Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 5576198" data-attributes="member: 20323">Totally. But S'mon was saying he uses monsters at most 3 levels lower (within guidelines for an easy encounter).I was thinking that a sandbox is well served by player created quests.Well, here's how I handle minions IMC. Generally they don't cluster, but they do make good use of cover/concealment (remember they can provide it for each other) and they come in waves, preferably from more than one direction. Generally I adopt the philosophy "the minions will keep coming until strategy improves." Minions in themselves usually aren't threatening IMC. It's how they set up attacks for the tougher villains or hinder the PCs objective that makes them dangerous. I use the "lair" concept too. The PCs are assaulting an Orc fortress, and after a couple encounters, they withdraw to town intending to come back and pick up where they left off. With a "lair", the PCs must face a certain # of encounters with no extended rest (or other rest limit of your choice); if the rest before then the monster (in particular the minions) re-spawn. By that I mean reicorcements arrive.Well, stinking cloud is tricky because it's a moveable zone which inflicts auto damage to all creatures starting their turn in the zone or entering it with their own movement. So it is an excellent minion killer. But it isn't perfect.What if there is a strong wind the wizard must account for?What if there are innocents, hostages, or ally-ish people in the mix?What if it is important for the PCs to maintain line of sight thru the area?What if the minions have a means to move out of turn, like a leader's aura or at-will command? An immediate reaction power? That way they don't worry about starting in the zone as much.What if there is an artifact granting them poison immunity?What if a lurker is on the wizard's tail and it has a nasty opportunity attack?I'm pretty confident that whenever the next iteration of D&D comes out, minions will be worth less XP than 1/4 the XP of a standard monster.But even if your running a sandbox game you've got to tailor challenges to the PCs. While your group's wizard might make minions easy, a group without a controller (or your group if the wizard is down) could find a mass of minions hard. A lot of it depends of context too.</blockquote>

Verification