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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1795239" data-attributes="member: 5171">In the game I ran, my biggest problem with mooks was keeping them around long enough for them to actually be worth setting up.  They're great for making a hero with an area attack feel useful, as most of my mooks ran out in a cluster with blaster rifles, got off one round of shots, and then were unconscious the following round as one of my heroes took care of them.I think the important thing with mooks is to remember that the mooks are not really the enemy.  The mooks are flavor. The mooks are chances for your heroes to look cool and show off their powers in a low-risk environment.  I wouldn't put too much restriction on whacking the mooks -- I mean, I wouldn't let arguably heroic PCs get away with irradiating several square blocks to take out 4 bank robbers, but anything within reason should be fine.Or, to put it a different way:-Mooks show up without big bad guy: They're there to let the players know that a real fight is coming up.-Mooks show up with big bad guy: They're there to make it so that the players don't all gang up on the big bad guy at once, or so that someone who can't get to the real fight can still have fun for a round or two.-Mooks show up with bigger guns or behind a defense screen or something: They're there as part of a more dangerous environment, either to show off some of the heroes' defensive skills or to make sure that heroes who have gotten sloppy really do take a round to deal with them.-Mooks are surrounded by innocents or delicate art or something: They're there to give the heroes a chance to use their non-damaging powers, or to demonstrate to the players that they really ought to have non-damaging powers.If you really really want to, you can make mooks threatening.  They can have intelligent tactics, minmaxed builds, and so forth -- but that's not really the point.  The villains are the ones who really must challenge the PCs.  The mooks are there to make sure that the heroes look good. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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