Paper Minions - WT?

[KarinsDad]

Why? One of the biggest inspiration for D&D games is movies. The further the rules are from allowing me to do that cool thing that I saw in a movie the worse the game is for me. I'd much rather my game look like Indiana Jones than Civ 4.

I won't bother to debate this. But, using movies to justify rules is silly because people can rationalize anything. One person can justify that a rule is bad using the same movie that another person uses to justify that the same rule is good.

Rules are good or bad based on what they accomplish with respect to having fun in the game. And the same rule can be good for one game and bad for another.

I've seen this claim a few times and I really have to wonder how you did it.

...

See, I've run those large combats as well. And my experience has been the exact opposite of yours. So, I'm wondering what you're doing that I'm not. How are your groups acting as a challenge to the party?

Since the PCs have spell casters and the enemies do not (or only have one or two), it's not hard. A simple Web spell can delay 5 or 6 or more enemies alone. One action by a PC arcane caster delays the enemies by dozens of actions. Crowd control is highly important in these types of conflicts.

Note: In our games, even the combatant type PCs tend to have at least some capability to cast spells, use psionics, etc. We tend to not have straight Fighters, but Rangers or Paladins or Psychic Warriors, etc. In our current game, we have a Psychic Warrior, a Monk/Sorcerer, a Sorcerer, a Rogue/Cleric, and a Psion. Every single one of them has non-melee capabiliites (which is not always the case, but often). In this case, 3 of the 5 PCs can cure for example and the rest carry around a lot of potions.

The PC melee type can easily be healed by the PC Divine caster who has spontaneous cures and Wands of Curing to back up his spells. The enemy Divine caster (if he exists) typically does not. He often has a few Cure spells, but when he runs out, he runs out.


Sure, if you throw creatures with high DR and/or spell casting (especially arcane spell casting or psionics) and/or special tactics/abilities at the group, you are begging for a TPK.

But, an encounter where the enemies have a lot fewer options than the PCs tends to be a slugfest where the PCs have more ways to go to the well. And, these types of encounters tend to be against humanoid type foes, not foes with "tricks" or "defenses".

The reason that it is challenging is that there is the chance that things can go terribly wrong for the PCs. For example, most of the enemies could make their saves or one PC could get criticaled by multiple foes in the same round, etc.

Also note that this type of thing eats up a lot of party resources, so it tends to be something that can only be handled by the PCs as the first (or possibly second) fight of the day.

You say that minions get a "slight" offense bump. That's simply not true. They are getting a HUGE offense bump. And, remember, it's not a 2:1 ratio, it's a FOUR :1 ratio. That's four actions, as opposed to two. And actions that have a reasonable chance of hurting the PC's, rather than wasting time at the table.

Oh, I agree with your assessment here. The 4E minion concept results in a lot of damage. The reason the 3E mooks did not have this same level of damage capability is because PCs did not allow it. The arcane casters cast Greater Invisibility and then did stick and move crowd control or crowd damaging tactics. The divine casters buffed up the AC of the entire team. I do not see this level of player created disparity of capability between PCs and NPCs in 4E, so the NPC minions by defintion will be more capable of chewing up the PCs in 4E.

I'm convinced that I will not be able to run 42 NPCs of a few levels lower against the PCs in 4E like I once did in 3E (and remember, I did that particular combat in waves of about 15% of the NPCs per round). PCs in 4E just do not seem to have as many "go to the well charges" as 3E ones (i.e. I consider an At Will power to not be especially "going to the well" in 4E).

 

[Hussar]

Hang on. Maybe I misread you Karin'sDad. Are you saying that under 3.5, using lots of monsters resulted in very easy combats?

If true, then I agree with you 100%. I'd actually go a step further and say that under 3.5 rules, using lots of monsters resulted in combats that were not even remotely a challenge. Which I believe is what Rystil Arden is claiming as well.

So, in other words, using lots of monsters made for boring encounters which were no real threat to the PC's.

Thus we get minion rules where I can use lots of monsters on the table, and still threaten the PC's. Fantastic.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Hang on. Maybe I misread you Karin'sDad. Are you saying that under 3.5, using lots of monsters resulted in very easy combats?

If true, then I agree with you 100%. I'd actually go a step further and say that under 3.5 rules, using lots of monsters resulted in combats that were not even remotely a challenge. Which I believe is what Rystil Arden is claiming as well.

So, in other words, using lots of monsters made for boring encounters which were no real threat to the PC's.

Thus we get minion rules where I can use lots of monsters on the table, and still threaten the PC's. Fantastic.

Nope, what I'm saying is that I designed a large encounter to be easy and it worked as I planned. I made a variant design of a large group that I didn't use but I playtested and it was difficult (it had very minor but significant tweaks, such as Fire Resistance to stop the Wu Jen and Fire Ninja from AoEing quite as much). And, though easy, the encounter used resources and was fun.

My group may be better than usual for large fights due to a large number of members but low number of casters (unless you count the Ninja with their few Ninjutsu, the only casters are one Wu Jen and one Miko (Shintoish Cleric) out of 8 PCs).

 

[KarinsDad]

Hang on. Maybe I misread you Karin'sDad. Are you saying that under 3.5, using lots of monsters resulted in very easy combats?

If true, then I agree with you 100%. I'd actually go a step further and say that under 3.5 rules, using lots of monsters resulted in combats that were not even remotely a challenge. Which I believe is what Rystil Arden is claiming as well.

So, in other words, using lots of monsters made for boring encounters which were no real threat to the PC's.

Thus we get minion rules where I can use lots of monsters on the table, and still threaten the PC's. Fantastic.

I did not consider them easy or non-challenging. I considered them challenging if designed correctly. They might be considered "boring" because the monsters did not do much tricky or special, but not because they did not challenge the PCs.

You'll get this with 4E often as well since the Minions in 4E usually have 0 or 1 special powers. Boring in the sense that they tend to just be melee grunts. Not boring in the sense that it is a challenge to survive and a significant challenge.


I cannot think of a 3E encounter in our group where I outnumbered the PCs by anywhere from 2-5 to 1 where it was not a challenge. I pick grunts to still have a ~20% to 30% (depending on numbers and other abilities) chance to hit the "front line" ACs. I don't pick grunts who need a 20 on the die. I agree, that's boring. I also ignore EL guidelines and such. I eyeball it myself more because ELs often do not take into account DR or special abilities or other mechanics that might just focus on a weakness of my particular group.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

I did not consider them easy or non-challenging. I considered them challenging if designed correctly. They might be considered "boring" because the monsters did not do much tricky or special, but not because they did not challenge the PCs.

You'll get this with 4E often as well since the Minions in 4E usually have 0 or 1 special powers. Boring in the sense that they tend to just be melee grunts. Not boring in the sense that it is a challenge to survive and a significant challenge.


I cannot think of a 3E encounter in our group where I outnumbered the PCs by anywhere from 2-5 to 1 where it was not a challenge. I pick grunts to still have a ~20% to 30% (depending) chance to hit the "front line" ACs. I don't pick grunts who need a 20 on the die. I agree, that's boring. I also ignore EL guidelines and such. I eyeball it myself more because ELs often do not take into account DR or special abilities or other mechanics that might just focus on a weakness of my particular group.

Then I think you just proved the usefullness of the minion rules. They make it so you dont have to ignore something that is supposed to be significant when building an encounter (but lets face it, usually came out as a joke).

 

[VannATLC]

Show me one of these encounters.

I'm hard pressed to believe you could put together an encounter out numbering the PCs by 5 to 1, with mobs that have a reasonable chance to hit, and normal damage and hitpoints, without killing the PCs. Unless you used no sensible tactics.

So, I want to see it. What were the mobs? What level characters?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Show me one of these encounters.

I'm hard pressed to believe you could put together an encounter out numbering the PCs by 5 to 1, with mobs that have a reasonable chance to hit, and normal damage and hitpoints, without killing the PCs. Unless you used no sensible tactics.

So, I want to see it. What were the mobs? What level characters?

My PCs were initially outnumbered 4-to-1 and managed to turn it to more like 3-to-1 as the enemies were closing in on them. I'm not sure what you consider reasonable damage, but they did pretty good damage. They hit a little bit less than half, such that if the PC moved about and only suffered one attack per enemy, they were usually taking one hit per round (and sometimes two), and if they stayed put and let the enemy get off full attacks, they would take more, often three times as many (the Water Ninja took fewer hits due to her Dispersion technique giving her a miss chance). Some of the enemies has minor special abilities that made the fight more interesting but weren't relevant to an analysis.

The Cleric did need to get in there with healing for some of the PCs, one of them had to use a healing sutra, and the Martial Artist had to use much of his daily limit of Ki Healing to recover, but they managed. The key was teamwork and high damage output. My group does ridiculous damage if they work hard enough at it. They aren't particularly durable and have low defenses to speak, but they can sure hit hard. Also, they came through the gate to the keep with Mage Armour, Greater Magic Weapon, and other such spells active.

If the enemies had somehow emerged from the Ethereal Plane or something such that they started in melee range of the party with 5-to-1 odds, the fight might have gone differently. But thanks to playtesting, I could tell that it wouldn't go that way (plus, again, my recent fight was 35 enemies vs 8 PCs. I mean, I've done bigger battles before too, but that was too long ago to comment in detail).

The enemy tactics basically were along the lines of "Fireball hits all of us at a very long range--let's close with them and rip them apart". It was a good choice (the party had better ranged attacks than the enemies), and I played that tact not-unintelligently, taking advantage of holes in the party's defenses, etc. The Fire Ninja's technique that raised a brief fiery pyre over squares she tumbled through for a round really helped control their movements as well, as the damage for crossing through + Fireball damage often started to come close to the enemy's HP total.

 

[Hussar]

Rystil Arden - in the interests of completeness, could you actually post the actual encounter, not just "enemies" and "PCs"? I would like to see the actual PC's (class/level/race) and the enemies and the initial encounter outline please.

Right now all I'm seeing is very vague posts about how it works for you and Karin'sDad. Could you both post actual encounters?

 

[VannATLC]

So.. what were the enemies? (Just say if they are earlier in the thread, I don't have the time atm)

But either they NPCs have good reasons for lousy tactics, or simply lousy tactics were involved.

NB; If the vast majority of resources are used in one encounter, I generally don't consider that actually balanced. The BBEG, maybe..

 

[KarinsDad]

Then I think you just proved the usefullness of the minion rules. They make it so you dont have to ignore something that is supposed to be significant when building an encounter (but lets face it, usually came out as a joke).

I think you are confusing the 4E EL rules with the 4E minions rules.

The 4E EL rules are replacing the 3E EL rules. Except for how many XP you get for a minion, the minion rules have nothing to do with the EL rules.

And the EL rules are ok, but they are not perfect. Just using your Minion comment as an example, a same level EL 4E encounter at first level uses 500 XP. This would allow for a 20 Minion fight. Although the rules suggest using different roles, they do not require them.

20 1st level minions will kick the snot out of most 5 member 1st level DND groups (not necessarily kill them, but minimally use up a lot of resources and knock unconscious a high percentage of the party) because on round one alone, the mininons will average about 35 hit points of damage out of the PC's 130 or about 27%. Sure, the PCs will whittle them down, but maybe not as fast as the minions will whittle down the PCs (on average).

Remember, if the PCs do not have anti-minion powers (i.e. ways to damage more than one opponent each per round), the fastest 5 PCs can wipe out 20 minions is 4 rounds. On average, it's probably closer to 7 rounds.

That means that the average minion damage will drop by ~14% per round or 27% on round one, then 23%, then 19%, then 16%, then 13%, then 8%, then 4% (assuming none of the PCs go unconscious and none of the PCs have or can use anti-minion powers). This is over 100% of the PC's hit points and any PC knocked unconscious will not be contributing to the fight unless restored. Sure, the PCs can use Second Winds and other abilities, but using time recovering as opposed to attacking, is giving the plethora of minions more time to take out other PCs.

It would be interesting if someone ran some same level mock combats of all minions versus all PCs. I suspect that the PCs will lose more often than they would win.