Question About Minions

[Erasmas]

Hello, first off... let me just put out there that I am a 3rd edition player.
I know, I know... but put your pitchforks down, I come in peace (and I don't get into edition wars anyways).

On a more serious note, I have been toying with the notion of introducing Minions into my games and the one thing that I cannot figure out a good solution for is when a group of Minions are included in an area of effect (such as a fireball spell, etc.). Now, again, I'm not all that familiar with 4th's rules, so bear with me here. Even with a passed saving throw and minimum damage, it will still be enough to kill something with only 1 hit point. Now, I suppose that they could all have something akin to the Evasion special ability, but this seems like nothing more than convenient hand-waving.

What I was wondering is if anybody here has come up with a (even slightly) more reasonable way to handle this?

[Epinephrine]

Hello, first off... let me just put out there that I am a 3rd edition player.
I know, I know... but put your pitchforks down, I come in peace (and I don't get into edition wars anyways).

On a more serious note, I have been toying with the notion of introducing Minions into my games and the one thing that I cannot figure out a good solution for is when a group of Minions are included in an area of effect (such as a fireball spell, etc.). Now, again, I'm not all that familiar with 4th's rules, so bear with me here. Even with a passed saving throw and minimum damage, it will still be enough to kill something with only 1 hit point. Now, I suppose that they could all have something akin to the Evasion special ability, but this seems like nothing more than convenient hand-waving.

What I was wondering is if anybody here has come up with a (even slightly) more reasonable way to handle this?

The evasion ability sounds like exactly the right approach. Minions take no damage on missed attacks, which is equivalent to taking no damage on successful saves.

[NecroRebel]

In 4e, a missed attack never damages a minion, even if the attack power would otherwise. Attack rolls against the non-AC defenses are literally identical, mathematically, to saving throws in 3.x. There's even a variant rule for 3.5 where creatures have static reflex, will, and fortitude scores (equal to 10+their relevant modifier) and spellcasters roll to overcome it rather than there being a static save DC that defenders roll to overcome, which is just like 4e functions normally. As such, the closest analogue to how 4e minions work in 3.x would be to make them all immune to taking damage on failed saving throws.

In 4e, there are still lots of ways to pop minions automatically. Powers might have an "effect" line, which isn't reliant on an attack roll and so if there is damage in such a line minions will still take it, which of course will surely kill them. Non-damage effects also work on minions normally, even those that are on a power's "miss" line.

Since the whole point of minions is convenient hand-waving of creatures that are not threatening enough to worry about unless they're present in large numbers, the convenient hand-waving of giving them all Improved Evasion and equivalents for fortitude and will is par for the course.

[Erasmas]

Excellent!
Thank you both for the rapid and in-depth replies.

It sounds like the biggest difference (in this regard) is that everyone effectively has "evasion" in 4th edition, which certainly eradicates any issue that someone would have with all minions get it automatically, but more 'hardy' characters do not. Okay... I think this will simply have to be one of those things that just goes in the favor of game mechanics over immersion.

[obryn]

Excellent!
Thank you both for the rapid and in-depth replies.

It sounds like the biggest difference (in this regard) is that everyone effectively has "evasion" in 4th edition, which certainly eradicates any issue that someone would have with all minions get it automatically, but more 'hardy' characters do not. Okay... I think this will simply have to be one of those things that just goes in the favor of game mechanics over immersion.
Ummm not everyone gets "evasion." It's just a characteristic of (almost) every minion. Basically, in the fiction, you assume that minions have hit points; they're just not enough to track. A fireball might singe the ones who were quick enough to get out of the way, but they're still capable combatants.

[Epinephrine]

Ummm not everyone gets "evasion." It's just a characteristic of (almost) every minion. Basically, in the fiction, you assume that minions have hit points; they're just not enough to track. A fireball might singe the ones who were quick enough to get out of the way, but they're still capable combatants.

This. Basically, one good shot downs a minion. But you don't get to take them out with a glancing blow, or automatically scorch them as they were in the area. (also, playing with minions is fun - taking out hordes of them with an attack feels great, but it's also amusing when a minion survives; recently a minion was the last one standing despite having been in the area of quite a few blasts, the low die rolls just kept coming up for him.)

[Erasmas]

Well, evasion (for me) simply means that it did little else than singe you. It isn't like you somehow managed to get out of the area of the spell even though people all around you caught the full effect. What I meant by saying that "everyone effectively has evasion" was that it is the same net effect - the defender passes a roll (or the aggressor fails one) and the target takes no damage as opposed to half-damage. Just putting it into terms that I can grapple with.

[NecroRebel]

Well, evasion (for me) simply means that it did little else than singe you. It isn't like you somehow managed to get out of the area of the spell even though people all around you caught the full effect. What I meant by saying that "everyone effectively has evasion" was that it is the same net effect - the defender passes a roll (or the aggressor fails one) and the target takes no damage as opposed to half-damage. Just putting it into terms that I can grapple with.

...Except that that isn't the case. There's lots of powers, especially daily powers, that deal half damage on a miss. It's only minions that don't take that damage. And there are many powers, even some at-will and encounter powers, that deal damage whether they hit or not, and these will damage even minions. So it's more like "minions always have evasion" than "everyone always has evasion."

[Epinephrine]

Well, evasion (for me) simply means that it did little else than singe you. It isn't like you somehow managed to get out of the area of the spell even though people all around you caught the full effect. What I meant by saying that "everyone effectively has evasion" was that it is the same net effect - the defender passes a roll (or the aggressor fails one) and the target takes no damage as opposed to half-damage. Just putting it into terms that I can grapple with.

Then minions have evasion and mettle. PCs do not, nor do most enemies.

Edit: Ninja'd - will also add that minions are worth 1/4th XP, and deal about 1/2 the expected damage. This makes them hit harder than their XP value would account for, but they can be eliminated very efficiently by controller type; they are thus actually good targets, as their threat value is high compared to their share of the XP budget.

[Yakk]

I have fooled around with minion rules that do not have "missed attacks do not damage minions" in them.

An easy version of them is to have a minion HP pool.

If you hit a bloodied minion, take (damage in pool) + (damage you deal), and if it exeeds (level+3) of the minion, kill it and discard the pool. Otherwise, you failed to drop the minion.

If you hit a non-bloodied minion, if the damage exceeds (level+3), kill it. Otherwise, bloody it, and add the damage you dealt to the pool.

You can scale minion HP to be different than (level+3) if you like (x1.5 for brute-types, x2/3 for fragile types, whatever).

Now an auto-damage attack that deals 6 damage will only auto-drop minions of level 3 or less. It will bloody minions and stuff damage into a pool. Miss damage is as good as hit damage.

Let's look at a dozen level 8 minions (11 hp each). You shoot a fireball at them (6d6+8 damage, roll a 27 total). Every minion dies.

A few levels later you fireball a group of level 18 minions (21 HP) for 6d6+15 damage (33 roll result). Hits kill, and misses just bloody (and accumulate into a HP pool). If you miss just 1, the pool has 16 damage in it, and any damage of 5 or more kills the next bloodied minion to be hit.

You can be a bit more generous and use the "damage pool + current damage >= HP" rule for non-bloodied minions, but that can result in 2 point hits killing undamaged level 30 minions, which seems wrong.

The cost to use this is a bit of math and tracking said damage pool, plus marking minions as bloodied.

This makes minions easier to pop with daily powers that deal half damage on a miss, but harder to pop with autodamage. I find autodamage more common than half on miss damage, and the ability for small amounts of autodamage to pop a minion while massive miss damage cannot is an annoying artifact of the engine.

[Doug Lampert]

Then minions have evasion and mettle. PCs do not, nor do most enemies.

Edit: Ninja'd - will also add that minions are worth 1/4th XP, and deal about 1/2 the expected damage. This makes them hit harder than their XP value would account for, but they can be eliminated very efficiently by controller type; they are thus actually good targets, as their threat value is high compared to their share of the XP budget.

Fourth edition they're worth 1/4th XP partly because it takes one hit to kill a minion and roughly four hits to kill a standard. 3.x doesn't have a similar neat progression in how hard things are to kill and often has attacks that outstrip defenses.

At level 1 I'd be tempted to make a minion worth half his expected CR (half damage), and have this drop off with increasing level. By level 20 the fighter will be taking out 5 minions a round even if poorly optimized for it.

[Erasmas]

Ahh, okay... I see now. Thank you all once again!

Out of curiosity, is there any "in character" explanation as to why minions always have 'evasion' when other characters do not? That is the thing that I am going to have the most trouble getting my players to get over... so I am desperately searching for something that could possibly excuse it. If it ends up just having to be DM Fiat, then so be it. But if that is the case, I want to be prepared. However, if there is already a workable reason that at least partially explains it, then that at least gives me a good jumping point.

[Doug Lampert]

I have fooled around with minion rules that do not have "missed attacks do not damage minions" in them.

An easy version of them is to have a minion HP pool.

I did something similar (but didn't think of the "bloodied" part, I like that addition. People stopped going out of their way to find "1 damage" effect-type powers, and we stopped having to check the errata to see which of those powers had had "does not kill minions" added in later.

It does take away one of the big uses of the fighter's Cleave power (which is modest autodamage to a secondary target in 4th edition), and makes rangers even more powerful, but it seemed to work. The controllers did like that they could kill lots more minions with their big dailies.

Edited to add:

Ahh, okay... I see now. Thank you all once again!

Out of curiosity, is there any "in character" explanation as to why minions always have 'evasion' when other characters do not? That is the thing that I am going to have the most trouble getting my players to get over... so I am desperately searching for something that could possibly excuse it. If it ends up just having to be DM Fiat, then so be it. But if that is the case, I want to be prepared. However, if there is already a workable reason that at least partially explains it, then that at least gives me a good jumping point.

In character the minion DOES NOT HAVE 1 HP. He has a bunch, but less than one attack that hits from a level appropriate foe does. Any decent attack can take just about anyone down. People with HP are just so good that they avoid damaging hits till they are out of HP, minions aren't that good, but if one makes his save he's avoided the damaging part of that particular hit.

[obryn]

Out of curiosity, is there any "in character" explanation as to why minions always have 'evasion' when other characters do not? That is the thing that I am going to have the most trouble getting my players to get over... so I am desperately searching for something that could possibly excuse it. If it ends up just having to be DM Fiat, then so be it. But if that is the case, I want to be prepared. However, if there is already a workable reason that at least partially explains it, then that at least gives me a good jumping point.
There's no such thing as a "free-range minion." Minions are only minions when they're fighting the PCs; their mechanics are a game convenience. There's no tribe of kobolds somewhere out there where they all die immediately when they step on a caltrop or something. :smallbiggrin:

Minion is just shorthand for "it's not worth tracking HP for these guys, so let's take a mechanical shortcut."

[Erasmas]

Perfect, those are exactly what I was looking for!

Good gaming, everyone... regardless of the edition you play.
:smallwink:

[georgie_leech]

Perfect, those are exactly what I was looking for!

Good gaming, everyone... regardless of the edition you play.
:smallwink:

Enjoy your gaming, and as someone who frequents both boards, don't worry, we don't tend to bite on this side. :smallbiggrin: