Pure Glow decimates minions?

[Chimerasame]

Be careful adding save vs. death onto auto-damage effects, you don't want to inadvertently make it harder to hit with them than with something that normally requires an attack roll.

I think the HP pool idea is the best solution, if you think it's an issue which warrants solving.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

It's not just auto damage effects: so many classes and paragon paths offer area effect attacks that can wipe them off the map. As a DM I've found that melee minions aren't usually worth the effort of assembling on the battlemat once the party exceeded 6-7th level.

As a player of a wizard, I'm annoyed that what's meant to be my class specialty is something so trivial (fortunately the crippling save-ends effects I get makes up for it!)

Ranged minions are in a somewhat better situation since they don't have to group up. Some sort of minion generator can also make them interesting.

 

[Lynadianya]

Minions are supposed to be minions

Minions should be minions. They serve a specific purpose in game. They are the red shirts...the cannon fodder. They are meant to be mowed down in spectacular fashion.

So, AoE powers in 4e are very light on the damage. And, for almost every class, they are encounter or daily powers. I am sure there are more, but the only AoE I can think of that's at-will is the Wizard's Thunder Wave. So, instead of taking an encounter or daily power that can do very good damage + status effect or massive damage with no status effect to a single target (which, by the way, is what you need to take down your lieutenant and BBEGs) you have spent that slot on a power that does little damage or negligible damage + status effect. Every power that you take as a minion broom is one less power you have available to you to effectively threaten the major monsters on the battlefield.

If you are concerned about the fact that minions are effectively neutralized in your encounters then halve the xp value, send them in waves, and put an extra lieutenant on the field. And don't send them in bunched up.

 

[Turtlejay]

A few points -

Wizards may be better at minion killing, but that is not their only role. Wizard AoE attacks may do less damage, but they also hit a few targets and apply an effect.

There are quite a few at will area attacks, spread among quite a few classes. Many of them are not controllers.

Minions are only as effective as the strategy behind them. Quite a few of those strategies have been mentioned in this thread. Not counting house rules.

Our last session we fought a warlord-type enemy who acted as a 'spotter' for about a dozen crossbow wielding minions hidden around the map. On his turn, he would call out for them to attack, and the unfortunate target was made a pincushion. Once we started going after the minions, we found that they were in groups of 3, and it took some time to hunt them all down. It was an interesting fight with only 1 non minion, and 10-20 minions. It's all in how you use them.

Jay

 

[Dr_Sage]

By the way...

I have this ideas for monster classifications (this is for the 30+ years old!), using Changeman series:

This is a minion (hidler soldier, trashed by the dozens, usually they kill inocents before the heroes come):

This is a Elite (she was a liutenant, and usually fought 2 heroes at the same time):

And well, this is a solo. The very last bad guy:

 

[Thundershield]

The problem with minions, however, is that people tend to abuse them or reduce their efforts in fighting them to the point where the minions' presence doesn't make any difference.

By now, I've seen players pick or acquire various means for doing auto-damage as effortlessly as possible. Everything from Long Night Scions to Pure Glow to Enlarge Spell Cloud of Daggers (okay, I was being lenient on that one, seeing how Cloud of Daggers technically isn't an area burst spell).

Anyway, the idea with introducing a bloodied state (if you deal less damage to the minion than its level) seems like an interesting option. Means that the amount of damage dealt to a minion still matters (to some extend) without rendering low-damage effects neither obliterating nor worthless.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not convinced that the minion's level should be the damage threshold. In a few cases where I wanted a group of minions that was able to hang tough for a round or two I made the "tough" and just gave them an arbitrary damage threshold. The number you pick should be tailored to the sorts of damage they're going to be expected to take. If its low level or the party invariably favors some particular minion sweeping power, then set the threshold such that 50% of the minions end up bloodied instead of instantly popped. At that point they've done their job, they made the PCs use another action and another power to try to get rid of them.

Remember though, it is pretty easy to go overboard with this. An AoE that already has to make a to-hit roll should be missing 50% of the time. If the damage also has to exceed a certain value, now your down to 25% or less effectiveness. At least with non-minions there is always damage done and the targets are now easier to kill. Pile on too many restrictions on killing minions easily or hit point pools etc and all of a sudden you don't actually have minions anymore, you have some exceedingly annoying opponents that don't use the normal hit point rules. That's OK for certain specific situations where you want to have a special type of enemy but the vast majority of the time it isn't justified.

 

[Garthanos]

a bloodied minon always goes down next hit.. no matter what the most I get is two damages. Or one targetted attack that hits. They are still more interesting (healable intimidateable etc), but never in danger of becoming too significant.

I dont worry about the threshold normally... a cleave now bloodies the adjacent minion.. as does greenflame blade.

 

[CableRouter]

I hate minions, the suspension of disbelief that adding a big number of enemies that die in one hit makes whne the other enemies tend to have lots of HP, is just too much to be ignored. I think minions are a metagamy mechanic.

As opposed to the metagamy mechanic of anybody in the game suriving a sword thrust through the chest? Much less continuing to fight as if nothing had happened? HP are, for the most part, the ability to not be there when that sword thrust lands, but if you want to talk about suspension of dsibelief; why should every opponent the PCs face, especially an actual horde of faceless minions the PCs are supposed to be wiping the floor with, automatically be good enough to evade the attacks of the universe's best weapon masters or spell casters?

Mechanically I have no problem with the concept of minions, this game is a lot more level dependant and hp progression is still mostly linear, using a pile of low level monsters won't get the job done. They aren't going to be a real threat to the PCs and they still have more than enough hp that a large group of them would take exceedingly long to kill.

My real issue with minions is in implementation, by 8th level or so they are mostly useless and by mid Paragon they are almost completely useless due to things like a PP feature that automatically kills every minion within 100 feet the second you become bloodied or at-will burst 5 attacks that only hit enemies. By Epic it's just silly, there is at least one ED power that will kill at least half of all the minions within line of sight, even if there is an army of a million of them, and it would be easy for a party to stack on some attack bonuses for the power and push that number as high as 95%.

 

[Turtlejay]

Nice. And since this is D&D, instead of the 50,000 survivors running away to live another day, your jerk DM would have them mob you and you'd die. And come back to life later.

Epic is seriously another matter entirely when it comes to whether things make sense or not. You made a really good point about HPs not being actual damage, why does that not apply in all cases?

So, when this epic power that you reference is unleashed, instead of burning the flesh off of 950,000 minions, perhaps it just does that to . . .100,000 of them, and the others are all so freaking terrified that they bolt like rabbits. Leaving 50,000 to charge you and make you die (of course, if you can repeat the attack they are reduced to 2,500, and you will not likely survive that either. The next round though, when there are only 125 left, you have a chance).

The recent article up on the WotC site about high level challenges addresses this issue, kind of. Minions are not a club to be waved around without skill. You apply them delicately, and deliberately. A minion rush will always die, even at 1st level.

Jay