Paper Minions - WT?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I had that exact thought...

Not the thread, but the topic... Maybe it is the new "Paladin/Alignment" thread for 4E?

 

[Bigwilly]

As a DM I am looking forward to NOT having to track the HPs of a bunch of minions. I am also looking forward to said minions beating on the PCs (admittedly for a fixed and relatively limited amount of damage) rather than rolling a bucket of dice and hoping for a 20. And I will smile with glee as my PCs miss said minions with their attacks giving me another round to beat on them.

As a PC I am looking forward to cleaving through hordes of minions to get to the BBEG and his friends for some heroic smackdown.

If you don't like the idea of minions, you don't have to use them. You can still throw normal/elite/solo monsters at the PCs. But you will have to do a bit more housekeeping and probably won't be able to throw hordes of minions at the PCs without the game slowing to a crawl or ending up in a TPK.

 

[Brecht]

Minions vs a player character at low levels.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I agree - it's tough to wrap my head around mammoth minions, or for that matter huge minions of any kind.

I'm joking, but do you think that Legolas was shooting an oliphaunt minion in the Return of the King movie

 

[KarinsDad]

Minions vs a player character at low levels.

Well, that is a cinematic fight that at least supports my proposed houserule where minions go often go down in 1 to 3 successful hits, not 1 for every one. Thanks.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hey KarinsDad, please, I was not trying to attack you at all.

As for suggesting that you just use a regular monster instead of a tough minion: It just seems that if your Tough minion no longer goes down in one hit, and you have to roll damage for them like a regular monster, you've taken two big steps back towards it being a regular monster. It seemed your main goal was to hide the "minionness" of the standard minions which I think you could do equally well with a regular monster. Thus my inquiry about what the Tough minion adds because I honestly though a regular monster would serve just as well. No snark intended.

Well, thanks for being a straight up guys. I apologize for getting frustrated when the nth person told me to ignore my houserule because the main rule is better. The main rule has definite pros, but I see cons with it, at least for my game, as well.

And for 2 successful attacks out of 3, what you said is correct. In order to hide minionness, the players have to roll the damage dice once for a Regular Minion and twice for a Tough Minion.

But remember, a Tough Minion is worth 2 Weak Minions XP-wise. That means, it will not be used in every minion fight. So although the players have to roll the damage dice against it twice, I do not have 2 Weak Minions to roll to hits (and damage using this) in this system, I only have 1 Tough one (if I balance out the encounter XP-wise). So, sure there are some additional dice rolls, but to me, that's no big deal. And, the players never have to roll dice on the killing blow against Regular and Tough Minions like they often have to do with regular monsters. So, these minions still have some mechanical advantages over regular monsters.

I still gain the advantage of not adding or subtracting hit points with the minions. I still gain the advantage of Weak Minions falling over. The Minions still save dice rolls for the most part overall compared to regular monsters and the minions still allow me to throw 10 monsters at the PCs. So, I still gain some advantages of the core rule.

For a slight cost, I gain many of the advantages of minions, but do not have what I consider some of the larger disadvantages.

Note: I will probably also throw one or two Regular Minions in every 2 or 3 minion battles and a Tough Minion in every 3 to 5 minion battles. It will not be an every minion battle type thing. Just enough to keep the players from absolutely knowing that if a monster can take a single hit, that it is not a minion.


That fact that I now have two more monster Roles to use in my game system is a good thing, not a bad thing. I am not forced to use them in any given encounter. I'll just make sure I use them is some encounters, just like any other monster Role in the MM.

Basically, I view this as an advantage over DMs who limit themselves to the standard minion rules. At least, IMO.

 

[Obryn]

I'm joking, but do you think that Legolas was shooting an oliphaunt minion in the Return of the King movie

Ha!

You know, there's something to that.


KarinsDad - I think your 'tough minions' houserule has some promise. I probably won't use it, but I don't think there's anything inherently broken in it.

-O

 

[Doug McCrae]

The only thing close to an exploit with minions is PCs avoiding the use of encounter or daily powers. Conversely the PCs probably want to use per encounter powers on non-minions right away to get the benefit of ongoing damage and conditions for as long as possible.

The trick for the devious DM here is to vary your monster descriptions so that it isn't immediately obvious which are minions. For example even though the rules say all minions of type X have clubs and leather armour, you can mix things up by giving some spears, flails, maces, scimitars, hide or chain armour and so forth. Of course they still have the exact same stats, but the players aren't to know that.

Or if you really want to confuse the players, give them studded leather, broad swords and fauchard-forks. Hax!

 

[Cadfan]

The oliphant wasn't a minion, it was a walking skill challenge.

Challenge: Get to the oliphant's Secret Weak Spot, and shoot it in the brain. 6/4.
Relevant skills: Athletics, Acrobatics, Combat for when you shoot it in the brain.
Unusable skills: Diplomacy. The raiders cannot be talked into allowing you to shoot their oliphant in the brain. Consider instead shooting the raiders in the brain.

 

[KarinsDad]

The only thing close to an exploit with minions is PCs avoiding the use of encounter or daily powers. Conversely the PCs probably want to use per encounter powers on non-minions right away to get the benefit of ongoing damage and conditions for as long as possible.

I can think of other exploits.

The DM throws 10 foes at the PCs. The players pretty much know that some of the foes are minions (either that, or the DM is throwing lower level oppoents at the PCs or is trying for a TPK which typically won't happen in most games).

So, since there are 10 foes, all 5 PCs throw a dagger (or other ranged attack) at 5 different NPCs. 3 hit and 2 of the 3 foes drop. Not only do the players gain the exploit of knowing that the one foe that did not drop is not a minion and can have encounter / daily powers thrown at him (as you state), they have also gotten some fairly cheap XP and changed the odds from 10 to 5, to 8 to 5.

They are using a tactic that they typically would not use if there were 4 foes coming at the PCs during the encounter.

The tactic should work the same regardless of number of foes, but the tactic works better against the larger group not because it is a good tactic in combat, but because the players can exploit the metagaming knowledge that minions exist in the game system and when minions are typically used in the game and how those minions are easily defeated.

Against 4 foes, the players can pretty much be sure that there probably are not any minions in the group, so they exploit that knowledge to use the different superior tactic of concentrating most of their attacks against a single foe (if their goal is to change the odds more into the PCs favor). And even if there were minions in the 4 foe encounter, the first PC who hits kills one, so the other PCs can concentrate on the rest of the foes. No gain, but no loss of using this tactic.


Another exploit. The player of the Fighter knows that Cleave works better when fighting 2 foes in the 10 foe case over the 4 foe case. The Fighter is still fighting 2 foes in both cases and there should be no differences, but the player knows that because of how the game is designed, his Cleave will often be more productive in that encounter type. That's an exploit.


Ditto for area effect attacks that might in the game system, be much more effective against groups of minions than groups without, even though the caster is using it against the same number of foes.


Knowledge is power. In this case, knowing that there are probably minions and knowing which are not minions is a great deal of metagaming power.