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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ValhallaGH" data-source="post: 5015942" data-attributes="member: 41187">Odd thing to say, given how commanding your previous post was.That sort of volume only comes with commands and / or arrogance.Your second post is a much more interesting and useful analysis, rather than an arrogant dismissal of an idea you dislike.  I think your reasoning is highly flawed, but it is present and provides substance for discourse.Not in the slightest.  It's not like you have to tell the players about your conditional minions.  Instead it is a pleasant surprise when they do something that is 1) intelligent, 2) appropriate for trained and experienced combatants, 3) narratively and cinematically appropriate for the scene, 4) and is rewarded by keeping the "sneaky-violence" approach viable by allowing them to quietly kill opposition.Like traditional circumstance bonuses, they don't know they're getting them until it's happening.  At which point they are pleased that their idea is working even better than expected.They still have other options, but conditional minions make violent stealth a usable option, despite the 3E / 4E tradition of "violence ends all stealth". If things often come down to a single roll in a given campaign then something is really odd, and probably wrong.  There are plenty of spots, throughout the rules, where a single die roll can make everything go sour (Saving Throws are the most common, but this can happen with just about any type of roll).The only real effect is to make their plan non-functional at which point they need to activate Plan B (or run away to create a plan B for future activation).Then do so.  No reason you can't have each approach be a skill challenge; heck, it sounds like the perfect recipe for a skill challenge.Agreed.  I like to think that Conditional Minions provide the PCs the option of stealthy violence, while keeping the DM option of using real monsters for the guards most of the time.  A wealth of choices for all playing the game.Apparently you feel differently (though I don't see why).As for encounter difficulty, it would seem to me that replacing the guards monsters with an equal number of minions and the skill challenge of eliminating them stealthily would be worth equal experience, being of the same overall difficulty.  And if things go sour and they have to fight a bunch of scary monsters, well, sometimes encounters are crazy-difficult.</blockquote>

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