Monster HP question

[med stud]

In my play tests, both PCs and bandits went down fast. It didn't feel slow to take a bandit down from 30 HP to 0 HP. I was afraid that combats would take forever and feel stupid when I saw the numbers, but my fears were unfounded.

The "one shot"-problem is something that I always have had a problem with when it comes to D&D. It is hard for a PC to take down a tough enemy in one attack, and PCs don't have to be very afraid of getting ambushed by an assassin, they can always run for help.

I think, though, that one-shot:ing is something that is worth giving up. Many ambushes are lethal anyway, as long as more than one person is doing the ambushing. A character that ambushes an opponent, using dailies and action points can deal a large amount of damage in one round.

Minions are a nice way of mowing through opponents. Minions are the average-joes that are given some spears and pointed in the right direction. They can't defend properly, they don't have the fighter instinct or attitude, they topple over when they are getting minor injuries.

My favourite example is from the LotR- movie, the first one.
[sblock]In the final battle, there are lots of uruk-hai that are being killed in droves by Boromir. Then there is their leader, who is much tougher. He kills Boromir and gives Aragorn a run for his money. All uruk-hai in that scene are minions except for that one that takes more than a round to bring down.[/sblock]

 

[DandD]

Again, though, what possible reason could they have for writing out "minions die when they suffer an attack that deals damage" in the kobold minion stat block instead of "HP: 1" unless "die when hit by an attack that deals damage" is a standard feature of the minion type? I haven't seen any of the "minions have X hp" theories explain why the kobold minion would be written this way.

Perhaps because they're kobolds. Everybody expects them to be puny and weak and to die in one hit. So they exagerated this feature for the demonstration games.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Most creatures are just ordinary creatures, and that's what a minion is. A typical member of their race.

While typical members of a race may die as quickly as minions, not all minions are typical members of a race. I suspect that all the minions of a race in the MM will be warriors of some kind. Minions of plants, animals or magical beasts may be typical members of the species.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I like minions and think they work well.
In a recent 3.5 campaign I threw 66 lemures at an 8th level party - they might as well have had 1 hp each, and a single attack with a better chance to hit would have been less annoying then the paired claw attacks. Still by the end of the battle, just thier presense was a tactical consideration - they pinned one character against thier barbed devil leader, and made life difficult all around. One Lemure even wounded a PC and survived! He was promoted a couple of steps to spined devil after the battle. The spined devil corps had also lost 8-12 members, mostly to a barbarian with the bow of an eyrineis.

Lemure AC 16, hp 1, +6(1d4) would have been a lot easier on me, or even some mob benefit power, like +2 to hit if adjacent to 2 or more lemures.