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Minions with Damage Thresholds?
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<blockquote data-quote="Shardstone" data-source="post: 9204332" data-attributes="member: 6807784"><p>I rule environmental situations on a case by case basis. But for the most part, it depends on the type of minions being used. Let's say I'm having a fight in a giant volcano against a firegiant and their drow minions. The arena deals 1d6 fire damage to the players at the start or end of every round. This damage would effect drow normally, but it doesn't effect minions. I justify this by saying the drow have been given something by the fire giants to protect them, and for less serious tables, it's just accepted that the bad guys can fight in this environment without being messed up by it. </p><p></p><p>It's still a corner case, but otherwise, I find this very functional. The overkill mechanic, which is how you can apply leftover damage from one minion to the next, is very fun to play with. It makes martials especially feel very badass -- they can do things like the Fighter Dwarf could in the D&D movie where she takes on a bunch of guards at once without too much danger. It also allows you to have micro-combats without rolling intiative. If you have two guards you need to take out to get through the door, instead of a full combat, you can just test to see if you hit them, and if not, they get a reaction to take a turn and then you allow the same or another character to take another crack at it. This allows for a more dynamic field of play, where you can have a mix of minions, normal fights with imitative, and normal fights with minions and initiative combined. This spectrum IMO feels better because it lets me litter a new kind of fast-to-resolve danger across the map.</p><p></p><p>A good example of what I'm emulating is how, in Dark Souls, you can round the corner and some annoying 1 hp-skeleton ambushes you with a quick swipe. Killing this skeleton is easy in Dark Souls, but having to roll inititive to take it out means I have to change the encounter to be more complicated, have a full encounter with just one overmatched skeleton, or modify the rules to have the skeleton be like a trap or something. But with minions, I can use monsters-as-traps and monsters-as-hazards, which also increases my opportunities for interesting NPCs to cross path with the players. And with overkill, I can still have it be several skeletons that get quickly resolved if I want to. And I can also combine this with another encounter too to adjust for different reasons.</p><p></p><p>I have to repeat this though: the core of what makes me like these rules is specifically the overkill mechanic. This small change to how minions functions (and it is small) has very big effects on the number of ways you can deploy minions as a game and/or narrative device. I think any minion system that doesn't allow for overkill or something similar is providing only half of what the "concept" of minions can provide.</p><p></p><p>All in all, I find the MCDM minion mechanics to be the most enjoyable and the most narratively flexible while still being very mechanically satisfying to play with.</p><p></p><p>Sorry for the short post earlier, I was doing laundry and on my phone!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shardstone, post: 9204332, member: 6807784"] I rule environmental situations on a case by case basis. But for the most part, it depends on the type of minions being used. Let's say I'm having a fight in a giant volcano against a firegiant and their drow minions. The arena deals 1d6 fire damage to the players at the start or end of every round. This damage would effect drow normally, but it doesn't effect minions. I justify this by saying the drow have been given something by the fire giants to protect them, and for less serious tables, it's just accepted that the bad guys can fight in this environment without being messed up by it. It's still a corner case, but otherwise, I find this very functional. The overkill mechanic, which is how you can apply leftover damage from one minion to the next, is very fun to play with. It makes martials especially feel very badass -- they can do things like the Fighter Dwarf could in the D&D movie where she takes on a bunch of guards at once without too much danger. It also allows you to have micro-combats without rolling intiative. If you have two guards you need to take out to get through the door, instead of a full combat, you can just test to see if you hit them, and if not, they get a reaction to take a turn and then you allow the same or another character to take another crack at it. This allows for a more dynamic field of play, where you can have a mix of minions, normal fights with imitative, and normal fights with minions and initiative combined. This spectrum IMO feels better because it lets me litter a new kind of fast-to-resolve danger across the map. A good example of what I'm emulating is how, in Dark Souls, you can round the corner and some annoying 1 hp-skeleton ambushes you with a quick swipe. Killing this skeleton is easy in Dark Souls, but having to roll inititive to take it out means I have to change the encounter to be more complicated, have a full encounter with just one overmatched skeleton, or modify the rules to have the skeleton be like a trap or something. But with minions, I can use monsters-as-traps and monsters-as-hazards, which also increases my opportunities for interesting NPCs to cross path with the players. And with overkill, I can still have it be several skeletons that get quickly resolved if I want to. And I can also combine this with another encounter too to adjust for different reasons. I have to repeat this though: the core of what makes me like these rules is specifically the overkill mechanic. This small change to how minions functions (and it is small) has very big effects on the number of ways you can deploy minions as a game and/or narrative device. I think any minion system that doesn't allow for overkill or something similar is providing only half of what the "concept" of minions can provide. All in all, I find the MCDM minion mechanics to be the most enjoyable and the most narratively flexible while still being very mechanically satisfying to play with. Sorry for the short post earlier, I was doing laundry and on my phone! [/QUOTE]
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