[4e] Toughening up minions

[valadil]

The general consensus in my group is that minions are weaker than advertised. Instead of just increasing their numbers, I was wondering how well they'd work if minions weren't automatic one hit kills. I haven't played a lot of 4th ed yet, so I'm less comfortable making changes to it than to 3.5.

Anyway, I like the elegant simplicity in not tracking minion HP so the solution that comes to mind to give them some longevity is to give them a saving throw to stay alive each time they're hit. A standard 50/50 could work, but the part of me that likes to overcomplicate things would rather do something based on their level. IE the difficulty to stay alive is 20 - level/2. So a level 2 minion has to roll a 19 and a level 30 minion has to roll a 5 to not die after each hit.

Is this too powerful? Does it gimp controllers? Most importantly, will it really piss off my PCs?

[Aron Times]

I did the math, and found that minions deal the minimum damage that a normal monster would deal. Basically, they're taking 1 on their damage rolls. Try giving them average damage instead:

1d6 = 3.5
1d8 = 4.5
and so on...

[DragonBaneDM]

Boost their defenses through the roof.

If a character has to WORK to hit a minion, they're doing their job, which is keeping the PCs away from the bigger monsters.

[Tallis]

Seems like it would get too powerful at high levels. Also a very lucky minion becomes very dangerous when the PCs can't kill it. Maybe make it 1 hit per 5 levels or something like that with a crit being an auto-kill.

Of course my experience with 4e is very limited, so take that into consideration.

[ninja_penguin]

My first glance reaction to that is to say that you're just putting in too much bookkeeping for yourself.

Me, in my attempt to keep the player's on their toes and stop from going 'oh look, minions, everybody can breathe a sigh of relief' has been to do a couple of things:

1. Mix in multi-model minions, so they don't go 'oh, that guy is an X'.

2. I've given a few minions a 'second chance' ability; it takes two hits to kill them instead. I announce that they're bloodied after one hit if they took a reasonable amount of damage, otherwise I don't say anything.

3. For a psuedo-horror adventure, I had a bunch of minions that were killed off like normal, but the next turn they got back up, now taking no damage from the type of damage that killed them in the first place (weapon damage, radiant, fire, cold, etc)

4. Also, have minions spawn/run in/whatever after the battle has started, for the purpose of flanking, etc. I think minions shouldn't ever really be on the first line of the fight. I also like having the 'spray and pray' minions with ranged attacks with at least 8 attacks in one round. Sure, the wizard can wipe up, but it's like sticking your head into machine gun fire.

[herrhauptmann]

A lot of the big minion killers I think are zones that deal auto damage. If you give the minions a save vs taking damage in that zone, that'll help a lot. Especially at high levels when it seems like everyone's got some form of autodamage.

[ninja_penguin]

Especially at high levels when it seems like everyone's got some form of autodamage.

That's when you make the minions explode. /cackle

[AstralFire]

That's when you make the minions explode. /cackle

I like the way you think.

[Saph]

My 4e wizard characters love minions. They're practically walking XP. It's like being in a shooting gallery. They're even more fun if you have Enlarge Spell.

- Saph

[TheOOB]

If you make it so minions don't die in 1 hit, they are not minions.

Anyways, I have, over time, learned a few things about minions.

1) Assuming the minions get a few attacks in, minions are about as tough as they should be for their level. Their difficultly level assumes they won't all be killed in one attack.

2) Minions are way harder if your controller/AoE monkey can't get to them(keep that in mind when designing encounters).

3) Minions do not belong in every encounter. If they appear all the time(even every session), your party will develop methods to fight them so effectively they are almost worthless. Like cookies, minions are a sometimes monster.

4) Minions alone are never a good encounter. Minions need something to make them dangerous. Perhaps they're are enemy leader type monsters who can grant bonuses, raise them from the dead, or move them around. Maybe their are rogue type enemies mixed in and the players have no way of knowing which are minions or not. The minions should have a reason for being other than "I wanted lots of foes in this encounter". There should be something that benefits from having lots of warm(or cool) bodies on the field.

5) Don't announce minions presence. If you use numbered counters for most monsters, don't use non-numbered ones for minions, still have your players roll damage when they hit a minion. They'll figure it out quickly, but every action it takes them makes the minions more dangerous.

[Mando Knight]

6) Minions are probably the Kobolds of 4E: Laughably weak at first, but in the hands of the right DM, can leave an optimized team crying.

[TheEmerged]

7> If you need a "tougher", just give them "hits" instead of hit points. That is, the tougher minion dies in 2 hits instead of 1. You can also give them a defense bonus against area effects, but be careful here -- harder to kill minions means less useful controllers, and controllers are probably the weakest archetype right now.

8> Ranged minions are much more effective than melee minions (cf autohitting). Minions that have things to do other than attack ("The trap fires every time one of the kobolds hits one of the levers. Did I mention there are 10 minions and 4 levers, all 4 squares away from each other?")

9> Do you want your characters to actually *fear* minions? Give them a weak but wide & stacking debuff aura.

10> Ever play the old video game Gauntlet? Two words, my friend: minion generators. Yes, the players will quickly concentrate on them. That's why you give the boss a power that increases whenever a generator is destroyed :smallredface: Make sure the bonus isn't overpowering but big and obvious enough the players are faced with a decision.

11>Borrow a trick from the mycnoids, and have a regenerating brute around with a power that redirects the damage to him.

[The New Bruceski]

Dungeon Delve has a nice idea for minions in fight 1.3: "Try to give the impression that this combat involves a tough dragon and a bunch of identical kobold minions." The real threat is two kobold skyblades mixed in with the minions, some nasty lurkers who use the minions to get close in the confusion.

[AgentPaper]

I give them damage resistance equal to their con modifier. Scales with level, and lets some minons be tougher to kill than others. Most attacks will still 1-shot them, but at least most auto-hit stuff doesn't work.

[RTGoodman]

The newer Minions in MMII have updated stats. They do more damage, have slightly higher defenses, and usually have a couple of special abilities that make them worthwhile. I believe there's one (a slave to devils or something) that, when it dies, gives the nearest non-minion ally 5 temporary hit points or somesuch. Basically, take a look at a minion's attack bonus, damage, defenses, and ability to actually affect the battle other than forcing a PC to waste an action killing it.

If the the attack bonus or defenses aren't on par with a creature of their level (see the monster creation rules in the DMG), bump 'em up. A minion, in my mind, should be hit by PCs on about a 10-11 on the die with AC and Fort attacks, and maybe a 9-10 or so on Refl and Will attack. That way their not particularly hard to hit, or particularly easy to hit, though they are more vulnerable to area attacks (which makes controllers with large burst/blasts useful).

Conversely, a minions attack should be basically on par with any creature of its level - it may be a minion, but it's not some low-level kobold (unless, of course, it is :smalltongue:). It can usually hit the PCs as easily as others, it's just not as effective at HURTING them.

If the minion's DAMAGE is low, just increase by about +25% to +50%. That should make them slightly more dangerous, but not completely deadly (except in big packs).

If the minion just doesn't do anything but charge and then attack the whole time, well, you might need to find a new minion or homebrew some better abilities. Orc minions might do more damage if there are no non-bloodied orcs around them. Kobold minions, besides being Shifty, might be able to "jump in front of the bullet" and take damage for their adjacent non-minion allies, since weaker kobolds know their place in society. Human guard minions with large shield might give adjacent allies +2 AC and Reflex. An undead minion might give adjacent PCs a -2 penalty to attacks for a round when they die, as the souls within rush out at the character. You know, something minor, but that's cool.

[Jerthanis]

My DM had four minions in the most recent battle in an 11th level +0 encounter group. We had a Controller who went after the minions first with area spells. It should've been ideal, but our DM kept track of the minion damage totals... 130 damage was done by minions that combat, about half the total damage dealt to us. Minions CAN be pushovers, and unimpressively weak. Other times it goes the other way.

I will say though, the idea of minions making a saving throw every time they would take damage is nice, because it means attacks that deal damage on a miss aren't sucky when used against minions specifically, but also isn't automatic death for them if they're targeted by them. There are a lot of examples...

say you're a TWF Ranger with scimitar dance or hammer rhythm flanked by a minion and a bloodied skirmisher who deals extra damage when it has combat advantage and you know you've got to take one of them out. Likely you'd kill the minion if you went after it, but you can't know you'll hit, and the minion isn't subject to miss damage, so if you go after it, you could waste your turn. Meanwhile you could go after the skirmisher and at least soften it up for your allies. If you've noticed the enemies are hard to hit, you're easily tempted to try to take out the more dangerous one that you KNOW you'll do something against, versus the one you MAY end up killing. Also, the utility of using Reaping Strike directly against a minion would increase, rather than Cleaving the adjacent foe.

But a saving throw against REAL hits would make minions just obscenely durable in extreme cases. I could see with a 50/50 survival mechanic resulting in minions being the very MOST durable members of the enemy groups, and the least attractive targets simply because people don't want to waste their turns targeting them, and because luck has strange runs.

[Kurald Galain]

I'd recommend

(1) having minions ignore automatic damage, thus making sure they only die on an actual hit, and
(2) occasionally using minions with immunity to some particular kind of element

[bosssmiley]

Minion durability problems?

How about: 1st hit (or automatic damage) bloodies, 2nd hit kills. That gives them a little more durability, maybe even enough to get a hit or two in before dropping.

[Totally Guy]

Here's a controversial answer. Keep the minions identities secret in a mixed group of enemies, describe them as any other monster. That way the appropriate tactics are at odds with each other. Not minions? Focus fire! Minions? Spread out attacks.

The lack of metagame knowledge shifts the balance to get the minions involved. It's funny when a player attacks one of the last guys only to realise it was a minion all along.

Also minions do flat damage but roll something anyway to mask that property.

[Saph]

Here's a controversial answer. Keep the minions identities secret in a mixed group of enemies, describe them as any other monster. That way the appropriate tactics are at odds with each other. Not minions? Focus fire! Minions? Spread out attacks.

Speaking from a player's point of view, I can usually tell if an encounter's using minions (and roughly how many there are) just by counting the number of monsters.

Lots of people are saying "hide which ones are the minions!" but I'm not sure why. From a targeting perspective, I don't actually care that much which targets are the minions and which ones are the regular monsters. I'm going to blast the densest concentration of enemies whatever.

E.g., in my current 4e game, the party got separated by a trap that cut me and the party tank off from the other PCs. A hidden door starts to open. I ready an action to Thunderwave. Door opens, horde of monsters charges in, I Thunderwave them. Next turn, Thunderwave again, shove monsters away from me into tight group, action point, Grasping Shadows. Next turn, Scorching Burst on the ones that are left.

I didn't bother to figure out which ones were minions. If I target a minion, good, multiple attack rolls means it's almost certainly dead. If I target a regular monster, good, that many attacks will make it easy for everyone else to finish off and I might even kill it if I get lucky. It's fine either way.

- Saph

[Kudaku]

stuff

Your argument makes a lot of sense - from a controller view. But you have to consider the role of minions from the perspective of all four archetypes.
Say you present a party with 4 members, each filling one of the four traditional roles, with a 16-monster encounter. Logic states that either you have a vindictive DM across the table, or a majority of the critters are minions. What is each character thinking?

Defender: I want to lock down as many as possible but especially any brutes, I'll leave the minions to the controller. Now which ones are the brutes...

Striker: I want to do as much damage to the controller/brute/artillery (depending on striker class) as possible, but I don't want to waste my high-damage attacks on mere minions. Now which ones should I go for...

Leader: ...Probably opens up with a group buff or a group debuff, mostly irrelevant to our discussion.

Controller: I want to take out as many minions as possible, ie I nuke the biggest concentration with my biggest encounter spell.



For a controller the "kill em all and let death sort it out"-type thinking works out perfectly - but rogues really don't want to waste their highest-hitting encounter power on the monster that turned out to be "just a minion". Same goes with a Fighter who marks a minion and misses the Brute who just charged the cleric. Defenders and especially Strikers benefit from knowing what monsters are minions and which ones fill other roles.

By hiding minions or at the very least not making it obvious from the start what monsters fill what role you can make combat alot more interesting/fun/frustrating for these archetypes.

As for beefing up minions... I like the idea of letting minions make saving throws to avoid damage, but how about using a character level vs Minion level as a modifier?

A lvl 12 wizard uses Winter's Wrath on a level 10 minion, rolls, beats the minion's Fortitude Defense. The minion takes a Saving Throw with a -2 penalty since he's two levels below the wizard to survive the spell, and even if he makes that save he still suffers the secondary effect of the spell (immobilized).

This way you make minions more robust while still scaling their difficulty to the players. The downside is that it could add up to alot of saving throw rolling.

[Saph]

For a controller the "kill em all and let death sort it out"-type thinking works out perfectly - but rogues really don't want to waste their highest-hitting encounter power on the monster that turned out to be "just a minion". Same goes with a Fighter who marks a minion and misses the Brute who just charged the cleric. Defenders and especially Strikers benefit from knowing what monsters are minions and which ones fill other roles.

By hiding minions or at the very least not making it obvious from the start what monsters fill what role you can make combat alot more interesting/fun/frustrating for these archetypes.

Well, I guess, but if for some reason it was important for me to pick a non-minion target, it wouldn't be that difficult.

First: ask for descriptions of all the monsters. Stock creatures from the 4e MM have elites and regulars look quite different from minions; just look at the illustrations. Often a monster encounter will consist of mixed species, which simplifies things further. You also look to see which ones are giving orders, in the best tactical positions, etc. Most of the time, you'll be able to make a pretty good guess of the encounter composition just by listening to the DM talk.

Even if you have the worst-case scenario, where you have a bunch of goblins/kobolds/orcs all dressed identically and carrying identical weapons - you just use a generic attack rather than a big one and wait one combat round. Minions always do the same amount of damage, and it's generally always about the same amount relative to your level (for example, at Level 2, standard minions will be doing 4 points per hit). Elites and specials will have special abilities that they'll be using, while the minions will all be using duplicate attacks. Thus about one round's observation should be enough to tell you what you need to be going on with.

Also, even if you're not playing a controller, it's a good idea when building your character to make sure you have some sort of 'sweeper' attack which you can use to clear out crowds. That way, you do just as well against swarms. A Twin Striking Ranger and a fighter with Cleave will cut through a crowd of minions in short order, even without a wizard to back them up.

- Saph

[Kudaku]

Well, I guess, but if for some reason it was important for me to pick a non-minion target, it wouldn't be that difficult.

First: ask for descriptions of all the monsters. Stock creatures from the 4e MM have elites and regulars look quite different from minions; just look at the illustrations. Often a monster encounter will consist of mixed species, which simplifies things further. You also look to see which ones are giving orders, in the best tactical positions, etc. Most of the time, you'll be able to make a pretty good guess of the encounter composition just by listening to the DM talk.

This is where "camuflaging" the minions come in. If you describe the enemies as "a fiercesome brute, clad in black spiked plate mail, wielding a fearsome blade and a stout wooden shield - a wizened old crone holding a staff adorned with mystical runes - a sneaky-looking fellow with a wicked dagger in each hand... And thirteen guys in leather armor holding spears", then you might as well label them as M for Minions on the battlemat.
Paying attention to who is giving orders and trying to read their tactics isn't something the characters will be able to do in the first round, and if your players are actually doing this, then they're doing it because you're making them work for it - in short you are requiring them to play smart, which you should in turn reward them for.


Even if you have the worst-case scenario, where you have a bunch of goblins/kobolds/orcs all dressed identically and carrying identical weapons - you just use a generic attack rather than a big one and wait one combat round.

By giving the minions a single round you've already given them a significantly bigger chance of making a difference than if they've been blasted away in the first round - and instead of giving everyone identical clothes and identical weapons - give everyone different clothes and different weapons :smallsmile:.
Personally I enjoy describing minions as equipped with a variety of weapons - why do all the kobolds shop at the Spear store anyways? Just because they all do 4 damage an attack doesn't mean one can't carry a rusty sword while the other is wielding a half rotted scythe. Roll a dice when you do damage with a minion, that might keep the players guessing for another round or two.


Also, even if you're not playing a controller, it's a good idea when building your character to make sure you have some sort of 'sweeper' attack which you can use to clear out crowds. That way, you do just as well against swarms. A Twin Striking Ranger and a fighter with Cleave will cut through a crowd of minions in short order, even without a wizard to back them up.

Absolutely, but Close/Area bursts are usually encounter powers for non-controllers and these players don't always want to invest in something that's not contributing to their main role - a fighter who takes area powers loses out on the powers that lets him slow, shift, push, or immobilize his target.

Cleave is in a special position since it essentially removes one minion a round "for free" (and would be significantly less powerful with the changes proposed in this thread), but if the fighter isn't sure which mob surrounding him is a skirmisher and which is a minion, the power is less powerful - Strength Modifier damage is a pittance to anything except a minion.

[Saph]

This is where "camuflaging" the minions come in. If you describe the enemies as "a fiercesome brute, clad in black spiked plate mail, wielding a fearsome blade and a stout wooden shield - a wizened old crone holding a staff adorned with mystical runes - a sneaky-looking fellow with a wicked dagger in each hand... And thirteen guys in leather armor holding spears", then you might as well label them as M for Minions on the battlemat.
. . .
Personally I enjoy describing minions as equipped with a variety of weapons - why do all the kobolds shop at the Spear store anyways? Just because they all do 4 damage an attack doesn't mean one can't carry a rusty sword while the other is wielding a half rotted scythe. Roll a dice when you do damage with a minion, that might keep the players guessing for another round or two.

If the DM is going to that much trouble to camouflage minions and describe them individually, why use minions at all? Just do it the 3.5 way, where every monster has an actual hit point score. That way you don't need the deception.

If you want to keep on using them as is, then I'd say it's fine for minions to look similar to normal monsters, but not for them to look identical to normal monsters, because 4e minions really are a totally different type of creature. They work in completely different ways, and are vastly weaker than a regular critter. I don't think it's fair for that to be invisible. If one monster is a major threat and another is a total wimp, then there ought to be some perceptible difference between them. Sure, the DM can always deny information to the players, but he'd better have a good reason for it - I know I'd get seriously annoyed if I thought the DM was messing with my character's perception to cover a tactical weakness.

- Saph

[valadil]

Thanks all for the comments :-)

After reading this, I'm thinking that I probably won't be changing the way minions work except in special circumstances. I was thinking it might make sense for undead zombies and such to be slightly more durable, but I also like the idea of NPCs who can raise minions or minion generators.

Minion camo seems like a good tactic, but not one that I'd use in every fight. Kobolds should be indistinguishable. But a knight should be different from a peasant with a pitchfork. I'll use this trick where appropriate and try not to overdo it.

[Artanis]

If it's not too late to chime in...

I'm with TheOOB on this one: the entire point of a minion is that it dies in one hit, so making it able to survive a hit makes it not a minion. You might as well just send a batch of lower-level non-minions at them if you're going to make them not die in one hit.

I like Kurald Galain's suggestions. They already ignore damage on misses, so making them ignore automatic damage isn't much of a stretch. Elemental resistance and/or immunity is also a perfectly good way of increasing durability without adding hit points too something that is defined by its HP count.

[valadil]

Here's another idea I just had for making them a little more survivable. Instead of giving them a save to not die, why not an encounter power that's used as an immediate reaction to prevent death (or allow a save against it) and recharges on a 5 or 6? That way they'll always die after two shots so there won't be an issue with the neverending minion.

[jmbrown]

I like the idea of a save-or-die approach to minions except they roll a d6 and not a d20. On a 6 they live and anything else they die. It's only a 1 in 6 chance but it's not as severe as a 50% chance of living if they made a standard saving through. Minions are still weak but if they have a slightly higher chance of surviving.

[Kylarra]

Here's another idea I just had for making them a little more survivable. Instead of giving them a save to not die, why not an encounter power that's used as an immediate reaction to prevent death (or allow a save against it) and recharges on a 5 or 6? That way they'll always die after two shots so there won't be an issue with the neverending minion.At that point though, you might as well be tracking hp for a lower leveled creature. :smallwink:



Also if you scale up minions' durability, remember to scale up their exp too.

[AstralFire]

As Kaylarra says, that's just like tracking HP at that point. I think the save is the best system to use here, since it's a quick roll with a static DC and it doesn't require checking.

[The Dark Fiddler]

6) Minions are probably the Kobolds of 4E: Laughably weak at first, but in the hands of the right DM, can leave an optimized team crying.

I know little of 4e, and nothing of Minions, but this just made me think one thing:

Tucker's Minions. :smallcool:

[Kylarra]

If you really want to gimp your controllers more, make them like the shaman's spirit companion, they still die in one hit, but you have to deal a minimum threshold of damage (so resistances might actually mean something) or they don't die.

This does have the secondary benefit of nulling the effectiveness of hammer rhythm and similar "tiny damage on miss" effects.

No extra rolling, and your players aren't sure if the minion is one or not, since they still have to roll damage.

[Artanis]

But even with stuff like that, you still might as well just be using lower-level monsters with HP. The entire point of a minion is that if you deal damage to it, it dies. Making it so that dealing damage to it doesn't immediately kill it means that pretty much by definition it isn't a minion anymore.

[Kylarra]

But even with stuff like that, you still might as well just be using lower-level monsters with HP. The entire point of a minion is that if you deal damage to it, it dies. Making it so that dealing damage to it doesn't immediately kill it means that pretty much by definition it isn't a minion anymore.Yeah I know. I'm just trying to offer pseudo alternatives since it's really only giving the minion Resist X to all damage assuming some reasonable integer X, which isn't completely out of the question in various energy flavors, but taken as a whole, might be a bit over the top.

It does minimize bookkeeping though.

[lesser_minion]

You could try giving them some hitpoints 'to share' and then have them die in one hit once those hp are expended. That gives them a little survivability, and also removes any metagame incentive to treat minions differently. It does mean that you have to go back to tracking hitpoints, however.

[AgentPaper]

You could try giving them some hitpoints 'to share' and then have them die in one hit once those hp are expended. That gives them a little survivability, and also removes any metagame incentive to treat minions differently. It does mean that you have to go back to tracking hitpoints, however.

Now that's an interesting idea. How would you figure out the HP total, though? As much as a normal creature of their level/4 for each minion? Less?

[Yakk]

Now that's an interesting idea. How would you figure out the HP total, though? As much as a normal creature of their level/4 for each minion? Less?
Use the minion's level. Or the minion's HP bonus. Both will be in the right ballpark.

Use a collective pool of damage for minions. When you damage a minion, add it to the HP pool. If you break the minion's level in damage, the minion dies, and you discard the damage pool.

Alternative: You cap damage added to the pool by the minions level. When a minion dies, take the minion's level damage out of the pool, and use it to kill the minion.

This alternative is a tad more complex, but avoids a damage discontinuity. (An area effect dealing 19 damage on level 19 minions kills every minion it hits. An area effect dealing 18 damage on level 19 minions kills every 2nd minion it hits, unless you use this alternative rule. With the alternative rule, the area effect kills all but 1 minion that it hits, and leaves some damage behind (barring it hitting >18 minions)).

Even better, it lets smoothly makes attacking a minion much like attacking a low HP monster. There is some risk of blow-through, but only if you pass that minion's HP threshold.

[valadil]

The damage pool is an interesting idea and I hadn't thought of it before. Other games (GURPs in particular) handle minions by squishing them into swarms and claiming that that one token on the board is really a dozen guys. I like this better because it lets them occupy several squares but only adds one thing to keep track of.

The appeal of minions to me isn't that they die in one hit, but that they add several enemies to the table without affecting notetaking overhead. Maybe I should call them mooks instead of minions if they're going to have mechanical longevity?

[Yakk]

That is what minions are supposed to be about.

You can also add in the save-or-fall mechanic:

When a minion takes a status effect that is weaker than prone, they fall prone.

When a minion takes a status effect that is stronger than prone, they immediately save against it. If they fail the save, they are eliminated. If they pass the save, they fall prone.

The above doesn't apply to marks, hunter's quarry, warlock's curse, etc.

The goal is to reduce the amount of bookkeeping.

...

A nice thing about the damage pool mechanic is that temporary HP are easy to adjudicate -- just boost the 'level' for the purpose of damage of the minions that had temporary HP placed on them.

[tbarrie]

But even with stuff like that, you still might as well just be using lower-level monsters with HP. The entire point of a minion is that if you deal damage to it, it dies. Making it so that dealing damage to it doesn't immediately kill it means that pretty much by definition it isn't a minion anymore.

I disagree. The point of a minion is that the DM doesn't have to bother tracking its hit points. Having it only die when hit by an attack that does X damage or more preserves this feature, so it strikes me as a good solution.

[sombrastewart]

I've actually played in a game where minions were altered. They didn't die by autodamage, they only died on a direct hit. I was playing a feypact warlock with the Feytouched paragon path. This houserule pretty much negated one of the path features entirely. The only way to take out waves of minions was for the Wizard to blow an encounter or daily.

[TheEmerged]

I've actually played in a game where minions were altered. They didn't die by autodamage, they only died on a direct hit. I was playing a feypact warlock with the Feytouched paragon path. This houserule pretty much negated one of the path features entirely. The only way to take out waves of minions was for the Wizard to blow an encounter or daily.

The wizard didn't choose one of the burst/blast At-Wills?

[Asbestos]

This does have the secondary benefit of nulling the effectiveness of hammer rhythm and similar "tiny damage on miss" effects.

Minions are never damaged on a miss anyway. Things like Reaping Strike and Hammer Rhythm have no effect on them. The problem is things that cause zones of auto-damage.

[Yakk]

I disagree. The point of a minion is that the DM doesn't have to bother tracking its hit points. Having it only die when hit by an attack that does X damage or more preserves this feature, so it strikes me as a good solution.
The downside is that there is a discontinuity at X damage.

Imagine you have a source of autodamage that did X-1 damage, and another that did X damage. Balance-wise, these two are nearly identical (assuming even a medium-sized X) -- except against a minion that dies when it takes X damage, and ignores damage when it takes X-1 damage.

Such effects are reasonably common.

Hence the idea to use one common damage pool for minions. If the death threshold is X, then doing X-1 damage doesn't do nothing -- instead, it nearly kills a minion. The next minion to take any damage dies.

Keeping track of one damage track for all minions in an encounter allows the DM to have a huge number of minions without having to keep track of which ones took damage.

And yes, a strange artifact could appear where two players alternate dealing exactly X/2 damage to minions -- the first never kills the minion they are beating on, the second kills a minion on every hit.

This requires two sources of damage that are lined up nearly exactly with the damage threshold of the minion, a fighting pattern that is unlikely to be stable, both players either hitting or missing each turn, etc. So it isn't likely to occur that often. And all that changes is which minion dies, instead of if a minion dies.

And note that this works wonderfully with auto-damage -- you could even allow miss damage on a minion.

[Kylarra]

Minions are never damaged on a miss anyway. Things like Reaping Strike and Hammer Rhythm have no effect on them. The problem is things that cause zones of auto-damage.My bad. Ignore that part then. :smallredface:

[AgentPaper]

For hit points, if you want to have minion HP scale the same way as normal monster HP, you would go with: 2 + (Con / 4) + (level * 2) HP per minion.

For example, let's say you want to have 8 kobold minions. At level 1 with 12 con, that's 7 HP per minion, for a total of 56 HP. Then, you just keep track of how much damage is being taken by minions, and whenever that damage reaches a threshold, one minion dies. In this case, a minion dies at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, and 56. This adds a little work figuring out the HP and thresholds of your minions, but it's not much, and the game goes just as smoothly in the game itself.

However, this runs the risk of letting a single-target, high damage attack landing for 56 damage on one of the minions, and thus killing off the rest of them in the process. So, you should limit the amount of damage any single attack can do to the HP pool to the amount of HP each minion represents. So in out above encounter, if a rogue sneak attacked a minion for 23 damage, he would only deal 7 damage, killing a minion. If a wizard hit three minions with an area attack, dealing 12 damage to each, he would instead do 7 damage to each, for a total of 21 damage to the pool, killing three minions.


In effect, this really doesn't change the core of how minions function; Most attacks that land, kill. It's only weak, large area effects that are nerfed, though without making them completely pointless. For example, if one character had a way of dealing 1 damage to every monster on the field with no attack roll, that would deal 1 damage to each minion, adding up to 8 damage total and killing a minion.

[valadil]

For example, let's say you want to have 8 kobold minions. At level 1 with 12 con, that's 7 HP per minion, for a total of 56 HP. Then, you just keep track of how much damage is being taken by minions, and whenever that damage reaches a threshold, one minion dies. In this case, a minion dies at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, and 56. This adds a little work figuring out the HP and thresholds of your minions, but it's not much, and the game goes just as smoothly in the game itself.


You don't even need to come up with the value 56. Just know that each time the damage hits 7 a minion goes poof and it all resets. By the time you hit 56 they're all exactly dead anyway.

[kieza]

My solution, which seems to work well, is to have minions die to any hit that deals damage, and to roll a saving throw if damaged by a miss or autodamage. If they fail, they still die.

Pros:
No extra bookkeeping.
Autodamage, which is common at higher levels, doesn't wipe out a ton of minions in the first round of a fight.
Misses that deal damage, like the Fighter's Reaping Strike, are more valuable against minions.

Cons:
Extra rolls.
I have, on one occasion, had a minion get immobilized in an auto-damage zone and make his save six times before he was killed. I did the math afterwards, and he took more damage than some of the normal monsters. So yeah.

Also, I encourage my players to take out minions with attacks by giving the kills far more epic descriptions than if they died to autodamage. "A smoking corpse falls forward through the flames and collapses with a variety of crunching noises and the scent of burnt hair" sounds so much cooler than "he burns to death. Next?"

[FoE]

My solution, which seems to work well, is to have minions die to any hit that deals damage, and to roll a saving throw if damaged by a miss or autodamage.

Minions aren't supposed to take damage from a miss!

[AgentPaper]

You don't even need to come up with the value 56. Just know that each time the damage hits 7 a minion goes poof and it all resets. By the time you hit 56 they're all exactly dead anyway.

True. And of course, if an attack hits a minion and does damage equal to or greater than it's HP, you can just remove that minion without even changing the running damage total. I'm really starting to like this idea more and more. I'm surprised nobody thought of it before. (or at least, never applied it to DnD)

[Yakk]

For hit points, if you want to have minion HP scale the same way as normal monster HP, you would go with: 2 + (Con / 4) + (level * 2) HP per minion.Ya, except that is more annoying to calculate than "1 HP per level". :) And with the blow-through damage problem...

I might make the minion ratio 4:1 in heroic, 5:1 in paragon, and 6:1 in epic with the 1 HP per minion level rule.

And do not generate a collective HP pool. Instead you have a collective damage pool.

When you damage a minion:
Does it exceed the minion's level?
Yes: Kill minion. Done.
No: Add damage to minion damage pool. Does the damage pool exceed the minion's level?
Yes: Kill the minion, and subtract the minion's level from the damage pool.
No: Minion lives.

When doing AOE damage, do the 'blow through' check on each minion. Then add up the total damage done and add it to the pool. And start killing hit minions from damage in the pool.

[Gralamin]

Ya, except that is more annoying to calculate than "1 HP per level". :) And with the blow-through damage problem...

I might make the minion ratio 4:1 in heroic, 5:1 in paragon, and 6:1 in epic with the 1 HP per minion level rule.

And do not generate a collective HP pool. Instead you have a collective damage pool.

When you damage a minion:
Does it exceed the minion's level?
Yes: Kill minion. Done.
No: Add damage to minion damage pool. Does the damage pool exceed the minion's level?
Yes: Kill the minion, and subtract the minion's level from the damage pool.
No: Minion lives.

When doing AOE damage, do the 'blow through' check on each minion. Then add up the total damage done and add it to the pool. And start killing hit minions from damage in the pool.

You know Yakk, you need to either stop making good house rules, or make a huge book of them as a sort of 4e Unearthed Arcana :smallwink:

[AgentPaper]

Ya, except that is more annoying to calculate than "1 HP per level". :) And with the blow-through damage problem...

I might make the minion ratio 4:1 in heroic, 5:1 in paragon, and 6:1 in epic with the 1 HP per minion level rule.

1 HP per minion level is just too low, though. Most monsters have about Level*8 HP, plus 8 and their constitution. If each individual minion is supposed to be about 1/4 the challenge of a normal monster, they should have about the same hit point total, if not more. (since it's easier to do lots of damage to them with area attacks) Which means you should have their HP be at least Level * 2, though even that is lower without the con and base 8 HP bonus. Of course, you can simplify it all to about 5 + Level * 2, but since you only have to do this once per group of minions, there's really no reason not to just calculate out 1/4 of their constitution. The whole process should only take about 10 seconds, and anything less just seems lazy to me. :smallwink:

[Yakk]

But blow through will be significant.

The 1*Level HP thing means that a real blow on them will generate blow-through -- wasted damage -- but auto-damage and miss damage will (unless they are blowing a daily) not kill them automatically.

I'm perfectly OK with how easy it is to kill minions using area damage that needs to hit -- area damage is horrible at killing solos and elites, after all.

I just want to toughen them up so that auto-damage doesn't always pop minions (auto-damage tends not to break 1 point per player level, except at low levels), and toughen them up enough that miss damage on at-wills won't be enough to drop a minion (barring serious miss damage optimization).

[AgentPaper]

But blow through will be significant.

The 1*Level HP thing means that a real blow on them will generate blow-through -- wasted damage -- but auto-damage and miss damage will (unless they are blowing a daily) not kill them automatically.

I'm perfectly OK with how easy it is to kill minions using area damage that needs to hit -- area damage is horrible at killing solos and elites, after all.

I just want to toughen them up so that auto-damage doesn't always pop minions (auto-damage tends not to break 1 point per player level, except at low levels), and toughen them up enough that miss damage on at-wills won't be enough to drop a minion (barring serious miss damage optimization).

I'm not saying that a minion should be able to live through a normal area attack, if it hits. I'm saying that two auto-hits shouldn't wipe them out. That leaves the problem just about the same as before. For example, let's say you have 8 level 5 minions, and the players have an attack that auto-hits for 3 damage. They use it once, that's 3*8= 24, half the minions are dead. They use it again, that's 4+ 3*4= 16, now there's only 1 minion left. Two actions, and the minions are pretty much eliminated without any chance of failure.

If they had 12 con, then they should have 15 HP each instead of 5. Then, the 3 damage auto-hit move goes off, they take 24 damage again, and one is down, and you're halfway to killing another. Doing it again results in 3*7= 21 damage, and two more are down. The auto attacks are still doing a lot of harm, but they aren't completely nullifying the minion's existence.

And serious attacks will still wipe the floor with minions, as they should. For example, a level 5 wizard might have Fireball, which does 3d6+ Int mod damage. That's about 10(dice) + 4(int mod) + 2(item) = 16 damage on average. If it hits a minion, it's probably dead, or at least very close to it.

[warrl]

Lots of people are saying "hide which ones are the minions!" but I'm not sure why. From a targeting perspective, I don't actually care that much which targets are the minions and which ones are the regular monsters. I'm going to blast the densest concentration of enemies whatever.

This was in 3.5, but we just had a big battle where we labored under the burden of "no matter what you do, don't touch the dragonspawn!" About 25 of them were scattered around the room, amid a larger number of human minions, and we had mass invisibility to dragons.

It greatly complicated the planning of all sorts of area attacks. In a few cases we had to have discussions with the DM about whether a certain sort of event would constitute an attack *by us*. (The thing about invisibility to dragons is that one attack on one dragon by one character completely breaks the spell.)

And it could have been worse if the DM had had the BBEG plan for that possibility by, for example, training his archers to get out of line or putting dragonspawn in his lines of archers.

[Yakk]

I'm not saying that a minion should be able to live through a normal area attack, if it hits. I'm saying that two auto-hits shouldn't wipe them out. That leaves the problem just about the same as before. For example, let's say you have 8 level 5 minions, and the players have an attack that auto-hits for 3 damage. They use it once, that's 3*8= 24, half the minions are dead. They use it again, that's 4+ 3*4= 16, now there's only 1 minion left. Two actions, and the minions are pretty much eliminated without any chance of failure.An area auto-damage for 3 points at level 5 is a pretty good power. And they managed to keep the minions bunched for 2 to 3 rounds -- good for them!


If they had 12 con, then they should have 15 HP each instead of 5. Then, the 3 damage auto-hit move goes off, they take 24 damage again, and one is down, and you're halfway to killing another. Doing it again results in 3*7= 21 damage, and two more are down. The auto attacks are still doing a lot of harm, but they aren't completely nullifying the minion's existence.
*nod*. Still, adding in the con seems like a needless complication.

You could go with Level*2. That is simple, and makes them tough enough. The problem is...

And serious attacks will still wipe the floor with minions, as they should. For example, a level 5 wizard might have Fireball, which does 3d6+ Int mod damage. That's about 10(dice) + 4(int mod) + 2(item) = 16 damage on average. If it hits a minion, it's probably dead, or at least very close to it.Fireball is a daily -- and a damage-only daily at that. A daily that doesn't guarantee that a hit kills a minion?

That is strong evidence that you are giving these minions too many HP.

Admittedly, if you allow miss damage to apply, then the fireball on 8 minions will hit 4 and miss 4.

Assume another +2 damage from other sources (easy to get), and we have 8+3d6 damage on the hit targets. That means a 7+ on 3d6 kills them -- or a chance of not-killing of ~11%.

The max damage on the missed minions is 12. So we can just add up the average damage on those -- 16+21=37, or 2.47 killed by the miss damage on the fireball. The .47 will be enough to finish off any of the minions who took below-expected damage on a hit.

So the miss damage makes up for the fewer creatures killed by hit damage. Instead of 4/8 dead, we have 6/8 dead from a fireball.