4e Minion rule for 3.5 vs. CR?

[veovius]

Hey all...
I played 4e for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I ran into the minion-have-1hp rule for the first time. And I LOVED it. One problem I've had in running, say, Star Wars Revised, is when Jedi face off against a horde of stormtroopers and you're stuck for 4 hours grinding away at them. This way, a party of 4 blew threw around 20 kobolds in about 30 minutes.

How does this translate to 3.5? I'm planning on running a very martial campaign soon, and I'd love to use this rule here. How would that affect CR ratings of creatures? I'm totally new to DMing 3.5 (I've DMed SWR a lot, and Palladium), but I'm a long time player. Some advice would be awesome.

[Runestar]

I am not sure if minion rules translate well to 3e.

At first glance, magic missile or acid fog would be very strong, letting you take down 5 minions per shot (no attack roll or save). You have fighters with multiple attacks and cleave (unlike in 4e, where everyone has only 1 attack/round).

It seems like it might also make damage spells more useful, and battlefield control less so (no point glitterdusting a mook who is going to die next turn anyways).

[Mando Knight]

Give them the same immunity to miss/save damage, and they should serve well.

[Gametime]

As pointed out, the higher prevalence of automatic damage in 3.5 makes the 1-hit point minion less threatening. One potential fix would be to have them make a 4e-style saving throw any time they take damage; on a 10 or higher, they live. Alternately, tie the saving throw to actual 3.5 saves; Fortitude probably makes the most sense, although any of the three could be justified. You could even have distinct saves for different types of attacks, although at that point you're probably over-complicating what is meant to be a very simplistic enemy mechanic.

The "save against death" for minions would obviously replace saves to reduce damage. You would probably only want it to apply against non-rolled attacks; normal, hit-the-AC attacks should just kill the minion outright.

[Mike_G]

We've used a modified Minion rule for 3.5 and it works fine.

You take the horde of Redshirts, Stormtroopers, Orc at Helm's Deep etc, give them an attack bonus and AC that are challenging, give them 1 hp, and basically consider them to have Evasion, so the half damage on a save doesn't kill them.

That way, have all the mooks you want, no tracking HP. Hit one, he's dead. Spell one, he saves or he's dead. Just knock over the mini.

It works better that trying to use lower CR monsters straight up as mooks, since they will never hit, but keeps the Screaming Chicom Horde from being a book keeping nightmare.

It's more satisfying than trying to use a Swarm template, IMO.

[Yakk]

Use a HP pool.

Every X damage, a minion drops. No single blow can kill more than one minion (and no area attack can kill more than it targets).

This could reduce the number of attacks the "minion force" has if you want.

The advantage you get out of this is reduced bookkeeping (you don't have to keep track of each individual minions HP), at the cost of a bit more math to handle area damage. The per-minion HP should scale in such a way that "cheap autodamage" isn't an auto-kill, but be enough that a "real hit" takes out a minion.

[krossbow]

one thing, it looks suspiciously like the enemies are taking dives as well when they have 1 hp


Unless, metagame wise, the players realize that such things as minions exist, they'll probably expect a trap of some time.

[veovius]

Give them the same immunity to miss/save damage, and they should serve well.

One potential fix would be to have them make a 4e-style saving throw any time they take damage; on a 10 or higher, they live. You would probably only want it to apply against non-rolled attacks; normal, hit-the-AC attacks should just kill the minion outright.

Is this the same thing you guys are talking about?'

Mike_G, that sounds pretty much like I was playing in 4e. Which is what I want to do in 3.5 :) My only question now, is how to handle experience. At what level should I give XP for a CR3 Ogre mook? Or a Goblin mook? Or probably more to the point, 10 of the same?

one thing, it looks suspiciously like the enemies are taking dives as well when they have 1 hp

I think that after the mindnumbing grinding my players have gone through in SWR, this will be a very very refreshing change of pace That and I do plan on having regular non-minion enemies sprinkled in. Just need some filler :)

[veovius]

Use a HP pool.

Every X damage, a minion drops. No single blow can kill more than one minion (and no area attack can kill more than it targets).

This could reduce the number of attacks the "minion force" has if you want.

The advantage you get out of this is reduced bookkeeping (you don't have to keep track of each individual minions HP), at the cost of a bit more math to handle area damage. The per-minion HP should scale in such a way that "cheap autodamage" isn't an auto-kill, but be enough that a "real hit" takes out a minion.

Not such a fan of this as I am of the 1-hit-dead system, as long as auto-damage is dealt with by a save-to-negate or something. The only way I could see this being better than the 1-hit system is if the PCs started fighting by flinging a flask of Alchemist's Fire and killing something that definitely shouldn't be killed by a 1d6 hit, say a higher-level minion. Maybe I could transition to this after a few levels (starting at 1) to be say 5 or 10 hp, just so that cheap low-damage effects aren't insta-kills.

Alternatively, I could just say that if you do less than say, 5 dmg, in a hit, then there's simply no effect (obviously at later levels). I could still keep the one-shot-kill effect and the lack of paperwork to go with it, and yet keep the mooks from being stupid weak to shenanigans. Thoughts?

[Mike_G]

one thing, it looks suspiciously like the enemies are taking dives as well when they have 1 hp


Unless, metagame wise, the players realize that such things as minions exist, they'll probably expect a trap of some time.

That's not so much of an issue. Just use a bit of DM description, like "The Orc falls, gurgling and spurting gore from a cut throat." That's hard to fake.

At high levels, minimum damage is usually pretty high anyway. You an use the "less than 5 hp is no effect" idea if you don't want somebody to spam low damage

[Mando Knight]

Is this the same thing you guys are talking about?'

Pretty much. 4e minions are immune to damage that's dealt by miss effects, so giving them Evasion or equivalent (ignoring "save 1/2" and similar effects) gives the same basic effect.

For XP, 4e sets the minions to 5 minions = 1 normal monster, and gives them higher defenses to allow them to dodge a few attacks.

[Coplantor]

If anyone here owns the player's option skills and powers from 2nd edition, there was an optional rule to fight hordes of monsters, cant remember it well though. I'll look for it and then post it here, maybe something from 2nd ed might work better on 3.x than the minions rule. Or maybe both can be combined.

[Mike_G]

We used the minion rule for 3.5 when the campaign involved a major battle. The PC's job was to target enemy leaders, casters, tough monsters, etc, while the grunts on both sides fought one another, but they had to deal with a few squads or companies of enemy spearmen, archers, ect to get to the main bad guys.

It worked fine. Anything more would have eliminated the "no bookkeeping" advantage of the system. Plus, we cranked up the attack bonus and AC of the mooks so the could hit the PC's on more than just a natural 20, and weren't auto-hit by the party. They just died when hit. Straight up 3e goblins, Kobollds, Orcs, and so on would never have hit, still died from just about any attack, and been less than a speedbump.

As it went, they were a nuisance, but could hit for a few damage, so the PC's couldn't just ignore them, or wipe them out with a "1/2 damage on a save" spell. The handful of Sergeants and classed bad guys mixed in were nice and challenging.

The Minion rule is perfect for simulating cinematic battles without three pages of stats and tracking HP for a hundred doomed grunts.

[Caphi]

The Minion rule is perfect for simulating cinematic battles without three pages of stats and tracking HP for a hundred doomed grunts.

Mowing down paper targets isn't my idea of cinematic, from either side of the screen.

[Oslecamo]

Straight up 3e goblins, Kobollds, Orcs, and so on would never have hit, still died from just about any attack, and been less than a speedbump.

Only if you're doing it wrong. That's for what there's the aid another action, or give the mooks touch attack weapons.

Alternatively, DMG2 provides a mob template to group lots of small dudes in a big deadly blob. I took the liberty of improving it to make it a worthy challenge to PCs with much less bookeeping than the DM needing to roll a hundred iniatives, attacks and saves per round.Here

As it went, they were a nuisance, but could hit for a few damage, so the PC's couldn't just ignore them, or wipe them out with a "1/2 damage on a save" spell. The handful of Sergeants and classed bad guys mixed in were nice and challenging.

What, your arcanists didn't have magic missile? Or any other "no save, just take damage" effect? In 4e almost everything needs a roll to hit. Not so much in 3.5e

The Minion rule is perfect for simulating cinematic battles without three pages of stats and tracking HP for a hundred doomed grunts.

Meh, some of us don't really like the idea that a dude wich can resist an half-missed fireball rolls over dead just because you grazed them with your sword.

[Mike_G]

Mowing down paper targets isn't my idea of cinematic, from either side of the screen.

That wouldn't be the whole encounter, and how is that not what happens in Star Wars, or Kill Bill, or Braveheart, or Raiders of the Lost Ark or a hundred other examples. The heroes cut down the bad guy mooks by the handful, then have a tough fight with the boss or a few tougher guys.

It doesn't exactly makes sense for the commander of the evil horde to be away from his evil horde, and if you make his army of minions CR appropriate to the party, you have a huge bookkeeping nightmare.

As is, you make it so the lowly minion have a chance of hitting, a chance to be missed, and do minor damage, but you don't need to track HP for a hundred guys.

You'd never put the party against a hundred minions. You'd put them against the big bad warlord and his elite bodyguard, with a battalion of grunts nearby who might interfere.

This is for the Stormtroopers or the horde at Helm's Deep.

Only if you're doing it wrong. That's for what there's the aid another action, or give the mooks touch attack weapons.

This is for the horde of goblin spearmen. They are not filled with Metagame knowledge of PC highjinks, they are line infantry. The Spartans, a Roman legion, etc, would get mowed down by a tenth level party, but they train to fight other mooks. Touch attack weapons don't make sense narratively.

Alternatively, DMG2 provides a mob template to group lots of small dudes in a big deadly blob. I took the liberty of improving it to make it a worthy challenge to PCs with much less bookeeping than the DM needing to roll a hundred iniatives, attacks and saves per round.Here

Yeah, but I don't like that rule. I don't like the "platoon swarm" type concept. The enemy company isn't one foe, it's a hundred guys with spears. The minion rules preserve this feel.

What, your arcanists didn't have magic missile? Or any other "no save, just take damage" effect? In 4e almost everything needs a roll to hit. Not so much in 3.5e

Magic Missile tops out at five missiles. And it takes an action, and a spell slot. There's generally something better he could be doing.

Even if the Wizard does want to spam MM's no big deal. At that level, I'm fine with him dropping five mooks a round.

Meh, some of us don't really like the idea that a dude which can resist an half-missed fireball rolls over dead just because you grazed them with your sword.

That really doesn't faze me, considering how abstract D&D damage is anyway. How many times does the big, huge attack not quite kill the enemy and a weak attack finishes him off.

Weird stuff happens in combat anyway. An artillery shell can land in a squad and kill half of them but leave another guy unscratched.

The rule works fine in actual practice. I think people just hate it since it comes from 4e. I don't like 4e in general, but I like this idea.

I hate the Swarm template for crowds.

[Gametime]

Only if you're doing it wrong. That's for what there's the aid another action, or give the mooks touch attack weapons.

Touch attack weapons are reasonably hard to come by. Of course, you could just make something up, but giving your mooks weapons more powerful than the vast majority of actual monsters and not, presumably, allowing your players to loot them seems at least as verisimilitude-straining as a mook who falls over after one hit. At least the latter has the action genre precedent.

Mowing down paper targets isn't my idea of cinematic, from either side of the screen.

I can see not liking minions - they definitely aren't for everyone - but not cinematic? Perhaps that's too broad a term, but a huge proportion of action/adventure movies mow down dozens of paper targets to make the heroes look good. It's a convention of the action genre in cinema.

[Jayabalard]

Mowing down paper targets isn't my idea of cinematic, from either side of the screen.

I'm thinking that either you're misusing the term "cinematic" or haven't seen a lot of action movies in the last 30 years.

[Oslecamo]

That wouldn't be the whole encounter, and how is that not what happens in Star Wars, or Kill Bill, or Braveheart, or Raiders of the Lost Ark or a hundred other examples. The heroes cut down the bad guy mooks by the handful, then have a tough fight with the boss or a few tougher guys.

How many times are the mooks a threat to the heroes? Never. The heroes WILL cut down by the mooks whitout a scratch. Ok, perhaps a scratch, but never anything that slows them down. So by your logic minions shouldn't have enough attack to reliably hurt PCs because movie mooks can't do so either.

This is for the horde of goblin spearmen. They are not filled with Metagame knowledge of PC highjinks, they are line infantry. The Spartans, a Roman legion, etc, would get mowed down by a tenth level party, but they train to fight other mooks.

THIS! IS! D&D! You can't take two steps out of a city whitout some big hard nasty monster like a giant/bugbear/dire wolf poping out and attacking you. Any standing army on D&D world will have faced creatures with much higher AC than themselves.

Also, the roman legion and spartans did indeed fight elephants, wich are really hard to be taken down if you apply anti-infantry tactics against them. But can be defeated much easier if the infantry coordinates itself geting out of their front and driving them towards spear troops in waiting-aka aid another.

The infammous wall of spear formation is based on aid another, when you use your spear to force the enemy to run into your nearby pals spears.

Touch attack weapons don't make sense narratively.

The dread cult of warlocks? The sorceror rebels? The kobold alchemists?

Yeah, but I don't like that rule. I don't like the "platoon swarm" type concept. The enemy company isn't one foe, it's a hundred guys with spears. The minion rules preserve this feel.

It's not one foe, it's one hundred dudes working togheter. Wich is what a company should be. Any decent military group knows that ten guys fighting togheter are much more dangerous than ten guys fighting separatedly. Stuff like having less room to move, being unable to effectively parry blows from diferent directions, actualy being in danger of being burrowed under the weight of enemy bodies, that's what makes one hundred guys with spears dangerous.

Again, if you want useless mooks that can't work togheter, why bother with giving them higher attack? The PCs will trample over them, and all they'll lose is some charges of their wand of cure light wounds. And you'll still have to roll dozens of dices per turn.

Plus if the tenth level party isn't automatically dealing at least 10 damage with their attacks, wich means they 1-hit KO most humanoids out there, their AC probably won't be that hot either.

Magic Missile tops out at five missiles. And it takes an action, and a spell slot. There's generally something better he could be doing.

Even if the Wizard does want to spam MM's no big deal. At that level, I'm fine with him dropping five mooks a round.

Again, this is 3.5. If not magic missile stuff like Evard's black tentacles, "something" fog will quickly wipe out the mooks. They aren't a threat at all unless the players are charging mindlessly at them.

That really doesn't faze me, considering how abstract D&D damage is anyway. How many times does the big, huge attack not quite kill the enemy and a weak attack finishes him off.

What's exactly the problem with that? The big nasty blow cracked open the monster's shell/armor, allowing the second weaker attack to hit an actual vital point of the monster.

Weird stuff happens in combat anyway. An artillery shell can land in a squad and kill half of them but leave another guy unscratched.

Yeah but that's the exception and not the rule. If my artillery shells are killing half the dudes while leaving half of the others mint fresh something is fishy.

The rule works fine in actual practice. I think people just hate it since it comes from 4e. I don't like 4e in general, but I like this idea.

Actualy false. Minions are from 3.5 still. Check out Monster Manual V. It has a monster that produces "minions" with just 1 HP but high saves, attack, damage and has evasion as well. A lot of stuff in 4e is just a fleshing out of stuff in 3.5 that passed unnoticed.

[Mike_G]

I guess you probably just shouldn't use the minion rule, then.

We've been using it and it works fine for us. Every other suggestion is either more work or verisimilitude breaking.

I'm gonna go do something more productive than continue this discussion.

[pffh]

In my group we use minions in 3.5 and they are basically:
Always minimum HP ((1+con mod)*#HD)
Always minimum damage
Always 1 on any die roll except on saves or when rolling to hit
Cr: 6 to 8 minions = 1 normal Cr monster. (This is just something we wrote down as a baseline. I usually just eyeball the Cr)

This way we can have large number of enemies that can be killed easily and don't do much damage but can still hit the PC's.

[veovius]

Wow, this thread seems to have taken off!

The only other thing I'm kinda concerned about is Cleave/Great Cleave. Of course, that would be pretty "cinematic", wandering into a group of 8 and Ginsu-ing them to pieces. Should I do something to limit that, or should I just grant the player who manages to get 8 solid attack rolls in a row the awesomeness?

[Saph]

How does this translate to 3.5?

Why not just use 50 CR 1/3 or CR 1/2 creatures and call it a day? The thing about 3.5 is that you don't need special rules for minions - creatures with a CR sufficiently far below the party level fill that role anyway. It also means you can scale enemies - you have total mooks, then slightly threatening mooks, then elite mooks, then CR-equal enemies.

Minions are generally considered one of the more poorly balanced areas of 4e, so I don't recommend adopting the rules. XP-wise, four minions are supposed to equal one normal monster, but in practice minions are far easier to kill than normals. It also encourages players to pick up effects which auto-hit for tiny amounts of damage; once the party has done that, they can kill an entire encounter's worth of minions without breaking a sweat.

[Quietus]

Wow, this thread seems to have taken off!

The only other thing I'm kinda concerned about is Cleave/Great Cleave. Of course, that would be pretty "cinematic", wandering into a group of 8 and Ginsu-ing them to pieces. Should I do something to limit that, or should I just grant the player who manages to get 8 solid attack rolls in a row the awesomeness?

The easy answer to this is... how do you feel about making Great Cleave useful?

[Tiki Snakes]

Why not just use 50 CR 1/3 or CR 1/2 creatures and call it a day? The thing about 3.5 is that you don't need special rules for minions - creatures with a CR sufficiently far below the party level fill that role anyway. It also means you can scale enemies - you have total mooks, then slightly threatening mooks, then elite mooks, then CR-equal enemies.

Minions are generally considered one of the more poorly balanced areas of 4e, so I don't recommend adopting the rules. XP-wise, four minions are supposed to equal one normal monster, but in practice minions are far easier to kill than normals. It also encourages players to pick up effects which auto-hit for tiny amounts of damage; once the party has done that, they can kill an entire encounter's worth of minions without breaking a sweat.

As I understand it, Saph, a large number of cr 1/3 minions WON'T do the same job, at all, because if they are that out-matched, they will be unable to defend themselves or harm their foes. Minions on the other hand, are as defended as any other creature of the level, and do average damage for it. If ambushed by enough minions, a PC is in serious trouble, whereas against cr 1/3 mooks, you'll only really be worrying about them rolling natural 20's.

That's the theory, anyway.

[Saph]

Eh, it adds up to about the same thing. An XP-appropriate amount of minions in 4e isn't a threat, because they die too easily. An XP-appropriate amount of goblins or orcs in 3.5 isn't a threat either, for the same reasons. In both cases the objective is really just to give the PCs some cannon fodder, so they accomplish their purpose.

[Oslecamo]

As I understand it, Saph, a large number of cr 1/3 minions WON'T do the same job, at all, because if they are that out-matched, they will be unable to defend themselves or harm their foes. Minions on the other hand, are as defended as any other creature of the level, and do average damage for it. If ambushed by enough minions, a PC is in serious trouble, whereas against cr 1/3 mooks, you'll only really be worrying about them rolling natural 20's.

That's the theory, anyway.

Theory indeed. Let's check practise:
A-Unlike in 4e, a medium-high level noncaster is expected to hit his enemies with anything more than a 1 when not power attacking. The fire giant for example has 23 AC. A 10th level fighter has +10 Bab +7 from strenght +3 from weapon,´+2 from feats/extras, so if he doesn't power attack he hits the fire giant no problem. If it's fire giant minions with 23 AC the fighter just lolz and greater cleaves 8 per turn.

So to make minions "defensable" in 3e you would need to give them even more armor than regular monsters, wich is just, well, ridiculous.

B-AC doesn't scale automatically by level in 3e, so even 1/3 mooks will be able to hit players in rolls of 15-20 unless they're really focusing out their AC. A kobold for example can easily get +1Bab, +1 weapon focus, +1 MW weapon,+1 Dex +1 size for +5 attack. Make them flank the above fire giant for an extra +2 and they're hiting him on a 16-20.

C-3e characters just have a lot more defensive tricks than 4e ones. Fly, invisibility, etherealness, walls, fogs they all allow you to easily ignore hordes of small dudes if they haven't got the special abilities to bypass those tricks.

[Greenish]

As is, you make it so the lowly minion have a chance of hitting, a chance to be missed, and do minor damage, but you don't need to track HP for a hundred guys.

…

This is for the Stormtroopers or the horde at Helm's Deep.

Stormtroopers shouldn't be able to hit PCs.

[Mercenary Pen]

A suggestion I remember hearing for a 3.5 minion conversion is just minimising hit points granted per hit dice- possibly not even granting hit points for their CON modifier. This gets around problems like killing the 7hd warrior minion with a cantrip and other such weaknesses of converting 3.5 to use minions, whilst still making it a lot easier to kill large groups in short order.

[Saph]

A suggestion I remember hearing for a 3.5 minion conversion is just minimising hit points granted per hit dice- possibly not even granting hit points for their CON modifier. This gets around problems like killing the 7hd warrior minion with a cantrip and other such weaknesses of converting 3.5 to use minions, whilst still making it a lot easier to kill large groups in short order.

I guess. Why not just use proper monsters, though?

If you want minions to fight a 10th-level party, say, use a bunch of CR 3 Ogres. They're dangerous enough to do some damage if they get up close, but tough enough to not go down instantly. A 10th-level party will still slaughter them, but you won't get the problem of five of them dying to a single Magic Missile.