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View Full Version : 4e- MM2, Elites and Minions done right?



Asbestos
2009-05-17, 11:59 AM
So, I was flipping through my (early) copy of the MM2 and mixed in with the classic monsters, metallic dragons, and six pages devoted to humans (because aren't we the real monsters?) I noticed something. Minions and Elites get a bit of a boost.

For example, let's look at the Legion Devil of the MM which in all its forms gains a benefit to defense when adjacent to another Legion Devil. Mechanically these guys want to bunch up, and everyone knows how well that works out. Lich Vestiges also want to stay relatively near each other, which is again a bad decision. Most other minions in the MM are uninteresting. Now... let's look at the MM2. Not only are minions more mechanically interesting (the Bullywug Croaker with its Aura and at-will blast attack) but they no longer have mechanics that encourage DMs to bunch them up with each other. As well, some of them basically demand to be attacked and killed before the other monsters take damage, which is exactly what minions are supposed to do. For example, not only does the Infernal Armor Animus have an aura that grants nonminion devils a cumulative bonus to damage, but when they die the nearest devil gains 15hp.

Elites also get some love. More of them have auras and the like and some of them actually spawn more monsters. Great examples of the latter are Pod Demons, Black Puddings, and the Slaad Spawner (or whatever) template. Additionally some elites are actually two separate monsters. When one dies the other appears at full health with all of its encounter/rechargeable abilities ready to go. As a DM this is a welcome departure from the big sack of HP type of elite that was common in the MM.

It seems like WotC learned from the mistakes of their initial implementation of these monster types.

Tehnar
2009-05-17, 12:12 PM
Minions still have 1 hp right? So that still means they will be a nice XP rich power source for players. I don't understand why WotC couldn't make them have 1/4 of the hp of a monster of their level, or just simply let them have 1 hp per level, so a lvl 15 minion would have 15 hp. Still little enough to be killed by strikers or hybrid strikers in one shot, but not to the opportunity attacks of the 9 STR wizard.

AgentPaper
2009-05-17, 12:19 PM
Minions still have 1 hp right? So that still means they will be a nice XP rich power source for players. I don't understand why WotC couldn't make them have 1/4 of the hp of a monster of their level, or just simply let them have 1 hp per level, so a lvl 15 minion would have 15 hp. Still little enough to be killed by strikers or hybrid strikers in one shot, but not to the opportunity attacks of the 9 STR wizard.

Because the whole point of having minions is to have big fights without the huge mess of bookkeeping that would usually take. As a houserule though I give minions Resist All (con bonus). It seems to scale well, though I've yet to really try it in a game.

Artanis
2009-05-17, 04:22 PM
Minions still have 1 hp right? So that still means they will be a nice XP rich power source for players. I don't understand why WotC couldn't make them have 1/4 of the hp of a monster of their level, or just simply let them have 1 hp per level, so a lvl 15 minion would have 15 hp. Still little enough to be killed by strikers or hybrid strikers in one shot, but not to the opportunity attacks of the 9 STR wizard.

That 9 STR Wizard has to hit the minion to kill it...good luck with that, especially if it's not a Staff Wizard. Besides, it's not often that something wants to get away from the Wizard in the first place.

Colmarr
2009-05-17, 06:52 PM
So,


What's the grooviest new mechanic in the book; and

What's the best new monster in the book (and why)?

Saph
2009-05-17, 07:24 PM
That 9 STR Wizard has to hit the minion to kill it...good luck with that, especially if it's not a Staff Wizard. Besides, it's not often that something wants to get away from the Wizard in the first place.

The problem isn't when the Wizard hits it with a staff. The problem is when the Wizard uses Burning Blood, or one of the other auto-hits, and every minion on the map dies automatically.

Minions are currently underpowered in Heroic and a joke in Paragon and Epic. The MM2 will have to REALLY boost them to make them threatening.

- Saph

Colmarr
2009-05-17, 07:58 PM
The problem isn't when the Wizard hits it with a staff. The problem is when the Wizard uses Burning Blood, or one of the other auto-hits, and every minion on the map dies automatically.

It seems to be the "damage without attacking" issue that causes all the problems with minions. Do you think it would help if minions could save against damage caused without an attack roll (and if successful they take no damage)?

Eg. a minion next to a flaming sphere has a 45% chance of dying.

Alteran
2009-05-17, 08:16 PM
I saw a copy of the MM2 in my FLGS. I didn't buy it due to a cost about 40% higher than what I can get online, but I was very impressed by what I saw. I like the new Archons and the Remorhaz especially, but I didn't really have time to look over the stats.

I'm now looking forward to the purchase of this book even more. :smallsmile:

The only thing I didn't like was that the monstrous races appeared underpowered. But again, I didn't really have time to give them a good look over, so I could be mistaken.

RTGoodman
2009-05-17, 08:55 PM
The only thing I didn't like was that the monstrous races appeared underpowered. But again, I didn't really have time to give them a good look over, so I could be mistaken.

Come on man... you can't just tease us by mentioning them but not telling what they are. (Some of us don't live close to anywhere that would have it out yet... :smallannoyed:)

Artanis
2009-05-18, 12:52 AM
The problem isn't when the Wizard hits it with a staff. The problem is when the Wizard uses Burning Blood, or one of the other auto-hits, and every minion on the map dies automatically.

Minions are currently underpowered in Heroic and a joke in Paragon and Epic. The MM2 will have to REALLY boost them to make them threatening.

- Saph

The Wizard hitting it with a staff is what I was replying to. The "a Wizard's opportunity attack" bit in the post I quoted.

Saph
2009-05-18, 01:05 AM
The Wizard hitting it with a staff is what I was replying to. The "a Wizard's opportunity attack" bit in the post I quoted.

The point is that to any reasonably prepared character, Minions are a joke. I'm playing a Wizard at in a PbP game and I already find minions to be basically walking experience. And I'm level 1. At higher levels you get tricks such as the Burning Blood second wind that kills every minion on the board, and the Warlock item that lets them kill minions as a minor action by just looking at them.

Minions have to come in small armies to be dangerous, and to do that you have to double or triple the XP budget for the encounter. It's just too easy to do small amounts of damage to things.

- Saph

Alteran
2009-05-18, 01:11 AM
Come on man... you can't just tease us by mentioning them but not telling what they are. (Some of us don't live close to anywhere that would have it out yet... :smallannoyed:)

I'm sorry, I didn't even think of that! They were Bullywugs, Duergar, and one other I can't remember now. There were only the three, unless I somehow missed the others.

Sebastian
2009-05-18, 02:36 AM
Additionally some elites are actually two separate monsters. When one dies the other appears at full health with all of its encounter/rechargeable abilities ready to go.


4e is not like a videogame. Not at all. :smallamused:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-05-18, 02:38 AM
It seems to be the "damage without attacking" issue that causes all the problems with minions. Do you think it would help if minions could save against damage caused without an attack roll (and if successful they take no damage)?

Eg. a minion next to a flaming sphere has a 45% chance of dying.
That's not a bad idea, actually.

Give 'em a straight saving throw against auto-damage - it should still be much better than trying to hit them with an attack roll, and it'll keep them all from dying when an AoE hits. Plus, there's minimum extra complexity added.

I'm going to try that in my next 4E game - by the end of my last campaign I had stopped using 'em because the Warlock with Armor of Agathesis basically neutered them... even when the Sharpshooters were instructed to take the Warlock out first thanks to some good intel :smallamused:

Colmarr
2009-05-18, 02:41 AM
That's Give 'em a straight saving throw

Oh, I didn't say a straight saving throw. :smallwink:

A caster with Spell Focus should be more effective at killing minions, but overall I think it would go a long way to dealing with the problems that people have noted.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-05-18, 02:42 AM
Oh, I didn't say a straight saving throw. :smallwink:

A caster with Spell Focus should be more effective at killing minions, but overall I think it would go a long way to dealing with the problems that people have noted.
I know, but breaking out the d% is more work than I'd bother with for the effect. The d20 is already there, and Saving Throws are an established mechanic.

And I don't want to have to calculate auto-damage resistance for every monster vs. a given class - pretty much all of them can do some auto-damage at some point.

Colmarr
2009-05-18, 02:48 AM
I know, but breaking out the d% is more work than I'd bother with for the effect. The d20 is already there, and Saving Throws are an established mechanic.

You misunderstood me. I didn't actually mean to roll a percentile dice. I was simply clarifying that it wasn't necessarily a straight (ie. 10+) saving throw.

It would be a saving throw in all senses of the term. Human minions might get a +1 (for perseverance). A caster with Spell Focus would impose a -2 to the save etc.

skywalker
2009-05-18, 02:48 AM
If your group is just the "for fun" (disclaimer: I know that optimizers have fun. I'm just using it as an easy term) type, I have to say that minions are a bit dangerous. In fact, the parties I ran through Keep on the Shadowfell did the worst with the encounters full of minions. Because it's just so many attack rolls for the DM.

Universally, minions were the most hated and earliest killed monsters. Powers like flaming sphere were cherished for their ability to chew thru minions.

I know that they might not be too challenging for the hardcore optimizers, but I kinda like that WOTC is making stuff the optimizers can destroy again. Because that means my group will be fairly challenged by them. It's a nice change of pace from late 3.5 and certain parts of the 4e PHB, which seem almost scared of optimizers and tried to go toe-to-toe with them frequently. No offense, but I like that DM's with "power gamer" parties have to fudge up, instead of me having to fudge down.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-05-18, 02:58 AM
Universally, minions were the most hated and earliest killed monsters. Powers like flaming sphere were cherished for their ability to chew thru minions.
That's part of the problem - anything which is only either deadly or trivial reeks of bad design. Minions work well so long as your PCs have limited auto-damage; if they have little control over their Encounter-per-day and know they can face minions at any time they will treat minions with some respect.

I'm starting to wonder if 50% resistance is too high though; my next game is a high Heroic / low Paragon campaign so they should have a goodly amount of auto-damage powers. On one hand, I do want to keep minions non-trivial, but I don't want to make auto-damage powers worthless either (Cleave, for example). I think I'll start with 33% (5+ on a D6) and tweak it up or down, depending on how things turn out.

Tengu_temp
2009-05-18, 03:19 AM
Am I the only one here who likes the fact that minions get turned into mincemeat and die in hordes at higher levels?

Kurald Galain
2009-05-18, 03:47 AM
You might try an encounter with minions that are immune to fire.

The warlock trick is probably in need of errata; the (few) large area automatic damage effects could be houseruled to not include minions. Things like a flaming sphere could be ameliorated by having the minions use a better strategy than clumping up. That seems to be easier than rolling a lot of saving throws.

Also, there's certain leader monsters that do nasty things with minions (e.g. "standard: all minions within 5 squares may make a basic attack", or "immediate interrupt: one minion takes zero damage from one attack", or even "ongoing: every minion within 5 squares that would die, instead dies at the end of its next turn")

Oslecamo
2009-05-18, 04:55 AM
Am I the only one here who likes the fact that minions get turned into mincemeat and die in hordes at higher levels?

I'm with you in that mate! A minion's main strenght should be to allow the party to kill lots of stuff whitout they actually being in too much risk of dying themselves!:smallbiggrin:

And heck, screw the extra Exp, some of us would like to actually go from level 1 to 30 in less than a year.

Morty
2009-05-18, 07:17 AM
Am I the only one here who likes the fact that minions get turned into mincemeat and die in hordes at higher levels?

Considering that if I recall correctly, one normal monster is supposed to equal four minions XP-wise rather than a dozen of them then you might be, because if the latter is true, then they're not as threatening as rulebooks say they should be. Because from what I understand, people aren't complaining about minions themselves, but rather that they go down even easier than they should. My personal feelings on the concept of minions aside.

Tehnar
2009-05-18, 07:36 AM
The problem in minions is not that they are easy to kill (and they are), or that they are supposed to die in droves (they are). The issue I have with them is that they die easily, and players can use them to their advantage. From the warlocks infernal pact that gains him temp hp when a cursed creature dies, to the fact that plenty of weapons/powers/class features that provide sizable bonuses when a player kills something. Heck, my fighter even sometimes likes to surround himself with minions, keeping a little squishy wall between him and the tougher monsters. The perception I have with minions is not: "drat minions", or "bleh, minions, boring", but rather "minions, sweet".


P.S. The thing with the wizard killing minions was an exaggeration, but not a big one. If a fighter can hit minions on a 10, then the wizard can on a 19 or 20. So while its rare, it will happen from time to time.

eepop
2009-05-18, 10:01 AM
Honestly, the main problem from my point of view is just the XP cost per minion. From the experience I have had, I would say you should probably get 4 + (Party Level / 5) minions in place of a standard monster.

Level 1-4: 4 Minions
Level 5-9: 5 Minions
Level 10-14: 6 Minions
etc

Artanis
2009-05-18, 10:01 AM
The point is that to any reasonably prepared character, Minions are a joke. I'm playing a Wizard at in a PbP game and I already find minions to be basically walking experience. And I'm level 1. At higher levels you get tricks such as the Burning Blood second wind that kills every minion on the board, and the Warlock item that lets them kill minions as a minor action by just looking at them.

Minions have to come in small armies to be dangerous, and to do that you have to double or triple the XP budget for the encounter. It's just too easy to do small amounts of damage to things.

- Saph

That is totally irrelevant to my post. The words - the only words - I was replying to is the following:

"but not to the opportunity attacks of the 9 STR wizard."

He was saying that it was stupid for a Wizard's melee attacks to kill a minion. I replied that a Wizard's melee attack had to hit the minion, which a Wizard's melee attacks just plain wouldn't do. I said nothing about them sucking at being part of the encounter, I said nothing about them being easy XP, I said nothing about any of the myriad other problems minions had/have. All I said was that being slapped to death by a Wizard was not on that list of problems. Nothing more.


Edit: just saw this:


P.S. The thing with the wizard killing minions was an exaggeration, but not a big one. If a fighter can hit minions on a 10, then the wizard can on a 19 or 20. So while its rare, it will happen from time to time.

At high levels (when minions become useless), the difference in both stats and weapon enhancement bonuses becomes more and more pronounced. At level 30, a Wizard could need a natural 20 to hit something that a Fighter could hit with a three.

Callos_DeTerran
2009-05-18, 10:26 AM
What's the best new monster in the book (and why)?

This hasn't been answered yet. Would like it to be. Is Demogorgon in the book as the cover advertises and if so, what do HIS stats look like?

Awesomologist
2009-05-18, 11:14 AM
The point is that to any reasonably prepared character, Minions are a joke. I'm playing a Wizard at in a PbP game and I already find minions to be basically walking experience. And I'm level 1. At higher levels you get tricks such as the Burning Blood second wind that kills every minion on the board, and the Warlock item that lets them kill minions as a minor action by just looking at them.

Minions have to come in small armies to be dangerous, and to do that you have to double or triple the XP budget for the encounter. It's just too easy to do small amounts of damage to things.

- Saph

I couldn't agree more with this statement. I know with my local group minions have become a sore point in that they're rarely fun. For example:
- You waste an encounter or daily on a minion (This rarely happens now since the players have learned to rely on monster knowledge checks)
- Minion sweeping becomes the job of a select player in the party, usually one that has multiple targeting powers or can kill minions with fewer actions.
- An encounter with minions tends to cause players to go on auto-pilot. They simply turn to static damage effects, such as powers or items that cause damage to enemies for attacking/hitting/moving without an attack roll. The minions are then ignored and now as a DM I'm wishing I just put in an extra monster.
- They can over-trigger special effects. Warlocks love minions, but many other classes and items have power effects on dropping an enemy to 0HP. These effects should trigger, just not every round.

When I DM I've come to only using minions when the encounter is supposed to be a throw away encounter. Sometimes you need to move the story along and minions can help with that. I only do this at best once per adventure. The only other time minions were effective was during a skill challenge. Since half the players fall asleep during those, I gave them something useful to shoot at for a couple rounds and it led to the urgency of the skill challenge where failure would lead to a real encounter. Once again though, you can only use that trick so many times.

The only times minions were useful in encounters was during low level Heroic adventures where the party simply cannot take too many beatings. It lets the low level controller or sub-controller classes shine until their powers become more effective.

Alteran
2009-05-18, 12:05 PM
This hasn't been answered yet. Would like it to be. Is Demogorgon in the book as the cover advertises and if so, what do HIS stats look like?

I'm afraid that my information will once again be very incomplete. The only thing I remember about Demogorgon is that he got two full activations, one for each head.

Asbestos
2009-05-18, 12:32 PM
4e is not like a videogame. Not at all. :smallamused:

Well, for the ones that do it it makes perfect sense. You kill the physical form of a Fey Lingerer and a ghost pops out. You kill the humanoid form of a phoelarch and its elemental twin (phorea) pops out.


Best monster? Gnome Wolverine. Why? Its Wolverine in gnome form.

NPC/PC monsters?
Bullywug: Con/Dex, only special ability is its aura that weakens enemies that spend a healing surge. Bad for PCs, great for NPCs
Duegar: Con/Wis, darkvision, Con based range 3 racial attack. Could make a decent PC race if you gave them the exact stats as Dwarves and changed the racial attack to Str/Con/Dex for the attack stat.
Kenku: Dex/Cha, Mimicry is basically a free action, personally centered ghost sound. Flock Effect gives them a +3 bonus when flanking or doing aid another checks. Probably the best of the 3 for PC use.


Demogorgon and Dagon both appear in the MM. Demogorgon's stat block is enormous and he's pretty badass. I think he's a level 34 solo and Dagon is a level 32 solo.

eepop
2009-05-18, 12:53 PM
Anyone else disappointed that we got 3 new races that have the same ability score pairs as existing races, and there is still no Wis/Cha race?

Asbestos
2009-05-18, 12:55 PM
Anyone else disappointed that we got 3 new races that have the same ability score pairs as existing races, and there is still no Wis/Cha race?

Yeah, Wis/Cha would be nice... but so would a damn Lizardfolk race!

Alteran
2009-05-18, 12:59 PM
If you want Lizardfolk, the Vote up a Campaign Setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102957) project will have lizardfolk as a PC race when it's completed.

DM Raven
2009-05-18, 02:59 PM
I really like minions, you can use them to set up some neat encounters depending on your party makeup. In one encounter, our group had to help hold back an army of goblins that were rushing a dwarven stronghold. I think I ended up killing 200+ enemies that day and it was just...well...just great! =D

Minions don't seem like they're supposed to be a huge hinderance. They are the everyday lackeys who aren't really trained to survive in dangerous situations like a hero would. They are meant to force players to deal with them and absorb attacks that could otherwise be used on more powerful foes. You can use them in an overwhelm schenario to great effect or as tools to help buffer a stronger boss battle.

Not every fight in D&D has to stretch characters to their limit. Some are more for fun or to push the story forward and, in this respect, minions are a great tool.

Tengu_temp
2009-05-18, 03:02 PM
Well said. I agree.

Asbestos
2009-05-18, 04:27 PM
I've used minions to boost up random encounters (most bandits should be mooks shouldn't they?) and to 'extend' encounters. Basically there are standards and minions show up as the fight goes on.

Callos_DeTerran
2009-05-19, 10:40 PM
Demogorgon and Dagon both appear in the MM. Demogorgon's stat block is enormous and he's pretty badass. I think he's a level 34 solo and Dagon is a level 32 solo.

Squueeeee! Dagon AND Demogorgon? Both of my favorite demon lords? I may just have to get it now.