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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 4266748" data-attributes="member: 158">Because in adventure books and movies, hordes of mooks DO present credible threats to the heroes. In Star Wars, Stormtroopers can and DO wound the heroes. In Spellfire, the Zhentarim do threaten the heroes with bodily harm, and the only one who is completely unworried about them is Elminster himself. In Jackie Chan movies, there has to be a sense that he's doing great things, and being incredibly skilled and lucky to succeed in beating up the minions. So how does one create that sense of threat from the mooks to the Players, instead of just the characters? You use minions who, when in a gang, CAN kick the characters' butts, instead of making their stats so incredibly weak that the players don't even sweat a lucky hit from one of the mooks. 1000 1st level warriors in 3e wouldn't mean a thing to a 20th level PC. Only a percentage could attack at any one time, and of those that hit, only 5% will do any palpable damage at all. On the other hand, just 10 minions can scare the bejeezus out of a couple of  equivalent characters. 10 of those shifty little kobold minion bastards can surround a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level PC and turn them into hamburger if they get the chance. Now, all well and good at low-low level, but what if I want to recreate the feeling at high level? Do I, as a DM, track 10 critters with about 40 or 50 hit points apiece, for multiple rounds, IN ADDITION to the name-level bad guys? (Using a Feng Shui term here.) I could, but I get the same effect if I jsut ramp up their saves and AC, and just say "1 hit takes them down" -- in other words, what 4e has done, and I avoid a lot of bookkeeping just to get the same effect.Important Question: For those in extreme dislike of minon rules, will there EVER come up a situation where a single high-level minion will  be threatening a village, absent of any PCs or NPCs? Now, I CAN see a perfect scenario involving a high level minion threatening NPCs - one which highlights a PCs obvious skill and power over what is perceived to be a greater threat. I'm reminded of an Issue of the old DC Spelljammer comic, where the captain and crew landed on a world for some R&R. The locals were threatened by a mysterious enemy, which turned out to be a huge Red Dragon. One of the crew members was helpless before its power. Then, the captain shows up, gets pissed off with the dragon, and KILLS IT IN ONE SHOT with a finger of death. I loved that scene, because it turned the whole "climactic battle with the bad guy" theme on its head. The dragon turned out to  be a pansy next to the ship's captain. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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