Tweaking Minions

[Syrsuro]

I was reading this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=236066 and I started to post my opinions in that thread, and then decided it really fell into the 'house rules' category rather than the '4e rules' category. So here it is.....



My take on minions:

I really like the idea, and I initially saw them as one of the noteable innovations (OK, adaptations - as similar ideas have been in other games for awhile) of 4E.

But after seeing them in play I am less than enamored of their implementation.

My problem with minions is that they often go down so fast that they don't have any measurable effect on the combat - aside from a brief (albeit hollow) ego burst for the dragonborn or scorching burst wizard. And if they aren't going to influence the combat beyond a couple bursts, what purpose do they serve? They don't really seem to add much to the combat, making them an idea that doesn't live up to its potential. And perhaps even detracts from the combat (since they often die before even having a chance to act).

For example (reference to Treasure of Talon Pass):

[sblock]Example from a published module: I have seen Treasure of Talon Pass run twice, once as a player and once as a DM. In both cases, the horde of 10 pack zombies (minions) failed to hit a single player, dying so fast that they had negligible effect on the combat (in both cases every single zombie was dead before the wights appeared on the scene).[/sblock]

As a result, I am considering a small change. I don't want to get into tracking hit points for minions; after all, that is part of the rationale behind minions. And I definately want to retain the idea of the minion/mook. But I think I also want them to not fall automatically to the first casual hit.

I am mulling over the following approaches (as well as just leaving it as is).

Option A (50/50): When a minion is hit, I randomly determine the outcome with a 50% chance of death and a 50% chance of being bloodied. A second hit on a bloodied minion kills it. Possible addition: Damage from a missed attack can bloody them. Note: "Bookkeeping" is simple as they are either alive, bloodied or dead.

Option B (2 pts): If a minion takes damage from an attack that does 1 die or less of damage (i.e. cleave, at wills, dragonborn breath, etc.) it is bloodied. If a minion takes damage from an attack that does 2 or more dice of damage (most encounters and dailies) it is dead. Note: Here, also, "bookkeeping" is simple as they are either alive, bloodied or dead.

Option C (combined): If a minion takes damage from an attack that does 1 die or less of damage (i.e. cleave, at wills, dragonborn breath, etc.) it is bloodied 50% of the time and dead 50% of the time. If a bloodied minion takes further damage, they are dead. If a minion takes damage from an attack that does more than 1 die of damage, it is dead.

These changes seem as if they will make minions a bit more relevant to the encounters they occur in, while keeping them easy to clear out and keeping the 'bookkeeping' drain to a minimum. It also makes it a bit less clear which are the minions as they players will now occasionally damage/bloody one and not be sure whether it was due to its hit points or its minion status.

So what is the consensus here: Should I leave it as is or consider a change? What am I missing that makes minions, as written, a better option than A, B or C?


To put it another way: If one of the above were the RAW, on what basis would you argue for "minions all have 1 hp" as a superior house rule.

Carl

 

[erik_the_guy]

I think the problem might be with zombie minions. 13 AC does not make a good level 3 minion IMO. Zombies are supposed to be easy to hit, hard to kill, and have high HP to reflect that. I can see 10 minions of another type lasting quite a bit longer, even if they had as little as 15 AC.

 

[keterys]

Zombie Minions would be better if they got a save to ignore any hit, or something else in theme.

I've been pretty happy with minions so far - my concern is actually more with higher levels where it seems like areas get easier and easier to do, so I'd rather have it be more than 4 minions per normal monster at higher level.

 

[erik_the_guy]

I like how the wizard's at-will AOE skills are still useful at high levels because of minions.

 

[DanmarLOK]

What I'm doing (as I agree with the OP) is that minions become more Mooklike ala True 20 and they now have a toughness rating. I'm setting this as the average damage of a an appropriate level players at will damage (maybe +1). If the player doesn't deal X damage to the Mook it's unaffected. On average they'll go down a little under 50% of the time. Our current record is a mook that lasted three hits but usually it's 1 or 2 hits. You could also set it up as a Resist Damage X on all damages power for the minions. This does negate the dragonborn's breath racial to a large extent if your fights have lots of mooks and not so much others but honestly I'm not all that fond of it anyway. Dragonborn get aoe breath weapon and elves get to re-roll one dice. But that's anothe thread.

I'm setting it to the players damage so it's the player that decides the fate of the mook rather than giving each mook a power that says something like, "Just a scratch: When hit with an attack that would normally kill a minion, minion rolls a Save to avoid death." and then it's DM that decides if the minion dies. I'd rather put the glory and the despair on the player so that they leave saying "If the damn dm hadn't of rolled so well on their saves we'd of won that fight!" I want them to say, "Man if we could have just rolled some real damage we'd of won that." Or the inverse, "man did you see how we tore through those guys?!" instead of "DM's dice rolls sucked tonight."

Such a option also helps hide mooks from the players. They're not sure if they didn't kill something because they rolled low on damage or if it's because it's a 'real' monster and they have to be a little cautious. It got rid of the "Those are just minions, Steve (the dragonborn) go breath on those and kill them all while we take care of these guys here." for sure.

 

[Syrsuro]

What I'm doing (as I agree with the OP) is that minions become more Mooklike ala True 20 and they now have a toughness rating. I'm setting this as the average damage of a an appropriate level players at will damage (maybe +1). If the player doesn't deal X damage to the Mook it's unaffected. On average they'll go down a little under 50% of the time. Our current record is a mook that lasted three hits but usually it's 1 or 2 hits. You could also set it up as a Resist Damage X on all damages power for the minions. This does negate the dragonborn's breath racial to a large extent if your fights have lots of mooks and not so much others but honestly I'm not all that fond of it anyway. Dragonborn get aoe breath weapon and elves get to re-roll one dice. But that's anothe thread.

I kinda like some aspects of this as well. I'll probably add a variant of this to the options I'm considering (option D). Something like "If the attack does less than some threshold value, they are bloodied." On the other hand, this is kinda what I was going for with option B. The advantage of this is that it is more dependant upon the character's die rolls and thus they feel more 'in control'. The disadvantage is a slight increase in "bookkeeping".

Aside: As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of bloodying my mooks when/if they do survive. There are multiple reasons for this. First - it helps the players (and me) to keep track of which ones are damaged, Second it gives the players some sense of accomplishment even if they don't drop them with the attack, and Third it helps to obscure which creatures are minions and which are not. And this doesn't even consider benefit four - that it lets PC abilities which key off of bloodied opponents (i.e. Tiefling bloodhunt) to be relevant versus them - a minor benefit but I like to see PC abilities matter. And whether I will take advantage of potential benefit five - that it allows me to key minions abilities off of the bloodied state - remains to be seen but is unlikely, at least at low level.

(And no, I don't want to get into the "should we tell them or not" issue. There's a thread for that. My opinion is that they should not explicitely know which are and which are not minions).

The more I think about it, the more I lean towards a slate of "minion properties". I.e. - maybe some types of minion (e.g. Giant Rats) use the RAW (die when hit), while others (e.g. zombies) might use option D, etc.

Carl