions taken out quickly when the heroes work at it for a couple of rounds, but I've also seen minions drop PCs when the PCs decided to concentrate only on the big guns because they thought that the minions weren't a threat.I think it's important to emphasize that minions are *not* there primarily to be punching bags only used for atmosphere.  If that is desired, the DM should use foes significantly lower in level than the heroes.  If minions aren't a significant threat for whatever reason in a campaign, the DM should stop using them and use foes that are actually threatening and worth awarding XPs for.I should note that I do worry a bit that at higher tier play, area effects with automatic damage will become so common and easy that minions may become less of a threat overall.  However, I think this is a separate issue from whether the minion rules are appropriate at all.</blockquote>

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