3.5 Minions

[unre9istered]

I was thinking about this as an idea to bring the utility of minions from 4e to 3.5, that is fun battles against hoards of opponents who fall quickly to make the party feel awesome.

I was thinking:
HP = either 1hp per hit die, or 5. Can't go with just one because spell casters have to many auto hits (1st level spell to kill 5 high level minions without any roll would make 3.5 minions too weak), but this keeps it low enough that cleave such are still useful at high levels and the standard AOE spells will clear out swaths of enemies.
damage = minimum (like 4th)
defenses = add evasion, for similar reasoning to the "no damage from misses" that 4e minions have.
CR = 4 minions replace one standard monster of the same CR (like 4e)

Thoughts?

[jmbrown]

There was a topic like this maybe a month ago and the basic consensus for it was to give minions minimum hp on their hit dice. A level 5 dwarf fighter with 16 constitution has 20hp which is low but still gives him good survivability against, say, a fireball cast from a level 5 wizard.

[Starscream]

I've done this when playing stuff from the Heroes of Battle sourcebook. When you are playing a big army with tons of people in it it's much easier to just say "the guys you hit with the fireball die" than to figure out the hp for a few dozen npcs, and make a bunch of reflex saves.

[erikun]

While I haven't DM'd in awhile, I figure that minimum HP and a -2 to all rolls/defenses will make them considerably "minionlike" and, depending on your needs, will let you jam a bunch of minions into one encounter.

If you're just looking for a way to quickly run through large battles, though, the penality to rolls/defenses wouldn't apply.