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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James McMurray" data-source="post: 4573908" data-attributes="member: 743">Have you run an epic level encounter with minions in it? How did it work out? Was there no concern that the tactics used to kill real monsters kill minions as a side effect, with little to no loss of actions on the party's part, and little to no danger as well? Was there no concern that because of that, minions are effectively free experience points because there's no risk and little change of strategy needed to kill them?We've had lots of fights with minions in the hero tier and they've been fun. The PCs don't have a lot of automatic damage effects, and the controller gets to shine. We've had a couple at paragon tier and one was very boring thanks to some good positioning and a paladin with polearm gamble. We had one epic level fight with minions before I introduced a house rule, and the minions may as well not have been there. The standard strategies used to kill real monsters (auto-damage stances, come and get it, and area nukes with status effects) also kill minions almost on accident. The 8 slightly modified (i.e. tougher) legionnaire devils turned into free xp. IIRC one of them managed to do a little damage before they died. Had they been two standard monsters or if we'd been using our house rule then they'd have lasted a little longer, survived the collateral damage, and had a chance to actually affect the battle. Instead their primary purpose in life was to make the players say "Crap! that's a lot of large monsters. double crap! They can teleport! Oh, nevermind. They're dead."Our house rule is:    Minions do not always die from a single hit. If a minion would be destroyed, it is instead knocked down. A critical hit destroys a minion, and an attack which would deal damage on a miss still deals that damage to them. Should such an attack hit, the minion is destroyed. If it takes any damage while knocked down, it is destroyed. Otherwise they make a saving throw on their turn. If they fail, they twitch one final time, attack an adjacent target while prone, and they die. If they succeed, they act normally.To avoid the massive amounts of condition tracking this could add, any status effects caused by an attack will instead count as a hit. For example, Crushing Titan’s Fist deals damage and immobilizes those hit. Minions in the area would be destroyed. Some examples:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fighter hits a minion twice, cleaving into the minion next to it each time: both die.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fighter crits a minion with cleave: it dies, the other one he damages is knocked prone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The warlock hits a minion with Eldritch Blast and triggers Warlock's Curse: the minion is knocked prone (the amount of damage doesn’t matter, so strikers do not gain a benefit against minions that they did not have under the core rules).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The wizard fireballs a bunch of minions: Since it does damage on a miss, it'll count as a hit no matter what. Any minions hit by the attack will die. Minions that are missed will be knocked prone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The cleric traps some minions inside a Fire Storm: they die at the start of their turn (one hit when it lands, plus one hit when they start their turn in it).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The artificer hits a minion with Burrowing Projectile: it's almost guaranteed to die because the initial damage plus one round of ongoing count as two hits.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The artificer misses a minion with a natural one for Runic Resistance: No change in it's status. <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></li> </ul></blockquote>

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