# Minions with 1hp - Can anyone justify this?



## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'

Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?

Before you guys rush in, can anyone tell me in both mechanical combat terms why I should keep them, and *also* how the hell do you explain this in a roleplaying or 'realism' sense? (note that 'realism' is different from 'realistic' and we all know D&D isn't supposed to be 'real' blah blah let's not go there).

*PS, my own DM who's running KotSF has already decided to give minions more than 1hp because 'it makes no sense' but he has almost no clue about the rules at all for 4th edition so his opinion is 'questionable' at this point.


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## IanB (Jul 16, 2008)

This is why minions have 1 hp:

[ame]http://youtube.com/watch?v=P8oz_B2aGn8[/ame]


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## Incendax (Jul 16, 2008)

*Mechanical Reason:* They don't have to have simply 1 HP, but it makes for easy bookkeeping. A Minion is a matter of perspective, and if the monster should be tough for you to defeat then you don't use the Minion mechanics. Ultimately, a Minion is a useful tool in the DM's ToolBox to help them represent certain cinematic scenes or battles that you don't want to drag out too long but still allow for some threat to exist.

*Roleplay Reason:* Dave Arneson once said that Hit Points are the 'points until you are hit'. They are an abstraction that could mean you are bloody from a dozen fleshwounds, or you have avoided every single blow thrown at you, or any other variation. Only that last blow that brings you below zero is the one that is actually a mortal wound. While your average goblin has 40 points worth of roleplay and cosmetic effects before he goes down, a Minion lacks the ability to 'roll' with the blows, taking a mortal wound the first time he is struck.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 16, 2008)

When a legionnaire devil fights a bartender, he doesn't have 1 hitpoint, he's an unstoppable monster.

Minions are a convenience, a way to allow a dm to run many guys with little effort, and a chance for players to really strut their stuff. They are not so that Bobo the clown can kill the legion of the damned.


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## Fallen Seraph (Jul 16, 2008)

Well generally, I think you should only use minions in specific circumstances, they shouldn't be used to fill-up encounters in my eyes.

*Mechanically:* They work well for creating balanced encounters against a large group of monsters, while still keeping it challenging. Since their damage and defenses are still level for the PCs.

They also are nice mechanically for circumstances where single-kills are proper, ie: sneaking into a castle and snapping the necks of the guards. Who would be minions.

So essentially they work best mechanically depending on the circumstance and for large-scale battles.

*Roleplaying/Realism:* A minion can be viewed in a variety of ways in-game. I will simply list a couple ways:

-They are a weaker version of a creature (don't prefer this method).
-They die so quickly because of the PCs being so much more powerful, ie: a level 5 orc soldier at level 5 be a level 20 minion at level 20.
-Luck, fate, chance, etc. in combat. They represent the lucky blow that beheads a orc, while a similar orc manages to only get skimmed by a similar blow.

Just a couple.


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## SweeneyTodd (Jul 16, 2008)

The reason that they have specifically 1 hp as opposed to say 1d4 or something is that it keeps the bookkeeping much simpler. A minion is either hit and taken out, or still in play. No paper trail.

If you think it would make sense for a minion to sometimes survive a hit but not usually, the only downside is having to track their HP.

If you're asking why they have a low number of HP _at all_, as oppose to "1 versus a few", then I think the guys above have that covered.

One of the implications the minion rule has (a lot of the 4e rules, really) is that because the game is used to adjudicate the PC's interactions with the world, the mechanics represent how the world interacts with the PCs. It doesn't represent how NPCs interact with each other, that's not really its aim. If you're not comfortable with that, then it's not the minion rule itself that's bugging you, it's the game's design philosophy.


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## Arakim (Jul 16, 2008)

At level 1 I had a group of PC's defend a breach in a city wall against 101 Skeletal Minion.

It looked and felt epic.

Think of it more as minions only having 1/4 the hitpoint of a creature their level.  You only have to hit each one once, but there are 4 times as many of them.

The book keeping is simple as well.  I just need stats and a dead pile tally to keep track.

Minion should always, ALWAYS, be of the same level as the PC, maybe a level higher or lower.  The math breaks down when you try to put in a level 20 minion against a level 10 party.

Use minion for flavor and strategy.  Sometimes they are the spice, sometimes they are the meal.

101 minions, oh man that was funny...


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## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

Incendax said:


> *Mechanical Reason:* They don't have to have simply 1 HP, but it makes for easy bookkeeping. A Minion is a matter of perspective, and if the monster should be tough for you to defeat then you don't use the Minion mechanics. Ultimately, a Minion is a useful tool in the DM's ToolBox to help them represent certain cinematic scenes or battles that you don't want to drag out too long but still allow for some threat to exist.
> 
> *Roleplay Reason:* Dave Arneson once said that Hit Points are the 'points until you are hit'. They are an abstraction that could mean you are bloody from a dozen fleshwounds, or you have avoided every single blow thrown at you, or any other variation. Only that last blow that brings you below zero is the one that is actually a mortal wound. While your average goblin has 40 points worth of roleplay and cosmetic effects before he goes down, a Minion lacks the ability to 'roll' with the blows, taking a mortal wound the first time he is struck.




No exaggeration, the top two responses are the best I have ever seen on En World!  Nice!


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## Minigiant (Jul 16, 2008)

Mechanic: Defenses represent how hard it is to effect the target. HP is how well the target can stop a killing blow. Minions, for the most part, stink at actively stopping a blow. They mostly rely on numbers, supernatural powers, or equipment.

Roleplay:  HP is multiplied by plot impotance. Standard creature gain regular HP.  Elites   get beat up for a whole paragraph or page and get double HP. Solos are equivalent to a whole party, are a chapter storywise, and get 500% Hp. Minions don't even get introduced individually, barely last a sentence each, and are written off easy. They get 1 hp.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 16, 2008)

You must like problematic topics because there's at least four threads about this one.  And that's just what I'm aware of.


Pros:

Easy Bookkeeping - you don't have to track a minion's hp, unless he's got temporary hit points.  Either he's fine or he's dead / unconscious.  Bonus: they do static amounts of damage.
Heroic Feel - carving through a ton of guys reinforces that the heroes are bad asses.  Players (and DMs) respond to that.
Emphasize Facelessness - Minons are the guys that show up in big numbers.  They may or may not be really good at this stuff, but when there are this many of them it doesn't really matter.
Avoid "Miss" Powers - Nothing makes my evil DM heart brighten like getting to smile when my players tell me "And he takes half damage."
Both Worse and Better Than "Real" Foes - The math on minions makes them insanely deadly if they get to use their optimal tactics.  Four times as many actions will quickly chip through the heroes' resources.  On the other hand, taking them out is pretty easy.  "If only there weren't so many, we'd have a chance!"
Heroic Skill - Minions emphasize that your fighters actually do stab people in the heart, cut out throats, sever limbs and crush skulls in combat.  They add that gritty touch that makes things feel bloody and brutal.
Speed Combat Up - Minions are plain faster to run than an equal number of regular foes.  Damage resolves faster and they have less to track.
Epic Duels - Several times, I've been witness to an epic duel between a PC and a minion.  The player couldn't hit and the minion couldn't deal enough damage fast enough to kill the PC.  However, the PC was tied up for several rounds by a single minion, making the encounter much more difficult for the party.

Cons:

Anti-Climactic - Having an enemy drop in the first hit, or an entire encounter end in the first action, is usually a let-down.   Not always, but sometimes.
Deadly - Minions are surprisingly deadly.  Those epic duels and four times the actions make minions very dangerous.
Weak Criticals - Minions always do the same damage.  Unless you choose to specifically give minions a weapon that does more damage on a critical hit, their damage is unchanged.  This is simple and quick but can feel a bit dissatisfying.
Explanations - The biggest problem with minions is that many DMs find them very, very jarring and difficult to explain.  It shouldn't be (these are the guys that novel heroes stab in the heart, throat or head every time they hit them).  Honestly, it's no harder than explaining why a 18th level character is nearly indestructible when compared to his 1st level self.  But there it is.

Ultimately, the explanation falls to the guy running the game.  Are the minions simply more of the same, old foes long beaten, or simply guys that you don't want your players to spend a lot of time worrying about?
From an RP stand point, I use minions just like I use everything else.  They are characters with their own lives, personalities and ideas.  However, in combat they are probably dog meat, not because they aren't competent but because they don't have that narrative spark that lets them survive ridiculous dangers.
Now, there is no reason you can't replace any and all minions with regular monsters (and you got the DMG ratio correct), but you probably shouldn't.  

Now, you don't always have to use the minion version of a monster, especially if it's the first time the heroes encounter one of those and you want it to be memorable.  Simply take the minion and give it appropriate hp for it's level and probable role (the new DMG is awesome).  Make sure to increase it's XP value.

However, when it's "more of the same" for the heroes, or they fought these guys six levels ago, then you probably want to use minions to emphasize the lack of competition.  Minions are a great way for 27th level characters to have to worry about Ogres without being worried; making the Ogres level 25 minions makes them useful in the combat without making them more dangerous than a long-conquered threat should be.


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'
> 
> Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?
> 
> ...




The claim that minions are somehow unrealistic never ceases to amaze me.  Minions are the guys who can be killed with one solid hit from a deadly weapon.  Like... y'know... REAL HUMAN BEINGS.  What on earth makes them unrealistic?  Now, if you were complaining that _non-minions_ - who are somehow impossible to kill without several rounds of beating on them first - were unrealistic, you might have a point.

In game-world terms, minions are guys who lack the fighting skills to go one-on-one with the PCs.  Individually, they're easy meat for a player character of their level.  They aren't going to make an endurance contest out of it - at best, they get lucky for a round or two, then the PC breaks through the minion's guard and it's lights out.  Compare that with a normal monster, which is canny and skilled enough that the PCs can't usually drop it without a few rounds of softening-up first.

En masse, however, minions are dangerous.  A martial artist may be able to disable or kill an untrained opponent in seconds, but will still have trouble against a mob.

(It's important to keep in mind that monster stats are designed to reflect how they interact with the PCs.  They aren't the universal laws of the world.  A minion does not die if attacked by a housecat.)

As for a mechanical reason to use minions?  Well, if you want your PCs to face off against a mob, it'll take bleeding forever if the mob is made up of normal monsters.  And that forever will consist of the PCs relentlessly slogging through monsters they miss only on a 1, while the monsters wait for the lucky 20.  Minions solve the problem.  They're very easy to keep track of and their attacks and defenses are good enough that you aren't guaranteed to hit them and they aren't guaranteed to miss you.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

Stalker0 said:


> Minions are a convenience, a way to allow a dm to run many guys with little effort, and a chance for players to really strut their stuff. They are not so that Bobo the clown can kill the legion of the damned.




I think I'm putting this in my sig.


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## fba827 (Jul 16, 2008)

You could relace 4 minions for 1 'normal' enemy as you mentioned.. just keep that it changes tactics.

more minions = more chance for a PC to provoke an OA, harder for a PC to retreat, harder to get in to flanking position  (i.e. postional strategy is more of an issue)

more 'normal enemies' = longer surving enemies and more "all PCs pile up on the guy" (thus, less positional strategy, more attacks and counter attacks)


Also keep in mind that
1) No one has a glowing hp bar above their head denoting their total, so you are breaking some realism by making a concious awareness of the 1 hp

2) minions are designed to be the little mob-like cannon fodder.  They have other abilities (for instance, they take no damage on a miss even if the miss would otherwise deal damage)

3) They have high defenses and high to hit and high damage, equal to encounters of their level, thus, they still pose a threat. They just need "to be dealt with" to get to the main baddies

4)  The intended reason is so that PCs don't spend forever on mobs before getting to the BBEG but at the same time, the mobs still need to pose some threat.

5) Every action-oriented book/show/movie has some scenes where the hero is fighting through a bunch of enemies, taking them down with a single kick/shot/sword swing ultimately getting to the main bad guy that takes more time to deal with...

6) it's not so much that the minions are "so weak they only have 1 hp" but rather "the minions are a threat to the PCs but they aren't skilled enough to last long against the PCs' suprior experience..."


As far as KotS, I would advise against raising the hp of mobs (esp if the DM doesn't yet understand 4e rules -- but once he has a better idea of the party and their capabilities, then, sure).  Because KotS is so combat intensive, increasing minion hp means 1) much harder fights esp the ones that are already very strong TPK potentials  2) and also make encounters much longer (there is already a lot of hack and slash dungeon crawling, if the players don't like that, making the minions stronger will only make the session much more annoying


Anyway, just my two cents on the topic.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

Dausuul said:


> (It's important to keep in mind that monster stats are designed to reflect how they interact with the PCs.  They aren't the universal laws of the world.  A minion does not die if attacked by a housecat.)




There are some very good points being made here and I totally understand now how they're useful. I'm very curious about the quoted post here though. Is this actually stated somewhere in the core books or is this an assumption?


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## Klaus (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'
> 
> Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?
> 
> ...



Every attack that hits a minion was a very well placed attack (and remember that minions are as hard to hit as any other creature): a strike to the head, a decapitation, a wooden stake through the heart, whatever. When you hit a minion, regardless of what you rolled, you hit it where it mattered. Compare this with a 100hp goblin. Even if you roll a critical hit with your longsword, you'll deal 10, 12 points of damage. So even if you rolled a natural 20, the attack was still a grazing strike.


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## Gargoyle (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> There are some very good points being made here and I totally understand now how they're useful. I'm very curious about the quoted post here though. Is this actually stated somewhere in the core books or is this an assumption?




Looking at the books, I don't see it.  Minions are mentioned in the DMG and MM, and nothing mentions that they are statted from the Player Character's point of view.  However, nothing talks about minions outside of the context of a fight with player characters either.

That's because 4e only simulates the encounters you intend to run, and doesn't try to simulate what happens "off-camera".  It's the fundemental difference between this edition and all past editions.  The way ability and skill check DC's are calculated, the way encounters are set up, all of it is in the context of a fight between player characters and the bad guys.  For example, spellcasters don't have huge spell lists, only the spells the player characters will see are listed.  

The evidence isn't in a single quote in the core rules, it's intrinsic to the content of the entire ruleset.  While this truth is implied rather than spelled out, it becomes very clear if you keep reading the books and run a few games.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> *PS, my own DM who's running KotSF has already decided to give minions more than 1hp because 'it makes no sense' but he has almost no clue about the rules at all for 4th edition so his opinion is 'questionable' at this point.




I wouldn't get too attached to your characters, I hear a lot about TPKs in KotSF already. Making minions tougher, specifically, making them not go down to one hit, means the PCs are going to be vastly outnumbered. If he removed 3 out of every four minions, then you'd be okay, but... then you're just not using minions.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 16, 2008)

The trick to understanding minions is simple, but counter-intuitive.

The MM does not contain Minions because you can encounter them 'in the wild'.

The MM contains minions to allow DMs to build encounters quickly.

You see, _Minion is *NOT* a creature type._

It's an encounter mechanic. It allows you to multiply an enemy into four enemies without making the encounter a TPK. 

In 3.X DMs used low-level monsters in a similar fashion, but this really didn't work well because these low-level creatures had trouble hitting or hurting the party - they really weren't a threat. Minions have level-appropriate defenses, attack bonuses and skills, so the party does have to take them seriously, but they're weak enough to be defeatable. (The no damage from misses is there so their defences still mean something). Because four minions take the place of one normal enemy, they need to do about 1/4 damage, and drop in 1/4 the number of solid blows a normal enemy requires. Normal enemies drop in about four hits, so minions drop in one hit. The easiest way to ensure this without introducing a complex system is to say 'they have one hit point'. i.e 'the first solid blow drops them'.

So technically, minions are just the new way of throwing lower-level enemies into the mix. You explain minions the same way you explain throwing lower-level enemies of the same base creature type or race in. They may be weaker, or the hastily-trained cannon fodder militia sent in with low-grade equipment to soften the enemy while the well-trained troops with the expensive equipment stand back. They may be the runts of the litter, or sickly, or simply unlucky. They may be green troops without battle experience, or maybe they've overconfident because they've only really fought peasants etc, not hardened adventurers who can take a hit and fight back. Perhaps they're in some sort of battle frenzy, attacking wildly but leaving themselves wide open for a fatal blow if the PC can just time it between their swings. Or maybe they're all at an early stage of their training, and while it's good enough for terrorising peasants any experienced combatant (such as the PCs) can see the potentially fatal openings that could be exploited with just the right sort of feint...

In other words, the justifications for minions are as diverse as the DM's imagination. Whatever the explanation, the bottom line is that an encounter contains minions using minion rules because the DM wanted the players to enjoy a battle where they faced superior numbers and were victorious, and have that victory mean something, rather than have the party say 'well, we were never in danger'.


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## Regicide (Jul 16, 2008)

Theres really no good reason for it.  That one monster would have 1 HP and the monster standing beside it that looks nearly identical could have hundreds really makes no sense.  They should have just made it a template to change monsters to in the rare case that a DM would want to hand players tons of free XP for having the wizard toss an AE instead of ramming them down our throats as a common play mechanic.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

> At level 1 I had a group of PC's defend a breach in a city wall against 101 Skeletal Minion.
> 
> It looked and felt epic.




But wouldn't it be like living a lie? I mean - wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow (eg: the skeleton has 30hp, but your fighter can deal 40+ with a single blow), and not because it has only 1 hp, and that it would be keeling over the moment you so much as sneezed on them?

It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.

To me, it just seems like rules abstraction carried 1 step too far. I suppose the only consolation is that they stopped just short of giving us balor minions or something...


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## On Puget Sound (Jul 16, 2008)

Get flanked by 4 of them and they don't look so inconsequential.


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## cangrejoide (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> To me, it just seems like rules abstraction carried 1 step too far. I suppose the only consolation is that they stopped just short of giving us balor minions or something...





Oooh I am eager that my players reach epic levels, I'm soooo gonna throw them a fullblown combat with Balor minions!!!


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

On Puget Sound said:


> Get flanked by 4 of them and they don't look so inconsequential.




Before or after the wizard encases me in a flaming sphere?


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## Scud.NZ (Jul 16, 2008)

Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?

Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.



			
				Gargoyle said:
			
		

> It's the fundemental difference between this edition and all past editions. The way ability and skill check DC's are calculated, the way encounters are set up, all of it is in the context of a fight between player characters and the bad guys.




Sadly, yes. D&D is a roleplaying game, right?


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## doctorhook (Jul 16, 2008)

Regicide said:


> Theres really no good reason for it. That one monster would have 1 HP and the monster standing beside it that looks nearly identical could have hundreds really makes no sense. They should have just made it a template to change monsters to in the rare case that a DM would want to hand players tons of free XP for having the wizard toss an AE instead of ramming them down our throats as a common play mechanic.



You understand that minions are not simply low-levelled versions of other monsters, yes? Their attacks, damage, and defenses all scale with level, which means the average Close or Area attack is no more likely to hit a minion than a normal monster of the same level. This is far cry from "tons of free XP". (And remember, you are not required to include minions in your encounters nor in your games; it's simple to convert four minions into one standard monster. This is far cry from "ramming them down [your] throat".)

It may help to envision four minions as one "monster" or "swarm"; in melee combat, attacking one enemy at a time, it will usually take four or five successful hits to drop a standard monster, and similarly, it usually takes four or five single hits to drop one group of four minions. In this manner, one warrior is matched against a single hobgoblin soldier or a group four hobgoblins grunts; variety just makes combats more interesting.



			
				Runestar said:
			
		

> But wouldn't it be like living a lie? I mean - wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow (eg: the skeleton has 30hp, but your fighter can deal 40+ with a single blow), and not because it has only 1 hp, and that it would be keeling over the moment you so much as sneezed on them?
> 
> It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.
> 
> To me, it just seems like rules abstraction carried 1 step too far. I suppose the only consolation is that they stopped just short of giving us balor minions or something...



*"Wouldn't it be like living a lie?"* No, because I'm fighting animated skeletons, which is at least as improbable. *"Wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow?"* Possibly; however, this experience has not been removed from the game. In this situation, enjoyment of "bringing down the big guys" is balanced against the usual disappointment when attacks fail to do "enough damage to kill" a monster. Over the course of a series of encounters, characters can alternately savour the thrill of "one-shotting" toughs and mowing through hordes of mooks.

Remember, this is a game played for personal enjoyment. Beyond having a character of an appropriate level and an understanding of that character's capabilities, I don't believe "merit" should ever be more important to the game than the illusion of merit.


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> But wouldn't it be like living a lie? I mean - wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow (eg: the skeleton has 30hp, but your fighter can deal 40+ with a single blow), and not because it has only 1 hp, and that it would be keeling over the moment you so much as sneezed on them?
> 
> It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.




How would it be better if the game were rigged to give minions 30 hit points and let you do 40+ damage on a single blow?  The outcome is the same.  Bigger numbers mean nothing.


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## jaldaen (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> To me, it just seems like rules abstraction carried 1 step too far. I suppose the only consolation is that they stopped just short of giving us balor minions or something...




Balor minions would be... harsh... all those death bursts... ouch 

As to the OP question:

If each minion is worth about 1/4 a regular creature and regular creatures are suppose to go down in 3-5 hits (depending upon whether at-will, encounter, or dailies are used), then is there really much difference between 1 hp or 8 hp (for a normally 32 hp 1st level creature) when you deal an average of 6.5 to 11 points of damage (2.5 to 7 average damage die result + 4 ability) with most at-will attacks?

What about at level 5 is there much difference between 1 hp and 14 (for a normally 56 hp 5th level creature) when you deal an average of 7.5 to 12 points of damage (assuming a +1 weapon) with most at-will attacks?

What about Level 10? Is there much difference between 1 hp and 24 (for a normally 96 hp 10th level creature) when you deal an average of 9.5 to 14 points of damage (assuming a +2 weapon; +1 damage stat increase) with most at-will attacks? 

This is the first level at which there is enough of a difference to start wondering if minions should have more hit points. However, with encounter and daily powers around is it worth the added complexity to use 1/4 hp? Probably not since these will usually do enough to take down a minion even if it had 1/4 hp.

What about Level 15? Is there much difference between 1 hp and 34 (for a normally 136 hp 15th level creature) when you deal an average of 11.5 to 16 points of damage (assuming a +3 weapon; +2 damage stat increase) with most at-will attacks? 

Its paragon level, so I could see an argument that at this point it would be nice to have something to distinguish minions of the paragon and epic tiers.

Perhaps you could change minions at paragon level to read:
*HP: *2; a missed attack never damages a minion; damaging at-will powers that hit deal 1 damage; damaging encounter and daily powers that hit deal 2 damage

However, is the added complexity worth it? In WotC's eyes no and for me as a DM, probably not.

What about Level 20? Is there much difference between 1 hp and 44 (for a normally 136 hp 20th level creature) when you deal an average of 12.5 to 17 points of damage (assuming a +4 weapon; +2 damage stat increase) with most at-will attacks? 

Yeah probably, but as pointed out above, how much complication do you want to add to the game for a creature that is meant to be a sideshow to the main event?

What about Level 25? Is there much difference between 1 hp and 54 (for a normally 216 hp 25th level creature) when you deal an average of 18 to 26 points of damage (assuming a +5 weapon; +3 damage stat increase, +1[W] for most at-wills) with most at-will attacks?

So here's the really interesting part... its about on par with the paragon levels average damage of at wills versus 1/4 hp, so you could still use the suggestion above for paragon minions for epic minions:

*HP: *2; a missed attack never damages a minion; damaging at-will powers that hit deal 1 damage; damaging encounter and daily powers that hit deal 2 damage

However, again this might be too much of a complication for too little payoff.

Lastly, what about Level 30? Is there much difference between 1 hp and 64 (for a normally 256 hp 30th level creature) when you deal an average of 20 to 28 points of damage (assuming a +6 weapon; +4 damage stat increase, +1[W] for most at-wills) with most at-will attacks?

*Note:* I did not include a lot of ways you could increase damage... I just focused on base damage for at-wills assuming simple magic weapons and did not bother with special weapons, crits, feats, etc. As such the numbers given are the low estimate of damage. If you assume a minion is always critted, then you can double the base damage and add and extra damage die of damage (+3.5) to the at-will results for each +1 weapon enhancement. This will result in even the lowest damage at-will power doing enough to take down any minion with 1/4 hp at most levels (excepty high paragon and epic levels where the lowest die falls 1 to 3 hp short).


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## Henry (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> But wouldn't it be like living a lie? I mean - wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow...




The reason it doesn't work very well is because the monsters by that point will have attacks and defenses so ludicrously low compared to the PCs that there would be no point to having them in the field - take that 30 hit point 1st level monster and stack 20 of him against the 25th level character doing 40 points of damage in a hit, and they're going to be hitting maybe once a round, needing a 20 to hit. It's true in all editions that I'm aware of. So, minion has an effective defense and attack range, does little damage by itself in a hit, and dies in one strike, and you have a credible threat that can be used _en masse_ without making it pointless nor overwhelming.




Scud.NZ said:


> Sadly, yes. D&D is a roleplaying game, right?




On the other hand, even AD&D was written with this in mind -- a werewolf couldn't break a portcullis or even reason with another monster unless the DM said it could; the STR and CHA scores and bend bars and diplomacy chances were DM fiat anyway.


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## Gargoyle (Jul 16, 2008)

Scud.NZ said:


> Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?
> 
> Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
> The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.
> ...




Different issue, but I will say that I don't see anything sad.  I don't see 4e's focus on combat as inhibiting roleplaying because I don't need rules to roleplay. I _do _need combat rules to make combat go quick and smooth so that we can roleplay more, so in fact I believe *4e encourages roleplaying*, after you're familiar with the rules.  To get back on topic, minions are an example of how bookkeeping is reduced.

Anyhow, I think you've got a point...minions don't know they're minions, even as elites don't know they are elite.  The evil tax collector probably is a minion who thinks he's an elite.    Minion status is just a rules mechanic to make mooks fall down easy and to make bookkeeping easier on the DM.


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## Arakim (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> But wouldn't it be like living a lie? I mean - wouldn't it feel better if you one-shotted those skeletons because you actually did enough damage to kill it in one blow (eg: the skeleton has 30hp, but your fighter can deal 40+ with a single blow), and not because it has only 1 hp, and that it would be keeling over the moment you so much as sneezed on them?
> 
> It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.
> 
> To me, it just seems like rules abstraction carried 1 step too far. I suppose the only consolation is that they stopped just short of giving us balor minions or something...




In every good fantasy movie you see, there is at least one scene where the heroes are outnumbered 3 or 4 - 1, and they are kicking butt.

The Breach:

In round two when the Minion were pushing them back, and they were going to lose the breach, minions did not seem weak.

In round 8, when everyone had used their Second Wind, both Paladins and the Fighter had been or were bloodied, and the Warlock with Armor of Agathys had just been brutalized a round or two previous, and yet the PC's were pushing forward into the breach, the minions did not seem weak.

It is quite possible when the higher levels come that due to increasingly high amounts of AOE that minions might lose something.  Then again, I can always make more minion....

Minion are fun and can be a challenge, both for Player and DM.  They add an epic feel to the game, even at level 1.


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## Celtavian (Jul 16, 2008)

*re*



Ninja-to said:


> On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'
> 
> Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?
> 
> ...




I thought 1 hp minions was a pretty smart move. It used to take a wizard one or two fireballs to wipe out a ton of orcs or kobolds working for a dragon or the like. Those orcs and kobolds couldn't do much. They couldn't hit the protagonists. They were never a threat, they were just there to be annoying until the fighter could cleave through them or the wizard blow them up.

Now they are handmade for that purpose but can still be a threat to a character. I like how that works.

It's really a matter of suspending your idea of old minions. And simply looking at minions as a mechanical way of rendering the following idea:

_A weak helper of a big bad evil guy that is there to die, but might land a useful hit or give a useful benefit to his master before doing so._

Players still have to account for minions, but they are easily beaten once accounted for. I like the mechanical rendering of the idea of a minion in 4th edition.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> It seems to appear great on the surface, your party can now mow down tons of mooks with relative ease, like LoTR. But look deeper and the underlying truth is that you KO'ed them only because the game mechanics specially made provisions to allow for this, and less so due to your own merit.




Isn't this true of anything you do in the game? I mean, you could say a wizard can cast fireball specifically because of a provision in the rules, not on your own merits. This just doesn't seem like a very good argument to me.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

It is somewhat odd that especially at higher levels, minions still only have 1 hp, while foes easily have hundreds of hp. This means that a PC would have little problems quickly disposing of 4 minions by using some area-affecting power like breath weapon or stormwarden's aura, even though the same attack would barely put a dent in the hp of a normal foe.

I am dubious as to how internally consistent the concept for minions is. At much lower lvs, it still seems okay, since the disparity between 1hp and the 30 odd hp a kobold has is still fairly minior (4 attacks to dispose of 4 minions ~ 30-40 damage anyways). At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.


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## A. Smith (Jul 16, 2008)

First, you are doing much MUCH more damage at the epic tier. Second, the 1HP rule is only there to guarantee that they fall fast. The might as well have 10 HP at high levels; you're going to be doing at least that much damage at that point. However, it's simpler to just "heh, they die when they get hit". Apparently, that was how it was initially: minions had a very small ammuont of HP, but it was still higher then 10. They changed it because they thought it was unnecessary bookeeping: they die in one hit anyway.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 16, 2008)

Scud.NZ said:


> Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?
> 
> Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
> The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.




*Im*possible encounter. The minion encounter mechanic is to replace one monster with four - not to have a one-hit wonder at large in the world! Such misuse of minions is going to result in some rather silly situations. And what does making this tax collector a credible but frail combatant add to the game? And what fun is a trivially-dispatched major villain?

For this encounter, I'd just make the tax gatherer a noncombatant NPC.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.




I would say at paragon and especially epic gameplay it is MORE appropriate to be felling foes in one hit. Odysseus could kill three men with a single arrow. Django mowed down a village full of bandits, and Tequila Yuen killed hundreds of people without a scratch. This is what 4th edition combat strives to emulate.

If you want to see exactly how a D&D encounter with minions should work, pop in Kill Bill Volume 1 and skip to the Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves. Is it appropriate for Beatrix Kiddo to kill or incapacitate eighty-eight well armed, trained assassins, all deadly in their own right, sometimes more than one in a single sword slash, but still have so much trouble dispatching Johnny Mo, GoGo Yubari, and O-Ren Ishii?

In a lot of ways, Beatrix Kiddo is the prime example of a 4th Edition D&D hero. She even has a magic sword.

And in role-playing terms, minions aren't weaker. Minions are the norm. Anyone with more than 1 HP is exceptional, possibly supernaturally so.


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## Celtavian (Jul 16, 2008)

*re*



Runestar said:


> It is somewhat odd that especially at higher levels, minions still only have 1 hp, while foes easily have hundreds of hp. This means that a PC would have little problems quickly disposing of 4 minions by using some area-affecting power like breath weapon or stormwarden's aura, even though the same attack would barely put a dent in the hp of a normal foe.
> 
> I am dubious as to how internally consistent the concept for minions is. At much lower lvs, it still seems okay, since the disparity between 1hp and the 30 odd hp a kobold has is still fairly minior (4 attacks to dispose of 4 minions ~ 30-40 damage anyways). At paragon and especially epic gameplay, is it okay to be one-shoting foes like that? Seems like lots of cheap xp for little work.




You're looking far too literally at the minion and thinking of the 1 hp. 

If you look at how they design encounters, it's just like a movie or book featuring a cinematic fighter.

You have the main big bad evil guy who is as tough or tougher than the PCs.

You have a few more powerful servants who can give the PCs a tough fight and are harder to kill.

Then you have the minions. Little guys who fall to one kick, punch, or bullet, but can occasionally land a lucky shot or do something useful during the combat.

I don't see the problem with it at lvl 1 or lvl 30 considering that everyone does less damage in this edition. You get in essence the same feel as previous editions as an epic level archmage unleashing an empowered or maximized fireball to take out the 20 lvl 10 or 20 big bad evil guys the lvl 30 Pcs must face.

Look at the old rules. A lvl 20 bad guy wouldn't have an easy time hitting PCs at lvl 30. It was just an exercise in paperwork to kill them all. They didn't really threaten the PCs or do much that could severely damage a prepared party.

4 E went in different direction. The minion is a threat, but it is also an easily eliminated threat so the DM doesn't have to keep track of 30 creatures hit points during one battle. I think it was a brilliant way to render minions that makes life much easier on the DM while still capturing the feel of a fight against a ton of somewhat dangerous creatures.


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## Snotboy (Jul 16, 2008)

Minions probably don't think they're minions.  If they knew how fast they'd go down, they wouldn't rationally attack the PCs.  Their mindset would look more like this:

Minion 1: "KILL YOU!!!"
Minion 1: *splat*
Minion 2: "That idiot.  Attack smart, not hard!"
Minion 2: *splat*
Minion 3: "While he's distracted by those two, I can get a shot in!"
Minion 3: *splat*
Minion 4: "A worthy opponent... I'll have to use my special move!"
Minion 4: *splat*


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## icarusfallz (Jul 16, 2008)

You can almost look at all of the baddies in an encounter as a "pool" of HP.  When you carve into the "pool", certain pieces fall off.  A minion dies when you do 1 point of damage to the "pool".

Think Sci-Fi.  You are fighting a capitol ship.  You do 1 point of damage to one of it's weapons, and you stop that weapon from shooting you.  It takes more damage to get through it's hull (Brute), it's fighter ships (Skirmishers) and it's bridge (Controller).  

Minions are just weapons.  Cannon fodder.  Peons.  FUN!


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## Switchback (Jul 16, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> You're looking far too literally at the minion and thinking of the 1 hp.
> 
> If you look at how they design encounters, it's just like a movie or book featuring a cinematic fighter.
> 
> Then you have the minions. Little guys who fall to one kick, punch, or bullet, but can occasionally land a lucky shot or do something useful during the combat.




HP in D&D has long since been explained as an abstraction. Yet there was always something more definite in damage it seemed. A critical hit was a massive blow, or a fireball that did 50 damage was laying waste on a grand scale, regardless of how enemies abstracted their health. Players had a way to judge that which felt solid.

Now in 4e, Minions cause damage to be an equal abstraction. Especially dealing with Minions at high level. It is entirely understandable that a 20th level character could one-shot a high level minion, because he is putting out just that much damage. When the Fighter smacks one down for 20 damage the mechanic seems entirely satisfying and fine. Yet when the wizard uses his staff to take an opportunity attack on one, and nicks him for 3 damage and the Angel of Valor Veteran (level 16) collapses at that deathblow, it can be a little more head-scratching.

But there is not much to be done for it. It adds something very useful in the DM's toolbox, and they can be fun for players. But it should not be lost that the mechanic was somewhat indebted to easy bookkeeping more than any other concern.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

> I don't see the problem with it at lvl 1 or lvl 30 considering that everyone does less damage in this edition. You get in essence the same feel as previous editions as an epic level archmage unleashing an empowered or maximized fireball to take out the 20 lvl 10 or 20 big bad evil guys the lvl 30 Pcs must face.




My point is exactly that. Everyone does less damage in 4e, the point seems to be to let combat last longer and be less subject to upsets like x4 crits from a scythe or failing your fort save against the finger of death spell by letting combat be more a case of attrition where one side slowly but surely gains dominance, rather than a game of rocket tag where victory really only depends on who wins initiative. 

In light of this, do minions having just 1 hp run contrary to this design concept? However I look at it, they seem too flimsy. One bad roll and all go down to a well-placed AoE effect. And they seem to give quite a lot of xp for the relatively little effort it appears to take to kill them.

Or is there some trick to optimizing the use of minions to maximize their use of the xp budget I am just not seeing?


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## AtomicPope (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> Or is there some trick to optimizing the use of minions to maximize their use of the xp budget I am just not seeing?



Yes, there is a trick to minions.  As a DM I like using minions because they allow (as someone else pointed out) an epic fight that doesn't take an epic amount of time.

The trick to using minions is to mix them with other monsters.  Having a Soldier or Brute flanked with minions is a good strategy.  Don't bunch up with other minions.  The minions run interference on the Strikers, preventing flanks and charging the ranged strikers, thus increasing the life expectancy of Big Bosses.  Many minions have ways to "remain sticky" but not all.  I used Decrepit Skeletons to tie up Strikers this way.  For their level they have good defenses and survived long enough to allow my Brutes and Artillery to be deadly.  When the Big Baddies start hitting consistently because of Combat Advantage the Minions have payed for themselves.

Minions also benefit from Leader and Controllers.  Many Leaders allow allies to shift or move for free.  Minions improve the quality of actions taken by important monsters through the denial of PC actions.  The minion is a "positioning" monster, like pawns.  Their greatest strength is defensive.  They give flanks, block PC movement, they're the shock troops (this is all from the MM).  Controllers can pull or push PC's but when you don't have enough monsters to tie that PC up, what good does it do?  Minions are the tar pit.  They improve the battlefield control of other monsters.

So basically, play minions as pawns.  They're sacrificial but not unimportant.  They allow for the creation of a defensive and offensive network to mire your opponent's actions, like pawns.  Trap hard, single attack hitters in a minion tar pit and prevent their movement, save the king.  Use the minions to divide the party and isolate weaker PC's for elimination.  Finally, use the minions because it gives Wizards something to kill


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## Noinarap (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> My point is exactly that. Everyone does less damage in 4e, the point seems to be to let combat last longer and be less subject to upsets like x4 crits from a scythe or failing your fort save against the finger of death spell by letting combat be more a case of attrition where one side slowly but surely gains dominance, rather than a game of rocket tag where victory really only depends on who wins initiative.
> 
> In light of this, do minions having just 1 hp run contrary to this design concept? However I look at it, they seem too flimsy. One bad roll and all go down to a well-placed AoE effect. And they seem to give quite a lot of xp for the relatively little effort it appears to take to kill them.
> 
> Or is there some trick to optimizing the use of minions to maximize their use of the xp budget I am just not seeing?



I've noticed that clustering monsters together (minions or otherwise) is a great way to make the wizard in your group look like a god. If the minions cluster, they die. The trick is to position enemies far enough apart to discourage AoE, but still close enough that they can charge to each other's assistance. You probably don't want more than one monster's worth of minions in most fights, since large numbers will force them to cluster.


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## wedgeski (Jul 16, 2008)

As a matter of order, minions do not have 1 hit point... they are killed by any successful attack. The difference is more than just semantic, especially in discussions like this.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> Or is there some trick to optimizing the use of minions to maximize their use of the xp budget I am just not seeing?




Several.

The first trick is to spread them out. Consider them weak to AoE spells. So try not to get them hit with AoEs. If the players have to use an attack that targets one or two minions, it's costing them turns.

Then use them to flank with other minions or non-minions. Sure, the minion seems useless, but when he grants combat advantage to a solo... well...

And it does take quite a bit of effort to kill a minion. Even if you figure one attack to take out each minion, that's four attacks to get the XP equivalent of a regular monster. In reality, it's more like 8. Plus they don't take damage from "even on miss" abilities.

But here's a question. Have you ever, you know, used them in play? Or are you objecting to them on their face? Not trying to be a jerk, just saying, try them in play, a lot of things work different on the table than they do on the page.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

I did try the sample DMG adventure (sadly my only foray in 4e to date, due to lack of time). The few minions that got featured went down fast. In the 1st encounter for instance, 2 went down to the fighter via cleave, the other 2 from the wizard's thunderwave. It did make me a little alarmed, as if minions exist for no other purpose but to die like flies (which suggests that the amount they can contribute to the enemy effectiveness meaningfully is very ... how do I put it - volatile?).


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## Celtavian (Jul 16, 2008)

*re*



Runestar said:


> My point is exactly that. Everyone does less damage in 4e, the point seems to be to let combat last longer and be less subject to upsets like x4 crits from a scythe or failing your fort save against the finger of death spell by letting combat be more a case of attrition where one side slowly but surely gains dominance, rather than a game of rocket tag where victory really only depends on who wins initiative.
> 
> In light of this, do minions having just 1 hp run contrary to this design concept? However I look at it, they seem too flimsy. One bad roll and all go down to a well-placed AoE effect. And they seem to give quite a lot of xp for the relatively little effort it appears to take to kill them.
> 
> Or is there some trick to optimizing the use of minions to maximize their use of the xp budget I am just not seeing?




One concern I do have with minions only having 1 hp is that a Defender or any class for that matter can simply call for an AoE on their location. For example, I did a Thunderwave on a group of minions with my allies close. It didn't matter. The damage was not going to kill them.

So it is kind of hokey that you can call for an Aoe Attack right on your location at lvl 30 from a lvl 30 mage and it is a nuisance attack that kills a ton of minions and but barely harms you or your comrades. That makes minion single target hit points very weak.

I just kind of let this go though. There is no perfect system. I feel the minion system balances putting a ton of weaklings on the board.

For example, when I was going through _City of the Spider Queen_, the lvl 4 and 6 guards in the drow City near the surface died in one round to a firebal or cleaving fighter. They rarely were able to hit any of the characters. And they were just a nuisance to kill that took up time and resources.

Minions are the same now save that you no longer need to roll a ton of saves for twenty minions and keep track of hit points for twenty creatures that are going to die and do nothing.

On top of that, the minions can usuallly attack much better than a lvl 4 Fighter minion equivalent from previous editions of DnD.

So if you want a 3.5 analogue to a 4th edition minion, think of all those lvl 4 Fighters tossed into temples and humanoid dungeons that were pretty much there to die, but you have to write down their hit points just in case they got lucky from a low PC damage roll or a made save. 

4th edition encounters toss in a few minions, a few tougher enemies, and one very tough enemy. They mix it up like old editions. They just don't make useless no xp lvl 6 Fighters as guards in dungeons made for lvl 10 people that do nothing but create a stat keeping annoyance for the DM.

I hated getting to high level and having to fight stupid low level guards taht didn't even give xp but wasted my time. At least a minion gives a little xp so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

> For example, when I was going through _City of the Spider Queen_, the lvl 4 and 6 guards in the drow City near the surface died in one round to a firebal or cleaving fighter. They rarely were able to hit any of the characters. And they were just a nuisance to kill that took up time and resources.




That point is not without merit. I countered this via generous application of buffs (for instance, in a side-trek involving a drider and 6 very young white dragons vs a 10th lv party, I had the drider buff them all with mage armour, resist energy, a scroll of mass bull's str and topped it off with haste, as well as making judicious use of flanking and charging to bring their to-hit values up to a respectable lv. 

Though looking back, I wonder if it may all have been just an exercise in futility.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

Scud.NZ said:


> Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?
> 
> Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
> The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.
> ...




What do you mean "Sadly, yes"

NPC's do not need to roll when attacking NPC's. This is a roleplaying game, not a rollplaying game. Whatever happens is whatever is thematically appropriate. If you want the goblin to pick up the barkeep and move him about then that happens. Why? Because the DM said so. You only roll when determining player actions or actions against players because there needs to be some mechanic to determine whether or not its a success(because typically the DM and player will disagree on whether or not it should be). There can be no disagreement between the DM and the DM regarding what should happen when an NPC attacks an NPC.

This means you can have bar fights that are actually fun(I.E. the players take damage) without having to pretend that for some reason all the people in the bar are somehow level 8 fighters. You just stat them out as a minion really fast[a quick approximation would be one special attack, flat damage rate of something that seems reasonable like 5+1/2 level. a base attack of friendly AC -9, and base defense of friendly attack +10]. Bam, you just statted out a bar fight that might be interesting. 

The point is that you are heroes. And there are some enemies that heroes just chop through in one good hit. Then there are some enemies that this does not happen to. The enemies that the Heroes chop through, the fodder, are the minions. They are statted that way because its thematically appropriate for villains to have lackeys to do their bidding. Typically lots of lackeys to do their bidding. These lackeys need to both be an interesting challenge(not too hard and not too easy), not take forever to kill, but also be numerous enough to make it feel like you are taking out the villains lackeys. Why? Because its dumb when it takes more time to get through random villain 32 than it does when getting through the villains right hand man or the villain himself. And its dumb when a villain can only rustle up a hand full of lackeys. And its dumb when a villains lackeys wipe the floor with you when you would have easily taken on the Villain himself.

Ergo, you have 1 HP monsters with reasonable attack, defense, and flat damage.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 16, 2008)

Runestar said:


> I did try the sample DMG adventure (sadly my only foray in 4e to date, due to lack of time). The few minions that got featured went down fast. In the 1st encounter for instance, 2 went down to the fighter via cleave, the other 2 from the wizard's thunderwave. It did make me a little alarmed, as if minions exist for no other purpose but to die like flies (which suggests that the amount they can contribute to the enemy effectiveness meaningfully is very ... how do I put it - volatile?).



Did you notice how well your PCs had to roll to do that?

I did when I ran that adventure.  Mostly because my PCs generally took two or three attacks per minion.

Those epic minion duels I mentioned earlier are no joke.  The warlock I've seen engaged in two of them got _hurt_ fighting those minions.  Worse, the entire party was lacking his damage output.  And he wasn't rolling really bad, just 6 to 10.  But it wasn't enough to hit, so that minion ties up one of our strikers for four rounds, which is about the most you could expect from a brute.

Don't get me wrong, minions are there to die.  Even more than most monsters, they are meant to get killed.  However, they aren't there _just_ to die.  They are there to provide flanking, bull rushing, opportunity attacks, and all the other benefits of having the party heavily outnumbered.  Combined with a couple of non-minions, you can get some very, very, very dangerous tactics going.

Sure, their contribution is variable.  So is the contribution of non-minions.  Some days the dice hate your players, other times the dice hate your monsters.  C'est la vie.  
If you read that Tarrasque play test that was around here, in some seven rounds Big T got to attack once.  Once, in seven rounds of combat, because he spent most of it stunned due to bad rolls on his saves (and clever ability use by the players).  It can happen with every single monster.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 16, 2008)

Noinarap said:


> I've noticed that clustering monsters together (minions or otherwise) is a great way to make the wizard in your group look like a god. If the minions cluster, they die. The trick is to position enemies far enough apart to discourage AoE, but still close enough that they can charge to each other's assistance. You probably don't want more than one monster's worth of minions in most fights, since large numbers will force them to cluster.




Unless your wizard rolls like crap. 

In our last D&D 4 session, we fought a homebrewed solo abyssal ghoul that could summon Minions (Ghuls) as minor action... Boy were we surrounded fast, and did the Wizard miss often! The Paladin and the Warlord were flanking the Abyssal Ghoul, and the Wizard hat to thunderweave himself (with Arcana Reach) to keep clear of the minions constantly summoned around him.


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## Runestar (Jul 16, 2008)

> Did you notice how well your PCs had to roll to do that?




Fairly average. 

The fighter had a base to-hit of +7 (+3 prof, +1 focus, +3 str). The cleric had started off with a divine glow, granting everyone else +2 to-hit. He easily hit the 1st minion with cleave, then promptly KO'ed another adjacent one (since the secondary hit does not require an attack roll). The wizard had no problems hitting their crap fort defenses of 11 either.

Admitably, their starting positions are somewhat different from the suggested scenario in the DMG, so that might have contributed to them being more vulnerable.


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## satori01 (Jul 16, 2008)

Perhaps I had house ruled my own "minion" style rules in 3.5 by having level appropriate monsters w/ lower CON or HP in general so they went down faster, but still had a chance to hit.  Given all of the buff spells available.....it was not hard to make the Lower level mobs able to be able to hit the players.

In 4e, Minions are an interesting element.  Genius almost, except for I have a hard time swallowing the concept of a 20th level minion.  I know the point has been addressed regarding the concept of internal consistency and versimilitude for the rules:  3.5 has an inner logic that binds things together, 4e is more like stage work, what matters is what is on the stage and ignore the man behind the curtain.

As the man behind the curtain, I like but am baffled at the same time....as an aside 4e could never give rise to an Order of the Stick like world where the characters talk of the rules like we do of natural properties.

I like Zombie minions,   I can deal with Ogre Minions at higher level......though we kinda of get back to an 1e feel of graduating from monsters as you go up, which I purposefully went away from in 3.5 (that orc might be an Barbarian/Blackguard or he could be a 1 level warrior, only the DM knows) which I think helped players treat every encounter as an individual experience.

1 thing I do not like though is the Legion Devil.  In 3.5 individually they were weak, but put them in a group and the shared hit points and bonuses to hit started to acrue.  Now they are less than that....which is a shame.


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## Mengu (Jul 16, 2008)

In our 14th level 3.5 game, we just fought an evil Druid, accompanied by a T-Rex companion, an Iron Golem, a wyrmling Red Dragon, and 4 Fire Giants. The Fire Giants went down in one or two rounds each. They would certainly have been minions in 4e. When we were lower level, one of our toughest fights was against a Fire Giant. So it's not so much a matter of what a monster really is, but how the DM wants to represent it in any given fight.

I see the addition of minions as a parallel to the scrapping of multiple attacks, and long lasting spell/ability bonuses. For instance our 14th level hasted ranger with favored enemy giants, a holy weapon, and the bard singing +3/+3, was getting 6 attacks (typically hitting with all of them, some being criticals), and taking down about 1 giant a turn. In 4e, the same ranger would get 2 attacks against the giant minion, one of which would hit, and take it down with no additional dice rolls needed. Same result, significantly faster resolution.

4e has the design philosophy of finding the fastest resolution method to get to the desired end result. Minions are just one other design feature to satisfy that philosophy.


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## Starbuck_II (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> On the one hand I think 'give the PC's a chance to wipe out something in one hit' and on the other hand I'm thinking '1hp for a 20th lvl minion... and the bartender in town has like 15?!??!'
> 
> Can someone justify to me why I should keep minions to that measely 1hp? In fact, why use minions at all? Why not just replace them with real creature (take away 4 minions add a real one like the DMG says (I believe))?



Because sometimes you want there to be more enemies and the battle still beatable. 
10 enemies at level 1 is not beatable unless some are minions. TPKs happen otherwise (see multiple posts about Keep on ShadowFell module).



> Before you guys rush in, can anyone tell me in both mechanical combat terms why I should keep them, and *also* how the hell do you explain this in a roleplaying or 'realism' sense? (note that 'realism' is different from 'realistic' and we all know D&D isn't supposed to be 'real' blah blah let's not go there).



Mechanically, it helps fill the battlefield while retaining the ability to affect the battle.
Minions hurt just as much if not more than the standard ones (minions rarely deal one damage so that helps; though they don't Crit it seems).
4 x 4 or 1d8 +2: 16 damage or average 6.
Trust me, four minions ganking you will hurt more.

Realism: The Minions are just as well trainwed, but luck just isn't in the stars for them. They don't hav the divine fortune or ability to urn deadl blows into lesser ones (you do realize since 1st Edition/according to Gygax, hps are just turning deadly blows into lesser, luck, etc)



> *PS, my own DM who's running KotSF has already decided to give minions more than 1hp because 'it makes no sense' but he has almost no clue about the rules at all for 4th edition so his opinion is 'questionable' at this point.



 Whoa, that would make the battle too rough.
Think about it, the only difference between a Kobold Skirmisher and Kobold Minion is hps and exp.
If you only change hp, than you have guys with same hps and different exp. That is a bad expereince waiting to happen.

I mean, for the player you get gipted on Exp if he only changes hps. And as a DM, he might send more than he should against you.


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## Celtavian (Jul 16, 2008)

*re*



satori01 said:


> Perhaps I had house ruled my own "minion" style rules in 3.5 by having level appropriate monsters w/ lower CON or HP in general so they went down faster, but still had a chance to hit.  Given all of the buff spells available.....it was not hard to make the Lower level mobs able to be able to hit the players.
> 
> In 4e, Minions are an interesting element.  Genius almost, except for I have a hard time swallowing the concept of a 20th level minion.  I know the point has been addressed regarding the concept of internal consistency and versimilitude for the rules:  3.5 has an inner logic that binds things together, 4e is more like stage work, what matters is what is on the stage and ignore the man behind the curtain.
> 
> ...




Monster tailoring is even more extensive in 4th edition. You think you surprise your party with a Barbarian/Blackguard orc? That surprise is nothing compared to some freak kobold with strange abilities that can't be attributed to just kobolds.

4th edition threw any idea of assumption about a given creature out the window. Creatures do all kinds of strange things. There is no assumption about any creature now. If you're level 20 and a group of kobolds stand in your way, do not assume an easy fight. You are in serious trouble. Those kobolds are going to hand you your behind if you don't fight like their real enemies.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

This is one of the better threads I've read in a while. Nice posts by all.

One last minor quibble. Someone mentioned earlier a minion being ravagged by a house cat.

Now while I understand a high level minion will have crazy defenses and to hit bonuses... if that house cat rolled a 20 and scored a hit (which is after all not *that* unlikely), well, you can see the image there. Which leaves you with the possibility of say 5% of the time house cats (or any creature imaginable that can do 1 damage) able to take out epic demonic minions. This isn't just a silly waste of forum space. Think about the very plausible chance of a bad NPC taking on the PC's in a tavern, and bringing his epic demonic minions with him, only to have one of them taken out by the bar parrot mascot with a single lucky peck... 

Hmm. Would it be going too far to stretch the earlier assumption that minions only have 1hp when they fight PC's? I don't mind making that quick adjustment. But what happens when an epic minion goes up against Felix or Garfield...? Should I suddenly drop more hp's on them?


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## Harlander (Jul 16, 2008)

In that case, I'd simply not have the 1-hp-dealing critter attack the fire-wreathed demons from the utmost nightmares of untold depravity. Your example was a housecat - such a beast would probably have the good sense to quit the scene upon the arrival of the Dark Lord McGee and his infernal mooks.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Which leaves you with the possibility of say 5% of the time house cats (or any creature imaginable that can do 1 damage) able to take out epic demonic minions.




Why did you let one of your player play a housecat?


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## Ninja-to (Jul 16, 2008)

Nah the housecat is just an innocent bystander angry at being woken up by Orcus's peon.


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## amysrevenge (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Yet when the wizard uses his staff to take an opportunity attack on one, and nicks him for 3 damage and the Angel of Valor Veteran (level 16) collapses at that deathblow, it can be a little more head-scratching.




Of course, it is exciting when someone hits on a 20 (which isn't unreasonable to expect to recuire, for that hit to actually hit).

Remember everyone, that minions don't drop when *attacked*, they drop when *hit*.  And for all their "1 hp" they still have level-appropriate defences.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Nah the housecat is just an innocent bystander angry at being woken up by Orcus's peon.




O.K. So who protested when the housecat attacked and missed that made you roll an attack roll?


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Hmm. Would it be going too far to stretch the earlier assumption that minions only have 1hp when they fight PC's? I don't mind making that quick adjustment. But what happens when an epic minion goes up against Felix or Garfield...? Should I suddenly drop more hp's on them?




I would say that Garfield is not a combatant in this fight.  He's not even a minion, he's effectively part of the scenery.  He cannot damage anybody.


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## Kingskin (Jul 16, 2008)

Mooks have been pulled directly from Feng Shui, along with Blast powers (meaning magical attacks, not the specific Blast effect in 4th Ed) and broad-archetypes with minor differences between two characters of the same type.
Personally, I think they were excellent in Feng Shui; kept the DMs book-keeping down and allowed players wipe out whole rooms full of gun-toting bad guys like Chow Yun Fat on a good day.
In 4th Ed, they don't seem have been implemented as well. Basically, if your class isn't set up for killing mooks then (it seems to me) that you're wasting abilities by attacking them. I played a ranger for 3 games and found that apart from Twin Strike, none of my abilities were of any use when fighting mooks. This sucks if you find yourself under a mook-pile and with the guy you can actually work against on the other side of the room.


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## Rith the Wanderer (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Nah the housecat is just an innocent bystander angry at being woken up by Orcus's peon.




The point he was trying to make earlier in the thread is that they are only minions because the PC's are awesome. An Ogre at 5th level can be an important normal or elite creature, but that same ogre at level 25 would be a minion. Minions are minions because its the PC's they're fighting. A Housecat would deal no damage to a minion, ever (unless it was a mouse minion or something that the housecat is that much better than....).

On another note, remember what happened with things that were so low level in 3e, because they were crappy to everyone and not just the PCs? A housecat (with two attacks at +4 and an AC of 14) would kill a commoner (with one attack at +0 and an AC of 10, and identical health to the housecat) whenever he felt like it. Thats ridiculous but it made the most sense when dealing with the PC's. When you allow that kind of weakness to interact "off-camera" you end up with ridiculous combos like a house cat killing anyone who refused to give him milk.


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## MrGrenadine (Jul 16, 2008)

wedgeski said:


> As a matter of order, minions do not have 1 hit point... they are killed by any successful attack. The difference is more than just semantic, especially in discussions like this.




This is one of the best defenses of the concept I've seen.  If only the RAW agreed, then the minion mechanic wouldn't bother me so much.

But it does bother me, so my solution:

Minions have normal hitpoints, but characters do x10 damage on any successful hit.  

This puts the success vs a minion more in the character's hands, allows the minion to survive a poke in the eye (or a scratch from a housecat), and helps keep hp from being entirely meaningless.

The multiplier can scale per tier, or have any value that the DM thinks is appropriate.


MrG


p.s.  Also, the cinematic, large scale brawls that minions afford isn't applicable to everyone's gameworld, campaign or taste.  I love Jackie Chan movies, but thats not the game I want to play.  They are absolutely NOT necessary, so as others have said--use 'em or lose 'em as you wish.


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## drothgery (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Now while I understand a high level minion will have crazy defenses and to hit bonuses... if that house cat rolled a 20 and scored a hit (which is after all not *that* unlikely), well, you can see the image there. Which leaves you with the possibility of say 5% of the time house cats (or any creature imaginable that can do 1 damage) able to take out epic demonic minions. This isn't just a silly waste of forum space. Think about the very plausible chance of a bad NPC taking on the PC's in a tavern, and bringing his epic demonic minions with him, only to have one of them taken out by the bar parrot mascot with a single lucky peck...
> 
> Hmm. Would it be going too far to stretch the earlier assumption that minions only have 1hp when they fight PC's? I don't mind making that quick adjustment. But what happens when an epic minion goes up against Felix or Garfield...? Should I suddenly drop more hp's on them?




While the specific case (Epic-tier minion vs. small normal animal) is kind of silly  (for all the reasons others have mentioned here), probably the biggest problem with minions is dealing with combats where minions are fighting opponents of vastly different power levels (say, the PCs are leading the local militia against a necromancer and his undead army). 

If you stat the zombies and militia as minions, they'll drop on one hit from each other, not just from one hit by from the heroes (vs. zombies) or the necromancer (vs. the militia). Whereas if you stat the zombies as minions and the militia as low-level humans/elves/etc., then the militia will rarely hit the zombies, but they'll drop them when they do. That actually might be plausible, but more extreme cases could get silly.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is, other than "don't do that", and possibly arbitrarily rule that when a creature attacks a minion more than, say, 5 levels higher than itself, a natural 20 does not automatically hit.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

drothgery said:


> If you stat the zombies and militia as minions, they'll drop on one hit from each other, not just from one hit by from the heroes (vs. zombies) or the necromancer (vs. the militia). Whereas if you stat the zombies as minions and the militia as low-level humans/elves/etc., then the militia will rarely hit the zombies, but they'll drop them when they do. That actually might be plausible, but more extreme cases could get silly.




The answer is that when NPCs are fighting NPCs they do exactly what you want them to.

If your players are so anal that they need to know you're rolling, just roll behind your screen and ingore the roll.

Its even easier in this situation because if you have a bunch of zombies and townsfolk you aren't going to want to bother running all of their attacks anyway, you are going to handwave the situation and say "The townsfolk struggle with the zombies, the Baker falls to a lucky blow as the mobs struggle back and forth" then remove a token or two and keep going. The Heroes can then use the townsfolk for flanking, give them bonuses and healing(which you then just describe the effect of during their turn, and move tokens around). 

The players are there to be heroes, not watch someone else be a hero. So don't roll for NPC's on NPC violence, handwave it. Just say what happens and get it over with you wouldn't roll if it were off screen would you?[I envision a man sitting in his basement rolling die to see if the goblins capture the barons daughter to determine whether or not the PCs have a plot hook to follow] This is better on so many levels its not funny. Its better for roleplaying because the players have to deal with the situation as you want them too. Its better for wargaming because the players don't have to sit and watch the DM masturbate with all the tokens he has to play with. Its better for everyones time since the encounters go smoother and faster.

In short, there is only a problem because people have forgotten that DnD is about roleplaying heroic fantasy and not a system by which to simulate a heroic fantasy world. No one is going to run a computer model to create and then study the DnD world, rules that figure someone is going to do that are a waste of time, and are another thing that get in the way of the primary purpose of the system. For players to get together with a DM and roleplay.

edit: another easy way to do it would be to set them both as minions and have each side lose a number of guys equal to the ratio of them to us(not including the PCs and non-minions)

So if you fight a force of 25 zombies with 5 townsfolks, the 25 zombies are going to wipe them in the first round they are engaged and 1 zombie will die. If you fight a force with 20 zombies and 20 townsfolk one on each side will die until the PC's or Villains make a difference and one side starts to overcome the other


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## MrGrenadine (Jul 16, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> In short, there is only a problem because people have forgotten that DnD is about roleplaying heroic fantasy and not a system by which to simulate a heroic fantasy world.




Unless thats what the DM and his or her players want to do, of course.  Then it is exactly that.   Or a system by which to pretend that they're fairy princesses,  or talking broccoli, or in a Conan and Gandalf buddy movie, or whatever else it is that folks want to do.

Thing is, D&D used to be a robust enough system to handle any situation and type of play.  I hope it still is.

MrG


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## Mengu (Jul 16, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Nah the housecat is just an innocent bystander angry at being woken up by Orcus's peon.




There is advice in the DMG that you should not try to play out combat among NPC's if you can avoid it. In the case of the housecat vs the demonic minion, you simply say the cat tries to claw the demon, and the heat radiating from the demon's skin is enough to send the cat running with its tail between its legs.

Minions are minions, only if they are fighting PC's, and only if you wanted to make them minions for that specific combat. Everything in combat is designed to revolve around the PC's. If there is a pitched battle going on somewhere that the PC's are merely watching from a distance, DM decides what they see. No dice rolls are needed.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

MrGrenadine said:


> Unless thats what the DM and his or her players want to do, of course.  Then it is exactly that.   Or a system by which to pretend that they're fairy princesses,  or talking broccoli, or in a Conan and Gandalf buddy movie, or whatever else it is that folks want to do.
> 
> Thing is, D&D used to be a robust enough system to handle any situation and type of play.  I hope it still is.
> 
> MrG




First off, you are wrong, DnD was never robust enough to handle a simulation

Second off. Simulations are single player endeavors. They involve no players, only DMs. If you want to pretent you're a fairy princess or talking brocolli or in a conan and gandalf buddy movie you're perfectly welcome to do so. All minions are are another tool that DM's can use to enhance the players roleplaying experience, whatever it is they want to roleplay.

Once you start taking the system and applying it to NPCs acting for/against NPC's it breaks down, just as they all have. Heck, 4e is probably better in this regard than others(at least when simulating large combats). I mean, in 3e fighting a wizard meant he says "i win the game" essentially, so everyone would become wizards or clerics and everyone would go hunting monsters for XP and then living like kings off their WBL and their 1/day travelers feasts... 


Sorry, DnD has never been a simulation and never will be. Its always been a roleplaying game where the players job is to roleplay and the DMs job is to facilitate that.


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## matthewseidl (Jul 16, 2008)

Kingskin said:


> In 4th Ed, they don't seem have been implemented as well. Basically, if your class isn't set up for killing mooks then (it seems to me) that you're wasting abilities by attacking them. I played a ranger for 3 games and found that apart from Twin Strike, none of my abilities were of any use when fighting mooks. This sucks if you find yourself under a mook-pile and with the guy you can actually work against on the other side of the room.




Because a ranger isn't designed t deal with mooks, its designed to deal with the big bad.  If the ranger is under a mook pile away from the big bad, that seems like a perfect situation for the big bad.   Get a wizard over to clear the minions of with AoE, or even a fake controller like a cleric/warlock who have more area powers.  Or at least a fighter with cleave.  Or get someone with movement powers to move the ranger out of harms way and over to a nice single target.  

To me, this is an example of the design of 4e forcing more party composition.  The ranger needs help when dealing with piles of minions (although I'd argue the ranger is better able to deal than a rogue).


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## drothgery (Jul 16, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> The answer is that when NPCs are fighting NPCs they do exactly what you want them to.
> 
> ...
> 
> In short, there is only a problem because people have forgotten that DnD is about roleplaying heroic fantasy and not a system by which to simulate a heroic fantasy world.




The thing is that there's plenty heroic about PCs -- particularly warlords -- rallying a town's defenders or leading a nation's army. Or an NPC charge of the PCs (say, a 16-year-old princess) who refuses to stand by and watch while the PCs are trying to protect her from an Evil Horde.

To make it clear, here -- I like minions as a concept. They're a great solution for a lot of situations. But they do create mechanical weirdness in some corner cases.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

drothgery said:


> The thing is that there's plenty heroic about PCs -- particularly warlords -- rallying a town's defenders or leading a nation's army. Or an NPC charge of the PCs (say, a 16-year-old princess) who refuses to stand by and watch while the PCs are trying to protect her from an Evil Horde.
> 
> To make it clear, here -- I like minions as a concept. They're a great solution for a lot of situations. But they do create mechanical weirdness in some corner cases.




How does it not work? I am not seeing these situations. NPCs are there to be roleplaying aides. Minions are there for when you need a bunch of guys who won't kill your party outright but also wont also be total pushovers.


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

MrGrenadine said:


> Unless thats what the DM and his or her players want to do, of course.  Then it is exactly that.   Or a system by which to pretend that they're fairy princesses,  or talking broccoli, or in a Conan and Gandalf buddy movie, or whatever else it is that folks want to do.
> 
> Thing is, D&D used to be a robust enough system to handle any situation and type of play.  I hope it still is.
> 
> MrG




It never was.  D&D has always been atrocious for world-simulation - a large part of the humor in "Order of the Stick" comes from treating the D&D rules as if they were literal rules of physics.  The economic system is particularly appalling... see for example the trick where you buy a ten-foot ladder, break it apart to get two ten-foot poles, and sell the poles for more than you paid for the ladder.  Or the incredible gulf between the listed pay for laborers and the amount you can make with an untrained Profession check.

Now, you can cobble and house-rule and extend the system and come up with a fairish simulation.  But that's hardly the point.


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## Kingskin (Jul 16, 2008)

matthewseidl said:


> Because a ranger isn't designed t deal with mooks, its designed to deal with the big bad.  If the ranger is under a mook pile away from the big bad, that seems like a perfect situation for the big bad.   Get a wizard over to clear the minions of with AoE, or even a fake controller like a cleric/warlock who have more area powers.  Or at least a fighter with cleave.  Or get someone with movement powers to move the ranger out of harms way and over to a nice single target.
> 
> To me, this is an example of the design of 4e forcing more party composition.  The ranger needs help when dealing with piles of minions (although I'd argue the ranger is better able to deal than a rogue).



Agreed, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got spanked for it. Fair enough. My problem is with the idea that 4th Ed forces you to have a certain party composition which I'm not keen on and the mooks symptomatic of this.
I like the idea of a bunch of players getting together and creating whatever group of characters they want and then the GM running a game for them. It's why I've never gone in for pre-written adventures; they can't really take into account the group you've got and I find it less work to write it myself than to buy one and then alter it to fit. Looking at my collection, pretty much every game can easily support unorthodox groups but I've found that 4th Ed is built from the ground up on the assumption you've got 4-5 players and they're each taking one particular role. If you've only got two players (as our 4th Ed group had) then you're at a severe disadvantage and I can't think of any other game that suffers this same problem. Sure, you can get around it but in the end we found it was more hassle than it was worth and canned it after three sessions. I'm kind of dissapointed with that, I was really looking forward to 4th Ed; the lack of Vancian magic and the idea of mooks had me really interested but it just fell flat for the entire group. Kind of sad. But now we're playing cops in Chicago in Kult so things are looking up.


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## Regicide (Jul 16, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> Minions are there for when you need a bunch of guys who won't kill your party outright but also wont also be total pushovers.




  Thats what NPCs are there for, not minions.  Minions are there to promote players taking area of effect classes and abilities and reward them with massive amounts of free XP for doing so.

  The idea of removing level/HD as a measure of an NPC's survivability by making a "class" of opponent who have 1 HP regardless of level has caused more problems than it will ever solve as shown by these threads.  I don't even want to think about what conceptual contortions will need to be gone through in order to add pets, companions and cohorts to the game now.  Minions not haveing a relevant HP stat is already cause headaches with terrain that causes damage.  I mean, if the party's torch bearer uses caltrops those won't kill a minion, but if the party's ranger drops some in front of himself minions explode on contact... UUUUUUGH.

  3.5E had mob rules, I'm not sure if they were from Dragon, but variants showed up in some of the Dungeon adventure paths I think like Shackled City.  Anyway, they weren't perfect, but I far prefer them to the minion rules.


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## Obryn (Jul 16, 2008)

Scud.NZ said:


> Another Point of View: Does the minion know it's a minion?
> 
> Possible Encounter: 1 Minion tax gatherer, and 4 Brute mercenaries.
> The Minion is the one in charge here. He certainly doesn't regard himself as a minion, as he has the backup of the 4 Brutes. Plus, as a villain he has the potential to make our PC's lives miserable.



I don't think it works that way.

A "minion" isn't a thing that exists, independent of the PCs, anywhere in the world.  There are no free-roaming minions wandering around cities - "minion" is just a description of how the NPC or creature interacts with the PCs in combat.  That's all.  Of _course_ he doesn't know he's a minion.  His bodyguards also don't know they're "brutes."

As a DM, you could certainly declare that this tax collector acts as a minion in combat, but again - if you do so, you're doing so for unusual narrative reasons.  "This tax collector is completely feeble in combat, and doesn't present any real threat.  A good, solid blow to the head should knock him out."

He's not a minion because it's the way the world works, or because of any characteristics inherent to him.  He's a minion only because the DM has determined that's how he'll interact in combat with the PCs, should said combat occur.

-O


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Kingskin said:


> Agreed, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got spanked for it. Fair enough. My problem is with the idea that 4th Ed forces you to have a certain party composition which I'm not keen on and the mooks symptomatic of this.
> I like the idea of a bunch of players getting together and creating whatever group of characters they want and then the GM running a game for them. It's why I've never gone in for pre-written adventures; they can't really take into account the group you've got and I find it less work to write it myself than to buy one and then alter it to fit. Looking at my collection, pretty much every game can easily support unorthodox groups but I've found that 4th Ed is built from the ground up on the assumption you've got 4-5 players and they're each taking one particular role. If you've only got two players (as our 4th Ed group had) then you're at a severe disadvantage and I can't think of any other game that suffers this same problem. Sure, you can get around it but in the end we found it was more hassle than it was worth and canned it after three sessions. I'm kind of dissapointed with that, I was really looking forward to 4th Ed; the lack of Vancian magic and the idea of mooks had me really interested but it just fell flat for the entire group. Kind of sad. But now we're playing cops in Chicago in Kult so things are looking up.




Well, in small groups the DM does have to tailor the opposition to match the party.  I learned that in my very first gaming session when I put the party against three rat swarms, and discovered that a party without a controller is seriously hosed when fighting swarms.

But I don't think it's a major issue.  You just have to remember that certain types of monsters are a bit tougher against parties lacking certain capabilities.  Solo and elite monsters are harder for parties that lack a striker; minions and swarms are harder for parties that lack a controller; brutes are harder for parties that lack a defender; everything is harder for parties that lack a leader.  So up their XP value a little.

I'm not actually aware of any RPG that doesn't work out in similar ways.  If a character can be good at X and less good at Y, and if X and Y can vary from one character to another, then a party where nobody is good at dealing with Fragulators is going to have a tougher time when they go up against Fragulators.  At least 4E ensures that everyone has a basic level of competence in combat.


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## Obryn (Jul 16, 2008)

Regicide said:


> The idea of removing level/HD as a measure of an NPC's survivability by making a "class" of opponent who have 1 HP regardless of level has caused more problems than it will ever solve as shown by these threads.  I don't even want to think about what conceptual contortions will need to be gone through in order to add pets, companions and cohorts to the game now.  Minions not haveing a relevant HP stat is already cause headaches with terrain that causes damage.  I mean, if the party's torch bearer uses caltrops those won't kill a minion, but if the party's ranger drops some in front of himself minions explode on contact... UUUUUUGH.



I can understand folks who don't like minions.  Just because I do, doesn't mean everyone does.  They're a narrative mechanic, and if you hate narrativist gameplay, you'll hate them as well.

I can understand folks who don't understand how minions fit into the gameplay.  They're unlike anything in previous editions, and show that 4e is taking a completely new (for D&D) approach to how characters & NPCs interact with each other and with the rules.

What I don't understand is folks who intentionally misunderstand minions, and then use those misunderstandings as a basis for their dislike.

There's a certain zen to minions.  You can't shoehorn them into 3.5's mechanical view of the gameworld; they just don't fit.

-O


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

Regicide said:


> Thats what NPCs are there for, not minions.  Minions are there to promote players taking area of effect classes and abilities and reward them with massive amounts of free XP for doing so.
> 
> The idea of removing level/HD as a measure of an NPC's survivability by making a "class" of opponent who have 1 HP regardless of level has caused more problems than it will ever solve as shown by these threads.  I don't even want to think about what conceptual contortions will need to be gone through in order to add pets, companions and cohorts to the game now.  Minions not haveing a relevant HP stat is already cause headaches with terrain that causes damage.  I mean, if the party's torch bearer uses caltrops those won't kill a minion, but if the party's ranger drops some in front of himself minions explode on contact... UUUUUUGH.
> 
> 3.5E had mob rules, I'm not sure if they were from Dragon, but variants showed up in some of the Dungeon adventure paths I think like Shackled City.  Anyway, they weren't perfect, but I far prefer them to the minion rules.




Man what? NPCs are there for you to roleplay against they are not there to be fodder. Where in the nine hells did you get the idea that NPCs are there to take the place of numerous enemies that still pose a threat but will not utterly destroy you due to hit point scaling?

There are no headaches regarding terrain that does damage. If the terrain does not require a to-hit roll, the minion dies. Its very plain and simple in the rules. The minion dies whenever it would take damage, but a minion never takes damage from a missed attack. Does the terrain do damage? Yes, you said it does? Well does it make an attack roll or is it automatic? Its automatic? The minion dies, no attack was missed and it took damage. Blammo, its really easy.

Pets, Companions, and Cohorts will only be in the game in the form of Powers. They will only be in the game in the form of powers because pets, companions, and cohorts fundamentally break any game they are put into. They cannot be simultaneously useful in combat and balanced. They break economy of action. They were broken in 3.5(where every truly optimal build took leadership and had a wizard along with them), unless their operation takes up your own actions then they will be really and truly forever broken.

There is no problem with a parties torch bearer(assuming this in an NPC you hired) dropping caltrops. Whatever happens with those caltrops is the DMs decision. It an attack by an NPC against and NPC. Unless the DM is arguing with himself there is no need for conflict resolution by way of dice rolling. And if the DM is arguing with himself you have many many many more problems than any any system could throw at you.

Here is the deal. NPCs only need survivability when the players take a swing at them. If not, then everything is the DM deciding how powerful he wants the NPC to be and then describing it.

Caltrops again: Caltrops will not explode anything on target, it simply takes the minion out of the fight. Hell, you can voluntarily not do lethal damage with no penalty when bringing an enemy to 0 hit points, thus making them unconscious instead of dead. Just say the minion falls over in pain, clutching his leg and cant get up/passes out from the pain/falls on the caltrops in a violent and painful manner.

Regards to "free XP" Clearly you have not fought a good minion encounter if you are saying that they are free XP. Minions are tough. And you get 4 per every normal monster. This mean minions are doing around 3 times as much damage, can flank and create effects, can block three times more squares and are less vulnerable to status effects that weaken them.(since you have to hit them all). They are, in return, weak to AoEs. E.G. in my group I am playing in now we have a wizard, artful dodger rogue, ranger, fighter, and cleric. Minions are the hardest part of the fight because they gang up and rip into the fighter/ranger/rogue and don't care about his mark(there are 4-8 of them, what do they care?). The Wizard has to AoE his friends to get them off. The Rogue does 19.5 average damage/hit with sly flourish(or something equally disgusting), enough to kill a level 2 skirmisher in two hits. Throw a bunch of standard enemies at us and the wizard is going to keep one or two out of the fight while the rogue, ranger, and fighter, kill 2 enemies every 3 rounds.(or faster)

Mob rules were terrible compared to minion rules. Minion rules are simple, elegant, reduce book keeping, allow them to have tactical options instead of being swarms...


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## Switchback (Jul 16, 2008)

The reason the local militia should have trouble felling minions is because the expectation is they are piddly and weaker than the PC's and could not deal out enough damage do to that in one hit.

Yet, is there a difference between when the militia does 2 damage to a minion and a level 10 character does 2 damage to a minion? Is the player really doing a blow that is 10 times stronger even though both are read as 2 damage?

This is the new concept that can be hard to wrap around sometimes. It makes the players into incredible hulks such that they couldn't crack an egg without crushing it into bits because their damage is somehow multiplied beyond the commoner to the point where the actual combat numbers that usually order the world are made fuzzy and unreliable in what they represent.

If I try to break a bottle on a stand and it has 5 HP and I do 2, I did a pathetic blow and it doesn't break right? Even at level 20. 

People will say of course that happens, because minion’s HP is an abstraction. But that in turn, forces you to accept all damage in the world as an abstraction. 

Even still, that does not always save us. Because what if that 2 damage I did to both the bottle and Angel, both were splash damage from the same spell? Obviously some kind of rare and bizarre situation. But it could happen and then you would be forced to confront that 2 damage really was just 2 damage, and yet it killed this incredibly tough creature anyway.


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## Obryn (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> This is the new concept that can be hard to wrap around sometimes. It makes the players into incredible hulks such that they couldn't crack an egg without crushing it into bits because their damage is somehow multiplied beyond the commoner to the point where the actual combat numbers that usually order the world are made fuzzy and unreliable in what they represent.



The thing is, they're not fuzzy and unreliable - they're extremely precise when detailing an NPC or monster's interactions _with the PCs_.

It's the zen of minions.

-O


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## Regicide (Jul 16, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> There are no headaches regarding terrain that does damage. If the terrain does not require a to-hit roll, the minion dies.




  You do realize hazardous terrain is an isomorphism with the house cat, right?  And yes, you can say the DM can decide how NPCs interact with NPCs all you want, but you can also say the DM can tell players to not bother rolling dice because he's just going to decide everything too.  It's a simulation system, the fact that it breaks down at certain points and the DM has to hand wave is the problem we're talking about, not the solution.



Goumindong said:


> Pets, Companions, and Cohorts will only be in the game in the form of Powers. They will only be in the game in the form of powers because pets, companions, and cohorts fundamentally break any game they are put into. They cannot be simultaneously useful in combat and balanced. They break economy of action. They were broken in 3.5(where every truly optimal build took leadership and had a wizard along with them), unless their operation takes up your own actions then they will be really and truly forever broken.




  Waaaait, wait, wait.  You're saying on one hand lower level NPCs are useless because they'll never hit so minions fix that problem, then on the other you say they're broken when the PCs have them with their "truely optimal build".  You have to pick one, it's not both, it can't be both.



Goumindong said:


> There is no problem with a parties torch bearer(assuming this in an NPC you hired) dropping caltrops.




  AGAIN, you're going to have to pick a side here, you can't argue both.  You've gone to claim that torch bearers don't break 4E, then you claim any game with companions is broken.  Sorry, buzzer.

  Also claiming any game with pets etc. is broken because of it pretty much is claiming most games are broken since most games support them.  A clearly incorrect claim.

  I know nonsense like "exception based design" and "economy of action" sounds cool and technical and it's fun to say them, but it isn't, it's marketing.  Exception based design is how EVERYTHING is designed, not just games, but every single RPG ever made has been made that way.  Likewise "economy of action" is another way of saying constraint, and every system has constraints, complex ones like RPGs have lots of them.  4E has chosen actions as a constraint, some other games have, some haven't, it's not necessary for a balanced game.

  Most games balance having companions by having a cost associated with them.  Spending a feat when you're level 20 in 3.5E is a fairly small cost, getting a level 15 or so wizard ally from it (which you then use your epic diplomacy to make fanatically loyal) is probably not very balanced, but it has nothing to do with "economy of action."  Giving druids companions was fine in 3.5E, but having one of them at level 1 being a trained war dog that is effectively as strong as level 2 creature wasn't.  Again, economy of action isn't at fault there.


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## Switchback (Jul 16, 2008)

Obryn said:


> The thing is, they're not fuzzy and unreliable - they're extremely precise when detailing an NPC or monster's interactions _with the PCs_.
> 
> It's the zen of minions.
> 
> -O




I get it. But I'm saying you could confront a situation where you do equal damage in the same attack, to a minion and something else at the same time, an area attack or the rogue throwing stars, and the whole system can become exposed. 

  Minions are supposed to take the place of mooks or underleveled hordes right, but what if a DM's story calls for those foes to be used again? For whatever reason. 

Say we have a common kobold slinger standing next to a level 11 Ogre Bludgeoneer. Now our level 10 fighter uses a cleave attack on the Kobold. The Kobold is hit for 15 damage but still standing, and the weak secondary blow that follows through and hits the Ogre for 3 damage suddenly becomes his deathblow. This might seem strange to the fighter, since for all his life as a hero that secondary attack on a cleave has always been a piddly weak attack that is just a glancing blow on his follow through beyond the real target he attacked. 

As far as the numbers are concerned the adjacent attack on a cleave can never be stronger than the regular attack, since both get the fighters STR bonus but the initial attack gets a dice roll as well. 

This time for the sake of the game, we say it pierced the Ogre's heart or whatever and instantly slays him. But it won't be long before the fighter realizes that the adjacent follow through on cleave, *always* strikes a minion through its heart and kills them, no matter that the attack is never a strong one against any other normal creature in the world. It's icky and can be hard to resist thinking about.


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## GoLu (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Say we have a common kobold slinger standing next to a level 11 Ogre Bludgeoneer. Now our level 10 fighter uses a cleave attack on the Kobold. The Kobold is hit for 15 damage but still standing, and the weak secondary blow that follows through and hits the Ogre for 3 damage suddenly becomes his deathblow. This might seem strange to the fighter, since for all his life as a hero that secondary attack on a cleave has always been a piddly weak attack that is just a glancing blow on his follow through beyond the real target he attacked.
> 
> As far as the numbers are concerned the adjacent attack on a cleave can never be stronger than the regular attack, since both get the fighters STR bonus but the initial attack gets a dice roll as well.




The damage numbers are lower, but that doesn't mean the result has to be.  If I attack a 25 hitpoint creature for 30 damage, it falls down and is dead or dying, felled by one mighty blow.  If I attack a 50 hitpoint creature with the same attack, it is bloodied and looking worried.  If I attack a 350 hitpoint creature with the same attack, it shrugs it off, barely looking concerned.  So is that 30 damage attack a mighty swing, capable of slaying things in one hit, or is it a scratch that, while presumably unpleasant, doesn't even deserve to be called dangerous?

For that matter, the example concerns an attack that is good against minions.  If the secondary cleave attack has never hit anything other than a minion, then it will never have failed to kill anything that it has it.  It is 100% lethal.  Not so piddly now, eh?

Anyway, the idea of combining a level 11 minion with a level 1 (or whatever; don't have the MM on me at the moment) non-minion is stretching so far past what the system intends that it isn't surprising that you end up with weird results.  If the kobold is an important part of the encounter, the ogre would be better represented as a lower level elite or solo.  If the kobold isn't an important part of the encounter, why not make it a minion as well?


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## Obryn (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Say we have a common kobold slinger standing next to a level 11 Ogre Bludgeoneer.



You see, this is where the example goes wrong.  Why was there a kobold slinger standing next to an Ogre Bludgeoneer?

A minion should never be used in a situation where they should be a powerful opponent.  If the party is of a low enough level that the kobold slinger is a credible threat, any ogres should instead be actual monsters.  If the party is of a level where ogres should be easy kills, why is there a non-minion kobold there, too?

It's the zen of minions.  You want "minion" to be a canonical category, but there are no ogre minions in the wild.  An ogre is only a minion when the situation is appropriate for the ogre _to be _a minion.  Your example above doesn't satisfy this requirement.

-O


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Say we have a common kobold slinger standing next to a level 11 Ogre Bludgeoneer. Now our level 10 fighter uses a cleave attack on the Kobold. The Kobold is hit for 15 damage but still standing, and the weak secondary blow that follows through and hits the Ogre for 3 damage suddenly becomes his deathblow. This might seem strange to the fighter, since for all his life as a hero that secondary attack on a cleave has always been a piddly weak attack that is just a glancing blow on his follow through beyond the real target he attacked.




In this situation, the kobold should also be a minion.  A kobold slinger is a 1st-level monster; it should not be going up against a 10th-level party.  The DM should either make it a 9th-level minion (same XP value) or not even bother with it.


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## GoLu (Jul 16, 2008)

Ultimately, minions are just a tool the DM has that can help represent a certain type of fight scene.  If that kind of scene (the one where a bunch of faceless mooks with no plot protection go down in one hit) isn't what you're into, minions aren't going to be a particularly useful part of the DM toolkit.


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## Goumindong (Jul 16, 2008)

Regicide said:


> You do realize hazardous terrain is an isomorphism with the house cat, right? And yes, you can say the DM can decide how NPCs interact with NPCs all you want, but you can also say the DM can tell players to not bother rolling dice because he's just going to decide everything too. It's a simulation system, the fact that it breaks down at certain points and the DM has to hand wave is the problem we're talking about, not the solution.




1. I was not aware that house cats were burning walls of fire and ice and pure necrotic energy conjured from the very depths of hell and heights of heaven and the deep inner reserve of personal arcane energy by heroes on a quest to save the world. And/or Lava/pits/etc that would kill them anyway. My bad. 

2. No you cannot. See the rules are a method of conflict resolution between the players and the DM. The players naturally want their attacks to hit and the DM usually wants them to miss. So instead of everyone leaving the table in a hissy fit because nothing gets resolved, you roll dice to see what is resolved.

This mechanic is the core mechanic of all role playing games. You are playing a role and that role has limitations. In order to determine where those are and whether or not you suceed in your actions a random number generator is compared with bonuses against a target number.

DM's do not have arguments with themselves. Anything that is not in conflict with the PC's is there at the behest of the DM to do the DM's bidding so that the players can better roleplay. Its not a simulationist system, its never been a simulationist system, it will never be a simulationist system. Its a system that governs player/DM interaction not a system that covers DM/DM interaction.




> Waaaait, wait, wait. You're saying on one hand lower level NPCs are useless because they'll never hit so minions fix that problem, then on the other you say they're broken when the PCs have them with their "truely optimal build". You have to pick one, it's not both, it can't be both.



 There is a level of fudge in all systems. The very low level NPCs that a player had were more or less useless. The level -3 wizard they had tagging along was more or less really awesome.




> AGAIN, you're going to have to pick a side here, you can't argue both. You've gone to claim that torch bearers don't break 4E, then you claim any game with companions is broken. Sorry, buzzer.




A torchbearer isn't a companion. He is played by the DM, he dies when the DM says he dies, he is an entity in the game world for you to interact with. He is not a pet, companion, or cohort. He is exactly as strong and useful as is thematically apropriate for the DM because he is an NPC.



> Also claiming any game with pets etc. is broken because of it pretty much is claiming most games are broken since most games support them. A clearly incorrect claim.
> 
> I know nonsense like "exception based design" and "economy of action" sounds cool and technical and it's fun to say them, but it isn't, it's marketing.



1. Its not marketing, its an understanding haven been gleaned from studying games about what happens when there are wide divergences in the amount of actions players take.

E.G. Take every turn based AP based game ever(Arcanum, SPECIAL, etc etc). Unless there are very very very tight controls on how many APs characters get then the single best attribute in any game was the attribute that increased the number of AP you had to go around.

Ditto exception based design, except that instead of worrying about balance its worrying about people understanding it. If the game is nothing but exceptions with no core rule then no one will understand what is going on. No one will be able to make rational decisions about play, meta play will be more or less impossible. Now you aren't playing a game anymore(which is defined by those choices), you're guessing a game. There is a reason that nearly every game pays close attention to exceptions and economy of actions. _Its because its good game design_.

Pets/Cohorts/Companions are broken if they are not implemented as powers and require action on the part of the player to use each round. This is why nearly all the current summoning powers require sustaining, anything that makes more attacks requires another standard action, anything that moves requires a move action.

Its just that simple, you do not break the economy of actions and get away with it.



> Most games balance having companions by having a cost associated with them. Spending a feat when you're level 20 in 3.5E is a fairly small cost, getting a level 15 or so wizard ally from it (which you then use your epic diplomacy to make fanatically loyal) is probably not very balanced, but it has nothing to do with "economy of action." Giving druids companions was fine in 3.5E, but having one of them at level 1 being a trained war dog that is effectively as strong as level 2 creature wasn't. Again, economy of action isn't at fault there.



Yes it is. The companion would have to be as valuable as any other class ability, power, or feat. Which is to say not very useful at all. 

Most games balance companions laughibly. 3.5 is the perfect example. An companion at the begining of the game was terribly strong. An animal companion at the end of the game was more or less useless(iirc). A familiar was a liability nearly the entire game. A cohort was completely and utterly broken. There was no reasonable middle ground and there really never is in a multi-player game.

I suppose the one exception to that would be Diablo II and other action RPGs. But they play significantly differently are balanced as powers and their other powers are severely scaled back.

There is no way to do something like that in a turn based game, especially one like DnD.


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## Switchback (Jul 16, 2008)

GoLu said:


> If the kobold isn't an important part of the encounter, why not make it a minion as well?




It's an extreme example and you're probably right, since we have choices about kobolds we could use one that makes the situation less disconcerting.

I believe the stationary object + Minion combos are probably more worthwhile since concrete objects in the world have more definite governing rules.

If I am level 10, fighting Legion Hellguards (minion 11) next to a wooden cage (med size 20 HP) where one of my buddies is trapped and I want to explode it open and damage the guards at the same time, I can cast Thunderwave into the area and it might take 3 or 4 rounds to blast a darn wooden cage open, but yet the spell might be disposing 2 or 3 Hellguards every round in the process, killing them all before my friend is free. 

Now back at level 1, faced with a similar situation, the Wooden Cage would take roughly the same amount of rounds to blast apart, but if normal Orc (Raiders) were the guards, there is a good chance all of them would far outlast the cage being busted apart.

It doesn't make sense here that in 10 levels my power has grown drastically in relation to how fast I can kill supposedly tougher creatures (the Hellguards) but my power has grown in tiny contrast against the wooden cage. I am maybe doing only 2 more damage per Thunderwave to the object.

 When Minions are kept neatly segregated in encounters, it is easier to abstract the how’s and why’s of them. But when things get more complex, incongruence in the mechanic begins to show.


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## underfoot007 (Jul 16, 2008)

opppppssss


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## The Little Raven (Jul 16, 2008)

> Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the latter as the game-school. AD&D is assuredly an adherent of the latter school...As a realistic simulation of the realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure.... Those who desire to creature and populate imaginary worlds.... who seek relaxation with fascinating game, and who generally believe that games should be fun, not work, will hopefully find this system to their taste.




Despite my distaste for many of the man's game design philosophies and writing style, sometimes he said things that were pure golden truth.


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## GoLu (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> I believe the stationary object + Minion combos are probably more worthwhile since concrete objects in the world have more definite governing rules.




Ah, I see what you're getting at now.  And you're right.  This is one of the areas that abstract damage falls apart.

See, on a living creature, a high damage attack (or at least high damage compared to hit points) isn't necessarily "bigger" or more "forceful".  It might just be a perfectly targeted shot through the unarmored armpit and into the heart.  But against inanimate objects, that kind of excuse doesn't work so well.

There are similar problems with falling damage and, yes, minion hit points.  Or maybe it's non-minion hit points; those are the guys that shrug off sword wounds.  In any case, it's one of those things that works well enough in a game, but doesn't stand up well to close scrutiny.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 16, 2008)

Why does the housecat get a minimum damage of 1 when the PCs don't?

1d4 - 4 = 0 or less.  Minimum damage is 0.  Therefore, housecats never deal damage and can't kill anything with hit points.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 16, 2008)

To answer the OP: 

I think the best way to handle minions is to not treat them any differently than non-minions.

Example:
The room contains 3 ogres and 4 ogre minions. To the ogres, they are 7 ogres - they cannot tell that some are minions and some are not. If one ogre starts a fight with an ogre minion, it's an even fight (neither is a minion). In fact, there is no difference at all. 

In game application, this means the room really has 7 ogres (no minions) _until the players get there and start to fight them._

That's the critical part. They are not minions UNTIL they start fighting the player characacters.

Now the PCs arrive and they start fighting. 

First, Joe attacks an ogre and rolls a hit for 12 HP. The DM knows this is an ogre minion but neither Joe nor the ogre knows this fact. Because the ogre minion only has 1 HP, the DM describes Joe's attack as "Your sword cleaves deeply into the ogre's chest, rupturing internal organs. The ogre (minion) collapses in a fountain of blood." 

Next round, Joe attacks another ogre and rolls a hit for 12 HP. The DM knows this is not a minion, so he describes Joe's attack as "You slash viciously at the ogre's chest, but he twists away, avoiding most of the damage. Your sword scrapes across the ogre's chest drawing blood and leaving a little wound that won't be too hard for such a big ogre to shrug off."

What happened was that Joe made two virtually identical attacks at two virtually identical ogres. One ogre took the full brunt of the attack and died instantly. The other ogre dodged and avoided most of the damage.

But as for the sense of verisimilitude througout the world, those ogres were, for all intents and purposes, identical non-minion ogres right up until Joe's sword strokes landed.

As for the rest of those ogre's lives up until that point, they were just 7 ogres. When they marauded through the farmlands, the 4 minion ogres were not felled by the first farmer with a pitchfork. Not in the least. Because they were ogres then, and they were always ogres. 

The only difference between a minion and a real creature is how many times the cinematic heroes (the PCs) have to whack them to end their pathetic lives - right up until then they are all the same.


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## Dausuul (Jul 16, 2008)

Switchback said:


> It's an extreme example and you're probably right, since we have choices about kobolds we could use one that makes the situation less disconcerting.
> 
> I believe the stationary object + Minion combos are probably more worthwhile since concrete objects in the world have more definite governing rules.
> 
> ...




At 1st level, you're not very fast with your Thunderwave.  The orc raiders see you casting it, and they have time to brace themselves against the impact.  At 11th level, however, you can fire off a Thunderwave before the Hellguards have a chance to react.  You have also learned to focus the blast so that instead of just bludgeoning people to death, it shakes them like a lion with its prey, snapping their necks.

All this refined technique is lost on the wooden cage, which just sits there and takes the punishment either way.

(I will admit that the system doesn't hold up as well when inanimate objects and other such things are brought into it, but that's hardly new.  Inanimate objects have always been the toughest thing for the hit point system to explain.  The only way it ever worked was if you assumed hit points meant sheer physical toughness, and all the fluff about luck and rolling with blows and divine favor was so much blather.)


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## RigaMortus2 (Jul 17, 2008)

Also, the reason they have 1hp is so that effects like Temporary Hit points will stack on them.  In which case, you will then have to do some bookkeeping if an attack can't a minion out who has 1hp +x temp hps.


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## Hejdun (Jul 17, 2008)

My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.  Knowing that fact makes it hard for me to believe, for instance, that minions are ever a threat to anything.

Heck, it's possible (though maybe unlikely) that even if the minion wins init and goes first, it still can't kill the wizard before the wizard kills it.

And a 5th level cleric can insta-kill up to 9 minions, even the highest level ones.


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## amysrevenge (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.  Knowing that fact makes it hard for me to believe, for instance, that minions are ever a threat to anything.
> 
> Heck, it's possible (though maybe unlikely) that even if the minion wins init and goes first, it still can't kill the wizard before the wizard kills it.
> 
> And a 5th level cleric can insta-kill up to 9 minions, even the highest level ones.





You do still have to hit them, right?  Anyone more than 8 or 10 levels above you and you'll need a 20 just to hit...


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## The Little Raven (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.




If a level 1 wizard is facing off against level 30 minions, then the group needs a better DM, since it's not an appropriate encounter for that level.

Using common sense usually avoids issues with silliness.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.  Knowing that fact makes it hard for me to believe, for instance, that minions are ever a threat to anything.
> 
> Heck, it's possible (though maybe unlikely) that even if the minion wins init and goes first, it still can't kill the wizard before the wizard kills it.
> 
> And a 5th level cleric can insta-kill up to 9 minions, even the highest level ones.




*Exactly.* 

_If you completely ignore all the rules for how to use minions_, you're going to get some bloody strange results. One of those rules is: *don't use minions that aren't appropriate for the party level*. 

I've said this so many times I should put it in my sig:
*MINIONS ARE NOT A CREATURE TYPE. *

If you have something that would otherwise be used as a minion wandering around by itself, it's a normal creature with level-appropriate hit points and damage. If you then place it into a combat encounter where it and several of its peers need to fill the role of minions, _then_ it has one hit point and flat damage.

'Minion' is purely a mechanic for building encounters with large numbers of enemies, instead of throwing in a dozen level (party level-LargeNumber) creatures whom the PCs can safely ignore. The only reason we have minions in the MM is to allow a GM to build such encounters quickly, not to suggest that such creatures can be found wandering around the game world by themselves.


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## Kordeth (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.  Knowing that fact makes it hard for me to believe, for instance, that minions are ever a threat to anything.




Highly unlikely. A minion has comparable Defenses to other monsters of its level and takes no damage on a miss. The highest-level minion in the MM is the lich vestige (level 26), which has AC 40, Fort 36, Ref 40, Will 38. A first-level wizard only hits it on a natural 20. And in any case, this is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 1st level wizards up against 26th-level minions.



> Heck, it's possible (though maybe unlikely) that even if the minion wins init and goes first, it still can't kill the wizard before the wizard kills it.




This is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 1st level wizards up against 26th-level minions.



> And a 5th level cleric can insta-kill up to 9 minions, even the highest level ones.




This is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 5th-level clerics up against 26th-level minions.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> My biggest problem with minions is that a level 1 wizard can automatically insta-kill even the toughest minions in the MM.  Knowing that fact makes it hard for me to believe, for instance, that minions are ever a threat to anything.




Minions certainly do die easy.  But they also travel in packs and so the danger isn't from the 1 that the wizard killed, but the other 3.

Let's say a first level wizard goes first and kills one level appropriate minion per turn.  The minions will attack three times on their first round, twice on their second, and once on their third round.  Six attacks total, of which three hit.  That's maybe 12 or 15 damage on the wizard.

Oh, wait, opportunity attacks.  The first time the wizard casts, no one is nearby and a minion dies.  The second time, there are three pissed off minions nearby, for another three attacks.  The third time, there are two.  And the last has one soon-to-be-dead minion near the wizard.  That's another six attacks.  Except lets call it two because of clever shifting on the part of the wizard.  Of those two attacks, one hits.  So we're up to 16 or 20 damage.

That's a lot for a 1st level wizard to take.  Of course, I'm just approximating heavily here, but I hope it illustrates how a pack of minions might not be a total pushover even against a character with a auto-kill power.


Besides, if a DM is complaining that a first level wizard is one-shotting level 30 minions, the DM should really consider why the wizard is running into lone level 30 minions in the first place.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

Lurker37 said:


> I've said this so many times I should put it in my sig:
> *MINIONS ARE NOT A CREATURE TYPE. *




Except that there is a real creature named "Kobold Minion" in the MM, and other minion types likewise have their own unique names, and often lore. They are every bit a unique monster and different a monster as a Kobold Dragonshield is to a Kobold Wyrmpriest. Thus, you don't see Kobold Dragonshield Minion or Kobold Wyrmpriest Minion. A Minion is a new creature role just like artillery or controller. It is not a template that goes over other existing roles. 

Minions are *not* meant to be doubles of Brutes or Soldiers or other monster types, but only just with 1 HP.  If they were they could have very easily simply told you to use the Soldier, or Skirmisher, or Brute stat package, but assume however many you wanted only had 1 HP and reduce exp by a certain percentage. 

But instead, they made it a point to give Minions usually weaker armor or weapons or describe them as the most raggedly, or runty creatures of their race. And Mike Mearls further encouraged for the DM to play up the difference and make them recognizable in battle, so that we know they are weaker monsters not just standards that are heroically one shotted into oblivion. 

They are fodder, both for players and likely in their own clans or tribes. 

Another way we can tell that minions don't abstract into 'standard' or tougher creatures of their type is because we know the developers initially wanted them to have some actual small amount of Hit Points. Maybe 10 or 15 or so, maybe more for higher level minions. But the only reason they have 1 instead of a real number is to make bookeeping easier. That decision did not change that they are weaker creatures designed in 4e to replace the 'mook' or lower level filler from earlier editions. 

Now while it is true that the 1 HP is an abstraction, these creatures are *still* the weakest of their lot. When they return to their clans and are not in combat, they certainly do not die from falling over or being scratched by a cat, but they would get beat to a pulp in a royal rumble with Brutes or Soldiers, because while in theory have more than 1 HP, its not much more.

If they had stuck with the low HP number for minions I think it would have made many people much more clearly understand what they were going for with Minions. It's not that these creatures don't exist in the world, its just that they don't exactly have 1 HP like they do when they face players.



> *Minion:* Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo). Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly.



From the monster manual glossary. Being shock troops or cannon fodder to a standard creature lets us know that minions are weaker and subservient to even the standard creature, they are not themselves just standard creatures that for the fun of the game, have 1 HP. Their role in monster societies makes sense as equal to the role town guards or militia played in previous editions, in civilized lands. Now we have roles like that for monsters. 

It's not that minions don't exist in the world outside of combat, its just that they don't exist *with only 1 HP* outside of combat vs the players.


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## Hejdun (Jul 17, 2008)

Kordeth said:


> Highly unlikely. A minion has comparable Defenses to other monsters of its level and takes no damage on a miss. The highest-level minion in the MM is the lich vestige (level 26), which has AC 40, Fort 36, Ref 40, Will 38. A first-level wizard only hits it on a natural 20. And in any case, this is only an issue if the DM is dumb enough to put 1st level wizards up against 26th-level minions.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




There are a lot of abilities that automatically cause damage.  Cloud of Daggers, Cleave, and Consecrated Ground just to name a few that come to mind.  All of those will insta-kill most minions in one round because they do damage automatically without needing to hit and can never "miss".

Given how insanely easy it is to kill minions, why wouldn't an adventuring party hire a handful of level 1 wizards to follow them around to handle the minions they might encounter?  The only real answer is "the DM wouldn't let that happen."

If you think about it, minions were created to easily give the bad guys very cheap actions, while summoned creatures and animal companions were cut to prevent the good guys from getting cheap actions.  The combat system is built upon this faulty premise.  That faulty premise can be exposed immediately without even trying by finding a way to give the good guys a few extra actions, and combine it with the fact that killing a minion is child's play; it's the work of a 1st level at will attack.

The way I play, I want the things I do to make sense.  I want internal consistency.  Level 24 minions that can be killed by any average Joe Wizard right out of Adventuring Academy without breaking a sweat breaks internal consistency.  In fact it shatters it into microscopic pieces.

Heck, it doesn't even have to be a 1st level wizard.  It could be 20 militia members with throwing knives.  Between them they'll get about 1 critical hit a round, which will kill one minion.

I think Wizards went too far with this one.  I'm OK with the idea that some monsters are very weak compared to other level appropriate monsters.  But making all minions have 1 hit point is just too ridiculous.

I guess my objections can be boiled down to one question:

Why shouldn't an adventuring party hire a bunch of 1st level wizards for the express purpose of minion killing?

It's win-win, the wizards very easily gain levels and the party gets to save their actions killing actual threats, thereby vastly increasing their survivability.  If a few die, Raise Dead is chump change to a high level party.


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## DandD (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> Why shouldn't an adventuring party hire a bunch of 1st level wizards for the express purpose of minion killing?



Because the adventurers don't know if those monsters are minions. Only the players know that. And your characters only know this too if you metagame and can't separate character-knowledge from player-knowledge. 


> It's win-win, the wizards very easily gain levels and the party gets to save their actions killing actual threats, thereby vastly increasing their survivability.  If a few die, Raise Dead is chump change to a high level party.



If you're playing in a Order-of-the-stick-campaign world, where you treat game rules as physical laws of the world with all the absurdity that arises, go for it, and metagame the crap out of D&D 3.X and 4.0. 
A game master with normal common sense would make the wizards instant-die to the higher-level minions, because the level 1-wizard NPCs don't matter in the game. 
If you really want to play out armies against armies, then I rather suggest you go play Warhammer Fantasy Battle.


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## The Little Raven (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> Given how insanely easy it is to kill minions, why wouldn't an adventuring party hire a handful of level 1 wizards to follow them around to handle the minions they might encounter?




1. Because heroes aren't pansies that hire schoolchildren to do their dirty work for them, and because said high-level minion can pulp said Wizard in one hit. The game assumes that you're going to play a hero that will perform deeds, not sit back and collect the reward while some NPC kid does all the work for you.

2. Minion is a meta-game construct, not a factor of the game-world laws of reality. It's an abstraction for players and DMs, not a fact for characters.

3. This ain't a simulation game, and was never intended to be one.



> If you think about it, minions were created to easily give the bad guys very cheap actions, while summoned creatures and animal companions were cut to prevent the good guys from getting cheap actions.




Uh, no. Minions were created to allow for encounters in which creatures are a threat to your health, but have a glass jaw. Summon-type stuff was removed because it effectively multiplied the amount of actions a single player received by the (amount of summons + 1). Having one player take two, three, or even four times the amount of actions and game time as others is part of the whole "20 minutes of fun in four hours of play" problem.



> I want internal consistency.




There is internal consistency. A minion is a class of monster that dies when it takes 1 damage. Monsters are designed to be encounter challenges for characters of the appropriate level. No inconsistency present there.

Is it simulation you are after?


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

I'd say that if the players do hire a bunch of lesser wizards to help them out in a dungeon, then the wizards become minions too (and since monsters lose most of their powers when they convert to minion status, the wizards would too and would just have basic ranged attacks).


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## Hejdun (Jul 17, 2008)

DandD said:


> Because the adventurers don't know if those monsters are minions. Only the players know that. And your characters only know this too if you metagame and can't separate character-knowledge from player-knowledge.




Except that it's already been stated that players are supposed to know which monsters are minions.



DandD said:


> If you're playing in a Order-of-the-stick-campaign world, where you treat game rules as physical laws of the world with all the absurdity that arises, go for it, and metagame the crap out of D&D 3.X and 4.0.




Nice straw man.  Your argument might make sense if I was actually making some sort of absurd munchkiny argument, like "the rules never mention anything about gravity, therefore it doesn't exist."

Instead I'm just using one, level 1 at-will power as it is intended to be used.  I'm not abusing anything at all.  Nothing I'm arguing is opposed to the intention of the rules in any way.



DandD said:


> A game master with normal common sense would make the wizards instant-die to the higher-level minions, because the level 1-wizard NPCs don't matter in the game.




Except that the highest level minion, the level 26 Lich Vestige, can't even kill a level 1 wizard in one hit.  It can do 15 necrotic damage with Shadow Ray, and it will do 5 necrotic damage if the wizard is within 2 squares.  That's 20 damage; a wizard with any sort of above average Con will survive that.



DandD said:


> If you really want to play out armies against armies, then I rather suggest you go play Warhammer Fantasy Battle.




Why have rules if you're just going to ignore them?  Why even bother with the dice, and classes, and powers?

I'd argue that you can have the "feel" of minions and ditch about 95% of the absurdity by just having minions have about 10% of the hit points of their non-minion counterparts.  It's still a little sketchy, but it's significantly less sketchy than all minions having 1 hp.

Perhaps 4e doesn't support simulationism at all.  I'd argue that 3.5e does a decent job of simulationism.  Then I would argue that switching from 3.5e to 4e results in a net decrease in gaming experience.  But that strays away from my main point, which can be summarized as *1 HP minions are unnecessary and silly.*

If you have to change all the rules for everything else just to make the minion rules "fit," then perhaps it's the minion rule that needs fixing.


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

FadedC said:


> I'd say that if the players do hire a bunch of lesser wizards to help them out in a dungeon, then the wizards become minions too (and since monsters lose most of their powers when they convert to minion status, the wizards would too and would just have basic ranged attacks).




They would also be NPCs, and because of such would be fully under DM control and their actions would be handled by DM fiat more or less.


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## Victoly (Jul 17, 2008)

Personally I like to think of minions - from a design perspective - as a single monster that takes four hits to kill, gets four attacks per round, and occupies four different squares on the board.  Just my two cents worth.


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> Why have rules if you're just going to ignore them? Why even bother with the dice, and classes, and powers?
> 
> I'd argue that you can have the "feel" of minions and ditch about 95% of the absurdity by just having minions have about 10% of the hit points of their non-minion counterparts. It's still a little sketchy, but it's significantly less sketchy than all minions having 1 hp.
> 
> If you have to change all the rules for everything else just to make the minion rules "fit," then perhaps it's the minion rule that needs fixing.




In their article on minions they actually discussed doing the 10% hp thing (or something similar). They found that the problem was then the minion sometimes survived a hit and you'd have to keep track of their hit poitns individually. This defeated their whole purpose and there just wasn't any beneifit to it.

As for the rules, my understanding of the rules....or at least the DMing guidlines is that minions only exist when they are encountered by players with a similar level as a minion. We don't worry how lvl 28 minions interact with lvl 1 pc wizards, because lvl 1 pc wizards are never supposed to interact with lvl 28 minions. And if the players somehow manage to hire a wizard or 2 to help them, the DM chooses their stats (which are unlikely to be PC stats).


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## DandD (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> Except that it's already been stated that *players *are supposed to know which monsters are minions.



Exactly. The *players*. Now you understand. And I'm sure that you know the difference between the *players*, and their *characters*. 


> Nice straw man.  Your argument might make sense if I was actually making some sort of absurd munchkiny argument, like "the rules never mention anything about gravity, therefore it doesn't exist."



It's totally cool of you to act as if you hadn't see the intent of my message, critisizing you for using meta-game knowledge. But hey, if that doesn't bother you, no problem.  


> Instead I'm just using one, level 1 at-will power as it is intended to be used.  I'm not abusing anything at all.  Nothing I'm arguing is opposed to the intention of the rules in any way.



Like I said, if you can't see what I'm really saying, then don't bother with it. 


> Except that the highest level minion, the level 26 Lich Vestige, can't even kill a level 1 wizard in one hit.  It can do 15 necrotic damage with Shadow Ray, and it will do 5 necrotic damage if the wizard is within 2 squares.  That's 20 damage; a wizard with any sort of above average Con will survive that.



And the NPC-wizard is just that: A NPC who dies at the whim of the gamemaster, if it suits him, because he's not the game character of any other player. 


> Why have rules if you're just going to ignore them?  Why even bother with the dice, and classes, and powers?



Why bother intentionally misreading the rules like you do? You absolutely know that minions aren't meant to be used in such cases, and that this game is for player characters to bash monsters with their own rules. 


> I'd argue that you can have the "feel" of minions and ditch about 95% of the absurdity by just having minions have about 10% of the hit points of their non-minion counterparts.  It's still a little sketchy, but it's significantly less sketchy than all minions having 1 hp.



You can do it if you want, as long as you're happy with the additional paperwork. Meanwhile, everybody else who uses minions correctly will have fun with them. 


> Perhaps 4e doesn't support simulationism at all.  I'd argue that 3.5e does a decent job of simulationism.



It does a very bad one, leading the specific rules dealing with it to be ridiculized many times in "Order of the Stick". 


> Then I would argue that switching from 3.5e to 4e results in a net decrease in gaming experience.



Seeing as many others on the ENWorld Message boards have already stated how much more they like D&D 4th edition, this claim only is true for a minority.  


> But that strays away from my main point, which can be summarized as *1 HP minions are unnecessary and silly.*



Then don't use them, and use normal monsters with far more hitpoints that you have to keep track of, while adjusting the AC, attack bonus, and defenses for your non-minions.


> If you have to change all the rules for everything else just to make the minion rules "fit," then perhaps it's the minion rule that needs fixing.



Or perhaps you can't do it. Other gamemasters can use them in the correct way, and have fun with it. And their players have fun with it. 

Look up Mourn's post too, while you're at it.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Hejdun said:


> Instead I'm just using one, level 1 at-will power as it is intended to be used.  I'm not abusing anything at all.  Nothing I'm arguing is opposed to the intention of the rules in any way.



I doubt hiring a pack of first level wizards to follow you around is "as it is intended to be used."  Especially with the DMG indicating that people with PC classes are rare and special and definately not the norm.

Besides, they would just get eaten by the first non-minions to cross your path.



Hejdun said:


> Perhaps 4e doesn't support simulationism at all.  I'd argue that 3.5e does a decent job of simulationism.  Then I would argue that switching from 3.5e to 4e results in a net decrease in gaming experience.  But that strays away from my main point, which can be summarized as *1 HP minions are unnecessary and silly.*



Are you correlating simulationism with gaming experience?


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## Regicide (Jul 17, 2008)

DandD said:


> Because the adventurers don't know if those monsters are minions. Only the players know that. And your characters only know this too if you metagame and can't separate character-knowledge from player-knowledge.




  The characters would have to be intergalactically stupid to not be able to figure out after their billionth fight that they pretty often have a large groups of opponents who consistently die at the drop of a hat.  Minions are a fact of life for the 4E character, it makes perfect sense that they'll exploit it.

  "Oh look, we're outnumbered again, the sensible thing would be to run."
  "Nah, thats why we brought the wizard alone."
  "Foosh."
  "Oh yeah, just like every other fight.  Now it's 5 on 3, CHARGE!"


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## DandD (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> The characters would have to be intergalactically stupid to not be able to figure out after their billionth fight that they pretty often have a large groups of opponents who consistently die at the drop of a hat.  Minions are a fact of life for the 4E character, it makes perfect sense that they'll exploit it.



Once more, somebody who thinks that D&D 4th edition tries to fall into the same simulationist-hole that D&D 3.X headed to. 

Gesh, who else hasn't understood that D&D 4th edition rules have nothing to do with simulationism at all? 
Is anybody else trying to purposefully misinterpret the rules and then complain about them? 


> "Oh look, we're outnumbered again, the sensible thing would be to run."
> "Nah, thats why we brought the wizard alone."
> "Foosh."
> "Oh yeah, just like every other fight.  Now it's 5 on 3, CHARGE!"



What? Do you mean "alone" or "along"?


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## Syrsuro (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> The characters would have to be intergalactically stupid to not be able to figure out after their billionth fight that they pretty often have a large groups of opponents who consistently die at the drop of a hat. Minions are a fact of life for the 4E character, it makes perfect sense that they'll exploit it.
> 
> "Oh look, we're outnumbered again, the sensible thing would be to run."
> "Nah, thats why we brought the wizard alone."
> ...





And that is part of my problem with them.  Players are well aware when they are fighting a group of minions and will deal with them accordingly.    

Especially if they have a dragonborn (esp. with enlarged breath) who can just stand up and puff many of them out of existance (and even if they don't, wizards with scorching burst can get clear them almost as fast).

In other words, my major objection is that they just die too quickly.  Sure - they should die fast, but not so fast as to be irrelevant.  When a dozen minions charge the party and are all dead before they get a chance to strike (barring ambushes and the like - and every encounter can't be a minion ambush) -- they are not improving the game, they are detracting.  Players killing minions before they can even get into position to act is no more heroic then an adult picking on gradeschoolers.  

Which is why I am leaning towards a small change (essentially minions occasionally are blooded rather than being killed by attacks, giving them a chance to act), as suggested here:  http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=236228

Carl


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

*re*



Switchback said:


> HP in D&D has long since been explained as an abstraction. Yet there was always something more definite in damage it seemed. A critical hit was a massive blow, or a fireball that did 50 damage was laying waste on a grand scale, regardless of how enemies abstracted their health. Players had a way to judge that which felt solid.
> 
> Now in 4e, Minions cause damage to be an equal abstraction. Especially dealing with Minions at high level. It is entirely understandable that a 20th level character could one-shot a high level minion, because he is putting out just that much damage. When the Fighter smacks one down for 20 damage the mechanic seems entirely satisfying and fine. Yet when the wizard uses his staff to take an opportunity attack on one, and nicks him for 3 damage and the Angel of Valor Veteran (level 16) collapses at that deathblow, it can be a little more head-scratching.
> 
> But there is not much to be done for it. It adds something very useful in the DM's toolbox, and they can be fun for players. But it should not be lost that the mechanic was somewhat indebted to easy bookkeeping more than any other concern.





I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weapon. So he could go on a melee beatdown spree, which is kind of not cool to imagine. Your two-handed sword wielding fighter wandering about hacking down minions is believable, the robe wearing wizard doing the same is one of those images that makes you laugh.

But most players won't play that way. So hopefully won't come up too often.


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## amysrevenge (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> When a dozen minions charge the party and are all dead before they get a chance to strike (barring ambushes and the like - and every encounter can't be a minion ambush) -- they are not improving the game, they are detracting.




If the PC with the Area attack is getting a dozen hits out of a dozen attack rolls, either he's using loaded dice, or the encounter was not built properly.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weapon. So he could go on a melee beatdown spree, which is kind of not cool to imagine. Your two-handed sword wielding fighter wandering about hacking down minions is believable, the robe wearing wizard doing the same is one of those images that makes you laugh.
> 
> But most players won't play that way. So hopefully won't come up too often.




If we're talking melee only, I'm pretty sure the fighter will kill more minions in a twenty round period, and take less damage in the process.


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## Regicide (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> In other words, my major objection is that they just die too quickly.  Sure - they should die fast, but not so fast as to be irrelevant.  When a dozen minions charge the party and are all dead before they get a chance to strike (barring ambushes and the like - and every encounter can't be a minion ambush) -- they are not improving the game, they are detracting.  Players killing minions before they can even get into position to act is no more heroic then an adult picking on gradeschoolers.




  And when the party starts getting large area encounter powers that clear out a lot of minions at once you need to toss even MORE minions at the party so they're not completely irrelevant until the party gets surprised and the minion horde surrounds the wizard and beats him to death before his initiative even comes up.


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> And when the party starts getting large area encounter powers that clear out a lot of minions at once you need to toss even MORE minions at the party so they're not completely irrelevant until the party gets surprised and the minion horde surrounds the wizard and beats him to death before his initiative even comes up.




Good things wizards aren't quite that easy to kill then, as you've conceded to in the other thread.


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## Syrsuro (Jul 17, 2008)

While contemplating minion rules, I suddenly recalled that AD&D had a 'minion' mechanic as well.  It clearly operated by different rules, but it had the same goal - allowing the party to 'mow through' low level opponents.

Of course, many people didn't use this rule in 1st ed, and it was made optional in 2nd ed.  But it was there (page 25, 1st AD&D PHB):



> This excludes melee combat with monsters of less than one hit die (d8) and non-exceptional (0 level) humans and semi-humans, i.e. all creatures with less than one eight-sided hit die.  All of these creatures entitle a fighter to attack once for each of his or her experience levels.




So the goal of a minion is not a new one for D&D.  And I definately prefer the mechanic of 4E to that of AD&D.  I'm just not sure they are living up to the goals of keeping' a PC occupied for one turn, hav[ing sufficient defenses, and having a meaningful attack (as stated in the "minion except" article.

Carl


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> The characters would have to be intergalactically stupid to not be able to figure out after their billionth fight that they pretty often have a large groups of opponents who consistently die at the drop of a hat.  Minions are a fact of life for the 4E character, it makes perfect sense that they'll exploit it.
> 
> "Oh look, we're outnumbered again, the sensible thing would be to run."
> "Nah, thats why we brought the wizard alone."
> ...




Yea, heroes would have to be intergalactically stupid to not realize that they are freaking heroes. A level 20 fighter is a human that goes toe to toe with DEMONS for goodness sake(heck, you do that earlier).

Of course he is going to cut through minions like butter, the entire purpose is so that the game mechanics can support players being able to cut through enemies like butter and still be challenged.

Back in the day, if you lined up 1000 low level demons and a balor the level 20 PCs would be like "whatever" and go kill the balor. Now, when there are 1000 minions around a balor you are out of luck.Why? Because minions actually present a challenge. They give 1/4 exp so a fight with 20 minions is about the same as a fight with 5 enemies.

Except the minions will be doing a whole lot more damage on their turns.



Celtavian said:


> I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weaponn.



Uhhh. Yea, not even close. I would love to see you justify that one.


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## Dausuul (Jul 17, 2008)

(deleted)


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## Dausuul (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> And that is part of my problem with them.  Players are well aware when they are fighting a group of minions and will deal with them accordingly.
> 
> Especially if they have a dragonborn (esp. with enlarged breath) who can just stand up and puff many of them out of existance (and even if they don't, wizards with scorching burst can get clear them almost as fast).
> 
> ...




If that's how it plays out for you.  I have not had such a problem.  My PCs can certainly cut through minions pretty fast (when they aren't suffering the Curse of the Vengeful Dice Gods, which seems to happen a lot lately - I've never seen so many natural 1s and 2s), but not so fast as to make the minions useless.

Remember that every round a character spends blasting minions is a round not spent blasting the big guy.  And you can still miss minions.  And _scorching burst_ isn't that big an area - in my experience, it's unusual to be in a position to hit more than two targets with it.



Hejdun said:


> Instead I'm just using one, level 1 at-will power as it is intended to be used.




It is not intended to be used by a 1st-level character against a 26th-level minion.


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## Syrsuro (Jul 17, 2008)

amysrevenge said:


> If the PC with the Area attack is getting a dozen hits out of a dozen attack rolls, either he's using loaded dice, or the encounter was not built properly.





Well - yes.  If taken that literally.  But what if that one PC has a friend.  

To take Zombies as an example (either Rotters from the MM or Pack Zombies from Treasure of Talon Pass; and it has been pointed out elsewhere that zombies make poor minions) - with their _best_ defense of 13/14, and a reflex defense of 9/10, you are typically going to take out 3/4th of them with any attack - so after two area attacks (usually versus reflex) you are going to have only 1 in 16 (<1 out of a dozen) surviving.

So lets consider Kobolds instead.  Now we have a reflex of 13, so your first levels dragonborn and wizard are going to kill half of them per attack.  Better, but the odds of any surviving to reach the PCs is still pretty slim.  Barring an ambush, 3/4ths are dead before they reach the party.  And when they do, those members of the party who won initiative will have delayed an attack until they get into range and will kill (statistically) half of the remaining before they get into range.  Which means that 7/8ths of any group of minions will die before they can reach that party, with only the expenditure of a dragonborn breath (encounter, pretty much only good for minions) and a few at wills.  And the one or two remaining from the original dozen get one attack before they die.

If they minions can't reach the party and attack first, they will never get an attack.  

So yes, the alternative (aside from starting all encounters with a zerg rush, or making all minions ranged attackers) is to go in and manually edit all minions to get their initial survival rate up to where it ought to be.  But is that _really_ any different than (for example) redefining the effect of a hit so that some survive and are bloodied?  Either you follow the RAW and nearly all die to two area blasts or you don't and you manipulate the rules/numbers to get the survival rate you want.

That said - I do agree that that these are _not_ well built encounters.  But I think that they are _typically _built encounters.  Any encounter that bunches minions together (as, for example, was done with every minion encounter in Treasure of Talon Pass) is bad encounter design.  And this doesn't necessarily mean they have to be a mass at the start of combat - the simple need to close with the party (especially when combined with non-minions that hold back and don't attack during that first round) is usually sufficient to crowd them adequately unless you put each minion on its own initiative - in which case you've undone any potential decrease in bookkeeping you gained from the minion mechanic.  

Only when the minions are scattered amongst non-minions so that you can only target one or two with an area attack are they useful.  But that doesn't seem to really fit how most people see/use them.

Carl


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## Runestar (Jul 17, 2008)

How readily are players supposed to be able to recognize minions for what they are? For example, is there any chance a fighter might say, be suckered into using a key encounter or daily power on a minion because he mistook it for a normal foe? Or are players supposed to know which are minions and possess perfect knowledge with regards to how best to take them down?

If a 1st lv rogue went nova and dealt a blow dealing 30 damage to a minion, then it won't really matter if it had 1 hp or 29 hp then, would it.


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## Scud.NZ (Jul 17, 2008)

Lurker37 said:


> *Im*possible encounter. The minion encounter mechanic is to replace one monster with four - not to have a one-hit wonder at large in the world! Such misuse of minions is going to result in some rather silly situations. And what does making this tax collector a credible but frail combatant add to the game? And what fun is a trivially-dispatched major villain?
> 
> For this encounter, I'd just make the tax gatherer a noncombatant NPC.




What's a noncombatant NPC? I'm not allowed to stab the guy because he's a noncombatant...or Swiss? If he's in the encounter then he's a target.

Granted, one of the things about such a villain is that he can be "faceless" and not there. Imagine the shock when the PC's realise that the villain giving them such grief is a "normal" man.

OK, there might be other ways to deal with him; discredit the man, fake evidence against him, and so forth. However, the option still has to be there to commit violence upon his person. 

Whatever way the PC's deal with him there are going to be consequences to their actions. It might be found out that they faked evidence against him, they might be charged with his murder, he will want to seek revenge and may call upon other individuals to do so. He might call upon his merchant friends who will refuse to do business with the PC's. Power isn't just the pointy end of the sword.

However, from the point of view of awarding XP, I agree that the Minion mechanism doesn't work/apply . Myself, I'd make the defeat of the troublesome tax collector a Quest Objective, and reward it accordingly.


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

GoLu said:


> If we're talking melee only, I'm pretty sure the fighter will kill more minions in a twenty round period, and take less damage in the process.




True. 

And given that the wizard has to rely on basic melee attacks with a much lower str, his overall chance to hit is much lower. But he can still smack an epic level demon minion with his staff and kill it the same as a suped up fighter with a huge str slamming into a demon minion. That is quite a strange idea to reconcile as far as imagining it.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> > *Minion:* Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo). Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Your quote proves my point. Or would you like to explain how, in character, a particular Kobold is "designed to fill out an encounter"?

It's an encounter design concept, not a world simulation one.


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

*re*



Runestar said:


> How readily are players supposed to be able to recognize minions for what they are? For example, is there any chance a fighter might say, be suckered into using a key encounter or daily power on a minion because he mistook it for a normal foe? Or are players supposed to know which are minions and possess perfect knowledge with regards to how best to take them down?
> 
> If a 1st lv rogue went nova and dealt a blow dealing 30 damage to a minion, then it won't really matter if it had 1 hp or 29 hp then, would it.




A group of players will recognize minions as a weaker creature amongst the masses theoretically. From a metagame standpoint my players recognize minions as soon as the drop the first the minion. No other creature in the game dies like a minion.

Our warlord got a crit hit with this daily encounter and didn't drop a regular enemy with one hit. Our wizard launched an at will scorching blast on a couple of human rabble, they died. They immediately knew everyone one that looked like human rabble was most likely a minion.

So they'll pick up on it pretty quickly from both a metagame and in-game point of view.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 17, 2008)

Scud.NZ said:


> What's a noncombatant NPC?




One with no fighting skills. Never picked up a weapon or strapped on armour. Doesn't have divine investment or arcane power. Just a weedy little clerk with delusions of grandeur. Easy to hit, easy to kill. Except, in this case it's probably a _really, really_ bad idea. ( Killing tax collectors was a capital offence back in the day. )

Look at the NPCs in the sample town in the DMG. Most of them do not have combat blocks.


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## Dausuul (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> Well - yes.  If taken that literally.  But what if that one PC has a friend.
> 
> To take Zombies as an example (either Rotters from the MM or Pack Zombies from Treasure of Talon Pass; and it has been pointed out elsewhere that zombies make poor minions) - with their _best_ defense of 13/14, and a reflex defense of 9/10, you are typically going to take out 3/4th of them with any attack - so after two area attacks (usually versus reflex) you are going to have only 1 in 16 (<1 out of a dozen) surviving.
> 
> So lets consider Kobolds instead.  Now we have a reflex of 13, so your first levels dragonborn and wizard are going to kill half of them per attack.  Better, but the odds of any surviving to reach the PCs is still pretty slim.  Barring an ambush, 3/4ths are dead before they reach the party.  And when they do, those members of the party who won initiative will have delayed an attack until they get into range and will kill (statistically) half of the remaining before they get into range.  Which means that 7/8ths of any group of minions will die before they can reach that party, with only the expenditure of a dragonborn breath (encounter, pretty much only good for minions) and a few at wills.  And the one or two remaining from the original dozen get one attack before they die.




Your math here assumes that the PCs can hit all of the minions with each area attack, which is wildly untrue.  My experience is that a burst 1 (blast 3) will typically encompass two minions, and a burst 2 (blast 5) will encompass three, sometimes four.  Believe me, the minions survive to reach the party.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weapon. So he could go on a melee beatdown spree, which is kind of not cool to imagine. Your two-handed sword wielding fighter wandering about hacking down minions is believable, the robe wearing wizard doing the same is one of those images that makes you laugh.
> 
> But most players won't play that way. So hopefully won't come up too often.




Like this?


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## jimtillman (Jul 17, 2008)

Kingskin said:


> Agreed, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got spanked for it. Fair enough. My problem is with the idea that 4th Ed forces you to have a certain party composition which I'm not keen on and the mooks symptomatic of this.
> I like the idea of a bunch of players getting together and creating whatever group of characters they want and then the GM running a game for them. It's why I've never gone in for pre-written adventures; they can't really take into account the group you've got and I find it less work to write it myself than to buy one and then alter it to fit. Looking at my collection, pretty much every game can easily support unorthodox groups but I've found that 4th Ed is built from the ground up on the assumption you've got 4-5 players and they're each taking one particular role. If you've only got two players (as our 4th Ed group had) then you're at a severe disadvantage and I can't think of any other game that suffers this same problem. Sure, you can get around it but in the end we found it was more hassle than it was worth and canned it after three sessions. I'm kind of dissapointed with that, I was really looking forward to 4th Ed; the lack of Vancian magic and the idea of mooks had me really interested but it just fell flat for the entire group. Kind of sad. But now we're playing cops in Chicago in Kult so things are looking up.




3.x has this exact issue also if using a premade.
if your playing 2 characters then the dm is better off making his own campaign and structering the fight for those 2.
it is no diffrent then 3.x in this regard


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## jimtillman (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> Thats what NPCs are there for, not minions. Minions are there to promote players taking area of effect classes and abilities and reward them with massive amounts of free XP for doing so.
> 
> The idea of removing level/HD as a measure of an NPC's survivability by making a "class" of opponent who have 1 HP regardless of level has caused more problems than it will ever solve as shown by these threads. I don't even want to think about what conceptual contortions will need to be gone through in order to add pets, companions and cohorts to the game now. Minions not haveing a relevant HP stat is already cause headaches with terrain that causes damage. I mean, if the party's torch bearer uses caltrops those won't kill a minion, but if the party's ranger drops some in front of himself minions explode on contact... UUUUUUGH.
> 
> 3.5E had mob rules, I'm not sure if they were from Dragon, but variants showed up in some of the Dungeon adventure paths I think like Shackled City. Anyway, they weren't perfect, but I far prefer them to the minion rules.




how is it free xp? minions can actually kill party members


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## CountPopeula (Jul 17, 2008)

jimtillman said:


> how is it free xp? minions can actually kill party members




It's not, unless they're very very lucky. Although I seem to remember skill challenges were free XP before they were too hard to complete, too.

The problem isn't the game, it's people trying find things about it to complain about. Have you seen some of the "look at what customer service said about X" threads? They're insane minutia for the most part. I'm convinced a lot of people just want to be the person who proved that X mechanic they don't like is broken, so they can tell everyone they found 4e's "bag of rats." Just like the obstinate player who would rather be playing Runequest so he sets out to make everyone miserable and refuses to concede a point.

We come at this from every angle and explained how minions are a credible threat, and how they're not meant to be examined singly, but in a group of at least four. And all we've heard back is "but it's so dumb, they only have 1 hit point."

Some people just get off on ruining everyone else's good time.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

Lurker37 said:


> Your quote proves my point. Or would you like to explain how, in character, a particular Kobold is "designed to fill out an encounter"?
> 
> It's an encounter design concept, not a world simulation one.




That means what exactly in relation to the fact that Minions exist in the game world outside of combat? Which is the point I am making.

I don't think we are in disagreement about the way Minions should generally be used in encounters. However, the way you suggested playing sort of fast and loose with minions or doing bait and switches with other related monster types, would be suspect at the least, and downright dishonest or unworkable in some cases.

I.e. It might indeed be possible to catch a Legion Devil on a errand or messenger mission and if it were engaged, there is simply no way to morph it into anything other than it is, because *all* Legion Devils are minions. There is no such thing as a standard version and they look entirely different physically than other demons. 

Likewise, if players chased a minion out of one battle and into a building where it hid, such that it triggered a entirely new encounter, that creature should remain a minion when it is found and the new battle is begun, regardless if the players knew it was one beforehand. The DM knew and should retain consistency and  regard for what these separate monsters roles are in the world.


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## icarusfallz (Jul 17, 2008)

Ultimately, minions are what they are.  Cannon fodder.  If you want tougher minions, have a Leader type hit them with some Temporary HP.  Guess what, they will probably STILL fall in one hit.  

The WHOLE point is to have lots of fun stuff to kill without a lot of bookkeeping.  Kobold nests SWARM with generic little creeps, out of which crawl just a few Wyrmpriests and Dragonshields.  Remember when they just had half a hit die?  I do, and this is just the same thing.  It's all just flavor.  

Remember that the guides are just that, guides.  They are toolboxes that we can use to build things.  Just because it is LEGAL to burn your flag doesn't mean that I am suggesting that you DO so.  (Ref. Bill Hicks...  look it up, you'll be very happy or very offended.  God I loved that man.)

So can we put this one to bed now, and get on to discussing something interesting?  Like say....  Dragonboobs?

Note, this post is meant in good humor.  I love ya all, even those of you who annoy the HELL out of me, because you make me a better gamewr in general and a better DM in specific.  Thanks.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 17, 2008)

Obryn said:


> I don't think it works that way.
> 
> A "minion" isn't a thing that exists, independent of the PCs, anywhere in the world.  There are no free-roaming minions wandering around cities - "minion" is just a description of how the NPC or creature interacts with the PCs in combat.  That's all.  Of _course_ he doesn't know he's a minion.  His bodyguards also don't know they're "brutes."
> 
> ...




My earlier example of the housecat was just that, one example of how pretty much anything in the game world that can do 1 point of damage could spring up in any session and really have your minions on the spot. I'd just like to have it sorted beforehand.

This is actually my main question now. "Do minions only have 1 HP when dealing directly with PC's, or the entire game world? It's an important question. If the answer is 'yes' then again, is this just an assumption or is this RAW? I haven't seen it. If the answer is 'no' then consider other situations like the following.

A good point was brought up about terrain and damage.

Let's say you have another perfectly reasonable situation.

The PC's are say, in the middle of a forest, on a hill (for no particular reason just to help with description).

Running to the PC's, are some townsfolk being chased by demonic minions, screaming 'save us' as they might do.

Between the PC's and the townsfolk are... wait for it... 'THORNY BRAMBLES'!!! Oh noes!

The townsfolk, knowing they'll get scratched and take some damage through the 15 feet of brambles (1 hit point damage per 5 feet while running, no attack roll) do so anyway, because they know they'd rather face some thorns off a bramble bush than demonic minions from the nine hells.

The townsfolk push through, albeit a bit scratched up. The PC's ready themselves for the demonic minions... who either cower at the sight of that undergrowth of minion death, or wade their way through, being destroyed by those damn bushes yet again! 

In fact, if you have a battlefield where minions are part of your enemies arsenal, all you have to do is surround your troops with terrain that provides one point of damage with no attack roll and you've pretty much got in incredible advantage.

Now keep in mind, if you take the approach that 'minions are only minions when interacting with the PC's' then ok, you could almost follow that line of reasoning and get away with it but you'd have to make exceptions to this rule, and exactly how are you supposed to deal with it if you take that line? For example, in the brambles above, do you kill them off? Do you say the brambles just don't do any damage at all? If so, why? Isn't it now unfair that the PC's themselves would take damage walking through but the minions don't? 

Ok go RAW and you have a very silly situation. Demonic minions can't chase your average barkeep through damaging terrain of any sort that does automatic damage. Adjust the rules on the fly and you have another problem with consistency. A 20th level minion running through brambles doesn't take damage but PC's do. Maybe not such a big deal but still slightly unfair and could have other consequences. I've got no real issues with explaining things away and roleplaying combat situations out like this for them to make sense, but RAW, the fact is, 1 HP minions unfortunately don't make sense in some situations. If I'm wrong, so be it, but if you're talking about it as RAW then please show me where it's printed. I'm sure most of us here can explain things away at the gametable, but it's the RAW that has me confused.


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## Mengu (Jul 17, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> This is actually my main question now. "Do minions only have 1 HP when dealing directly with PC's, or the entire game world?




The minions are NPC's that are interacting with the world. So, you get to decide what happens when they run through brambles, just like when you decided the common folk who also are minions, were scrached up but weren't killed by the brambles.

When designing an encounter, and making rules for terrain, you can easily decide, these minions don't take damage from Brambles. If you wanted, you could even give the minions a defense bonus when they are fighting within the brambles.

So my answer to your question would be, HP's only come into play when PC's are involved. I can't point to RAW, but the DMG advice for the DM deciding the outcome of NPC fights is good precedent. Some minions encounter some brambles. You decide who wins.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 17, 2008)

Lurker37 said:


> *Exactly.*
> If you have something that would otherwise be used as a minion wandering around by itself, it's a normal creature with level-appropriate hit points and damage. If you then place it into a combat encounter where it and several of its peers need to fill the role of minions, _then_ it has one hit point and flat damage.




I think this is key here. But as with my example above and the dread brambles of demonic death, minions still become problematic.

I did think of a workaround though. Perhaps minions, when interacting with the environment, even in combat, have 'standard' hit points (appropriate for their level) and when being directly attacked by PC's have only 1. It still doesn't really satisfy me for some reason and I'm sure there are still issues to be dealt with, like the caltrops one someone else suggested. Hm but in the caltrops suggestion they become part of the 'world' once dropped and so wouldn't be a threat to the minion. Ugh... headache.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 17, 2008)

Mengu said:


> The minions are NPC's that are interacting with the world. So, you get to decide what happens when they run through brambles, just like when you decided the common folk who also are minions, were scrached up but weren't killed by the brambles.
> 
> When designing an encounter, and making rules for terrain, you can easily decide, these minions don't take damage from Brambles. If you wanted, you could even give the minions a defense bonus when they are fighting within the brambles.
> 
> So my answer to your question would be, HP's only come into play when PC's are involved. I can't point to RAW, but the DMG advice for the DM deciding the outcome of NPC fights is good precedent. Some minions encounter some brambles. You decide who wins.




You know what, I think I've got it.

There's a hint in the rules, as RAW, as to why in fact, yes, you're supposed to make rules such as the one you came up with (minions don't take damage from brambles), and that is 'minions don't take damage on a missed attack'.

It seems as though the designers have noticed this problem themselves, and have put in a quick solution, following the reasoning that you have to make exceptions to damaging effects against minions, even for damaging effects that automatically hit.

So I think after reading through all these posts and thinking about it far longer than I hoped I would, the conclusion seems to be:

Minions only have 1 HP in regards to PC attacks.

Minions should never be grouped together with creatures/enemies vastly different in level. A lvl 20 minion with a lvl 1 Kobold should simply not exist in the game world. If it absolutely had to be there, then it should be a full lvl 20 creature with appropriate hit points, not 1HP, and in other words a TPK.

Minions, when interacting with the world and creatures, require exceptions to rules, and one is provided already in the core RAW (ie missed attacks never damage a minion). Hazardous terrain that automatically damages creatures also shouldn't damage a minion, as with any other effects the DM deems necessary.

The wording isn't all that great but I think the general idea is clear enough. In short, Minions are meant to replace mooks, ease book keeping and provide thrills in combat. They need careful attention and you can 'describe' the minions being scratched up by brambles, but they don't get 'hurt' (lose their 1HP) by it.

*When an attack seems 'weird' so that a minion just shouldn't drop dead because of it (brambles) the DM explains the creature has taken some damage. So what? Roll initiative.


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## Ginnel (Jul 17, 2008)

I like minions and the way they work I think it might be interesting to have some 2 hit minions every now and then to shake it up a bit.

But when we come to 1 hit point of damage or 1D6 from a spikey bush or a 10ft drop or running through a campfire I would want the DM to handwaive it for higher level minions, by making them bloodied and even damage on a miss will kill them.


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## Regicide (Jul 17, 2008)

jimtillman said:


> how is it free xp? minions can actually kill party members




  Minions are worth more XP for the effort to kill them than non-minions.  As level increases and AE sizes get larger and easier to use and non-minion HPs rise while minion HPs effectively don't this becomes even more true.



FadedC said:


> Good things wizards aren't quite that easy to kill then, as you've conceded to in the other thread.




  I conceded that lower HPs, lower AC and smaller healing surges make wizards hard to kill?  Wonder what thread you've been reading.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> True.
> 
> And given that the wizard has to rely on basic melee attacks with a much lower str, his overall chance to hit is much lower. But he can still smack an epic level demon minion with his staff and kill it the same as a suped up fighter with a huge str slamming into a demon minion. That is quite a strange idea to reconcile as far as imagining it.




It's a strange idea that an attack with a lethal weapon (by an epic wizard, no less) might be deadly, although perhaps not as deadly as an attack by an even more lethal weapon wielded by an even stronger and even better skilled epic fighter?

Does it help to imagine minions as those extras in action movies who lack plot protection?  (Serious question.  It helped me get my head around 4e to think of it as a game that simulates action movies and, like action movies, it has a lot of cool stuff that you could easily overthink in a "hey, cars don't explode like that" kind of way.)




Ninja-to said:


> The townsfolk, knowing they'll get scratched and take some damage through the 15 feet of brambles (1 hit point damage per 5 feet while running, no attack roll) do so anyway, because they know they'd rather face some thorns off a bramble bush than demonic minions from the nine hells.



To be fair, we are talking about thorns which can dish out potentially lethal damage to hardy adventurers in full plate.



Ninja-to said:


> Ok go RAW and you have a very silly situation. Demonic minions can't chase your average barkeep through damaging terrain of any sort that does automatic damage.



Er...   wouldn't your average barkeep be a minion, were he to be in a combat situation?


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## Ninja-to (Jul 17, 2008)

The more I think about it, the more I like the resolution of 'DM decides whether the minion takes damage'. This is probably the intent, as I mentioned earlier with 'missed attacks never do damage' but it just isn't actually stated directly in the RAW.

One other thing regarding the posts about taking along a bunch of level 1 wizards. That's really not a problem as far as I can see. Several reasons.

1. Let the PC's take the lvl 1 wizards. Take a hundred. Then divide that encounter's xp by 100. Play that way until you're 90 years old. You might hit level 2.

2. Divide the treasure by 100 for each of those wizards. Maybe you can roleplay out of dividing treasure, fair enough. Every time some of those wizards are killed, pay that 'nominal' fee of 500gp. Go right ahead.

3. Don't like that lvl 1 wizards in the party can insta kill? Well... why not? They're PC's (or NPC's) just like the heroes. They can get lucky and kill in one hit. I don't see why that's not plausible. It goes back to the idea of hp's being abstract. Why shouldn't a PC of any level not be able to kill a creature in one blow? It's just like being coup de grac'ed. It's really no big deal. It makes sense in realism (not realistic, don't go there) that some creatures will die from being hit just once. 

Also, mechanically it makes sense that yeah you can kill some minions. But pretty soon you're very likely to die too, unless the PC's (who are taking xp penalties like crazy) bail you out. Anyway, so what? You're not doing anything particularly special. At the end of the day, no matter the minion you've killed, your lvl 1 wizard hasn't taken out Asmodeus. He's killed some of his minions while being backed up by high level PC's.

So in both realism and mechanics, carrying around lowby NPC's to do their work on minions is just fine RAW. They suck up xp, can cost you lots of gold in Raise Dead, and can even be explained in combat as perfectly plausible IE yeah they can kill some minions, because they're 'heroes' just like the PC's. Anyway, so what? Why is that hard to believe? Seems just fine the way it is.

I think what most naysayers are afraid of is some PC's taking advantage of the 1HP minion. The classic example is the 1st lvl kobold and the 30th level minion.

The solutions seems fairly simple for this, as stated by others.

1. The DM should not make an encounter like this.

2. If the encounter 'happens' this way for whatever reason, the minion changes. It is no longer a 'minion' but a creature appropriate for that level.

*The above assumes the seemingly general consensus that 'Minions' are meant to be, as stated by others, a tool. They're like a random encounter table or a name generator on a PC. When babies are born in Faerun, they don't go to their notebook PC's to come up with a name for the baby. Minions are an idea for the DM to make use of. They're not creatures that walk about with 1HP.

As has been said many times, if you DM them correctly, they won't be abused in game. Encounters should never involve huge disparity between minions and their counterparts. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is exactly what they're designed to oppose. The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil comes to mind, where you had lvl 4 or so 'mook's walking around carrying potions of healing and masterwork weapons for the PC's to pick up. These guys in droves did nothing but take up time and carry a bit of treasure. In 4th Edition these would be minions. They'd have a purpose and a role to play in combat (no pun intended). They would now have a real use. Like I said, if somehow it so happens you end up with the situation where you have that lvl 1 Kobold with a lvl 30 minion in a combat situation, DM it so that the minion drops his 'minion' status and now has full hit points. Why? Because he's no longer a minion at all. A minion is only a minion when it serves you as a DM, it's not supposed to be a creature type (again as others have said) it's supposed to be something to make your life easier to run. Period.


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## Dausuul (Jul 17, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> The PC's are say, in the middle of a forest, on a hill (for no particular reason just to help with description).
> 
> Running to the PC's, are some townsfolk being chased by demonic minions, screaming 'save us' as they might do.
> 
> ...




Which is why _such terrain does not exist_.  If you go through the traps and hazards in the DMG, just about everything has an attack roll involved.  Take the Field of Everflame, for instance, which is an epic-level version of "this terrain is on fire."  It makes an attack versus Fortitude, with half damage on a miss.  And since minions take no damage on a miss, they can survive it.

If you have minions who are way higher-level than the terrain, then they won't get hit except on a natural 20.

On another note: Nothing, but nothing, should do damage if it can't plausibly kill you.  Brambles might slow a character, maybe cause pain, but if you have brambles that inflict hit point damage, that's saying, "You could _die_ as a result of walking through these brambles."  Because people aren't always at full hit points.  If a PC is down to one hit point (but still fully functional) and then steps into your hypothetical Brambles O' Doom, that PC is taken down to zero and may well die as a result.  If you think it's stupid that people can die as a result of stepping into brambles, then brambles should not do damage, period.

Finally, in any situation involving legion devils, townsfolk are almost certainly minions too.  Specifically, "Human Rabble."


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## radferth (Jul 17, 2008)

Seems to me it would have been better to describe minions has having Low hit points, rather than 1; as 1 HP seems to imply to many folks (such as myself) as near-death fragility, but that is just an editorial decision.


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> That means what exactly in relation to the fact that Minions exist in the game world outside of combat? Which is the point I am making.




What fact?



> I don't think we are in disagreement about the way Minions should generally be used in encounters. However, the way you suggested playing sort of fast and loose with minions or doing bait and switches with other related monster types, would be suspect at the least, and downright dishonest or unworkable in some cases.



 There has never been any bait and switch. NPCs are not PCs they play by different rules.



> I.e. It might indeed be possible to catch a Legion Devil on a errand or messenger mission and if it were engaged, there is simply no way to morph it into anything other than it is, because *all* Legion Devils are minions. There is no such thing as a standard version and they look entirely different physically than other demons.



 And? At that point the Legion Devil is essentially a non-combat NPC to be interrogated by the PCs and not an encounter. The same as if you run into a goblin at a bar and he buys you a drink(well, not quite the same, but close enough). If the Legion Devil is caught by NPCs then you are back to the NPC on NPC violence solution and the outcome is whatever you want.



> Likewise, if players chased a minion out of one battle and into a building where it hid, such that it triggered a entirely new encounter, that creature should remain a minion when it is found and the new battle is begun, regardless if the players knew it was one beforehand. The DM knew and should retain consistency and  regard for what these separate monsters roles are in the world.




If players chase a minion out of one battle and into a building where it hid it would only be a new encounter if they stopped and rested for 5 minutes. Searching for the minion is not resting and so would be the same encounter. If they rest the minion gets away.

Either way, routing your enemy is still defeating them and the hit points of the minion are, at that point, irrelevant. 



			
				Ninja-to said:
			
		

> My earlier example of the housecat was just that, one example of how pretty much anything in the game world that can do 1 point of damage could spring up in any session and really have your minions on the spot. I'd just like to have it sorted beforehand.




Your housecat example was thoroughly shot down as has this one. Every terrain feature that does damage requires an attack roll unless its a zone or conjuration created by the players.


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## The Little Raven (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> While contemplating minion rules, I suddenly recalled that AD&D had a 'minion' mechanic as well.  It clearly operated by different rules, but it had the same goal - allowing the party to 'mow through' low level opponents.




That's because AD&D, just like 4e, was not intended to be a simulation of the realm of make-believe, because as a simulation, it's a dismal failure. It's meant to be a game.


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> I conceded that lower HPs, lower AC and smaller healing surges make wizards hard to kill? Wonder what thread you've been reading.




The thread where where you claim over and over how stupid I am for thinking wizards could have a decent armor class, and then ran away with your tail between your legs when challenged to support your belief, and given actual math by me and other posters.

In this case your seem to theorize that at mid level or higher a wizard can be actually killed in one round by 8 minions. I'll challenge you again to do the math and show me how that's possible assuming average or even above average rolls.


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## Dausuul (Jul 17, 2008)

FadedC said:


> In this case your seem to theorize that at mid level or higher a wizard can be actually killed in one round by 8 minions. I'll challenge you again to do the math and show me how that's possible assuming average or even above average rolls.




Well, a 26th-level wizard with Con 10 _could_ be killed in one round by 8 lich vestiges (26th-level minions).  They'd all have to hit, though, and the odds of that happening are not great.


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> Like this?





No. Gandalf isn't a true wizard. He is a lesser angel sent by greater angels that is over a 1000 years old. No mortal wizard could match him.

I'm thinking the DnD wizard is closer to the types of wizards you would find in a Conan novel or a book like _Tigana_. Less focused on martial power and more focused wizardly power.

I don't know if you have read _Lord of the Rings_ but Gandalf was stronger than Boromir or Aragorn. I mean physically stronger by a gigantic margin. So Gandalf is a very bad example of a melee wizard. Gandalf could not be defeated by a mortal wizard.


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Dausuul said:


> Well, a 26th-level wizard with Con 10 _could_ be killed in one round by 8 lich vestiges (26th-level minions). They'd all have to hit, though, and the odds of that happening are not great.




Hmm....lich vestiges do get a huge damage boost against wizards. Even then they don't kill him and only knock him out, and only if the wizard somehow hit lvl 26 without taking toughness, and only if all 8 hit, which assuming they hit on a 9 (which I calculate as most likely) has about a 1 in 100 chance of happening.


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## Sanzuo (Jul 17, 2008)

IanB said:


> (Jackie Chan axe gang scene.)




This is perhaps one of the greatest kung-fu movies ever.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> No. Gandalf isn't a true wizard. He is a lesser angel sent by greater angels that is over a 1000 years old. No mortal wizard could match him.
> 
> I'm thinking the DnD wizard is closer to the types of wizards you would find in a Conan novel or a book like _Tigana_. Less focused on martial power and more focused wizardly power.
> 
> I don't know if you have read _Lord of the Rings_ but Gandalf was stronger than Boromir or Aragorn. I mean physically stronger by a gigantic margin. So Gandalf is a very bad example of a melee wizard. Gandalf could not be defeated by a mortal wizard.




It's not inconceivable for an epic tier wizard to be adding a bigger number to strength checks than heroic or even paragon tier fighters, just because of the 1/2 level bonus.

And remember, at epic tier we're talking about people that are on their way to becomming demigods (or already are demigods and are on their way to becomming gods; I'm not totally clear on that), or are at least comparable in power to those proto-gods.  In any case, saying that Gandalf is way more powerful than a D&D wizard because he's a lesser angel doesn't fly when high level D&D wizards can be demigods that are significantly more powerful than some of the lesser angels in the MM.


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## Regicide (Jul 17, 2008)

FadedC said:


> The thread where where you claim over and over how stupid I am for thinking wizards could have a decent armor class, and then ran away with your tail between your legs when challenged to support your belief, and given actual math by me and other posters.




  If by "concede" you mean "couldn't be bothered to respond to someone who thinks wizards have the same AC, HPs and healing surges as paladins and won't believe otherwise" then sure.



FadedC said:


> In this case your seem to theorize that at mid level or higher a wizard can be actually killed in one round by 8 minions. I'll challenge you again to do the math and show me how that's possible assuming average or even above average rolls.




  God, more antagonistic nonsense from you, wonderful.  I actually posted "before initiative came up", which means surprise + round, but it should be pretty obvious that it can be done.  Ogres deal 9, 16 hits is 144 damage without any buffing, ample damage to kill a level 14 wizard.  Fiends at 7 damage do 112, enough to kill a typical wizard, more than enough to guarantee dying.  I know multiplying two numbers together is pretty hard to do which is why you needed me to do the math.

  The level 1 kobolds are actually more of a threat, 64 damage in two rounds is going to kill any level 1 wizard.  So minions become less of a threat at higher levels while at the same time being easier to kill in large numbers making them even more of an XP gimmie.


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> If by "concede" you mean "couldn't be bothered to respond to someone who thinks wizards have the same AC, HPs and healing surges as paladins and won't believe otherwise" then sure.




Ah yes.....you claimed that wizard ac was 8 points less then any defender, called everyone stupid who disagreed and then backed down when math was shown and you were challenged to defend your point. I'm sure that wasn't a concession. Never mind that nobody claimed that wizards had the same ac, hp and healing surges.




Regicide said:


> God, more antagonistic nonsense from you, wonderful. I actually posted "before initiative came up", which means surprise + round, but it should be pretty obvious that it can be done. Ogres deal 9, 16 hits is 144 damage without any buffing, ample damage to kill a level 14 wizard. Fiends at 7 damage do 112, enough to kill a typical wizard, more than enough to guarantee dying. I know multiplying two numbers together is pretty hard to do which is why you needed me to do the math. .




Yes, I'm the antogonistic one, not the guy ignoring mod requests that he stop posting here because he's clearly just here to fight. So let's look at those ogres. Why don't you calculate the odds of getting 16 hits in a row against a 16th level wizard with level apropriate magic items (hint...if you pull it off, enter the lottery). Not to mention the fact that being limited to a partial action on a surprise round usually keeps the ogres from surrounding one target and still attacking. 



Regicide said:


> The level 1 kobolds are actually more of a threat, 64 damage in two rounds is going to kill any level 1 wizard. So minions become less of a threat at higher levels while at the same time being easier to kill in large numbers making them even more of an XP gimmie.




I don't disagree with you that level 1 kobolds are more of a threat. Though they will miss a 20 int wizard in leather significantly more often then they hit.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> What fact?




 Do Legion Devils exist or not in your world? They have unique lore and a place in the world, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t. If they do, then minions exist outside of combat. We can use semantics and not call them 'minions' outside of player combat, we can call them weak demons or whatever, but that does not change they are real creatures in the game world. 



> And? At that point the Legion Devil is essentially a non-combat NPC to be interrogated by the PCs and not an encounter. The same as if you run into a goblin at a bar and he buys you a drink(well, not quite the same, but close enough).



 We are not talking about a NPC situation. We are talking about a combat situation where the PC’s have decided to kill this creature that would naturally fight back if you tried to kill it. It is no different than if the PC’s caught a standard Orc or Gnoll. And just like a Orc or Gnoll, we have stats for a Legion Devil. It takes 1 hit to kill it in combat.

 I have no idea why people have such difficulty grasping this. Minions are entirely as real as any other monster. The only thing abstract about them is that they have 1 HP when they encounter players in combat. Otherwise they are normal monsters in every way. 

At other times in the game world when Minions are not being hit by characters, they are still out there going about their lives like other monsters, performing their roles in monster society or whatever. The only difference is at these times, their hit points abstract to something more than 1, but still much less than standard creatures they may be related to. Because they are not standard creatures. They are weaker monsters. This is the reason the devs wanted to give them a low number of real value hit points. Only they did not for bookkeeping reasons. But when not interacting with players they might be expected to actually have some small low level HP for the purposes of the DM figuring out various results. 

But once combat begins with players, we have rules to deal with them. And it does nothing for the game to at that point try and guess what those low value hit points would have been. It's pointless if your trying to kill that solo  Legion Devil to guess that its HP may have been 25. It's not going to significantly change the encounter in any way. Same as the Kobold Minion you might have chased into the building and found 10 minutes later. It will die in one hit, for the sake of minion consistency.


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Do Legion Devils exist or not in your world? They have unique lore and a place in the world, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t. If they do, then minions exist outside of combat.



 Yes Legion Devils exist. No, minions do not exist outside of combat. Minions are constructs for PCs to interact with. They exist however the DM wants them to outside of combat with PCs. Such "minions" only exist in combat with PCs" because outside of combat with PC's they exist exactly as the DM wants them to, all such interactions being NPC vs NPC.




> We are not talking about a NPC situation. We are talking about a combat situation where the PC’s have decided to kill this creature that would naturally fight back if you tried to kill it. It is no different than if the PC’s caught a standard Orc or Gnoll. And just like a Orc or Gnoll, we have stats for a Legion Devil. It takes 1 hit to kill it in combat.



O.K. so your DM throws you up against a lone minion[something he shold not be doing](and you can choose not to kill it if you wish). And you kill it. And you're complaining why? How is it any different from the DM throwing any other level inappropriate encounter at you?







> At other times in the game world when Minions are not being hit by characters, they are still out there going about their lives like other monsters, performing their roles in monster society or whatever. The only difference is at these times, their hit points abstract to something more than 1, but still much less than standard creatures they may be related to. Becuase they are not standard creatures. They are weaker monsters. This is the reason they wanted to give them a low number of real value hit points. Only they did not for bookkeeping reasons. But when not interacting with players they can be expected to actually have these low level HP.



O.K. so if you agree with me, why are you disagreeing? You're being entirely inconsistent with your argument(that or you have finally realized we are right)


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> No. Gandalf isn't a true wizard. He is a lesser angel sent by greater angels that is over a 1000 years old. No mortal wizard could match him.
> 
> I'm thinking the DnD wizard is closer to the types of wizards you would find in a Conan novel or a book like _Tigana_. Less focused on martial power and more focused wizardly power.
> 
> I don't know if you have read _Lord of the Rings_ but Gandalf was stronger than Boromir or Aragorn. I mean physically stronger by a gigantic margin. So Gandalf is a very bad example of a melee wizard. Gandalf could not be defeated by a mortal wizard.




Whether or not LotR fits within DnD classes, Gandalf is _the_ iconic wizard.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> O.K. so if you agree with me, why are you disagreeing? You're being entirely inconsistent with your argument(that or you have finally realized we are right)




I don't know what you think you were ever disagreeing with me about. I responded to Lurker initially who was using the idea that just because it is not wise for a DM to make players encounter solo minions (its not) that they are somehow turned into 'normal' or standard monsters when not dealing with players. They are not. Because Minions are not a template that goes over other types of monsters. 

If you look over a campsite of Kobolds, players should be able to clearly see Kobolds wearing robes (or maybe shamanistic attire) who are Wyrmpriests, Kobolds with shields and armor that are Dragonshields, and runty, cowardly Kobolds, probably being shunned by their betters, who are Kobold Minions. 

They should not by contrast just see "a bunch of kobolds" who the DM then decides which ones to turn into minions when a combat starts. That is not understanding their value and place as unique monsters.

If one's definition of a minion turns on it having 1 HP in combat, then I can see where they would be confused with mine. Because my definition of a minion is any creature in the MM that has 'Minion' as its role. But them having 1 HP in combat is just one aspect of their nature. It is not their entire purpose to the game world.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> Whether or not LotR fits within DnD classes, Gandalf is _the_ iconic wizard.




Not Harry Potter?  Then why does D&D have wands?  Huh?

(I kid, I kid...)


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## FadedC (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> I don't know what you think you were ever disagreeing with me about. I responded to Lurker initially who was using the idea that just because it is not wise for a DM to make players encounter solo minions (its not) that they are somehow turned into 'normal' or standard monsters when not dealing with players. They are not. Because Minions are not a template that goes over other types of monsters.
> 
> If you look over a campsite of Kobolds, players should be able to clearly see Kobolds wearing robes (or maybe shamanistic attire) who are Wyrmpriests, Kobolds with shields and armor that are Dragonshields, and runty, cowardly Kobolds, probably being shunned by their betters, who are Kobold Minions.
> 
> ...




While I mostly agree with you, it's worth noting that at least according to the minion design article, it is reasonable for monsters to change between minions and non minions as the party levels. For example when you fight the ogre tribe of the broken skull at level 8, they are regular 8th level ogres. If you go back at lvl 16 to fight them, it's reasonable for the DM to turn them into 16th level minions, with maybe some  non minions for their leaders. This allows the players to feel suitably more powerful then the ogres, without the fight becoming overly pointless.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

FadedC said:


> While I mostly agree with you, it's worth noting that at least according to the minion design article, it is reasonable for monsters to change between minions and non minions _as the party levels_.




Yeah, I find that entirely reasonable. If its 10 levels later and the party comes back into the area, its probably so far removed from importance that you just make them minions now. 

It would be less realistic (and wrong IMO) if it happened within an adventure, where a DM should generally speaking, clearly know which creatures are minions or not. For example, if the PC's somehow split off a group of Ogre minions that were running between slave pits, they should remain minions for the consistency of the story he has built and for the reliability of observable information that the players might be gathering. I.e. "We have learned that the weaker Ogre bludgeoneers work in the slave mines" etc.


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

GoLu said:


> It's not inconceivable for an epic tier wizard to be adding a bigger number to strength checks than heroic or even paragon tier fighters, just because of the 1/2 level bonus.
> 
> And remember, at epic tier we're talking about people that are on their way to becomming demigods (or already are demigods and are on their way to becomming gods; I'm not totally clear on that), or are at least comparable in power to those proto-gods.  In any case, saying that Gandalf is way more powerful than a D&D wizard because he's a lesser angel doesn't fly when high level D&D wizards can be demigods that are significantly more powerful than some of the lesser angels in the MM.




If you're trying to tell me that Dnd wizard's melee combat ability compares to Gandalf then I don't know what to tell you. I disagree. Gandalf is nothing like a Dnd character and the current game could only simulate him by allowing an odd base race.

Please don't bring up strange elements in the rule system like a strength checked based on level when the same wizard with a lvl 10 strength at lvl 30 is still only going to be able to lift 200 lbs while the 20 plus str fighter is going to be able to life 400 lbs or more. As in the fighter is twice as strong as the wizard, but for some reason the wizard is able to make higher strength checks.

All you did was point out a nonsensical rule that I don't even want to think about because it utterly ruins suspension of disbelief. Why would you point out a rule that is ridiculous if you take the time to think about it?

Seriously.

lvl 10 fighter with 20 str lifts 400 lbs.

lvl 30 wiz with 10 str lifts 200 lbs.

Lvl 30 wiz gets +15 on str checks. Lvl 10 ftr gets +10 even though he is twice as strong.

Thanks for pointing out another illogical rule that is mainly there for mechanical effciency.

No, Gandalf isn't well-simulated by DnD. I don't bother to think about Dnd, especially 4th edition, as a close to good simulation of fantasy characters such as Gandalf. It is a very bad simulation. DnD wizards are nothing like Gandalf. The melee system they use is based entirely on the idea of mechanical efficiency. So your example doesn't fly. A DnD wizard is not Gandalf. It's a DnD wizard. It would take a great deal of work by a DM to create an analogue in 4th edition for Gandalf. It wouldn't even be worth trying.


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## Celtavian (Jul 17, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> Whether or not LotR fits within DnD classes, Gandalf is _the_ iconic wizard.






Goumindong said:


> Whether or not LotR fits within DnD classes, Gandalf is _the_ iconic wizard.




I don't think he is the iconic wizard for DnD. I think Gygax drew from different sources for his idea of wizards. Were Gandalf the Iconic wizard for DnD as you claim, then I think the wizard class would be very different.

Not to say that Gandalf isn't an influence, but I very much enjoy the _Lord of the Rings_ books, and have played many Dnd Wizards, and have never felt like Gandalf or even close. 

To me a DnD wizard is its own animal. At some point in time I have to get around to reading some Jack Vance _Dying Earth_ novels to see what inspired the DnD wizard.


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## Syrsuro (Jul 17, 2008)

GoLu said:


> Not Harry Potter? Then why does D&D have wands? Huh?
> 
> (I kid, I kid...)




I thought it was Mickey Mouse from the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Besides - Gandalf was clearly an Eladrin Wizard ....

Carl


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

Regicide said:


> The characters would have to be intergalactically stupid to not be able to figure out after their billionth fight that they pretty often have a large groups of opponents who consistently die at the drop of a hat. Minions are a fact of life for the 4E character, it makes perfect sense that they'll exploit it.
> 
> "Oh look, we're outnumbered again, the sensible thing would be to run."
> "Nah, thats why we brought the wizard alone."
> ...




This is probably not true.

Looking at the real world, do you think Jack the Ripper thought it was odd how everyone he attacked with a knife died when he first ran that knife across their windpipe?

Do you think that John Wilkes Booth was surprised when a single bullet dropped Abraham Lincoln in his tracks?

How about the countless soldiers in countless wars all across this planet who have hit an enemy with an axe, sword, arrow, bullet, etc., and seen that enemy fall dead from that single wound?

Was any of that odd? Unusual?

Weapons are meant to be destructive. They are designed (most of them, anyway) to kill their target when they are imployed successfully against that target.

Wielders of those weapons expect to see results. They expect to see their enemies fall before their attacks.

Now, D&D provides that kind of scenario across all levels. Minions. These minions die when they get hit weapons (or other attacks like spells, etc.). This is what everyone expects to happen.

But, sometimes, we fight something or someone and we swing our sword, fire our arrow, cast our spell, and the target ducks or dodges or twists away, causing our attack to land just a relatively harmless flesh wound that doesn't kill the target.

These guys are represented in D&D as the non-minion monsters who have HP. Their HP represents their ability to evade the lethal intent of some of our attacks, turning what could and should be a 1-shot kill into a battle that takes many shots to bring down this difficult foe.

That's the difference between minions and non-minions.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> That's the difference between minions and non-minions.




The way the Monster Manual gives minions separate ecology in some cases though is an indication that minion status is not something that is differentiated between monsters just because of combat luck or bad luck, or even something the heroes did heroically. 

The reason a Legion Devil dies in 1 hit is because its much weaker than a Pit Fiend or Bearded Devil. 

Just like in 3e filler died because the filler might have been a 2nd level Ghoul that was much weaker than the 10th level undead in the place the Ghouls were inhabiting as 'Mooks'. 

So 4e is telling us more that if Jack the Ripper stabbed someone, they died or not based more on what they already were before he chose them and not because he got lucky and hit the windpipe.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

Syrsuro said:


> And that is part of my problem with them. Players are well aware when they are fighting a group of minions and will deal with them accordingly.




I am more of the opinion that this shouldn't be the case.

The minions don't know they're minions, so why should the players know?

Two ogres are sitting side-by-side in a cave, one is a minion and the other is not. As far as they are concerned they are very much the same. When they go marauding through the human lands, laying waste to farmhouses and livestock, neither of them is slain by the first prick from a farmer's pitchfork, neither of them is slain by a barnyard mouser scratching them with a claw. Neither is slain by tripping over a fallen beam and hitting his head on the ground.

They stomp and bash and slay farmers and livestock and come home with full bellies.

Then along come the PCs. They stand outside the caves and shout challenges and taunts to the ogres, who in turn go running out of their cave to bash these silly fools.

The first ogre runs out and the ranger fires an arrow (he rolls a 15, a hit!). Zing, right through the ogre's eye, bursting out the back of his skull as brains and blood go flying. The ogres falls, dead before he hits the ground.

The second ogre runs out and the ranger fires another arrow (they were far enough away that the ogre didn't reach them in a single round - he rolls another 15, a hit!). The ogre sees the attack in time to snap his head to the side and the arrow just grazes along the ogre's skull, drawing a little blood and making the ogre even more angry.

What was the difference? One ogre wasn't alert enough to duck, the other one was. 

Which ogre didn't duck? The minion, of course.

But, until those two arrow hits, nobody, not the PCs, not the marauded farmers, not the other ogres living in a cave next door, not even the two ogres themselves, knew that one of them was a minion.

Even after the fact, nobody knows one ogre was a minion. Sure, the DM knows it, and the players inevitably figure it out. But the characters don't know it. After the fight, they congratulate the ranger on that lucky shot that took the ogre right in the eye and dropped him instantly. They laugh about the ogre that was too stupid to duck. 

But they never imagine in a million years that the ogre mysteriously had about the same HP as a hamster. 

Because truth be told, the ogre wasn't that weak, ever, at any time in its entire life, except right at that moment that the arrow struck him.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> Because truth be told, the ogre wasn't that weak, ever, at any time in its entire life, except right at that moment that the arrow struck him.




Yes he was weaker.

The difference between a Vampire Spawn (a minion) and a Vampire Lord is not cosmetic. They are not interchangeable. Neither in combat or in the lore of the world. A Vampire Spawn is a once living humanoid that has been blood drained by a Vampire Lord. Vampire Lords are much more powerful immortal undead, that would never be confused with a spawn. The difference between them is *not* decided by the arrow shot by a PC. They have separate ecology in the world, and so do even weaker minions like Kobold Minions in relation to Dragonshields. 

 Think of a bar scene in one of those Steven Seagal movies where he beats the crap out of everyone there on his way up to the villain on the other side. None of those ‘thugs’ are a challenge or even threat to him, no matter how many times he fights them. They are not going down in one punch or kick because he got lucky, or critical hit them , but because they are weak and nothing compared against the skill of Steven. He is always going to bend their arm backward and break it and make them scream, “You *)$#, you broke my arm!” Because he is just that awesome and they are just that pathetic.

  It’s the same idea with Minions in 4e. Kobold Minions die in droves to PC’s because they are nothing to the heroes. They are peons even among their own kind. Just like the thugs in the bar in the movie are peons that are probably ordered and beat up earlier in the movie by the main bad dude or his right hand man, in order to foreshadow their own threat level. 

  Now eventually Seagal comes up against the fat bodyguard or the muscled henchman that protects the villain and he gets a real fight, and this is the same as PC’s coming up against the Brutes or Soldiers or real threats in an encounter. Those foes are never going to be one-shotted, because they are the bigger kahunas not just in the battle, but in the larger game world itself. It’s a pecking order.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> The way the Monster Manual gives minions separate ecology in some cases though is an indication that minion status is not something that is differentiated between monsters just because of combat luck or bad luck, or even something the heroes did heroically.
> 
> The reason a Legion Devil dies in 1 hit is because its much weaker than a Pit Fiend or Bearded Devil.
> 
> ...




Sure, you could look at it that way.

Or you could look at it like the Monster Manual has specific entries to tell the DM "pick this guy when you want a monster, pick that guy when you want a minion".

Which may or may not be the best way to do things.

But if you look at it like minions are just as real as the other (similar) non-minion critters they hang out with, and only happen to be minions when that fatal lucky shot takes them more-or-less unaware and kills them outright, and assume the Monster Manual simply lists them separately to make them easy to find and use on the spot, then minions make more sense.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 17, 2008)

Man, I'm really disappointed with how badly this thread has gone to crap.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

ValhallaGH said:


> Man, I'm really disappointed with how badly this thread has gone to crap.




And your criticism adds value? 

If you're disappointed in the thread, then leave the thread, or improve the thread, but don't just make non-contributional comments about your disappointment - that doesn't help anyone.

And no, I don't think this post of mine adds any value, unless ValhallaGH and others like him are swayed by my impassioned appeal to their better judgment and henceforth take their disappointment elsewhere or make a serious effort to steer the thread into something less disappointing.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> But if you look at it like minions are just as real as the other (similar) non-minion critters they hang out with, and only happen to be minions when that fatal lucky shot takes them more-or-less unaware and kills them outright, and assume the Monster Manual simply lists them separately to make them easy to find and use on the spot, then minions make more sense.




 If they wanted you to do that though, they could have easily let you pick any standard monster stat package, give him 1 HP and 10% of the experience to make one a minion no? 

But they would not have made creatures like the Legion Devils at all who _are_ all minions and have no ‘standard’ version, if they expected you to simply let the skill of an arrow shot determine what is a minion or not. 

  If its more interesting to run your game that way, that’s fine. But I don’t see how it could be said that is the way the devs expect players to understand minions. So far they have encouraged players to play up the differences and we already know about the knowledge checks that can further shed light on monster types.


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## Goumindong (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> I don't know what you think you were ever disagreeing with me about. I responded to Lurker initially who was using the idea that just because it is not wise for a DM to make players encounter solo minions (its not) that they are somehow turned into 'normal' or standard monsters when not dealing with players. They are not. Because Minions are not a template that goes over other types of monsters.




No he is right, they are just like normal monsters when not dealing with players. Why? Because no monsters have any stats when not dealing with players. Nothing has stats, there is no conflict resolution, the entire thing is run by DM fiat. All of the stats blocks are irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Who wins is decided by the DM. Who hits and does damage is decided by the DM. In a combat with NPC's, PC's and minions a NPC that hits a minion might not kill it. Why? Because there is no necessary combat resolution.



> Think of a bar scene in one of those Steven Seagal movies where he beats the crap out of everyone there on his way up to the villain on the other side. None of those ‘thugs’ are a challenge or even threat to him, no matter how many times he fights them. They are not going down in one punch or kick because he got lucky, or critical hit them , but because they are weak and nothing compared against the skill of Steven. He is always going to bend their arm backward and break it and make them scream, “You *)$#, you broke my arm!” Because he is just that awesome and they are just that pathetic.
> 
> It’s the same idea with Minions in 4e. Kobold Minions die in droves to PC’s because they are nothing to the heroes. They are peons even among their own kind. Just like the thugs in the bar in the movie are peons that are probably ordered and beat up earlier in the movie by the main bad dude or his right hand man, in order to foreshadow their own threat level.




You're right. And how do those minions interact with friendly NPCs? They interact as if they were any other monster, they capture the friendly NPCs and hold trains hostage. Even when the friendly NPC's are fighting with the PC the NPCs still don't treat the minions as minions. 

Now, thematically minions are definitely separate from the big kahuna's. They may or may not be separate in terms of looks. That determination is up to the DM for how he wants the encounter to turn out.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> You're right. And how do those minions interact with friendly NPCs? They interact as if they were any other monster, they capture the friendly NPCs and hold trains hostage. Even when the friendly NPC's are fighting with the PC the NPCs still don't treat the minions as minions.
> 
> Now, thematically minions are definitely separate from the big kahuna's. They may or may not be separate in terms of looks. That determination is up to the DM for how he wants the encounter to turn out.




Well of course the creatures don't know they are minions, as in the specific meta-game fact that they have 1 HP in battle! NPC's wouldn't know that either or game around it as such, I agree. 

Minions may however know they are weaker or have a lower status than other related monsters. And other NPC's might know this as well, as in example, the large differences between Vampire Spawn and Vampire Lords. If the local militia knows who the local Vampire Lord is, or even he is readily apparent in a battle, they are likely to treat him with even more fear and caution than a Spawn for instance. 

Something like Ogres, would be less so differentiated. Though perhaps more easily by seasoned adventurers than townsfolk. 

As far as I can tell, you and I have the same fundamental understanding of them and we are down to trivial issues at this point.


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## GoLu (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> If you're trying to tell me that Dnd wizard's melee combat ability compares to Gandalf then I don't know what to tell you. I disagree. Gandalf is... <snip>




...a fictional character not well represented by the D&D rules.  I agree with you about that.  I was just using him as an example of how powerful high level D&D characters could get, and didn't intend to come across as saying that the D&D wizard and Gandalf were one in the same.



Celtavian said:


> All you did was point out a nonsensical rule that I don't even want to think about because it utterly ruins suspension of disbelief. Why would you point out a rule that is ridiculous if you take the time to think about it?
> <snip>
> Thanks for pointing out another illogical rule that is mainly there for mechanical effciency.




And wow.  Just, wow.  That's a whole lot of hostility towards 4e which I was completely not expecting.  I'll respect your wishes and drop the topic.


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## FourthBear (Jul 17, 2008)

I suppose if people simply dislike the "1 hp" in the stat block, the same effect could be achieved by giving them standard hit points, but giving them the following vulnerability:

Vulnerable: A minion hit by an attack by an opponent of its tier or higher is struck dead.  A minion that takes any automatic damage from an effect with level in its tier or higher is struck dead, with the exception of any effect brought about by a miss.

The vast majority of the time it would work out the same, you would just have a standard hit point to reference in the odd occasions where cats attack or lethal bramble bushes need to be run through.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Yes he was weaker.
> 
> The difference between a Vampire Spawn (a minion) and a Vampire Lord is not cosmetic. They are not interchangeable. Neither in combat or in the lore of the world. A Vampire Spawn is a once living humanoid that has been blood drained by a Vampire Lord. Vampire Lords are much more powerful immortal undead, that would never be confused with a spawn. The difference between them is *not* decided by the arrow shot by a PC. They have separate ecology in the world, and so do even weaker minions like Kobold Minions in relation to Dragonshields.




Sure, I grant you this case. A vampire's spawn are supposed to be weaker, and they are usually easy to tell - any seasoned vampire hunter can tell vampire from spawn.

But I think that's a small exception to my general theory.



Switchback said:


> Think of a bar scene in one of those Steven Seagal movies where he beats the crap out of everyone there on his way up to the villain on the other side. None of those ‘thugs’ are a challenge or even threat to him, no matter how many times he fights them. They are not going down in one punch or kick because he got lucky, or critical hit them , but because they are weak and nothing compared against the skill of Steven. He is always going to bend their arm backward and break it and make them scream, “You *)$#, you broke my arm!” Because he is just that awesome and they are just that pathetic.




I would not call this minion vs. non-minion. 

In your Steven Seagall movies, I see it as a high level fighter (Seagall is certainly paragon, and in many of his movies, could even be borderline epic) enters a room full of low level fighters (mostly all level 1 with a possible few exceptions of level 2, 3, or maybe a rare level 4).

He wipes the floor with these guys because their attacks are weak (need a 20 to even hit him, and Seagall has tons of HP and healing surges, while he can hit them with anything but a natural 1). 

Because they are low level, they don't have many HP, and Seagall is dishing out lots of damage, so they die or are rendered unconscious (or disabled, as with breaking arms).

Even Seagall is known to hit these mooks with combinations, striking them several times to bring down a mook. Other mooks he one-shots, maybe using stuff that 4e might call encounter powers, or maybe just good rolls with his at-wills...

Then he gets upstairs and finds the boss, and the boss' trusted henchmen, and these guys are higher level. High enough level to make a fight out of it. They damage Seagall, and he often has to damge them multiple times to kill them.

But here's where it gets into Minion Land - Seagall can one-shot some of these high-level henchmen, and often does. Especially in those movies where he uses guns or blades. 

The difference?

Some of the bad guys in the upstairs floor are high level fighters, some are high level minions.

Which all fits into my theory outlined in my previous posts.



Switchback said:


> It’s the same idea with Minions in 4e.




Yes, the same as I just oulined here. 



Switchback said:


> Kobold Minions die in droves to PC’s because they are nothing to the heroes. They are peons even among their own kind.




I disagree.

Among their own kind, a kobold minion may be a little weaker than a kobold specialist, but that's only a matter of training. As for their HP, they are both kobolds. If a kobold minion picks a fight with a kobold non-minion, they will be hacking and swinging and wrestling and probably even biting each other bloody, until one gives up or dies (or the other kobolds break it up). Maybe that non-minion has some special training that makes him more deadly in the fight, gives him an edge, but otherwise they are virtually identical.

Until the PCs bust into their lair and one-shot the minions and have to three- or four-shot the non-minions. 



Switchback said:


> Just like the thugs in the bar in the movie are peons that are probably ordered and beat up earlier in the movie by the main bad dude or his right hand man, in order to foreshadow their own threat level.




Nah, just really low level bad guys.

If you or I broke into that bar and picked a fight, we probably wouldn't one-shot any of them, and would get our butts handed to us right quick.

(You're not Steven Seagall, or Jet Li, or some other super tough martial artist guy are you? If you are, then you might beat up that bar room of low-level guys too. I still wouldn't).



Switchback said:


> Now eventually Seagal comes up against the fat bodyguard or the muscled henchman that protects the villain and he gets a real fight, and this is the same as PC’s coming up against the Brutes or Soldiers or real threats in an encounter. Those foes are never going to be one-shotted, because they are the bigger kahunas not just in the battle, but in the larger game world itself. It’s a pecking order.




As I said above, these are the high level guys that put up a fight, but some of them might still be minions.

These guys, even the minions, can hit Seagall. They can hurt him. They often do. (Well, Seagall doesn't get hurt as much as Bruce Willis, aka John McClane, but sometimes he gets hurt).

Seagall kills/disables some of these guys quickly, in one or two shots (high level minions), but others take a long protracted fight scene, many blows exchanged, blood flowing on both sides, until eventually Seagall prevails (high level non-minions).

It all fits perfectly into my minion-world-view.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

FourthBear said:


> I suppose if people simply dislike the "1 hp" in the stat block, the same effect could be achieved by giving them standard hit points, but giving them the following vulnerability:




What is standard hit points though? 

This is not really feasible at higher minion levels. And sort of again, misconstrues that minions are copies of existing creatures but with 1 HP. 

For instance a Angel of Valor Legionnaire minion is level 21, there is no standard type angel at the same level to compare it to to even give it a new HP maximum.

We have the Angel of Valor Soldier at level 8 with 88 HP. We have Angels of Protection, Lvl 14 (141 HP) that are an entirely different type, and Angels of Battle, Lvl 15 (296 HP) yet again a whole other type, that doesn't even look the same.

Realistically if you were to ratchet up a Legionnaire minion to a standard level 21 creature, it would have far more HP than the 88 HP of the level 8 standard version.


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## Switchback (Jul 17, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> It all fits perfectly into my minion-world-view.




I appreciated your take on the Seagal action. Kudos.  But I think your idea of the thugs being low level mobs is stuck in a 3e mindset. Where you would have been right in 3e, there is no reason to use those low level thugs anymore since we have minions now. Separate unique creatures, that while having increased threat power, nonetheless have glass jaws. 

It's not that Steven never got hit at all by the thugs, just when they did it, it virtually meant nothing. One broke a pool stick over his back and that is the automatic minion damage. It just makes him mad and he turns around and ends them, but those thugs were probably appropriately leveled minion's for the encounter. 

I also don't think its consistent to wipe away the Vampires, Angels, and Devils and just say you will treat minions as equals of their race type when you can. If you notice, some minions have unique levels, meaning there is not even a same level standard to compare them to or confuse them with. At higher levels, the suggested MM encounters that are given rarely even mix minions with related non-minions of their race. Which is probably a good general rule at that point.  

Anyway, I can see you are not likely to be persuaded, so good gaming sir.


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## DM_Blake (Jul 17, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> I agree. The new minion rule creates some headscratching now that the wizard essentially attacks as well as the melees with his weapon. So he could go on a melee beatdown spree, which is kind of not cool to imagine. Your two-handed sword wielding fighter wandering about hacking down minions is believable, the robe wearing wizard doing the same is one of those images that makes you laugh.
> 
> But most players won't play that way. So hopefully won't come up too often.




I seem to recall Gandalf hacking with his sword and bashing with his staff in both the movies and the books.

I doubt many fans of the genre find Gandalf overly laughable.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 17, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> If you're disappointed in the thread, then leave the thread, or improve the thread, but don't just make non-contributional comments about your disappointment - that doesn't help anyone.



Having tried both of the previous methods with no success, I hoped an appeal to emotion would have some effect.

It looks like I was mistaken.


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## FourthBear (Jul 18, 2008)

Switchback said:


> What is standard hit points though?



Well, I wouldn't actually use the system at all, since I think the current minion rules are fine, as is.  However, if a DM felt that they would like to know how many hit points are appropriate for a standard monster of its level in the absence of its special minion status, I would use a median hit point value for a monster of its level.  Looking at the table on page 184 of the DMG, that would appear to be (Con+8)+(Level*8).  I would probably simplify that to 8*level.  So, if suddenly an odd situation occured in the campaign where a DM wanted to know what hit points a monster of the level would have, level*8 would seem appropriate.  In standard encounters, it wouldn't matter, since the vulnerability would mean that the minion would die before then from a hit or damage by one of the PCs.  Another way to express it would be to replace the 1 hit point line with a binary Alive/Dead status.  Its mainly for people who seem to be aesthetically offended by the "1 hit point" entry.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

Perhaps this can close the debate a little more.

In addition to the points I made earlier, this quote from the Minions article on WotC seems to sum up everything I've come to understand since starting this thread.

"When you use minions, you should use those of a level appropriate to the encounter you’re building. *The concept of minions is to provide fun filler for encounters, not to provide a way for a 1st level character to gain 1,000+ XP for defeating a 23rd-level abyssal ghoul minion by rolling a natural 20.* *Minions are a rules abstraction*, and one of the many *tools* a DM has to build exciting encounters."

I put bold on the points I think most people who quibble over minions and their 1HP don't seem to grasp.

It would seem, contrary to many claims in posts earlier, that minions are *not* monsters in and of themselves. The article talks about "An 8th level encounter might involve battling ogres, but later in that campaign you might have an earth titan that has enslaved an ogre tribe, and thus create a 16th level encounter with an elite earth titan and a bunch of ogre bludgeoneer minions." 

It also seems to me that you need to take the same approach to a combat mechanic as you would to a creature. Not many people now have a problem with a 'shift' or a 5 foot step. It's just part of the game we've come to accept and understand as necessary to run things smoothly. The same open minded approach needs to be applied to minions. They're like your 'shift' maneuver. Their purpose is simply to make things run more smoothly.

I'm quite glad I started this thread, as I've now got no doubt in my mind what a minion should be used for. Wrongly or rightly, I will also use common sense in situations where a minion might lost his single hit point, such as in terrain damage (perhaps in the future there *will* be terrain that damages without an attack roll) or insta damage from sillyness, like angry house cats. In those cases, the minion simply isn't hurt enough to drop it. 

Just have to keep in mind they're rules abstractions.

They serve simple purposes.

For the DM, they are a quick way to bookeep lots of creatures.

They do not provide free xp. We've debated that to death and I think the free xp argument can be put to rest. Not only should such encounters not happen in the first place, but if they did, then the DM should put the 'real' creature back in place of the minion. Look up to the above excerpt where the ogres at 8th level are real ogres. There's no reason the reverse of the abstraction can't be true. In other words, you have your fist level characters in a room with 16th level minions. Reverse the abstraction and put in 8th level ogres (non-minions). The PC's should run if they don't want a TPK, which should be the case anyway.

I'm fairly satisfied now with the addition to minions in 4th ed. What wasn't really explained carefully enough in the core books seems much clearer to me now. What really needs to be said is that minions need to be very carefully used by DM's, as they are an important tool. Misunderstood by DM's or players alike can lead to the strangeness people have been experiencing.

So for now, my own interpretation is that Felix and Garfield might try to take on a 30th level minion, but even if they both rolled 20's, their damage wouldn't affect that particular minion. Only the PC's can take off that hit point. Wrong or right, for the time being that's how I'm houseruling it.

Nuff said.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> It would seem, contrary to many claims in posts earlier, that minions are *not* monsters in and of themselves.




If you have read the thread you know this is not true. Or else Vampire Spawn do not exist in the world. Only Vampire Lords exist. Because they are obviously not the same thing with different HP. Likewise Legion Devils and Angels, etc. Page 4 of the MM makes it very clear where a monsters name goes in a stat block and that it represents a real unique creature in the game world. 

If Vampire Spawn _do_ exist in your world and if they have 1 HP in combat, then yes, they are are monsters in and of themselves. They are also minions.   If you give them more than 1 HP, that means you have house ruled minions to be something other than the rules say. 

When it is said that minions are a rules abstraction, They are likely referring to the mechanic of their HP being fungible and that they only have 1 HP in combat with players.  

If it were not, the MM would not have gone and created specific lore for Minions that do not exist in a Standard form of the same type.

It should also be noted that in the Monster Manual glossary they did not carry over the line about them being an abstraction. Probably to dampen down further chances of confusion.

You might not think Minions are justified, but they are here in 4e nonetheless. If it makes it any easier to understand, I would think of Minions in my head as actually having some small number of HP as the Devs originally wished them to. Perhaps 1* their level, but which simply get ignored for bookkeeping reasons in combat. But keeping this in mind allows you to understand that a minion would not be killed in a combat with a cat, no matter how lucky the cat was.


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## Goumindong (Jul 18, 2008)

DM_Blake said:


> I would not call this minion vs. non-minion.
> 
> In your Steven Seagall movies, I see it as a high level fighter (Seagall is certainly paragon, and in many of his movies, could even be borderline epic) enters a room full of low level fighters (mostly all level 1 with a possible few exceptions of level 2, 3, or maybe a rare level 4).




The entire point of minions is that Segal as a high level fighter would be bored fighting low level fighters to the point that low level fighters should not even be there. He still has to try, dodge attacks et all. So they get statted as minions for the purpose of fighting Segal because otherwise its impossible for Segal to have a challenging fight with a bunch of guys

If there were level 3 or 4 fighters, Segals player would leave the table because its a bunch of boring junk. Levels, hit points, attack ratings, defenses etc etc etc are all just abstractions used to entertain the players. All of these disappear when dealing with NPCs. If the players are playing and you need mooks, you stat them as minions for the players. If you want a monster that is tough all on its own, you stat it as a solo monster. If you want a monster that is tougher than the rest, but not a lot tougher, you stat it as an elite monster.

Why do we do this? Because at the fringes of to-hit rolls the game becomes too static. Its too easy when you can't be hit and its too hard when you can't hit your enemies. So if you make an enemy hard by increasing its level to the point where it stands in for 5 enemies, it would just wallop your normal party(E.G. if you were level 5 and wanted to add a monster to fight alone you would have to go to level 14 in order to reach XP parity, if you need info on why this is bad, go ahead and get a level 5 party and have them fight a Night Hag(lvl 14 Lurker) then Young Black Dragon(Lv 5 Solo Lurker) with the same resources). As such, instead of increasing levels to make a creature harder we add a solo template and now its a challenge alone. Instead of increasing levels to make a creature a bit tougher than the normal guys we add a template.

Its the same the other way around. Instead of subtracting levels to have a bunch of guys we can use, we apply the minion template.

This way its still fun to fight the big guys and to fight the small guys.




> Even Seagall is known to hit these mooks with combinations, striking them several times to bring down a mook. Other mooks he one-shots, maybe using stuff that 4e might call encounter powers, or maybe just good rolls with his at-wills...



Maybe Segal has multliple attack rolls in some of his encounter powers?



			
				Ninja-to said:
			
		

> So for now, my own interpretation is that Felix and Garfield might try to take on a 30th level minion, but even if they both rolled 20's, their damage wouldn't affect that particular minion. Only the PC's can take off that hit point. Wrong or right, for the time being that's how I'm houseruling it.




That is not a house rule, that is the RAW/RAI


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

Hm I didn't say minions aren't justified, I said the opposite. I like them, they make perfect sense to me now.

When I talk about minions not existing in the world, I'm talking about outside of combat. Minions don't wander around the world afraid of things that can do 1HP damage to them. They're a tool for combat purposes only. Don't try to reason how the world exists with minions living their daily lives with only 1HP. Use minions as a convenience. This is what I mean by them not existing in and of themselves. They're not meant to exist outside of their roles in combat with PC's. They're an abstraction, like a shift or a held action or other combat abstraction. It just happens that this combat abstraction is a creature in 4th Edition and that's what some people can't seem to get their head around.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

They make perfect sense to me as well. I think I get what you are saying as well, but its overly confusing. 

The _1 HP_ is the thing that is an abstraction not the existence of the creatures themselves.


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## Goumindong (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:
			
		

> Hm I didn't say minions aren't justified, I said the opposite. I like them, they make perfect sense to me now.



The confusion might have come from you arguing the other way earlier in the thread. Even if you changed your mind it might not be entirely obvious that you had.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

It's not just the 1HP. If it were, you could apply 1HP to any monster and call it a minion. It's the entire concept of the creature that is the abstraction.

In all honesty, it probably doesn't make much difference anyway whether or not you want to say 'minion' just means '1HP', as long as you understand that minions are not meant to wander the countryside alone, fearing anything that could take their 1HP away. They should only fear PC's (or maybe their own superiors) during a battle. I'd go so far as to say don't call a minion a creature, it's almost a combat situation like a 'condition,' like being prone or slowed.

"You're slowed! You can only move 2 squares."
"You're minioned! You're going to have to use up actions to clear the battlefield. Oh they can also hurt you now, unlike in previous editions."


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## Goumindong (Jul 18, 2008)

Switchback said:


> If you have read the thread you know this is not true. Or else Vampire Spawn do not exist in the world. Only Vampire Lords exist. Because they are obviously not the same thing with different HP. Likewise Legion Devils and Angels, etc. Page 4 of the MM makes it very clear where a monsters name goes in a stat block and that it represents a real unique creature in the game world.
> 
> If Vampire Spawn _do_ exist in your world and if they have 1 HP in combat, then yes, they are are monsters in and of themselves. They are also minions.   If you give them more than 1 HP, that means you have house ruled minions to be something other than the rules say.



(short version since I lost the post)
No. All stat block entries are abstractions for how they interact with players. They are there are guides for DM's to pick monsters that behave how they want an encounter to run.

Whether or not the monsters exist is irrelevant. Because how they interact with each other has little to nothing to do with their stat block except maybe as a reference to general power. When a vampire spawn interacts with a vampire it might be as a level 5 lurker, when it interacts with level 2 PCs it might be as a level 5 skirmisher and not a level 10 minion. It all depends on how powerful the PC's are and what type of enemy the DM wants them to fight.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> The confusion might have come from you arguing the other way earlier in the thread. Even if you changed your mind it might not be entirely obvious that you had.




Yeah could be. Earlier in the thread I was confused about how and why they exist, but now I've come to understand their purpose and how they should (and shouldn't) be used so I'm clear on them now, especially in how to use them in combat. 

Admittedly it still takes a little brain power to have them safely interact with dangerous objects/terrain (that might do automatic damage). But my quick and dirty houserule of them not being affected by minor damage, just as they aren't with missed attacks, seems to work well enough for now.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> It's not just the 1HP. If it were, you could apply 1HP to any monster and call it a minion. It's the entire concept of the creature that is the abstraction.
> 
> ....as long as you understand that minions are not meant to wander the countryside alone, fearing anything that could take their 1HP away.




Not exactly. It's true they wouldn't wander the countryside fearing anything that could take their 1 HP away, because only players or heroes can do that.

But its not true that a DM could not have them wandering alone. Let's look at Legion Devils again. A DM could have a Pit Fiend sitting outside a town and sending his dozen Legion Devil Hellguards into a town *alone* to raze it to the ground. Unless that town had high level adventurers, there is nothing the townsfolk could do to stop them. Not one Legion Devil would likely die in the process. 

But in come the heroes to save the town. Suddenly the Legion Devils enter combat and have 1 HP. For a party of three, that would actually be somewhat of a even experience encounter. Though more likely it would make sense for the Pit Fiend to show up and join the fight. But I'm just showing how the context of these creatures can be used in the world where you don't have to fear for their monster lives just because of the 1 HP thing.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> (short version since I lost the post)
> No. All stat block entries are abstractions for how they interact with players. They are there are guides for DM's to pick monsters that behave how they want an encounter to run.
> 
> Whether or not the monsters exist is irrelevant. Because how they interact with each other has little to nothing to do with their stat block except maybe as a reference to general power. When a vampire spawn interacts with a vampire it might be as a level 5 lurker, when it interacts with level 2 PCs it might be as a level 5 skirmisher and not a level 10 minion. It all depends on how powerful the PC's are and what type of enemy the DM wants them to fight.




You are really missing my point there by virtually saying everything off camera is DM fiat. That goes without saying. But it doesn't add much to the discussion really.

It *is* important for people to understand if minions exist as creatures apart from fighting the players. Because players might have to track down the results of Legion Devils destroying a town, if they can't exist except in fighting the players, then how did that happen? If a DM doesn't understand that he can use these creatures in other ways, then he is misunderstanding the ecology of the Monsters.

You might fashion an adventure where a group of Vampire Spawn attacks a campsite of NPC's and the players have to track them back to their lord's castle. If the a DM thinks Vampire Spawn don't exist, can't exist, except in a battle, then he cannot even create that scenario. Because it is not very fitting with something a much more powerful Vampire Lord is going to be doing. 

We are talking at the nuts and bolts level of practicality here not D&D philosophy about how a Orc becomes dust and wind once he goes around the corner into a shadow.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

Switchback said:


> Not exactly. It's true they wouldn't wander the countryside fearing anything that could take their 1 HP away, because only players or heroes can do that.
> 
> But its not true that a DM could not have them wandering alone. Let's look at Legion Devils again. A DM could have a Pit Fiend sitting outside a town and sending his dozen Legion Devil Hellguards into a town *alone* to raze it to the ground. Unless that town had high level adventurers, there is nothing the townsfolk could do to stop them. Not one Legion Devil would likely die in the process.




RAW, this isn't true. Anything that rolls a natural 20 will kill one. If you decide not to roll at all as DM and simply say 'none die' then you're free to do that. Or you could say again 'minions don't take damage from non-Pc's'.

I do agree with you though that having minions *not* exist outside of PC combat or PC's being present is troubling. I don't like it either but I don't see a way of having minions exist with their 1HP. A pack of wolves or 20 of pretty much any creature could spell its doom if they all got one attack in. That is, you'd have to rule that taking 1HP damage from 'lesser' creatures wouldn't kill a minion.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> RAW, this isn't true. Anything that rolls a natural 20 will kill one.




If you have monsters (any type not just minions) do something like attack a town, or any action involving conflict without the players, do your really stop the game for several hours to roll out the combat one round at a time? No, you look at the relative strength of the creatures and make a decision about what would happen in that battle in general and how it would resolve.

For you to want to roll out that non-player minion conflict is no more necessary than you to roll out the results of 12 Ogre Savages hitting the town as well. Either way your going to have to DM fiat the results there or else waste a heck of a lot of pointless time for little gain.​
As dice rolling with regards to minions is only ever going to happen where players are concerned, the 1HP is never going to be an issue. It's not even true to say they really have 1HP, so much that it takes one hit from roughly equal level players to kill them. It's not the same thing.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 18, 2008)

Another good example of minion vs regular monsters is The Matrix.

In the first movie, Agent Smith was a Solo.  Neo had to pull together all the stops to defeat him.

In the second movie, the Agent Smiths were minions.  Individually, Neo could handle them with ease, but they had numbers and stood a chance that way.  And Neo did defeat an AWFUL lot of Agent Smiths.

In the third movie, in the final fight, Agent Smith was back to his old solo self, after having gathered all the power of being the one virus left in the Matrix.


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## Goumindong (Jul 18, 2008)

Switchback said:


> You are really missing my point there by virtually saying everything off camera is DM fiat. That goes without saying. But it doesn't add much to the discussion really.




No it really does, because its pretty much RAW and RAI. People here who are complaining that minions have 1 HP are largely complaining that in fights that do not involve players these 1 HP monsters would be killed by things that should not kill them. But RAW and RAI this is not true, since its NPC against NPC they pretty much do what you want. The DMG explicitly tells you that you should probably not roll these interactions.



> Orcs aren't just dust in the wind




No one is saying the monsters disappear when the PC's aren't there, they are saying that the concept of "minion" does. Its only a "minion" when the PCs are there fighting it. And when the PC's aren't there fighting it, its whatever it needs to be to make the plot expedient. 

When the Legion Devil Hellguards go into a town and raze it to the ground they are freaking Devils. When the PC's come they just happen to be Devils that the PC's are so much stronger than that BoB the Fighter the third can take them out with a single elbow drop and/or mailed fist. But against the townsfolk they are still unstoppable monsters of unspeakable doom.

I.E. against the townsfolk the Legion Devil Hellguards are level 5 soldiers and the townsfolk are level 1 minions. But against the heroes the Legion Devil Hellguards are level 11 minions and the PCs are level 11 heroes.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

^

Ok. I see what you are saying now. 

I have already tried to say that in many different ways, but it seem hard for some to grasp that the 1 HP only applies in the specific situations where the players are encountering these creatures as minions.

It's too bad though that people will not be able to use minions in their campaigns because they cannot or won't allow themselves to square the idea. Or worse, are going to have different monsters, with different looks, roles, or lore, possibly morphing into various minion creatures once battle begins because they don't get how to do it any other way.


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## Ninja-to (Jul 18, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> But RAW and RAI this is not true, since its NPC against NPC they pretty much do what you want. The DMG explicitly tells you that you should probably not roll these interactions.




Perhaps this is one of the main problems. Where exactly does it state this in the rules?





Goumindong said:


> No one is saying the monsters disappear when the PC's aren't there, they are saying that the concept of "minion" does. Its only a "minion" when the PCs are there fighting it. And when the PC's aren't there fighting it, its whatever it needs to be to make the plot expedient.




Agreed.



Goumindong said:


> When the Legion Devil Hellguards go into a town and raze it to the ground they are freaking Devils. When the PC's come they just happen to be Devils that the PC's are so much stronger than that BoB the Fighter the third can take them out with a single elbow drop and/or mailed fist. But against the townsfolk they are still unstoppable monsters of unspeakable doom.
> 
> 
> I.E. against the townsfolk the Legion Devil Hellguards are level 5 soldiers and the townsfolk are level 1 minions. But against the heroes the Legion Devil Hellguards are level 11 minions and the PCs are level 11 heroes.




This is the part that's harder to grasp. I'm not saying I disagree with it, I'm just saying that I think this is where all the confusion comes in. The 'process' I suppose of explaining to a group of guys at your gaming table at how this happens in play is what some people may find difficult. You can be sure that some of the players are going to pipe in and point out 'wait a minute, if any of these hundreds of townsfolk roll a 20 with a bow, they'd kill a minion'.

We know as DM's that this shouldn't be allowed. Explaining to players why is where the problem lies, because as far as I know this isn't explained in the RAW.


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## Switchback (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> We know as DM's that this shouldn't be allowed. Explaining to players why is where the problem lies, because as far as I know this isn't explained in the RAW.




This is why I feel players need to be let in on the basic premise of Minions and even their underlying mechanics. If they are new to the game or just not DM'ing and haven't paid attention, I see where it could be confusing.

They need to be told what they are and what they represent and why WoTC thought them up and the purpose they serve to the game.

I also think this is why they suggest making them be identifiable by players. Because after your 3rd Vampire Lord explodes in death on the first hit, and other ones have taken 15 rounds to kill, the horrible inconsistency might begin to ruin the underlying logic of your world, But the players should be able to much more easily understand that something like a Vampire Spawn could wreak havoc against commoners, but that beyond a certain point, would stop being a legitimate threat to paragon level heroes as individual monsters.


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## Destil (Jul 18, 2008)

Celtavian said:


> Monster tailoring is even more extensive in 4th edition. You think you surprise your party with a Barbarian/Blackguard orc? That surprise is nothing compared to some freak kobold with strange abilities that can't be attributed to just kobolds.
> 
> 4th edition threw any idea of assumption about a given creature out the window. Creatures do all kinds of strange things. There is no assumption about any creature now. If you're level 20 and a group of kobolds stand in your way, do not assume an easy fight. You are in serious trouble. Those kobolds are going to hand you your behind if you don't fight like their real enemies.



No different than 3E templates and monsters with class levels. Two kobolds wiped a 5th level party of mine once with 6 players and an equal-leveled NPC...

Two kobold sorcerer 8s, that is. 

Hell, let me introduce you to Klixxit


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## Lurker37 (Jul 18, 2008)

Switchback said:


> That means what exactly in relation to the fact that Minions exist in the game world outside of combat? Which is the point I am making.
> 
> I don't think we are in disagreement about the way Minions should generally be used in encounters. However, the way you suggested playing sort of fast and loose with minions or doing bait and switches with other related monster types, would be suspect at the least, and downright dishonest or unworkable in some cases.
> 
> ...




You've missed the point. Nobody's morphing anything. The Legion Devil in your example does not suddenly bulk up or gain a more robust cardivascular system.

The Legion Devil doesn't have one hit point because he's a Legion Devil. He has one hit point because he was put into the encounter as a minion. If you are forced to let the party encounter a single Legion Devil outside of a balanced level-appropriate encounter you either:

a) Acknowledge that anything short of a solo monster caught alone by a five-PC party is toast, and let them kill him. ( in the example of the fleeing minion - how the heck does one non-solo creature count as 'an encounter'? If the creature flees to _the next encounter_ however... )

b) Quickly assign an arbitrary amount of hit points and let them rough him up - they'll still probably kill him in one round. (And it still doesn't count as an encounter. This is important for things like milestones.)

c) If they don't want to kill him, let them roleplay it out (possible skill challenge).

(In fact, there's an option  d) where the Legion Devil is much higher level than the party, but in these cases the only solution is to drag the DM out the back and beat them senseless with a wiffle bat.)

Option b is the only one that requires alteration to the stats in the MM, probably by giving every minion two sets of stats. I don't think the gain in this corner case is worth the confusion it would cause.

The much, MUCH simpler solution is to give minions an in-game rationale *not to wander out alone*. For instance, declare that minions have a pack mentality, and strongly dislike being alone. They hang out in groups whenever at all possible. 

And have their superiors recognise that minions are too incompetent to trust with anything important like carrying a message - you use a lurker or something for that. Minions are the expendable troops, the runts of the litter, the hapless fools not worth wasting proper training and equipment on. Why on earth would you trust them with an errand or a message? If you've ever watched any television (or if you grew up in any society that had minions) you would _know_ that a minion being sent to complete any task of importance is just going to end with their boss taking two asprin, putting an icepack on their head (or, if really evil, executing a few random conveniently-placed minions ) and sending someone competent out to do whatever the minion failed to achieve.

You're also forgetting that the only time PCs will ever encounter ANY creature in game is because the DM put it there (even if the module says there's a Blue Spotted Geeba in the room, the DM still has the option by RAW to change that, especially to adjust for party size and composition). Because of this, the DM can control where minions go, and where they can be found, and what they do if they're in a losing battle (which, by the way, is 'die fighting'). If the DM ignores the rules for how to use minions and as a result creates an odd situation, then where does the fault lie?


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## Pinnacle (Jul 18, 2008)

FourthBear said:


> I suppose if people simply dislike the "1 hp" in the stat block, the same effect could be achieved by giving them standard hit points, but giving them the following vulnerability:
> 
> Vulnerable: A minion hit by an attack by an opponent of its tier or higher is struck dead.  A minion that takes any automatic damage from an effect with level in its tier or higher is struck dead, with the exception of any effect brought about by a miss.
> 
> The vast majority of the time it would work out the same, you would just have a standard hit point to reference in the odd occasions where cats attack or lethal bramble bushes need to be run through.




Also allows for enough attacks that do damage on a miss to take out a minion.  Probably won't ever come up, but if the players have bad luck a minion could survive more of these attacks than he/she/it should be able to take.


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## Goumindong (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Perhaps this is one of the main problems. Where exactly does it state this in the rules?



 I am trying to find it, but cannot.


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## GoLu (Jul 18, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Perhaps this is one of the main problems. Where exactly does it state this in the rules?




I don't see anything explicitly stating when not to roll for NPCs, although there are a couple sections (pp 116-117, 187) which make it very clear that you only bother with stats which you expect will get used in the advanture (or even just the encounter).  I can see at least two reasonable implications of that:
1) It's common for NPCs to have abilities beyond their stats, but these abilities aren't expected to be relevant to their interaction with the PCs.
2) When off-camera and expected to remain there, they have no stats (because they have no interaction with the PCs).  And it's kinda hard to roll for them when they lack stats.

On the other hand, when on-camera, I suspect that you are intended to roll for the NPCs.  Which is to say, if a demon horde sweeps through town and the PCs hear about it later, no stats are needed and the minion vs. non-minion aspect of the demons isn't really important.  On the other hand, if a demon horde sweeps through town with the PCs present, the demons and townsfolk (or at least the ones right next the PCs) should use normal combat rules in order to give the PCs the chance to save some of the local population like the heroes they are.


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## Obryn (Jul 18, 2008)

I am still unclear why anyone is worried about what minions do when the PCs are not around.

It's very not-zen.

-O


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## Midknightsun (Jul 18, 2008)

Q: If a minion is killed by a house cat in the woods with no one else around, does any one care? (but the house cat )


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## Syrsuro (Jul 18, 2008)

Midknightsun said:


> Q: If a minion is killed by a house cat in the woods with no one else around, does any one care? (but the house cat )





And do housecats get experience for killing minions.....

Carl


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## Ninja-to (Jul 19, 2008)

My Email:

I'm having difficulty understanding how minions interact with the world. As a DM, I can understand how they're used as abstractions for bookeeping purposes. They have 1HP to make life simpler. One hit and they die. I can understand this.

What I don't quite understand is how the rest of the world interacts with a minion. With 1HP, how would a minion realistically survive in the real world, outside of combat? In fact, do they exist at all?

I've written on a post on En World about how a high level demonic minion attacks the PC's at their home. Let's say one of the PC's likes house cats, and a bunch of these house cats (or other small pets) attack the minions. At some point, an epic level minion might actually be killed by one of these house cats (if it can roll a natural 20). Or less silly, how about a bar fight and the barmaid with a tankard?

Another example I used was hazardous terrain, like thorny bushes. Let's say there is some type of terrain that does automatic damage when you pass through it. Minions can't pass through this terrain, while a child or villager might make it through with just a few scratches.

How are minions supposed to survive these types of situations?

--------------------------

Customer Service

Unfortunately, there isn’t an official answer for the situation you describe. I’ve passed along this conversation to the game’s developers. Hopefully, we’ll see an  update  or  FAQ entry covering it soon, but until then it’s up to the campaign’s Dungeon Master to decide. The DM is always the final arbiter on how they want their campaign to run. Have fun!

----------------------------


So with any luck they'll respond in a FAQ or something.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 19, 2008)

My problem with the 1HP Minion is this.

It assumes that any successful blow a PC lands is fatal, or at least, instantly debilitating...

Which isn't realistic at all- the world is full of people who survive all kinds of horrible injuries- the kid who survives being mauled by dogs or attacked by sharks, the guy who survives being shot.

50 Cent...Phineas Gage...

They can't ALL be "PCs"- that would expand the definition of PC to uselessness.


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## jadrax (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> My problem with the 1HP Minion is this.
> 
> It assumes that any successful blow a PC lands is fatal, or at least, instantly debilitating...
> 
> Which isn't realistic at all- the world is full of people who survive all kinds of horrible injuries- the kid who survives being mauled by dogs or attacked by sharks, the guy who survives being shot.




A hit in this case would be determined as a "Successfully landing a blow with fatal damage" and a miss "Not successfully landing a blow with fatal damage" you could easily describe a miss as "you land a blow upon the Kobold, bruising him and knocking him slightly back." but in game effects he took no damage and did not move a full square so no change.


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## Mal Malenkirk (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> My problem with the 1HP Minion is this.
> 
> It assumes that any successful blow a PC lands is fatal, or at least, instantly debilitating...
> 
> ...




Just because a minion is out of the fight doesn't mean he's dead.  

The players state whether the minion he fell was killed, knocked out or horribly mauled for that matter.  The DM is free to overrule them from time to time if it helps the story.

Beside, your agument applies to all type of monsters over all editions; Whenever a creature was dropped below 0 it was assumed slain.  Only DM fiat could dictate that the disembowelled ork miraculously survived.


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## FourthBear (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> My problem with the 1HP Minion is this.
> 
> It assumes that any successful blow a PC lands is fatal, or at least, instantly debilitating...
> 
> Which isn't realistic at all- the world is full of people who survive all kinds of horrible injuries- the kid who survives being mauled by dogs or attacked by sharks, the guy who survives being shot.



If there's going to be a problem with the abstract nature of D&D combat not taking such things into account, you're going to have a lot more problems than just the minion rules.  I mean, standard combat of all types has opponents dying at zero hit points by default, unless the player specifically notes attacking to subdue or by DM fiat.  As far as I know, Minions are no different than standard monsters when it comes to what happens when they hit zero hit points.  Really, if you want to bring in more realistic and simulationist combat into D&D, I fear you've got a complete overhaul of the system to consider.


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## Tenniel (Jul 19, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> I'm having difficulty understanding how minions interact with the world.




I think how minions interact with the world is different with how they interact with PCs.  Having 1 HP is an abstraction (as you noted) and, importantly, an abastrction that assumes the minion is in combat with PCs of a relevant level.  This abstraction (and indeed game mechanics in general) are not required to adjudicate events outside the spotlight of the game.

When not part of an encounter minions can go about their lives without fear of dying from mosquito bites.  They can have battles with their neighbours and hobble into the infirmary afterwards with a dagger in the thigh and arrow in the shoulder.  Now if their neighbours were PCs then either the arrow or the dagger would have slain the creature (such is their fate when encountering heroes).  In short, minions interact with the world in a way that you, the DM, dictate to achieve whatever end you desire, be that 'realism', conistency, common-sense, plot or whatever tickles your fancy.

Similarly they could get through the damaging terrain (ouch, ouch) to later be part of the encounter (with deep scratches and their single solitary HP).

HPs represent a lot of things: mass, toughness but also luck and battle experience.  It is the fate of a minion to receive a mighty blow in combat from a worthy opponent, this does not mean they are made of tissue paper (refer to a Legion Devil's Fort save)... it means the PCs can easily dispatch these lesser beings with relative ease.

It is possible to set up anomolous situations (e.g. pet cats vs high level minion) with minions, but these can be simply avoided.  DnD simulates heroic fiction, which centres on the heroes and their deeds... so omitting the housecat's attacks from the resolution of combat will solve the rules anomaly while maintaing the spirit of the game.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 19, 2008)

FourthBear said:


> If there's going to be a problem with the abstract nature of D&D combat not taking such things into account, you're going to have a lot more problems than just the minion rules.  I mean, standard combat of all types has opponents dying at zero hit points by default, unless the player specifically notes attacking to subdue or by DM fiat.  As far as I know, Minions are no different than standard monsters when it comes to what happens when they hit zero hit points.  Really, if you want to bring in more realistic and simulationist combat into D&D, I fear you've got a complete overhaul of the system to consider.




Oh, don't worry about me- I'm already putting 4Ed in my rearview mirror.  I don't care for that neighborhood at all.* 

(*At least as a replacement for 3.X- it may be a decent game in and of itself, but like HERO Fuzion so many years ago, I won't be buying any more than the Core 3 I already have.)


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## Obryn (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Which isn't realistic at all- the world is full of people who survive all kinds of horrible injuries- the kid who survives being mauled by dogs or attacked by sharks, the guy who survives being shot.



Why do you think that 4e's minion rules represent anything other than the mechanics through which NPCs (deemed to be minions in any given combat) interact with PCs?

-O


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 19, 2008)

> Why do you think that 4e's minion rules represent anything other than the mechanics through which NPCs (deemed to be minions in any given combat) interact with PCs?




I don't.

I just think the 4Ed Minions mechanic does a poor job of simulating this because, as I said, 1 successful hit from a PC and they're done...which not only doesn't comport with the RW, it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).

Weak?  A marginal threat?  That I can understand.

Sopping wet toilet paper foes?  I don't care for that.


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## Jhulae (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).




Except for the fiction (in books and movies) where the heroes cut down/eliminate swaths of foes before the 'climactic' battle with the major villain.

Minion rules work fine, as long as one doesn't think to hard about them.


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## Minigiant (Jul 19, 2008)

Minions having 1 HP makes perfect sense to me.

Minions come in 3 types to me.

1) Mooks. You suck at defensive fighting.
You lack the fighting ability to defend yourself. You have to rely on your armor and powers to keep you from getting hit in the first place. But if someone swings past your armor, you lack the ability to dodge or parry it. Just because you're an orc or orge, doesn't mean you know how to parry a kensai's axe. Not everyone knows how to fight. You might be some wimp with superpowers. Level 15 powers on a level 1 body maybe. You can fly and shoot lasers but are really a loser in battle. Someone gave the street rat some epic gear. Someone took too many templates in 3.5E and walked into 4E. 

2) Ninja. You rely on passive defenses.
You slaughter the weak only to die for the strong. Enter the high level mass produced warrior. You buffed up your passive defenses (AC, reflex, etc) and but never planned on someone ever beating them. But commoners have to roll a 20 to hit you so you should have killed them all by then, right? Too bad your mortal. A stab to the heart kills most people and you have a dagger in your chest. You are hard to hit but once you get hit, you go down. You're a legionnaire or soldier, 90% of the time for you  it's more important to never allow a hit than it is to block those hits.

Minions either are grunts, noncombatants with superpowers, or experts with bad luck. Almost everyone dies with their brains are bashed and for one reason or other, when the good guys get a headshot, minion doesn't move.


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## icarusfallz (Jul 19, 2008)

To reply to the idea of a housecat killing a minion:

Minions are only minions to PCs, this should be obvious.  Farmers and housecats and raccoons are no threat to minions.  A horde of Kobolds comes to town, and the farmers are like "Well, 90% of them are minions, so to heck with em"  I think not.

Minions are SCARY to the non heroic.


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## SweeneyTodd (Jul 19, 2008)

CustServ reply: You can handle it however you want. 

Kind of goes along with what everyone else has been saying.  I'm pretty sure that is the answer they'd give for anything that happens "in game" when there are no PCs around.

Implied response: If you think it'd be dumb for a lvl 20 minion to be able to be killed by a house cat, _then they're not_. That goes along perfectly with last page's quote from the DMG describing "the minion 1 hp rule" as a tool for the DM to use when they wish. Again implied: if stuff happens and there are no PCs around to be involved, then you should decide what happens whatever way you think is plausible.

What else could you possibly need as far as an official answer?


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## FourthBear (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I just think the 4Ed Minions mechanic does a poor job of simulating this because, as I said, 1 successful hit from a PC and they're done...which not only doesn't comport with the RW, it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).
> 
> Weak?  A marginal threat?  That I can understand.
> 
> Sopping wet toilet paper foes?  I don't care for that.



I must say that I disagree with both of your points.  I have a hard time thinking of a prominent example of heroic genre fantasy fiction in which the heroes *don't* find themselves fighting against foes that are slain in a single mentioned attack in the book, but a menace in numbers.  Certainly, the classic touchstones of D&D all have this: Lord of the Rings, Elric, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and others.  I would assume that these are considered among the better exemplars, as the founders of the game felt they were the primary inspirational material.

I also think minions are definitely not "sopping toliet paper foes" that aren't even a marginal threat.  In fact, I believe that they can be significantly more than a marginal threat.  Note that their defenses and their attack bonuses are level appropriate.  If the PCs are hitting minions 90% of the time, something is out of whack.  They should still be having to roll above 7-10 to hit a minion at pretty much all tiers of play, unless they are choosing to expend resources that are usually conserved for potent foes to clear them out.  In my own games, I've seen minions taken out quickly when the heroes work at it for a couple of rounds, but I've also seen minions drop PCs when the PCs decided to concentrate only on the big guns because they thought that the minions weren't a threat.

I think it's important to emphasize that minions are *not* there primarily to be punching bags only used for atmosphere.  If that is desired, the DM should use foes significantly lower in level than the heroes.  If minions aren't a significant threat for whatever reason in a campaign, the DM should stop using them and use foes that are actually threatening and worth awarding XPs for.

I should note that I do worry a bit that at higher tier play, area effects with automatic damage will become so common and easy that minions may become less of a threat overall.  However, I think this is a separate issue from whether the minion rules are appropriate at all.


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## Goumindong (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I don't.
> 
> I just think the 4Ed Minions mechanic does a poor job of simulating this because, as I said, 1 successful hit from a PC and they're done...which not only doesn't comport with the RW, it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).
> 
> ...




Then don't use minions. They are there when you want to have a fight between a bunch of enemies and the PC's but standard monsters would either be too powerful or too weak.

Minions come in 4s. So for a party of five, the minimum minion encounter is going to be about

4 normal enemies, +4 minions. For a total of 8 enemies.

On the high end of an even level encounter you will be looking at 1-2 normal enemies and 12-16 minions. On the high end of a +3-4 level encounter you might be looking at 30-40 minions(not sure)

You simply cannot use the same basic monsters and have a challenging fight with 20 enemies or more without utterly destroying the party. 

These fights exist in heroic fantasy books and movies all the time, as well as extending across genre into pretty much all heroic fiction.

If you don't want to fight minions and want to fight more solo monsters/elites. Inform your DM and you might get some.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 19, 2008)

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of a housecat doing one hit point of damage. Cat scratches aren't fatal.

When's the last time someone was killed by a clowder of cats? Is that crazy lady with two dozen cats in her house now a deadly force?

If you can't imagine something killing a man, then it shouldn't do hit point damage.


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## ValhallaGH (Jul 19, 2008)

Midknightsun said:


> Q: If a minion is killed by a house cat in the woods with no one else around, does any one care? (but the house cat )




But how can a housecat kill anything?  It does 1d4-4 = 0 damage with a successful hit.


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## Henry (Jul 19, 2008)

ValhallaGH said:


> But how can a housecat kill anything?  It does 1d4-4 = 0 damage with a successful hit.




If you're talking 3e, that housecat does at least 1 point of damage, by the rules (a successful attack does at least 1 damage). If 4e, a housecat doesn't even have stats normally, so they don't do any damage unless the DM says so.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> I just think the 4Ed Minions mechanic does a poor job of simulating this because, as I said, 1 successful hit from a PC and they're done...which not only doesn't comport with the RW, it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).





If you're talking written fiction, there's Song of Roland, where he's cleaving Saracens are getting cleaved in two left and right, or Conan hewing through lesser men by the dozen in some of his earliest tales (early as in "young conan" not "first stories Howard wrote'").

If we're looking at movies, there's the Lord of the Rings, where literally DOZENS of "one-shot kills" are portrayed. And in TV, good old Buffy and Angel might stake a minion-seeming vamp roughly once an episode.

As for the whole, "50 cent and Phines Gage" analogy - they don't have to be PCs to not die in one hit; all told, "regular monsters" are faced at least as often as minions are. I'd say look at it deductively rather than inductively; because minions can have just as many skills, defenses, and close to the same attack bonus as non-minons, then the real test is: if they died in one hit, then they were a minion. If they didn't, then they weren't.

Alternately, a DM who doesn't like minions can either substitute them out for a non-minion at a 4-to-1 ratio, or make them non-minions pretty easily. Using the chart on page 184, convert them to Brutes, as that seems to be the closest category in terms of defenses, attacks, etc. to minions. Give them the brute's hit points, a normal or high damage expression, divide the number of them by 1/4th, and you're in business. All the other stats are close enough for government work, and those two steps are all that's needed.


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## RigaMortus2 (Jul 19, 2008)

Ninja-to said:


> Now keep in mind, if you take the approach that 'minions are only minions when interacting with the PC's' then ok, you could almost follow that line of reasoning and get away with it but you'd have to make exceptions to this rule, and exactly how are you supposed to deal with it if you take that line? For example, in the brambles above, do you kill them off? Do you say the brambles just don't do any damage at all? If so, why? Isn't it now unfair that the PC's themselves would take damage walking through but the minions don't?




Question...   Where did you come up with the stats for the brambles?  Are they in the DMG or something, or did you make them up?  Just curious...

If you (as a DM) made up the "stats" for the brambles, then you (as DM) can make up a rule stating that they do not deal damage to minions.

The way I would handle it, and rule it, is that the brambles sure do scratch up the NPC townsfolk and the demon minions, but not enough to have an actual mechanical detriment (meaning, they do not deal real damage).  Since we all agree that HPs are an abstraction, it is perfectly reasonable to discribe someone being hit, bruised, scarred or bleeding WITHOUT taking off hit points, just as it would be reasonable to describe a glancing blow, dodging out of the way of a fireball or fatiguing during battle (aka being hit by an attack that deals hp damage, but not enough to kill you) as you mark off hit points.


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## RigaMortus2 (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I don't.
> 
> I just think the 4Ed Minions mechanic does a poor job of simulating this because, as I said, 1 successful hit from a PC and they're done...




That is pretty much the point of minions though...



Dannyalcatraz said:


> which not only doesn't comport with the RW, it is also at odds with heroic genre fiction (at least, the better exemplars).




Why would you try to compare the mechanics of a game system with that of the real world? 

Others have already listed multiple sources of fantasy where heroes (ie PCs) take out multiple opponents in one hit (ie Minions), so I don't think this part of your arguement is very concrete...


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## Obryn (Jul 19, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I don't.



Then why are you asking about real-world examples of people who have survived wounds?

-O


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## robertliguori (Jul 21, 2008)

Tenniel said:


> I think how minions interact with the world is different with how they interact with PCs.  Having 1 HP is an abstraction (as you noted) and, importantly, an abastrction that assumes the minion is in combat with PCs of a relevant level.  This abstraction (and indeed game mechanics in general) are not required to adjudicate events outside the spotlight of the game.
> 
> When not part of an encounter minions can go about their lives without fear of dying from mosquito bites.  They can have battles with their neighbours and hobble into the infirmary afterwards with a dagger in the thigh and arrow in the shoulder.  Now if their neighbours were PCs then either the arrow or the dagger would have slain the creature (such is their fate when encountering heroes).  In short, minions interact with the world in a way that you, the DM, dictate to achieve whatever end you desire, be that 'realism', conistency, common-sense, plot or whatever tickles your fancy.



If we go down that route, why have stats for anything ever?  The DM can always handwave away the printed rules; having situations in which the DM needs to do so on account of the printed rules being nonsensical indicates bad rules.



> Similarly they could get through the damaging terrain (ouch, ouch) to later be part of the encounter (with deep scratches and their single solitary HP).



What happens when the PCs then attempt to push the monsters into the terrain as part of the combat encounter?  Do we get Schrodinger's Minions, who interact with the game world in totally different ways whether or not they are being observed, and in such a way that this difference in behavior can also be observed?



> HPs represent a lot of things: mass, toughness but also luck and battle experience.  It is the fate of a minion to receive a mighty blow in combat from a worthy opponent, this does not mean they are made of tissue paper (refer to a Legion Devil's Fort save)... it means the PCs can easily dispatch these lesser beings with relative ease.



But fate has nothing to do with it; if that worthy opponent has a level 1 wizard along for the ride, and that legion devil squares off one-on-one with that wizard, that devil will die.



> It is possible to set up anomalous situations (e.g. pet cats vs high level minion) with minions, but these can be simply avoided.  DnD simulates heroic fiction, which centres on the heroes and their deeds... so omitting the housecat's attacks from the resolution of combat will solve the rules anomaly while maintain the spirit of the game.




Just to check, then; it is an anomalous situation for non-appropriately-leveled characters to face legion devils.  This means that minions have no existence with regards to the PCs other than level-appropriate challenges, and clever PCs will stage commando raids on hell, find it either deserted or populated only by small groups of legion devils, loot and massacre, then escape, having been strengthened from the experience.  You are saying that it is inconceivable (or at least, not worth considering in the rules) that a character not an appropriately-leveled-PC will interact with the legion devils, despite the known and documented propensity for PCs to not go where and do what is expected.


My beef with minions is that they're solving the wrong problem.  The hordes of orcs don't go down at a poor dagger-slash from everyone; they do so at the hands of a hero.  Therefore, heroes expected to cleave through hordes of orcs should do minimum damage enough to guarantee a kill; if you instead change things so that the orcs are soap-bubbles, you should expect the actors in the world to treat them accordingly.


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## FourthBear (Jul 21, 2008)

robertliguori said:


> But fate has nothing to do with it; if that worthy opponent has a level 1 wizard along for the ride, and that legion devil squares off one-on-one with that wizard, that devil will die.



Only if that level 1 wizard rolls a 20.  Remember, minions have level appropriate defenses, so only through the grace of "always hits on a 20" will an opponent much lower level manage to hit a minion.  Note that on the other side, minions also have  level appropriate attack bonuses, so the minions (and every other higher level opponents in the fight) will always hitting our hapless level 1 wizard with every attempt.  Our wizard also probably be going dead last in every initiative order as well, since minions also get the same initiative bonus as all opponents.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if a level one wizard is in a high level combat, gets into melee and rolls a 20, why not let him kill the legion devil in a fluke?  He's going to be dead either in this combat or another very soon.


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## AllisterH (Jul 21, 2008)

FourthBear said:


> Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if a level one wizard is in a high level combat, gets into melee and rolls a 20, why not let him kill the legion devil in a fluke? He's going to be dead either in this combat or another very soon.




Strange...is this not how Smaug actually was defeated? THe one lucky shot?

Seriously, minion rules are one of the best features of 4E as it allows D&D to actually simulate those scenes from novels that supposedly are the basis of D&D. Throw in healing surges/second wind and you're easily duplicating the feel of a Conan novel for example.

I find it somewhat ironic that the 4E gamist version of D&D actually simulates the nfluences of D&D better than the more "simulationist" earlier versions. 

re: Real life and minions
Um, seriously, when a person gets hit by a sword, GENERALLY, they die. Sure, there are cases of people getting stabbed by a sword and not dying but that is NOT the average response.


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## AllisterH (Jul 21, 2008)

robertliguori said:


> My beef with minions is that they're solving the wrong problem. The hordes of orcs don't go down at a poor dagger-slash from everyone; they do so at the hands of a hero. Therefore, heroes expected to cleave through hordes of orcs should do minimum damage enough to guarantee a kill; if you instead change things so that the orcs are soap-bubbles, you should expect the actors in the world to treat them accordingly.




But they DON"T. Random Joe Blow at1st level isn't downing Legionnaire devils at all unless he gets extremely unlucky.

Seriously, it is easier to simple change the rules so that a natural 20 isn't an automatic hit. Right there, that simple change doesn't affect the PCs in any way but solves most of the issues.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 21, 2008)

Still debating? 

What's so difficult to understand about minions? Hasn't the 'correct' answer been stated several times in this thread?

There are no minions.

Or to be more specific: Minions only exist if a party of an appropriate level happens to be around.

Where's the problem?


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## robertliguori (Jul 21, 2008)

FourthBear said:


> Only if that level 1 wizard rolls a 20.  Remember, minions have level appropriate defenses, so only through the grace of "always hits on a 20" will an opponent much lower level manage to hit a minion.  Note that on the other side, minions also have  level appropriate attack bonuses, so the minions (and every other higher level opponents in the fight) will always hitting our hapless level 1 wizard with every attempt.  Our wizard also probably be going dead last in every initiative order as well, since minions also get the same initiative bonus as all opponents.
> 
> Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if a level one wizard is in a high level combat, gets into melee and rolls a 20, why not let him kill the legion devil in a fluke?  He's going to be dead either in this combat or another very soon.




One legion devil vs. one wizard.  Let us assume that the wizard has Cloud of Daggers.

The minion attacks.  The minion is incapable of slaying the wizard in one blow.

The wizard uses Cloud of Daggers.  The minion's defenses are bypassed, it takes a point of damage, and auto-expires.  It's not a 1-in-20 shot, it's a certainty of victory if the wizard has a particular power.



			
				AllisterH said:
			
		

> re: Real life and minions
> Um, seriously, when a person gets hit by a sword, GENERALLY, they die. Sure, there are cases of people getting stabbed by a sword and not dying but that is NOT the average response.



Nor is the average case getting hit by a sword and expiring immediately.  Most battle-deaths were from infection or blood loss, not trauma.

Have you ever had to joint a cut of meat?  Ever try to put steel (even sharp, heavy steel) through a bunch of flesh and bone?  It's not easy; try it once, and you'll be much more forgiving of the possibility of failure in Coup de Grace, especially when you factor in skin, armor, and the fact that warriors are not bred for tender meat the way domestic animals are.

Of course, I am not a trained warrior, I do not have 16 Str, and I'm wielding a meat cleaver and butcher knife, not an axe or greatsword, and I certainly do not have powers available for use.  Moreover, I don't practice it; I expect that even absent all these things, a training regimen (with optional montage bardic music) could greatly increase my capacity to put a weapon through flesh and bone, either on the cutting block or the battlefield.

I don't like the fact that D&D4 cannot represent me.  I don't like that my choices are either hero or extra, and that there is no room for 'can take a realistic amount of abuse before expiring'.  Really, if the goal was to simplify damage tracking, I'd prefer to give minions toughness saves, a la Mutants and Masterminds; the minion makes a save with DC of some constant plus damage dealt at a bonus (or penalty) according to level.  If they make the save, they live, if they fail by less than 5, they're bloodied and stunned for a round, and if they fail by more than 5, they're out.  You get one extra condition with two possible states (bloodied or unbloodied, with 2x bloodied equaling defeat) per minion to track.


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## CountPopeula (Jul 21, 2008)

Jhaelen said:


> Still debating?
> 
> What's so difficult to understand about minions? Hasn't the 'correct' answer been stated several times in this thread?
> 
> ...




Don't you know that if the rules of the game world are not also the physics of the game world, the game is deeply deeply flawed. Why should we apply logic to it?

And I disagree with the assertion that minions aren't minions when the PCs aren't around. I think that pretty much everyone has 1 hp in the game world, and having more than 1 hp is being above average.

Look at all the nit picks. "It's easier to kill a minion than a door." It's also easier to cleave a skull in two with an axe than it is to bust down a wolid oak door with an axe.

The falling damage thing? Well, a fall from 10 feet can kill you, potentially, depending on how you land. And do wee need to argue falling rules again in another edition?

"Oh, anyone can just kill a minion" So? If you get hit by a sword or a flail, you're probably going to die, or at the very least, be unable to stand up and fight.

"A housecat can kill a minion." No. Just no. and rules as written...  I thought we discouraged rules lawyering in this hobby? isn't the very definition of rules lawyering sidetracking a discussion by insisting the enforcement of rules in ways like this? "well, I don't see why my cat CAN'T kill the minion, it deals 1 damage."

The townsfolk and the horde of orcs? If the townsfolk can only hit on a natural 20, then they're not taking down a horde of orcs, are they? They're having a chance to fight back with the odds greatly against them, and only the heroes can heroically take down waves and waves of monsters. A single common could fell one... maybe.

As for the level one wizard vs high-level minions thing... How long does everyone plan on ignoring that you do, in fact, have to hit a minion to deal damage? Will someone please explain on someone who is, in fact, above average having a five percent chance to kill one demon/orc/whathaveyou out of twenty or more is logically inconsistent in the real world? Other than the demon/orc part. I mean, there's every chance that if me and Peyton Manning lined up and threw 100 footballs at the same time, I would throw one further than him. It doesn't change the fact that he would throw 99 further than I could.

Does anyone have any plans of explaining how minions are poorly designed when looking at the whole of the minion, including things like chance armor class and defense bonuses and attack bonus, or are we going to just get more "it only has 1 hp!"?


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## Dausuul (Jul 21, 2008)

robertliguori said:


> Just to check, then; it is an anomalous situation for non-appropriately-leveled characters to face legion devils.  This means that minions have no existence with regards to the PCs other than level-appropriate challenges, and clever PCs will stage commando raids on hell, find it either deserted or populated only by small groups of legion devils, loot and massacre, then escape, having been strengthened from the experience.  You are saying that it is inconceivable *(or at least, not worth considering in the rules)* that a character not an appropriately-leveled-PC will interact with the legion devils, despite the known and documented propensity for PCs to not go where and do what is expected.




The bolded part is the important one.  It is not inconceivable, but it is also not worth considering in the rules.  1st-level PCs do not generally find their way into the Nine Hells without a lot of DM assistance.  This is an extreme corner case.

And in the event that they do manage it, I fail to see how the ability to nuke one high-end legion devil a round is going to cause problems.  The PCs are still totally, utterly, and completely hosed.  What are they gonna do, sneak around looking for solitary legion devils to kill for XP?  Good luck with that.  Legion devils don't come individually packaged.  They come in _freakin' legions._


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## GoLu (Jul 21, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> "A housecat can kill a minion." No. Just no. and rules as written...  I thought we discouraged rules lawyering in this hobby? isn't the very definition of rules lawyering sidetracking a discussion by insisting the enforcement of rules in ways like this? "well, I don't see why my cat CAN'T kill the minion, it deals 1 damage."



I agree.  It's even worse when the rules lawyering misses that (1) minimum damage is 0 instead of 1 now, and (2) there are no housecat stats in the 4e core books.

But I guess this is like how the DMG contains comprehensive guidelines for building encounters which don't include facing a single minion twenty levels higher than the party, and yet that's a common point of contention when talking about minions.


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## Lurker37 (Jul 21, 2008)

CountPopeula said:


> Don't you know that if the rules of the game world are not also the physics of the game world, the game is deeply deeply flawed. Why should we apply logic to it?




Complete personal opinion, which I disagree with. Trying to simulate the physics of a world was IMO the biggest mistake 3.X ever made, due to the complexities and inconsistencies it introduced. The Devs have clearly stated in their blogs that they are not doing that this time.

And housecats don't do 1 damage anymore, since minimum damage is now 0, not 1. If you're facing a cat capable of doing 1 damage, you're facing a cat capable of killing a child quickly and a full grown man in prime health over a minute or so. Sure, it may have to scratch him a dozen or more times, but he will die. That's no ordinary housecat.


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## Dausuul (Jul 21, 2008)

Lurker37 said:


> Complete personal opinion, which I disagree with. Trying to simulate the physics of a world was IMO the biggest mistake 3.X ever made, due to the complexities and inconsistencies it introduced. The Devs have clearly stated in their blogs that they are not doing that this time.




I think CountPopeula was being sarcastic.


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## Obryn (Jul 21, 2008)

robertliguori said:


> One legion devil vs. one wizard.  Let us assume that the wizard has Cloud of Daggers.



Why is there a low-level wizard facing down a high-level Legion Devil?

This fails to take into account the zen of minions.

-O


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## MrGrenadine (Jul 21, 2008)

GoLu said:


> I agree.  It's even worse when the rules lawyering misses that (1) minimum damage is 0 instead of 1 now, and (2) there are no housecat stats in the 4e core books.
> 
> But I guess this is like how the DMG contains comprehensive guidelines for building encounters which don't include facing a single minion twenty levels higher than the party, and yet that's a common point of contention when talking about minions.





As far as as I'm concerned, the attitude "if its not in the Rulebook, then its impossible" is just as bad as rules lawyering.

Its a roleplaying game, not a computer game, and by definition the rules should be fluid and robust enough to handle whatever the players and/or DM decide they want to do.

MrG


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## jadrax (Jul 21, 2008)

MrGrenadine said:


> Its a roleplaying game, not a computer game, and by definition the rules should be fluid and robust enough to handle whatever the players and/or DM decide they want to do.




Good, because me and my players want to be able to easily fight battles against hordes of mooks.


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## spotmarkedx (Jul 21, 2008)

MrGrenadine said:


> As far as as I'm concerned, the attitude "if its not in the Rulebook, then its impossible" is just as bad as rules lawyering.
> 
> Its a roleplaying game, not a computer game, and by definition the rules should be fluid and robust enough to handle whatever the players and/or DM decide they want to do.
> 
> MrG



You know, there were three main points presented in the arguement that you quoted.
1> It is possible to have an attack that does 0 damage such as, say, the claw of a common housecat.
2> There are no housecat rules in the MM.
3> The DMG guidelines specifically discuss encounter creation rules, and talk about when to use minions.  Here, we find that you should not see level 20 minions as a 1st level party (etc etc)

I will agree that #2 is weak.  Just because there aren't any rules does not mean we should disregard a situation that could come up in play (though I'm honestly a bit confused as to how it _would_ come up in play, and why there are actual attack rolls being made.)

However, points 1 & 3 were sidestepped here.  Housecat can do 0 damage to the minion.  The minion survives, no matter how lucky the cat is.  As for the level 1 wizard vs. legion devil, this is a pretty contrived situation that is advised against if you actually read how to make an encounter.  However, if it is necessary for you to figure out what happens if your PC party attacks a single Legion Devil by itself (or an isolated small group), it seems pretty easy - just reverse the rules for minionizing a monster.  You'd probably be looking at some soldiers of about half the level.

Your dispute with item #2 is about the same as my support of #3.  There are some situations that the game is not necessarily set up to immediatly deal with.  Legion Devils are supposed to be part of a larger devil army.  What happens when you catch a few of them isolated?  Same thing that happens when you find yourself needing the combat stats of a housecat.  The DM looks at the available tools and makes something up that is reasonable.


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## Obryn (Jul 21, 2008)

Why are housecats fighting minions?

Minions are minions when interacting with the PCs in combat.  Minions are not minions when they are interacting with housecats.

-O


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## DM_Blake (Jul 21, 2008)

Goumindong said:


> The entire point of minions is that Segal as a high level fighter would be bored fighting low level fighters to the point that low level fighters should not even be there. He still has to try, dodge attacks et all. So they get statted as minions for the purpose of fighting Segal because otherwise its impossible for Segal to have a challenging fight with a bunch of guys
> 
> If there were level 3 or 4 fighters, Segals player would leave the table because its a bunch of boring junk. Levels, hit points, attack ratings, defenses etc etc etc are all just abstractions used to entertain the players. All of these disappear when dealing with NPCs. If the players are playing and you need mooks, you stat them as minions for the players. If you want a monster that is tough all on its own, you stat it as a solo monster. If you want a monster that is tougher than the rest, but not a lot tougher, you stat it as an elite monster.
> 
> Why do we do this? Because at the fringes of to-hit rolls the game becomes too static. Its too easy when you can't be hit and its too hard when you can't hit your enemies. So if you make an enemy hard by increasing its level to the point where it stands in for 5 enemies, it would just wallop your normal party(E.G. if you were level 5 and wanted to add a monster to fight alone you would have to go to level 14 in order to reach XP parity, if you need info on why this is bad, go ahead and get a level 5 party and have them fight a Night Hag(lvl 14 Lurker) then Young Black Dragon(Lv 5 Solo Lurker) with the same resources). As such, instead of increasing levels to make a creature harder we add a solo template and now its a challenge alone. Instead of increasing levels to make a creature a bit tougher than the normal guys we add a template.




I agree from a game perspective that using minion mooks is more challenging than using low-level mooks.

But we were talking about a Steven Seagal movie. No dice, no character sheets, no game. In a movie, Seagal is paid lots of cash to show up on set each day, regardless of how bored he gets. The character he plays in the film has no say about showing up - the character shows up when Seagal shows up. So there is no boredom, or if there is, it has little bearing on the actual effort to make the movie.

So to take it back to 4e, yes, we have minions. That is one way to make mooks.

But it is not the only way.

There is nothing that says every encounter the PCs ever face must be challenging. Heck, one of the beautiful things about gaining levels is watching your character get more and more powerful. But if every fight always takes 8 rounds and leaves you bloodied and out of encounter powers, then you never get to FEEL more powerful. Sure, your level 30 fights have bigger numbers flying around than your level 1 fights, but the end result is still the same: 8 rounds of furious life-or-death action, expending all your encounter powers, ending up bloodied. 

Once in a while, it might be fun to wipe the floor with a bunch of mooks. Especially if it's the same mooks that used to challenge you when you were lower level.

Remember that scene in Superman 2, when Superman gives up all his super powers to become mortal. Then he gets beat up in a bar by some big trucker guy. Then, later when he gets his power back, he goes back to the bar and trashes the trucker. Very satisfying.

It's just as satisfying when PCs get to do that.

The only way is to let them, once in a while, mop up some lowbie mooks.

Don't do it all the time. Don't bore your players. But once in a while, let them flex their new high-level muscles and actually feel powerful.

Besides, from a simulationist perspective, it's hard to imagine a bar full of bad guys, in which every one of them is vulnerable to house cats and hat pins, and not one of them (except for the boss and maybe a few of his senior henchmen) can put up a real fight. Mingle in some minions, some lowbie mooks, some mid level guys that can hit and take some hits, and a few high level guys that pose real threats. 

Isn't that what a gang (or a town, or an army) would be like? Some members of any group are probably very new and green, others are highly trained, others have been part of the group for a long time and have lots of experience, still others are highly-trained AND have lots of experience. 

And some of them go down with a single hit from a sword, either because you ran him through the heart or because he was a newbie and any decent would could drop him, while others take several hits and might hurt you along the way, and still others are serious threats but you gut them in one hit before they really get a chance to shine, while the best veterans in the group are a serious threat to your life and take some work to wipe them out.


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## GoLu (Jul 21, 2008)

As an aside, the last housecat statblock that I saw included the following (somewhat paraphrased, totally awesome) power:

at will immediate reaction (when picked up)
The creature picking up the cat takes 1d10+2 damage and drops the cat.  The cat shifts 3 squares.


Anyway, my point about the lack of housecat rules in the MM wasn't meant to indicate that housecats can't be in the game because they aren't statted.  I just meant that claiming that their (unoffical) stats let them do crazy good things (like kill legion devils) is possibly an effect of the stats being a little too good and not entirely the fault of the minion rules.


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## robertliguori (Jul 21, 2008)

Obryn said:


> Why is there a low-level wizard facing down a high-level Legion Devil?
> 
> This fails to take into account the zen of minions.
> 
> -O




The high-level team picked one of the many class-leveled NPCs out of the world and brought him along, knowing that he will quickly master the arcane secrets of enhanced blasting after dicing up a few Legion Devils.

Look, you can't have it both ways.  Either we follow the book, and legion devils exist solely as challenges and not as setting elements, or they do exist as setting elements, and we need a separate adjudication method (probably the DM wings it, and problems are caused when the moral equivalent of the Cloud of Daggers is thrown at one of them and it fails in one case and works in the other).

So, if minions are not minions when interacting with house cats, then we're essentially playing two games; the combat minigame, which bears only passing resemblance to the game world, and the actual game, in which things happen according to the other system.  I say that if it's important to you that minions not pop when hit with one point of damage from a no-miss source of damage, then the rules should reflect this.

Here, let's accelerate the level curve; all characters have DR equal to half their level, and all characters deal bonus damage on all attacks equal to half their level.  Problem solved.  We even get an increase of the all-important feeling of progress as your characters level, at the cost of under-level monsters being slightly easier and above-level monsters being slightly harder.


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## Obryn (Jul 21, 2008)

robertliguori said:


> The high-level team picked one of the many class-leveled NPCs out of the world and brought him along, knowing that he will quickly master the arcane secrets of enhanced blasting after dicing up a few Legion Devils.



"Look, I can invent corner cases that shouldn't ever happen in a game controlled by a thinking DM to make rules look broken!"



> Look, you can't have it both ways.  Either we follow the book, and legion devils exist solely as challenges and not as setting elements, or they do exist as setting elements, and we need a separate adjudication method (probably the DM wings it, and problems are caused when the moral equivalent of the Cloud of Daggers is thrown at one of them and it fails in one case and works in the other).



You must have a different book.

As I've said repeatedly, there's a zen to minions.  They're a narrativist/gamist structure, not a simulationist one.  You're trying to make them fit into a simulationist framework where, of course, they no longer make sense.  (Much like action points or any other metagame mechanic.)  I think you know that, and I'm really puzzled why you're still on this topic.

The game term "minion" is meaningless outside of combat with the PCs.  There is no such thing as a "hit point" in the game world.  The fact that minions have 1 hp is descriptive of nothing other than their interactions with PCs in combat - namely that they fall down when hit.



> So, if minions are not minions when interacting with house cats, then we're essentially playing two games; the combat minigame, which bears only passing resemblance to the game world, and the actual game, in which things happen according to the other system.  I say that if it's important to you that minions not pop when hit with one point of damage from a no-miss source of damage, then the rules should reflect this.



I think that's somewhat similar to what I'm saying.  There's the combat rules - which only reflect what happens when the *PCs* are fighting things - and the other rules, which is basically when anything else in the world is fighting anything else.

Those other rules are very explicitly spelled out in the DMG.  They amount to "don't roll dice for that."

Again, I think you know this about 4e.  It is different than 3e.  If you try to understand it within the gamist/narrativist structure of 4e, it makes perfect sense.  If you try to understand it under a simulationist structure, you get ... well, your posts.

-O


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