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Dust
2009-08-28, 02:06 PM
The Marquis of a large, magical (but corrupt) metropolis has a love for animals. He possesses a large menagerie of fish, cats and dogs, and the more exotic, not to mention a vast aviary.
He loves his pets so much, in fact, that he refuses to let them die. Using magic to trap his loyal companions forever in quasi-life, he now has a horde of fierce, half-undead pets.

In the last game session, one of the PCs attempted to ride a hippolich.


I'll give you a moment so that mental image can sink in.

Right.
Another PC - a Shadar-kai and a big believer that unnatural death is pure evil - plans to start hacking and cleaving his way through the Marquis' mansion in my game session tonight. He hasn't said anything, but I know the player all too well.

Now, I'm new to 4e, and unsure of the proper way to handle a swarm of bats/birds/hippos/goldfish/etc. Minions, sure, but I need to give them powers that really denote their...lichiness. In a PURE minion fight, how many is too many for a 5-person party of level 1 to handle? And so forth and so on. If you have any suggestion whatsoever, please, toss them up.

Kurald Galain
2009-08-28, 02:49 PM
Now, I'm new to 4e, and unsure of the proper way to handle a swarm of bats/birds/hippos/goldfish/etc. Minions, sure, but I need to give them powers that really denote their...lichiness. In a PURE minion fight, how many is too many for a 5-person party of level 1 to handle?

Swarms usually aren't minions.

According to the rules, a 5-man party can handle 20 minions, but in reality this depends on party make up (in particular, how many area attacks they have). Also, to make a fight interesting, it shouldn't consist of just minions.

Lichiness is probably denoted by (1) necrotic damage, (2) having them heal a bit (or spawn a minion) when they hit a PC, (3) regeneration, (4) vulnerability to radiant, and (5) causing the "weakened" condition.

For instance, you could have a regular minion that deals necrotic and weakened on a hit, and a swarm monster that has a necrotic aura and spawns one minion whenever it hits.

Tygell
2009-08-28, 03:26 PM
I would definitely consider turning some of them into swarms in the case of smaller animals, statting out the in between sized animals as minions, and use the largest enemies as brutes similar to zombies.

The hippolich would make a great charge zombie. Turn a flock of canaries into a swarm. Maybe a few canines and cats as small sized minions.