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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eleventh" data-source="post: 4547264" data-attributes="member: 79573">You had planned to have 10+ soldiers and had to scale that back. You achieved this goal by halving their hit points. That probably worked well enough, but why not just use real minions next time? That's what they're there for, and the work is all done for you.Maybe you were worried that they would die too easily. They do only have one hit point, but generally their defenses are pretty high. Your players will probably miss a few times against them before landing a hit and putting them down. This allows you to have 10+ skeleton minions in a battle and not have them all fall down in the first round.Maybe your concern was that they wouldn't do enough damage to threaten your players. You could either throw in an additional monster (maybe an artillery or skirmisher) to fill that role or you could increase the damage the minions do. That would be pretty easy.But that's not to say that minions are a better option. I have a problem with minions too.My problem with minions is the existence of certain powers/combos that auto-kill minions. Cloud of Daggers is a guaranteed minion kill at-will (at the start of the creature's next turn). Rod of Reaving takes a bit more forethought, but turns Warlock's Curse into a guaranteed and instant minion kill as a minor action! When I see my players start to head in this direction, I start making quasi-minions of my own. Essentially, I take whatever damage the cloud or rod's effect would do and double it. This value is the minion's new HP. Unless a player totally botches their damage roll, these creatures still function as minions and go down with one real hit, but are more resistant to cheap auto-killers (or at least demand a commitment of two rounds to be auto-killed).</blockquote>

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