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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4864519" data-attributes="member: 3820">But the opposing viewpoint (which is mine) is that the minion rules are a way to represent the context (which is that ogres are not a significant threat to you at upper levels, though they can still cause problems in numbers). It all depends on whether you see the rules as the context, or whether you see them as something to use to reinforce the context. You keep using this term "feebleblow butterfly." What kind of Mothras do you live near that a butterfly capable of doing 1 HP worth of damage is considered feeble? You live in Australia, don't you?I think there's a grave discrepancy in perception here. I don't think Captain Kirk "knows the red shirts are minions" at all. I think Captain Kirk thinks of them as human beings, and if he's a pretty good captain, he might even know most to all of them by name. The player may know that they're not going to help him out much in this fight, but as far as the character is concerned, this is trouble. Similarly, the player may know that taking out minions may not be the world's greatest representative of what a Horta (whatever that is) can do, but he may pay attention to what his character sees, the context that is defined by the entire encounter, and develop an estimate from there.I mean, I dunno. My players may be egregiously new-school in thought  (though most of them started with the red box, as did I), but when I had a cave fisher snip a guy in half like he only had one hit point, they reacted as though their characters would. I can only assume that the perception that "minions make everything seem less dangerous" is not universal. In my experience? The players pay more attention to their opponents as a way to figure this out. It does help that I have an expansive miniatures collection by now that gives them extra visual reminders (the ogres in ratty hide singlets are probably minions, the heavily armored ones are probably not), but I'm not reliant on them. It encourages me to put more description into the antagonists ("the ogre with the eyepatch," "the ogre with the breastplate covered in reliefs of screaming faces," "the skinny adolescent ogre"), and if I don't provide enough, my players ask. This applies to everything, of course. Raiding the Temple of the Horned Ape to rescue the girl? The players generally take it that the robed and armored high priest is not a minion, but that the eight shirtless cultists in kilts are likely kind of disposable. The characters take everyone as a threat, but they dispose of the lesser ones in proper cinematic fashion. I dunno, maybe, but I don't really see much point to it myself. The narrative benefit of having "the rabble" is excuse enough. Interestingly, I've found that as players get more used to the mechanic, they frequently drop the minions first — knowing that minions are still a threat with their aiding another and flanking and such, and reducing the number of attack rolls made against them each round. There's also the tendency to use encounter powers to wound one of the more dangerous combatants and drop a minion or three at the same time off-handedly. It provides a great natural dramatic escalation to the battle. If the minion rule doesn't work for people at all, obviously this wouldn't either, but man, we're having great fun.</blockquote>

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