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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4737462" data-attributes="member: 2011">This is one advantage of my "tougher minion" system. For all intents and purposes, they are normal monsters. They just fall over easier, so there are 2 of them instead of 1 regular monster instead of the 4 for normal minions. They use all of the normal monster rules, so battlerage and other new features that ignored minion rules do not ignore them.So, it would be 4-5 hits at 6.5 instead of 8-10 at 4 per round. 30 points of damage instead of 36 core.They average less damage per round, but spread it out over more rounds because they are harder to kill. This flattens out the damage curve compared to regular minions who do a lot of damage early in the encounter and very little damage near the end of the encounter. If the PCs survive by round four in a normal minion encounter, they are mostly good to go.Tougher minions are not as simple to DM as normal minions. I have to put a little check mark next to each one on my list each time it is hit and not killed. I have to put a bloodied token on the miniature if the tough minion is hit twice and not killed. I have to roll damage dice.I don't consider this major bookkeeping and I gain the advantage of their "minion-ness" being somewhat hidden from the players, at least at the start of the encounter. My players are not stupid. They figure it out eventually and sometimes quickly. But the point is that the players don't merely use anti-minion powers automatically as if they were being spoon fed by the DM.I seriously dislike spoon feeding my players. I want them to be challenged. I want them to make mistakes on occasion. I want there to be mysteries about the monsters so that there is more drama and intrigue and even player dread if a monster seems a lot more powerful than it actually is. My tough minions are not really that tough (1.75 hits each to kill * 1/2 the number of creatures * slightly increased damage). But, they have the illusion of being tough. They have the illusion of being normal monsters and that decreases the amount of metagaming player decision making and makes the encounter seem more powerful than it might actually be, just due to increased numbers of foes.It's something that adds to the potential player dread and tension. And IMO, that's a good thing. It decreases player combat boredom.</blockquote>

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