D&D 4E The 4E combat poll: grind and more!

[cignus_pfaccari]

You should ask them. Games are meant to be fun. Are minions fun for the players, or just another minor speed bump towards the end of the encounter?

I rather enjoy them. It's fun to one-shot things. They also tend to not throw out annoying conditions. Obviously, they shouldn't be the entire encounter, or in every encounter, but IME, they're generally fun for players.

Brad

 

[Aulirophile]

Needs an option for "Combat would be fine if people played they I do" tbh.

My groups play (where I am a PC) sped up considerably when they started rolling the dice in front of me and I added their modifiers for them. I don't know what is so hard about writing down your modifiers, considering I even print them out power cards, but some people have a hard time with it. I have all their modifiers memorized. That alone shaved 1-3 minutes off per round. Some people find basic math or memorizing numbers hard, no reason to push them.

As a DM my total time per round that I am controlling creature is under a minute. I roll damage and hit together. I have one d20 that is dedicated to each PC, they are color coded. I have a cheat sheet of all their skill checks.

If you think play is going slowly, I encourage the following:

Get a consistent way of tracking things. Put one player who is generally on top of things in charge of conditions. Regardless of who inflicts them. It helps to have this player track initiative as well.

Announce the next person's turn during each end of turn. The person whose turn it is now will be ready with their action, and the person after that will start getting ready. Give them 10 seconds to declare their action and a minute total to resolve their turn (barring any rules questions, which the DM should make a snap decision on and check later, don't open up books during play. Having a different player check, like the one who just went, is acceptable... but stick with your ruling for this fight.).

Find ways to speed stuff up. As a Warden, I roll my Font of Live save while the previous turn is going. I don't apply it till they are done, but knowing whether or not I saved helps me plan my turn.

After the first round, players should delay until they are going together. This speeds up fights for multiple reasons, and makes the tactical aspect of the game more enjoyable.

Optimize your party. A single optimized striker can reduce a fight from 10 rounds to 5 with a little party support. In addition to the big numbers, which is fun for everyone, it speeds things up and makes the party feel heroic.

For reference, I run my actual party through encounters I plan as a DM (just in case I'm royally screwing them over..I challenge my PCs, but the line between auto-TPK and "..we.. lived..." is narrow). I play both sides. It takes me, at most, 10 minutes to do any given encounter this way. Granted with one person all sorts of shortcuts are employable, but there is no reason that 5-6 people working together should be slower then one person doing it by themselves.

 

[keterys]

You should ask them. Games are meant to be fun. Are minions fun for the players, or just another minor speed bump towards the end of the encounter?

I was specifically requested to use more minions, and they often go "Neat" or "Cool" or whatever at how they affect the encounter. Or, in one case "Awesome" when they got up to 20 minions in one encounter (plus an elite and two normals, for clarity)

I certainly wouldn't want to fight minions all alone - unless it were more of a gimmick fight, like, 'You need to kill all of these guys by the end of the first round, or they raise the alarm and bring reinforcements', but they're great for being part of in-combat skill challenges (As long as the ritual is going, two minions will show up each turn...), made by other things (The necromancer can reanimate one minion per turn), a little bit of support that's easily removed or painful to ignore, or thought of as additional terrain.

 

[KarinsDad]

I was specifically requested to use more minions, and they often go "Neat" or "Cool" or whatever at how they affect the encounter. Or, in one case "Awesome" when they got up to 20 minions in one encounter (plus an elite and two normals, for clarity)

Odd. The words "awesome" and "minion" in the same sentence seems like an oxymoron.

But, people have fun in different ways.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was specifically requested to use more minions, and they often go "Neat" or "Cool" or whatever at how they affect the encounter. Or, in one case "Awesome" when they got up to 20 minions in one encounter (plus an elite and two normals, for clarity)

I certainly wouldn't want to fight minions all alone - unless it were more of a gimmick fight, like, 'You need to kill all of these guys by the end of the first round, or they raise the alarm and bring reinforcements', but they're great for being part of in-combat skill challenges (As long as the ritual is going, two minions will show up each turn...), made by other things (The necromancer can reanimate one minion per turn), a little bit of support that's easily removed or painful to ignore, or thought of as additional terrain.

Yeah, gotta agree. I also don't quite understand why DMs find minions quite so trivial as they do. Sure they can be swept out easily, but a lot of that assumes the situation caters to that. When a bunch of minions run up and engage in melee that pretty much means they've already close to met their worth. This is not going to be an unusual situation at all. Even at higher levels the PCs init modifiers are unlikely to be high enough to even come close to guaranteeing they go first. Any of a dozen situations can let minions close in. 4 minions close, they should get 2 hits, that's almost enough to justify them vs a standard monster. If they aid or are artillery etc they can easily justify their XP cost. If half of them survive to round 2 its a good bet they definitely earned their keep, especially if they attracted 2-3 actions to wipe them out. I just don't see the justification for calling them tactically worthless.

 

[keterys]

Odd. The words "awesome" and "minion" in the same sentence seems like an oxymoron.

It was a party in a mansion that got attacked by a necromancer, and all of the partygoers turned into undead. The fight sprawled through several floors and multiple levels as the primary enemy danced through the combat. Each place they got to had more and more minions, and - it was an online game - when they got to the final room and saw the last one with the '20' after its name, it was "Holy (cow), that's a lot of minions. Awesome."

But, minions apparently don't work for you or your players. At least, not the ones you've used, in the ways you've used them.

I think of them like using giant rats, orcs, and kobolds and such in slightly higher level 1st edition games. People enjoyed fireballing those then, or in a fighter sweeping through up to level adjacent ones, etc. The times haven't changed _that_ much in that respect.

And, again, I avoid crappy minions (melee only, defenses 5 too low, and you do no damage... eh?) or use respawning mechanisms that make them part of another creature or challenge. Of the last 5 fights in one campaign, 3 of them involved minions, and I actually think the minions were one of the better working parts of the fights. Enough so that I planned on posting them online specifically as soon as the monster builder update goes through.

Necromancer who started with 4 skeletal minions and 4 zombie minions, and could reanimate one per turn as a minor action.

Master Vampire who had 4 vampirespawn minions that were more difficult to kill until he was down (though they mostly did it anyways)

Dark Ritual that was animating all of the dead in the temple and making two wight minions attack until they'd stopped the ritual (in the middle of combat with the high priestess of the temple)

The skeletons could do ranged attacks and did extra damage on OAs.
The zombies grabbed on their basic attack and got to make a save to fall prone instead of dying from automatic damage.

The vampirespawn fell Unconscious and Prone until end of their next turn when reduced to 0 by a non-critical hit (or other special means - holy water or killing the master vampire).

The wights got to shift 3 after hitting, and if they hit someone, the person hit would lose a surge at end of next turn if that wight wasn't dead by then.

Everything had normal defenses for its level (5 - 9, varying. 7th level PCs)

Nothing inherently wrong with things that don't require as many rolls and drop when they're hit.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Its worth noting that some DMs/players problem with minions isn't so much how minions play tactically, but a dislike on having one monster take 5 hits to go down, and then his buddy, whose pretty much exactly the same, dies from stubbing his toe.

I know from my previous discussions with KarinsDad that the above offers a significant foundation to his dislike of minions in 4e. Which is fair enough... different people like/dislike different aspects of the game, and as the DarkSun discussion evidenced, different things cause different people different issues - some people find the minion mechanic hinders their imersion in the game, while others don't. And if it does hinder your immersion, chances are it is also something that you consider "not fun", as immersion and enjoyment usually have a close link

Myself, I like minions, both as a player and as a DM.

As a player, I played levels 1-4 in a group whose only AoE was in the form of 2 dailies (Rogue's Blinding Barrage and my Warlock's Armour of Agathys). Even so, minions were fun - it was a relief when we could FINALLY drop something, and its basically the only way my Warlock could get her curse benefit. My Warlock is now a Sorceror, and I still find minions fun to come across - though, less so now that my GM has decided to only field archer minions, as "we kill melee minions too easily" - to me, that feels gamist, and makes minions a nuissance that you essentially have to hunt down and kill one-at-a-time.

As a DM, I like having a lot of monsters on the board - for me, an encounter with 4 PCs and 4 monsters had better be a boss fight, otherwise its just dull. Preferably, I like having about twice as many monsters as PCs, and having minions really helps me do that (as does using lower level monsters and n+2 or higher xp budgets). One thing I do make sure to do (as a result of my experiences as a PC) is use is a mix of melee and ranged minions - both in general and, as is feasible, within a given encounter.

For me, being heroic means either 1) fighting big nasty monsters; or 2) fighting hordes of lesser monsters. For me, my sense of immersion cries foul when you attack the bandit camp or goblin horde and fight 5 guys here, and 5 more guys 5 minutes away. I mean, come on, if its only a dozen goblins, why doesn't the town guard deal with them? That said, if its clearing out 30 or 40 goblins (or more)... that's a job for heroes.

And minions are the only way to feasibly way to get those numbers without either a) inventing some reason why you only fight them in batches of 5 at a time and b) inventing some reason why you get a 5 minute rest between fights. And personally, that to me feels too much akin to the old Hercules cartoon where the badguys would all line up so that Hercules fought them one at a time.

So, as I said, different things bug different people, and for the things that bug me, minions are a solution, not a cause.

 

[Aegeri]

I dislike minions because they are far too vulnerable to automatic damage easily rendering them utterly useless. If they were more resistant to all the varieties of ways to generate automatic damage I might approve of them more. As it is minions with suicide mechanics that make them undesirable to kill in certain situations clearly work much better than those without them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I dislike minions because they are far too vulnerable to automatic damage easily rendering them utterly useless. If they were more resistant to all the varieties of ways to generate automatic damage I might approve of them more. As it is minions with suicide mechanics that make them undesirable to kill in certain situations clearly work much better than those without them.

The minion threads have worked insofar, that the design of minions changed.

The became more complicated... not really what i hoped, but at least a fix for the better.

The automatic damage thing is a problem however. The best fix i can see is a hit or autodamage that only does less than constitution modifier (including level bonus) only bloodies it, as do misses that do more than constitution modifier damage. A hit or miss (that deals enough damage) or autodamage on a bloodied minion finally kills it.

In this way minions don´t die too easily and it doesn´t slow the game down significantly (as all informations needed are already there)... maybe it speeds up the game, because minions are used more often.

 

[KarinsDad]

Its worth noting that some DMs/players problem with minions isn't so much how minions play tactically, but a dislike on having one monster take 5 hits to go down, and then his buddy, whose pretty much exactly the same, dies from stubbing his toe.

I know from my previous discussions with KarinsDad that the above offers a significant foundation to his dislike of minions in 4e. Which is fair enough... different people like/dislike different aspects of the game, and as the DarkSun discussion evidenced, different things cause different people different issues - some people find the minion mechanic hinders their imersion in the game, while others don't. And if it does hinder your immersion, chances are it is also something that you consider "not fun", as immersion and enjoyment usually have a close link

Yup, that pretty much sums it up. I just don't like Paper Tigers, err, Paper Kitty Cats.

Myself, I like minions, both as a player and as a DM.

I like the concept of minions, I just don't like the implementation. Not even the MM3 implementation (although slightly better, it's still meh).

For me, being heroic means either 1) fighting big nasty monsters; or 2) fighting hordes of lesser monsters. For me, my sense of immersion cries foul when you attack the bandit camp or goblin horde and fight 5 guys here, and 5 more guys 5 minutes away. I mean, come on, if its only a dozen goblins, why doesn't the town guard deal with them? That said, if its clearing out 30 or 40 goblins (or more)... that's a job for heroes.

And minions are the only way to feasibly way to get those numbers without either a) inventing some reason why you only fight them in batches of 5 at a time and b) inventing some reason why you get a 5 minute rest between fights. And personally, that to me feels too much akin to the old Hercules cartoon where the badguys would all line up so that Hercules fought them one at a time.

That's a good definition of heroic.

Actually, minions are one way to do so using core rules.

Another is to have lower level monsters than the PCs. Monsters tend to drop 8 to 10 or so hit points per level, so level - 3 would be very easy to hit and would take 1 or 2 fewer hits to kill each.

Another is to use tough minions (or one of many similar house rules). Or same level creatures with half hit points.

To me, it's not so much the concept of minions (which I like), it's the implementation. Seriously, is it that tough for a DM to roll 1D6+4 damage? Couldn't they have put optional minions rules in with the options in the minion writeup? (e.g. damage: 9 or 1d8+5). Each DM could pick what he prefers.

I think WotC went overboard in this case to make the game easier for the DM with minions, but immersion-wise not better for the players. Then they turned around and made the game tougher for everyone with the plethora of conditions and statuses. Obviously, YMMV.

This thread reminds me. It's been a couple of levels since I threw tough minions at my group. It's time to do so again.

So, as I said, different things bug different people

Yup.