D&D 5E (2014) Swarms=Minions?

[Weiley31]

While sleeping last night, a thought/dream occurred to me: couldn't you technically refluff a Swarm to represent the 5E equivalent of Minions? Sure you may have to change/wing some things, but it seems like there a start with utilizing that or something.

 

[LordEntrails]

Ummm, yea you could... Not sure it would visually work well. Swarms are usually representations of tiny or miniscule creates that travel together, in swarms. Not a bunch of weak creatures that can be individually targeted.

I mean, a swarm of kobolds? Do they move as a group? And all stay together? How many squares do they take up? And they do X damage until half of them are killed then do x/2 damage?

yea, you could, but I think their are better ways (low HP, fixed damage, VTT automation)

 

[Rune]

Well, the thing about minions is that any direct hit would kill them (hence, 1 hp). Unless the swarm also has 1 hp, it’s already serving a different function.

 

[Mannahnin]

While they're conceptually sort of related, in another sense they're really kind of opposite concepts.

Minions represent individual foes who are outclassed by the heroic/skilled characters, to the extent that any hit will kill them/take them out, as they have only one HP.

Swarms represent masses of tiny little monsters which would each have one or fewer HP, but who it is DIFFICULT to kill because there are so many of them; regular attacks are inefficient,killing only a tiny fraction of the swarm in a given blow, and you need blasts or bursts, area attacks to effectively engage them.

 

[Rune]

If you really want to make minions out of creatures, it’s easy enough to give creatures 1 hp and say only direct hits deal damage.

If 1-hp creatures aren’t your thing, you could still do a version that skips keeping track of hp: Any direct hit that deals more damage than creature has Hit Dice automatically kills. Any hit that does less than that threshold adds dealt damage to 10 to set a Con save DC for target to make. Success = survival.

Example: Beck d’Corbin attacks a minionized ogre with two polearm attacks and a bonus attack with the other end. The ogre has 7 HD (and an AC 11, Con save +3), so a hit with Great Weapon Master’s +10 damage would be an automatic kill, but Beck is still doing fine without.

Attack 1 misses and attack 2 rolls minimum damage on a d10 + STR (let’s say, +4). Since 5 is less than 7, the Ogre must make a DC 15 (10 + damage dealt) Con save to shrug off the lethal blow. Which it does. (Note that the highest that DC could get would be 17, if the damage had been 7.)

Fortunately for Beck, the bonus attack lands max damage with the 1d4 +4 and that means 8 vs. 7. Automatic death. On to the next monster.

 

[MarkB]

There are already rules in the DMG about amalgamating individual NPCs into Mobs (page 250). This seems like just approaching the same goal from a different direction.

Video for reference (not my own).

 

[Bupp]

I've used the stats for a hill giant to represent a swarm of orcs for a higher level party.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I guess you are talking about something like troop monster subtype, a concepct by Pathfinder.

Troop – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

 

[Rune]

I guess you are talking about something like troop monster subtype, a concepct by Pathfinder.

Troop – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

Kind of looks like the opposite, really. The point of 4e minions was that they were extremely quick to kill (one hit, no matter their level) and even more extremely easy to run individually in large numbers.

All of those templates add complexity and even the weakest one only knocks off 2 hp per HD. Although, in the case of the rabble, that complexity is in the prep, not at the table. Unless you’re converting on the fly.

 

[Shiroiken]

While sleeping last night, a thought/dream occurred to me: couldn't you technically refluff a Swarm to represent the 5E equivalent of Minions? Sure you may have to change/wing some things, but it seems like there a start with utilizing that or something.

If you mean a swarm of minions, yes you could. I often do this when I want to use a lot of lower CR creatures so I don't have to keep track of a bunch of them. I normally make them Huge in size, unless I want a lot of minions.