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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4391916" data-attributes="member: 57267">I agree from a game perspective that using minion mooks is more challenging than using low-level mooks. But we were talking about a Steven Seagal movie. No dice, no character sheets, no game. In a movie, Seagal is paid lots of cash to show up on set each day, regardless of how bored he gets. The character he plays in the film has no say about showing up - the character shows up when Seagal shows up. So there is no boredom, or if there is, it has little bearing on the actual effort to make the movie. So to take it back to 4e, yes, we have minions. That is one way to make mooks. But it is not the only way. There is nothing that says every encounter the PCs ever face must be challenging. Heck, one of the beautiful things about gaining levels is watching your character get more and more powerful. But if every fight always takes 8 rounds and leaves you bloodied and out of encounter powers, then you never get to FEEL more powerful. Sure, your level 30 fights have bigger numbers flying around than your level 1 fights, but the end result is still the same: 8 rounds of furious life-or-death action, expending all your encounter powers, ending up bloodied.  Once in a while, it might be fun to wipe the floor with a bunch of mooks. Especially if it's the same mooks that used to challenge you when you were lower level. Remember that scene in Superman 2, when Superman gives up all his super powers to become mortal. Then he gets beat up in a bar by some big trucker guy. Then, later when he gets his power back, he goes back to the bar and trashes the trucker. Very satisfying. It's just as satisfying when PCs get to do that. The only way is to let them, once in a while, mop up some lowbie mooks. Don't do it all the time. Don't bore your players. But once in a while, let them flex their new high-level muscles and actually feel powerful. Besides, from a simulationist perspective, it's hard to imagine a bar full of bad guys, in which every one of them is vulnerable to house cats and hat pins, and not one of them (except for the boss and maybe a few of his senior henchmen) can put up a real fight. Mingle in some minions, some lowbie mooks, some mid level guys that can hit and take some hits, and a few high level guys that pose real threats.  Isn't that what a gang (or a town, or an army) would be like? Some members of any group are probably very new and green, others are highly trained, others have been part of the group for a long time and have lots of experience, still others are highly-trained AND have lots of experience.  And some of them go down with a single hit from a sword, either because you ran him through the heart or because he was a newbie and any decent would could drop him, while others take several hits and might hurt you along the way, and still others are serious threats but you gut them in one hit before they really get a chance to shine, while the best veterans in the group are a serious threat to your life and take some work to wipe them out.</blockquote>

Verification