Paper Minions - WT?

[VannATLC]

I've done that combat, though it was 28 minions and 1 controller vs 8pcs.
The PCs win, and handily.

That's an inbalanced encounter because my party has 2 wizards and a dragonborn, and wiped out half the minions in turn. It did, of course, burn through a few powers, but it was the middle of the encounter run, and only one daily was used.

I'll run through 20 vs the pregens from KOTS. I don't expect it to be much more draining than a standard encounter.

My current party will be facins 10 times their number of minions, as well as several normal creatures, and a solo, this weekend, in an 'encounter' that I expect to span about 12 minutes of actual game time. There are some opportunites for short rests, if they find them.

 

[Rystil Arden]

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..

I have...rarely been accused of using lousy tactics. If anything, my new group (the one in this game) tells me that my tactics are too good. Also, the PCs used plenty of resources, but they have a ton of them. They still had resources to blow on the ooze and on the BBEG encounter. And they needed them all. When the BBEG fight was done, almost everyone was nearly out of spells, half the party had nealry died, and the Lightning Ninja forced the BBEG to make a choice to hit the rest of the party and not him (even though he was in the BBEG's face) or else miss hitting on the rest of the party, which ultimately turned out to be a lose/lose and ended the BBEG's reign of terror with 2/8 characters conscious.

@Hussar--as I mentioned earlier, the characters are gestalt-balanced. They're using homebrewed races and classes, which means that I knew posting their race/class make-up won't be terribly useful to you. Fortunately, as the designer of the classes, I have a very high circumstance bonus to making good challenges for the PCs using them, which could have factored into why I can get the system to work so well. Anyway, though I warned you won't get much help from this, I will post as requested.

For those who care (and those who follow along with my Gestalt-balanced class thread in the Houserules forum), the characters were--

Asakura Shiawase--Ronin7/MartialArtist1 (the player actually posted a brief summary of Shia on the wiki, so I can give it to you to get a glimpse--note that the Ronin can finesse with Katanas) [SBLOCK=Shia]Strength: 15 Dex: 20 Con: 13 Int: 13 Wis: 24 Charisma: 10

HP: 74/74 Speed: 30ft AC 22/ Touch: 22/FF: 17 Fortitude: 9 Reflex: 13 Will: 13

Base Attack: 8/3 Grapple: 10 Attack: Katana +15 or +10 1d10+5 15-20/x2 2 Katana: +13/+13 1d10+5/1d10+3 15-20/x2//17-20/x2 +8 1d10+5 15-20/x2 Also: First Katana: Frost 1d6 damage, Freezing Burst 1d10 on critical

Skills: (shown here are only ones with mutual bonuses and/or ranks) Ability + Ranks + Bonus = total

Balance: 5 + 0 + 2 = 7 Disable Device: 1 + 4 + 0 = 5 Handle Animal: 0 + 10 + 0 = 10 Hide: 5 + 7 + 0 = 12 Jump: 2 + 8 + 2 = 12 Listen: 7 + 11 + 0 = 18 Move Silently: 5 + 5 + 0 = 10 Open Lock: 5 + 2 + 0 = 7 Perform(Music): 0 + 1 + 0 = 1 Ride: 5 + 5 + 2 = 12 Spot: 7 + 11 + 0 = 18 Swim: 2 + 4 + 0 = 6 Tumble: 5 + 7 + 2 = 14

Exp: 29008 (I think as of the end of the year)

Feats: Improved Feint Exotic Weapon Process Katana Two Weapon Fighting Oversized Two Weapon Fighting Weapon Finesse Weapon Specialization Two Weapon Pounce Improved Critical

Special: Evasion Intuitive Celerity Sneak Attack 4d6 Uncanny Dodge Flurry of Blows Wisdom to AC Unarmed Strike

Language: Common, Larakese, Spirittongue [/SBLOCK]
Ken--Ex-Samurai1/Ronin6 (did lots of fire damage with his Katana and Wakizashi, both Flaming, and those gloves that boost fire damage on melee and ranged attacks)
Masamura Furuta--Wu Jen8 (specialised in Earth and Fire spirit magics)
Kokusha Hirake--MartialArtist8 (fought with a twin Naginata that did Holy and Electric damage)
Kusanagi Kaiko--Miko8 (had a Holy Bow that was also Bane against all the monsters in the encounter)
Nakamura Itaru--Ninja8 (with minor Electric techniques)
Sakamoto Yuka--Ninja7 (with substantial Water techniques)
and Special-Guest-NPC...
Sakamoto Aiko--Ninja9 (Yuka's sister, substantial Fire techniques)


The enemies were templated (Corrupted and Tainted--since I love Vile Damage and Heroes of Horror Taintrules ) converted Shadowlands Ogres, converted Shadowlands Trolls, a few Corrupted Tainted Dire Animals, a demon that I mimicked using a Corrupted Tainted Abishai, etc.

The templates really help increase the threat of the monster while leaving it squishy enough to go down before everyone dies. While the Dire Tiger might have an untenable number of HP, these things still only had double digit HP each, but adding so much Vile Damage and Taint per hit made them quite threatening.

 

[med stud]

A minion has the potential to go down in more than one attack. I think a fallacy of the anti-minion crowd is that they often assume that one attack roll = one dead minion. If you miss three attacks against a minion and hit the fourth time, it's the same result as attacking and hitting a regular monster four times, thereby downing it.

The minion rules look hokey on paper but they play out well. Generally, less number of attacks are needed to take out a minion but they don't go down in one attack roll every time.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

SO what happens when an enterprising pc throws caltrops in front of charging minions? If they choose to run through the caltrops they automatically take one point of damage to their feet and DIE from it?

 

[ForbidenMaster]

SO what happens when an enterprising pc throws caltrops in front of charging minions? If they choose to run through the caltrops they automatically take one point of damage to their feet and DIE from it?

Who says that caltrops do damage? Maybe they just cause you to be slowed if you run over them, otherwise they are difficult terrain.

 

[Zurai]

SO what happens when an enterprising pc throws caltrops in front of charging minions? If they choose to run through the caltrops they automatically take one point of damage to their feet and DIE from it?

What are caltrops? They don't exist in 4E.

 

[KarinsDad]

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?

This was a couple of years ago, so I do not remember all of the details.

24 Ogres, ogres attacked in something like a wave of 6 ogres each round, so yes, it was not until round 4 or so that all of the ogres were there (the ogres were spread out over this complex). And the ogres had to move up to the party, so some threw ranged weapons as they approached and some just ran in.

5 PCs level 7, Wizard, Paladin/Annointed Knight, Favored Soul, Ranger/Fighter, Cleric.

PC AC (for front liners) in mid-20s (I think after Magic Circle of Protection IIRC).

The room was something like 80x80 with multiple entrances. The PCs were eventually able to huddle a bit in a corner and used some pillars for partial cover. I remember Fireball, Web, Black Tentacles, and Summon Monster spells were cast (the Favored Soul was a SM specialist and kept pulling in Hippogriffs).

I suspect that there was also foreshadowing, so the PCs probably had some protective/buff spells up before the fight, but it was too long ago to remember exactly. And I remember that it was such a long encounter that the Paladin even brought her special mount warhorse in to fight (and it got snuffed which ticked her off).

I also remember that many of the Ogres attempted grapples and overruns (in order to break through to the spell casters), and were successful in some cases, but the problem for the Ogres was that the PCs bottled up the area and forced many of the Ogres to rely on ranged attacks. But, that's the point of PC tactics. Take away the advantages of your opponents. In the case of a large mob, make it hard for them to all attack at the same time, or at least with their best attacks.

It's not so much that the Ogres did not use good tactics, it's that the PCs used better ones. Without any spell casters on their side and with lousy ranged attacks, the Ogres could not use their advantage in numbers because the PCs did not just dumbly stand in the middle of the room.

 

[med stud]

SO what happens when an enterprising pc throws caltrops in front of charging minions? If they choose to run through the caltrops they automatically take one point of damage to their feet and DIE from it?

I can see three alternatives:

1) Caltrops use attack rolls (the option I prefer): If they "hit", the minion topples over with bleeding feet, lying there crying and out of the fight.

2) Caltrops don't deal damage (also a reasonable option): The trauma inflicted by a caltrop is not lethal in itself; you could stick caltrops in someones feet until they look like a porcupine and they still wouldn't die from the trauma (infection is another matter, as is long term disability). Therefore, caltrops slow you but they don't do damage. In that case, the minions HP doesn't matter.

3) Caltrops do one point of damage to non-minions, they only slow minions. Ugly solution but still viable.

 

[Blackeagle]

2) Caltrops don't deal damage (also a reasonable option): The trauma inflicted by a caltrop is not lethal in itself; you could stick caltrops in someones feet until they look like a porcupine and they still wouldn't die from the trauma (infection is another matter, as is long term disability). Therefore, caltrops slow you but they don't do damage. In that case, the minions HP doesn't matter.

This seems like the option that's most in the spirit of 4e. Rather than making caltrops a weapon, they're some sort of hindering terrain.

 

[gonesailing]

@Hussar--as I mentioned earlier, the characters are gestalt-balanced. They're using homebrewed races and classes, which means that I knew posting their race/class make-up won't be terribly useful to you. Fortunately, as the designer of the classes, I have a very high circumstance bonus to making good challenges for the PCs using them, which could have factored into why I can get the system to work so well. Anyway, though I warned you won't get much help from this, I will post as requested.

For those who care (and those who follow along with my Gestalt-balanced class thread in the Houserules forum), the characters were--

Not to pick a fight...but you are using heavily houseruled and custom races/classes/monsters that you obviously have spent a great deal of time and effort on to compare to the default rules of a system that is new. I completely understand that you wouldn't want to see that investment lost and would guess that is at least partially the reason for your posts. (Maybe I'm wrong)

I just don't understand the comparison.

Not all of us have the time or inclination to run games like yours. Or gaming groups to go along with it. The minion rules SEEM to do their job of simplifying large combats (for me at least).