Too Few Minions (4E)

[Starfox]

I've been playing Keep on the Shadowfell as a player (dwarf cleric) in a party consisting of:

• Dwarf Cleric (mixed range/melee) (me)
• Dwarf Infernal Warlock
• Elf ranger (archer)
• Human fighter (sword and board)
• Human Wizard (wand)

The group is all veteran players; we have about 100 years of collective RPG experience. We are level 3 at the time. Both the fighter, cleric and warlock have area encounter powers, and the wizard has plenty of area powers of course.

Most of the fights have been pretty fun, but on level 2 the encounters started to be very easy for us. In particular, minions were just no challenge at all. The wizard has started to do stunts, taking opportunity attacks in order to get better position for her close spells, and the rest of us has pretty much lost respect for minions. There was a big fight near Winterhaven that involved lots of minions, that was fun, but other than that minions so far seem too few for their low damage and defenses.

Anyone else has this problem? Is it our group composition? I'm thinking of upping the number of minions (and reduce the xp they give) when I DM, but I want more opinions on this.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Not had the problem but the group I DM are not that experienced and the other group I only get to DM occasionally (once or twice per year) that are esperienced I ran a session of Rescur at Rivenroar and there are very few minion fights there.
I have found that using minions in open ground with a wizard about will result in a lot of dead minions.

 

[zaxzilla]

Its just the nature of KotS with experienced gamers. Its kinda a primer of 4e play. One of the designers and Gencon said they're coming out with more threatening and tough minions than are out right now. Get to the Thunderspire module there's almost no minions. Irontooth really was one of the hardest encounters in the whole KoTS module. Some of the later ones are a little challenging but should probably be beefed up a bit for your party.

 

[Starfox]

Get to the Thunderspire module there's almost no minions.

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE minions, I just want more of them! Bigger fights, more minions to blast!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE minions, I just want more of them! Bigger fights, more minions to blast!

Pick any given encounter. Take one regular monster and replace it with 4 minions at the same level. Or take two, or an elite.
When replacing, start with monsters first whose role is already covered (so if there are two soldiers, and 1 skirmisher, make it a 1 soldier, 1 skirmisher, 4 minions encounter). To "minionize" existing monster, I suggest trying this: Hit points set to 1, damage minimized.

Maybe that's very obvious to do, but, well, maybe you should just try it.

Yesterday, I looked at the encounter building guidelines, and noticed that a lot of encounter templates seem to feature lower level monsters, but therefor more of them. Maybe use on of those, and replace regular monsters with minions.

 

[Alnag]

If the encounters are in general too easy for players just add +2 minions of the same type already present to any encounter. Problem solved.

I have smaller group of players (2 actually), but with 15yrs. of experience and confrontation with encounters counted against 2 players was little boring, so I count it as they were three. That was more fun for all of us...

 

[Starfox]

If the encounters are in general too easy for players just add +2 minions of the same type already present to any encounter. Problem solved.

How about doubling the number of minions? Or perhaps just increase it by 50%. And with no increase in xp?

 

[Dathalas]

Another option is to level up the minions. It works just like with other monsters, except for the hit points and the xp is 1/4 of a monster of the level (e.g. 31 xp for a level 2 minion, 37 xp for a level 3 minion).

 

[PeelSeel2]

IMO, minions as written are too weak. If I want a minion of a particular race, I take one of the existing monsters and drop it to 1 HP. Keep the random damage, the chance of critical, etc. Sometimes even making 2 hit minions. Works great

 

[Starfox]

IMO, minions as written are too weak. If I want a minion of a particular race, I take one of the existing monsters and drop it to 1 HP. Keep the random damage, the chance of critical, etc. Sometimes even making 2 hit minions. Works great

A friend is proposing minions with a kill threshold. Do X damage (say 5 + level) in the first hit and they go down. If this fails, they go down on the second hit. I've been a bit sceptical, as it seems a bit much of a bother against minions - and would lessen the wizard's role as minion-buster.