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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stormer" data-source="post: 4402068" data-attributes="member: 61883">Minions and Half hit pointsI appreciated your inputs. I have seen some interesting responses.  However, if anyone is going to DM school they must have lots and lots of time. Most others say minions are required to give a cinematic feel.  what is that feel, well the feeling that characters can slaughter loads of creatures at once or very quickly.  And why can’t they slaughter loads of creatures without having the minions?  Because the hit point system as is is screwed up IMHO! Any player that knows the rules will know who a minion is right after he hits that minion.  Regardless of what the DM does or how he plays the minion if you take down a guy with one hit guesses what, he is a minion (with few exceptions).  I fully understand the reason for the minions.  It is to allow characters to take down loads of monsters easy and fast.  What I am proposing with the reduced hit points still allows characters to take down hoards of monsters fast but makes the game world more like a world that the characters adventure in, not a world waiting for the characters to act. What I am saying is the reason for the minion is the unusually high hit points given to all base first level characters.  I am saying if you reduce the hit points, you get rid of the need for this minion monster and still retain the cinematic feel. If the hit points are reduced all creatures revert back to low hit points and now your first level goblin is the same as a minion.  He does not exist just to be killed, he exists and has few hit points because he is a goblin. The minions as they currently are, remind the characters that this is just a game and the bad guy is just sitting here waiting for the players to come get him.  Regardless of how they treat the minion prior to combat once combat starts his minion status is confirmed and now the players know the bad guy just hired him so he can be killed. The minion has no real place in the world he just exists to be taken out. it may be fun to take out minions but putting hoards of easy obstacles into the game world just to be killed reminds people this whole thing is just made up for their characters. I like my players to believe they are in a world that moves forward and that they can influence that world if they figure it out and take action.  The existence of minions reminds the players that the world sits and waits for the players to do things and that the world revolves around them. If you lower the hit points, then you still get the cinematic feel from taking out hoards of goblins or other first level characters but the minion i.e. the creature that exists and is hired by the bad buy just to give the characters something to kill, is removed from the game.  If you just want to take things out with rolls of the die you can play risk!  However if you want a story along with it that makes sense, you play DnD. Minions reduce the integrity of the DND world and suspend believe in the DnD story.  I know what you are thinking, DND has fireballs and flying mages how can that be believed. Well the idea of Dnd (to me) is what if this setting exists.  what if people can do these things.  Assume everything else is the same as the real world it is just that people now have these special abilities.  Given these abilities what happens now?  Minions make this interpretation difficult logically. What I really want to know is, what happens to the game if all hit points are reduced.  Do you think it changes game balance.  Do some characters become more powerful?  Which ones and why? Thanks for reading and you input. </blockquote>

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