swarm of minions attack!

[ryryguy]

Something a friend and I were discussing... I know that in 4e the encounters are designed to be larger. A level 1 encounter might be against a group of 24 zombie or kobold minions, correct?

My friend wondered, would the DM have to potentially make 24 attack rolls (at least in the first round before the minions start falling)? Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, just that I know 4e combats are also supposed to be easier to manage and go along faster, and 24 to hit rolls in a round seems... not fast. Is there some trick or shortcut in the rules to mitigate this?

 

[kennew142]

You could use 24 minions in one encounter, but it would be a lot of dice rolling. I have an encounter coming up in my first 4e scenario (first scenario of the campaign) that will have 8 minions, 2 standard and 1 elite thugs. I probably wouldn't go with just 24 minions. YMMV.

 

[SuperJosh]

I have read about people running all minion encounters and they have all said that they get boring after a while.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Something a friend and I were discussing... I know that in 4e the encounters are designed to be larger. A level 1 encounter might be against a group of 24 zombie or kobold minions, correct?

My friend wondered, would the DM have to potentially make 24 attack rolls (at least in the first round before the minions start falling)? Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, just that I know 4e combats are also supposed to be easier to manage and go along faster, and 24 to hit rolls in a round seems... not fast. Is there some trick or shortcut in the rules to mitigate this?

The kobold minions at the 4e preview did fixed amounts of damage, so you'd still have 24 attack rolls but no damage rolls. Done correctly, you should be able to chuck fistfuls of dice at the same time ("okay, here's attacks for all the vampire spawn around Bob, 5 hit, take 5xdamage, Bob"), provided things like combat advantage aren't an issue.

 

[Rex Blunder]

24 attack rolls sounds like a worst case scenario - for the characters as well as the DM. Sounds like 3 characters who are separated and surrounded by 8 minions each. Or 5 characters, all separated and with their backs to the wall, each being attacked by about 5 minions. Either way, the strikers probably aren't making it out of this combat alive.

 

[Alkiera]

I think if you want to run big minion battles in 4E, the DM should invest in several extra d20's. Thne you just roll them in groups. "Okay, for the 3 minions on you.. <roll 3d20> one hits for 2 dmg. For the 4 minions on the cleric... <roll 4d20> 2 hit, take 4 dmg.

Minions do constant damage, so that isn't rolled. Roll minion to-hits with multiple dice at once; separate by target, or use different colors or something.

I aready do something similar to this in mook fights. If there's a few npc archers in the back of the melee line, I decide who is attacking who, assign a d20 (mine are all different) to each npc, and roll all at once on their initiative.

I've heard several people discuss minions 'all having their own initiative'. Not at my table... I might group them, just to spread them out a bit, but in my game, generally all the NPCs act on the same init, with named/elite type mobs getting their own init.

 

[FadedC]

Well 4 minions are equal to 1 monster. A monster with 2 attacks actually rolls just as many dice as 4 minions (because he has to roll for damage too). A monster with 2 attacks that each deal say 2d6 actually rolls more.

 

[KidSnide]

My friend wondered, would the DM have to potentially make 24 attack rolls (at least in the first round before the minions start falling)? Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, just that I know 4e combats are also supposed to be easier to manage and go along faster, and 24 to hit rolls in a round seems... not fast. Is there some trick or shortcut in the rules to mitigate this?

As others have stated, 24 minions wouldn't be a /normal/ encounter, but it should be quite workable.

The GM just has to group the minions into clumps of 4-6 and handle each clump on its own initiative score. Then, whenever you're attack a character, just figure out how many minions are involved and roll that many d20s. Once you get the hang of it, it should go pretty fast.

My 3E fights routinely have 20-40 figures on the board, including enemy mooks and allied minions. My rule of thumb is that you want to clump mooks into large enough groups that "mook actions" only take up about a quarter to a third of the initiative "ticks". That allows them to have a significant effect on the battle, while keeping the focus on the PCs and their primary opponents.

The other trick I find useful is having a general sense of the relative difference between your mook attacks and PC ACs. For example, I know that an 18-20 will hit any of my PCs if I'm using an appropriate attack and that a 9 or lower is going to miss anyone when I'm attacking with a mook. Because I also know which PCs generally have higher or lower ACs, I can often resolve attacks without having to ask for or look up my PC's defenses.

 

[That One Guy]

Attack of the house rules....

D20 + 1Dsomething = How many got that attack roll. (If it goes over the max, whatever)

So, D20 + 4D6 one or more times and the fight is (reasonably) quickly solved. I haven't actually run a 4e game, yet... so I'm just throwing out a zany idear.

 

[ShadowyFigure]

I have been demoing 4e with my group, in total we have had 5 encounters so far. 4 of which were pure minions. I have found these are actually fun for the group especially in the adventure I put together (Undead based, lets just say zombie and skeleton hordes), the fighter and wizard have been having great fun and so has the cleric when his turn undead vaporises stuff. The only thing is the striker who is playing a class called the spider rider converted to 4e demo as a striker, the player thinks in 3.5 it seems though and is still trying to tank.

Otherwise the player have seriously been enjoying it and they can look forward to the non swarm encounters coming up. I have to say though as we are doing guesstimate leveling (Up to 3rd only) these encounters can give quite a bit of xp.