Returning to 4e

[thanson02]

I had been playing recently with the idea of building new "race-classes": the elf (combo of slayer and mage), the dwarf (combo of knight and thief), and the handling (combo of slayer and thief).

As NPCs or as player characters?

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[S'mon]

Something that I ran into in my games was when my players ran into groups of monsters was that minions, it worked fine for lackeys at lower levels. However, as they got higher up through the ranks, minions didn't cause the Cinematic feel I was looking for in my games.

An alternative that I found work really well was instead of having a bunch of minions attack my players, I had a gargantuan size swarm creature that was basically the minion type I was looking for (goblins, kobolds, undead, etc). That way they got the feel that they were taking on a large horde and it made keeping track of everything a lot more simple on my end.

Since you asked for suggestions, that's just a thought.

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I have experimented with swarms/throngs in the past, but for this slightly more
gritty/low-powered game I think giving minions hp will work well. It may encourage high direct-damage area attacks like fireball, which IME don't see much use normally. A Min-4 skirmisher with CON 12 will have 52/4= 13 hp in my game, enough to survive 1 weak hit but killed by a powerful attack.

 

[cavalier973]

As NPCs or as player characters?

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Player characters. Sort of a hybrid 4e/Moldvay Basic homebrew.

Also, the Nentir Vale "gods" are refluffed into "immortals" (but keep the 4e names).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I had been playing recently with the idea of building new "race-classes": the elf (combo of slayer and mage), the dwarf (combo of knight and thief), and the handling (combo of slayer and thief).

I kept wondering during the Next playtest if we'd see an 'elf' class it turned out, no, but the idea still has instant- character appeal..

 

[Marshall]

I have experimented with swarms/throngs in the past, but for this slightly more
gritty/low-powered game I think giving minions hp will work well. It may encourage high direct-damage area attacks like fireball, which IME don't see much use normally. A Min-4 skirmisher with CON 12 will have 52/4= 13 hp in my game, enough to survive 1 weak hit but killed by a powerful attack.

Giving minions hp defeats the purpose. Go with the two-hit option and/or make them immune to auto-damage. IME, it's not the prevalence of AoE or multi attack powers that take the teeth out of minions. It's being able to throw down a zone or aura that just causes them to pop with no effort. If you rule that you actually need to hit a minion to pop it, survival and threat go way up.

 

[S'mon]

Giving minions hp defeats the purpose.

Works fine for me. I have no problem tracking hp, but regular 4e monsters have too many hp and often are too complex to use en masse.

 

[MwaO]

I give them level+5 hp. They die most of the time with one hit, almost always with 2 hits, and take a couple of rounds to die from zones. But it really reduces the auto-kill features of die rolls without +stat or stat without die rolls.

Easy to keep track of without basically ruling that X doesn't work.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Nentir Vale, good setting. If you like, you can use this. Hope it would give you a few campaign ideas:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2mLfpEGKv-Sb29tN2tBYVBWZzA

 

[Randomthoughts]

For reference, how many monsters (or units) do you (OP and others) typically use during an encounter?

I ask because I don't find tracking minions, and "minions+" (with hp) that difficult.

For a party of 5, my typical encounter has 5-10. My biggest was 30 units, and even then it wasn't too complicated to track the minions+


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[S'mon]

For reference, how many monsters (or units) do you (OP and others) typically use during an encounter?

I ask because I don't find tracking minions, and "minions+" (with hp) that difficult.

For a party of 5, my typical encounter has 5-10. My biggest was 30 units, and even then it wasn't too complicated to track the minions+


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I think I'm about the same. My encounters so far:

10 hobgoblin minions + 2 goblin minions + standard hobgoblin = 13
6 giant frog minions = 6
2 standard crocodiles = 2
12 cultist minions + 2 standards = 14
3 standard crocodiles & 1 standard dwarf = 4
10 worm priest minions = 10

Around 10 enemies seems to make the best fight I think. Next fight in the adventure (Mists of Madness) will likely have 31 enemies.