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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4337605" data-attributes="member: 2011">I had similar issues as the OP. When I was DMing 4e (for two weeks, but one of my players wanted to DM, so I jumped at the chance to play instead), I introduced the concept of Tough Minions.A Tough Minion is identical to a normal minion except:1) It has double XP. So for the same XP encounter, I could put in 4 regular minions, or 2 regular minions and 1 tough minion, or 2 tough minions.2) On an even amount of damage, it dies. On an odd amount of damage, it takes "1 hit point".3) It has 3 hit points.4) A Tough Minion hit twice (i.e. with 2 hit points of damage) is bloodied (2 is a more or less an average number of times that a regular non-boss foe needs to get hit in order to bloody it, so the Tough Minion appears to be a normal foe).5) A set damage attack like the second round of Cloud of Daggers does 1 hit point to a Tough Minion, but does not kill it unless it is the third such attack (i.e. the minion took 3 hit points of damage). These types of attacks ignore rule #2.Note: I never told my players about rule #2, they just knew that there were regular minions and tough minions in the game system. I also rolled a random dice at the beginning of every tough minion encounter to determine if it was odd damage that killed them or even damage. The players never figured out my rule for kiling off the tough minions (although, they only met them twice I think in 2 play sessions).Similar to the 3 strikes and you are out rule of unconsciousness, Tough Minions have 3 strikes and you are out. But, they can easily fall on the first or second hit as well.This resolved many of the issues which cardboard minions. Even the higher level ones can last for several rounds of combat and are not auto-taken out via Cloud of Daggers, etc.But the thing that this resolved the most for me was the players KNOWING that a given foe was NOT a minion because he took a successful hit, so that they should target their anti-minion powers elsewhere. I did not like the metagaming aspect of that.The concept of Tough Minions kept the players guessing which I find to be a good thing. It's more challenging when the players do not know all of the ins and outs of their opponents. IMO.And, it allows the DM to throw some higher level Tough Minions at the group and the players consider it just another encounter, not a "minion encounter".</blockquote>

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