New Math and Minions
- Thread starter Rechan
- Start date
While not terribly related to the OP, my party and rotating DM's have gotten to a point where we heavily modify minions.
Most traditional minions will have increased defenses over standard creatures (+2 to all defenses for example) in the hope they may live long enough to accomplish something. Minions all have the 'high crit' property doing additional 1d10 per tier. They also frequently have a ranged attack in addition to a melee option if the creature did not have that in the design. We tend to run these in numbers that are double the books recommended allotment to challenge the PC's.
In addition to all the above we will frequently use 'Elite Minions'. The first hit on one such minion will bloody it. The next hit will kill it. Strikers consider their added damage to be part of a second hit only on minions, thus reflecting their ability to kill them more effectively. A critical hit kills an elite minion for all characters. These actually challenge PC's and are run in the standard recommended minion allotment.
Lastly, it can be fun just added flavor to an encounter by adding minions in unexpected ways. Example: Target is attacked by some standard monster type zombies. After a zombie is killed, it remains inactive for a full round. On its next turn in initiative it can use its arms to drag its limp torso around the battlefield as a crawl action to attack PC's as a minion (using prone detriments on its initial stats). This creature is treated as a minion or elite minion depending on your preference and is limited to melee basic attacks only.
Personally, I find the above additions add a lot to the fun and challenge of encounters involving minions and recommend you experiment if you've not already done so.
Most traditional minions will have increased defenses over standard creatures (+2 to all defenses for example) in the hope they may live long enough to accomplish something. Minions all have the 'high crit' property doing additional 1d10 per tier. They also frequently have a ranged attack in addition to a melee option if the creature did not have that in the design. We tend to run these in numbers that are double the books recommended allotment to challenge the PC's.
In addition to all the above we will frequently use 'Elite Minions'. The first hit on one such minion will bloody it. The next hit will kill it. Strikers consider their added damage to be part of a second hit only on minions, thus reflecting their ability to kill them more effectively. A critical hit kills an elite minion for all characters. These actually challenge PC's and are run in the standard recommended minion allotment.
Lastly, it can be fun just added flavor to an encounter by adding minions in unexpected ways. Example: Target is attacked by some standard monster type zombies. After a zombie is killed, it remains inactive for a full round. On its next turn in initiative it can use its arms to drag its limp torso around the battlefield as a crawl action to attack PC's as a minion (using prone detriments on its initial stats). This creature is treated as a minion or elite minion depending on your preference and is limited to melee basic attacks only.
Personally, I find the above additions add a lot to the fun and challenge of encounters involving minions and recommend you experiment if you've not already done so.
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I don't know if there is anything official, but here are my minion damage guidelines, and they seem to jive reasonably well with what's published.
Standard minion: (Level/2) + 4
Brute minion: +25%, or makes attack when it dies, or makes attack with some other condition.
Skirmisher minion: +25% with combat advantage or with other condition
Controller minion: -25% against 2 or more targets.
Artillery minion: -25% in melee (no other change necessary, being a ranged minion with boosted accuracy is its own damage reward)
Soldier minion: no change
Lurker minion: no change
Standard minion: (Level/2) + 4
Brute minion: +25%, or makes attack when it dies, or makes attack with some other condition.
Skirmisher minion: +25% with combat advantage or with other condition
Controller minion: -25% against 2 or more targets.
Artillery minion: -25% in melee (no other change necessary, being a ranged minion with boosted accuracy is its own damage reward)
Soldier minion: no change
Lurker minion: no change
Will Doyle
Explorer
Some fantastic advice above from Babinro: I'll definitely be applying the high crit property to all my minions in future. Rolling a crit and hitting the same amount of damage each time is a real letdown.
I've found that minions are very difficult to value in terms of XP, as the presence or absence of a controller can throw things wildly each way. For a decent controller, a group of 4 minions is no way an equal threat to a single monster. Overall, I think minions are very much a "tailor it to your own group" threat - i.e. don't worry so much about the rulebooks.
Worth noting I've had great success in presenting encounters against minions hordes. As they drop, just respawn their losses at the edge of the battlemap at the start of their next turn. If the party gets under pressure, set a short round limit for the reinforcements. Alternatively, treat them as a trap: once the players realise the horde is unstoppable, they start looking for a trigger to stop the flow. Some of my best encounters have been based around this, I think.
I've found that minions are very difficult to value in terms of XP, as the presence or absence of a controller can throw things wildly each way. For a decent controller, a group of 4 minions is no way an equal threat to a single monster. Overall, I think minions are very much a "tailor it to your own group" threat - i.e. don't worry so much about the rulebooks.
Worth noting I've had great success in presenting encounters against minions hordes. As they drop, just respawn their losses at the edge of the battlemap at the start of their next turn. If the party gets under pressure, set a short round limit for the reinforcements. Alternatively, treat them as a trap: once the players realise the horde is unstoppable, they start looking for a trigger to stop the flow. Some of my best encounters have been based around this, I think.
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When you do this and the PCs get into trouble, are you ever tempted to say "Elf needs food badly."
Matt James
Game Developer
I keep minions as they are and completely ignore their balance when it comes to the XP budget. In most cases, I'll throw a sea of them at the players. They really enjoy the challenge of slaying swaths of baddies.
Will Doyle
Explorer
Brilliant. I have thrown the occasional "Wizard is about to die" too.
Quickleaf
Legend
[MENTION=6682161]Will Doyle[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82885]Matt James[/MENTION]
I agree minions are hard to give an XP value to. I tend to block out 1 standard monsters worth of XP for 4-8 minions. IOW spice to taste.
[MENTION=65726]Mengu[/MENTION]
That's about what I use too, though I tend to up the damage by an extra +1 for every 5 levels. But otherwise I think those are good guidelines.
[MENTION=67482]babinro[/MENTION]
Great stuff.
As an experiment I tried the following and it worked out very similar to your elite minions:
Take a standard monster and reduce its HP to about 1/4 (or maybe 1/3 for brutes). Add vulnerable 5/10/15 critical hits. As an option you can include unique ways to kill it outright specific to the monster. In all other respects keep it the same, and use 2-4 of them in place of a standard monster. They'll go down in 2 hits usually, PCs who deal damage on a miss aren't ripped off, critical hits and damage types theyre vulnerable to are awesome against them, striker damage can drop them in one hit, but controller area effects don't wipe them out in one fell swoop, and they hit hard like a standard monster only in greater numbers.
I'm considering using this to replace *all* my minions and standard monsters the next time I DM.
I agree minions are hard to give an XP value to. I tend to block out 1 standard monsters worth of XP for 4-8 minions. IOW spice to taste.
[MENTION=65726]Mengu[/MENTION]
That's about what I use too, though I tend to up the damage by an extra +1 for every 5 levels. But otherwise I think those are good guidelines.
[MENTION=67482]babinro[/MENTION]
Great stuff.
As an experiment I tried the following and it worked out very similar to your elite minions:
Take a standard monster and reduce its HP to about 1/4 (or maybe 1/3 for brutes). Add vulnerable 5/10/15 critical hits. As an option you can include unique ways to kill it outright specific to the monster. In all other respects keep it the same, and use 2-4 of them in place of a standard monster. They'll go down in 2 hits usually, PCs who deal damage on a miss aren't ripped off, critical hits and damage types theyre vulnerable to are awesome against them, striker damage can drop them in one hit, but controller area effects don't wipe them out in one fell swoop, and they hit hard like a standard monster only in greater numbers.
I'm considering using this to replace *all* my minions and standard monsters the next time I DM.
