Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 4267903" data-attributes="member: 9391">I think if they'd listed next to the minion type monsters in the MM the regular version of the same monster, and given a rough guideline on when to use the minion version versus the regular version, it'd have cleared up a ton of confusion. <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&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> And the rules honestly do already explain that, it's just in the section about creating encounters. Most of the sections, for example humanoids, I think do a great job of making it clear &quot;these guys over here, statted as minions, are useful to throw into encounters *as* minions.&quot; The legion devils, for example. The idea seems to be that if you were to run into a platoon of legion devils, there's probably a 20 foot tall devil in front who's in charge. If your party's powerful enough to fight the big guy who uses these guys as footsoldiers, they're not powerful enough relative to the PCs to use except as minions. Both mechanically and &quot;in game&quot; wise, these guys are cannon fodder used by tougher enemies. If you want to have your party encounter these guys all alone and at a level where just a couple is a threat, unminionize em. Hey, all you have to do to unminionize something is (a) give it normal HP, and (b) treat it as a non-minion when you create the encounter. The fact that minion status matters for encounter balance indicates to me that we're better off taking our cues for how minions are discussed in the encounter creation section than in the flavor from the monster manual.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SweeneyTodd, post: 4267903, member: 9391"] I think if they'd listed next to the minion type monsters in the MM the regular version of the same monster, and given a rough guideline on when to use the minion version versus the regular version, it'd have cleared up a ton of confusion. :) And the rules honestly do already explain that, it's just in the section about creating encounters. Most of the sections, for example humanoids, I think do a great job of making it clear "these guys over here, statted as minions, are useful to throw into encounters *as* minions." The legion devils, for example. The idea seems to be that if you were to run into a platoon of legion devils, there's probably a 20 foot tall devil in front who's in charge. If your party's powerful enough to fight the big guy who uses these guys as footsoldiers, they're not powerful enough relative to the PCs to use except as minions. Both mechanically and "in game" wise, these guys are cannon fodder used by tougher enemies. If you want to have your party encounter these guys all alone and at a level where just a couple is a threat, unminionize em. Hey, all you have to do to unminionize something is (a) give it normal HP, and (b) treat it as a non-minion when you create the encounter. The fact that minion status matters for encounter balance indicates to me that we're better off taking our cues for how minions are discussed in the encounter creation section than in the flavor from the monster manual. [/QUOTE]

Verification