4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

I fear that area of effect spells are a bit too prominent against minions, if they really do have 1hp. Especially if the spell still deals half damage on failed attack roll (vs. defence in question).

Rothe, the text for the devils says that “A missed attack never damages a minion” so that fear should be allayed.

Otherwise, I’m with Jim.

Cameron, that should make it interesting. I mean, such spells should be powerful against minions, but I dislike making things too easy. Minions seem to be a nice way to give the main villains time to prepare in a way that makes sense with most plots.

Plus, this is a lot of fun for fighters to toss about such foes. Especially if things like cleave are still in the mix.

Just for a little comparison, a 3e fireball does 5d6 damage minimum.  If you have a horde of unadvanced goblins for your minions, they get 5hp each.  That means that on a failed save, all of the little goblins are going to die in the fireball.  If you roll their HP or vary their CON, then you’ve already made your goblin horde way too much work.  In fact, I’d venture to say that if a you have a horde of 20 or more minions and they can stand up to the party wizard’s fireball, then the party is basically screwed.  Unless, of course, you have high-HP/minimal-attack minions that aren’t a threat, in which case who cares about the minion horde?

The above is just to say: I’m a sucker for WotC and 4e.

How much is this going to slow down combat, does anyone know?
I definately do like the concept but not if it is going to slow things down to much.

You know, based on everything that I’ve seen about minions, it would be far simpler to just have a Minion template that had the following effects:

XP: 1/4 standard for level
Change HP entry to the following: HP: 1, a missed attack never damages a minion.
Powers/Attacks: Remove all non-basic attacks and powers and change damage on basic attacks to a fixed amount based on the minion’s level. (probably a table with the damage here)

Then any creature could be quickly and easily converted to a minion and rather than use MM space for printing minions, it could be used for printing more fully stated monsters.

The Legion Devil entry is a prime example.  WotC has wasted a whole page just printing 4 minions.  I’d much rather they’d have used that space to print one or two standard monsters that I could convert to minions on the fly if I wanted to.

Denmark you should probably read the article again, minions always have only 1 hit point, and in 4e there are defenses instead of saves, just thought you ought to know.

well BP you could also up the minions into full creature in a similar way, but it would be a little labor intensive, just an idea

When I DM higher level games, I don’t want to have to template or advance a bunch of basic monsters. I want all that work already done for me so all I have to do is run the monsters as is directly out of the MM. And if that means I get fewer monsters overall because of more pages taken up with variations on existing monsters, I’m ok with that.

For most variations, I’m with you.  I like that there are 5 variations on orcs in the MM (to reference a previous preview and not counting the minions).  Adding HD, class levels, or most templates takes way too long.  Having all those variations ready to go is great for the DM.

A minion template, however, would be an exception to this rule.  The two minion variations on orcs, for example, are wasted space that could have been filled with yet another useful orc variation (maybe a Lurker or Artillery variant).  A minion template would be so simple and easy to apply that fully stating a minion just isn’t worth it.

Take the Orc Drudge, for example.  I could have just as easily made a level 4 minion by taking the Orc Berserker (a level 4 brute) and saying it was a minion.  Cut XP (a quick look up in a table, or division by 4 if you prefer), fix damage (again, this should be a quick look up in a table), ignore the hp entry in favor of minion hp, and ignore the Warrior’s Surge ability.  Bingo.  One level 4 minion that has almost exactly the same stats as the printed drudge.

I should make clear though, that my proposed minion template is one of the few times where I’d prefer to see a template to a bunch of fully stated creatures.  This works as a template because it is so simple.  More complicated templates don’t work well.  3.5 was proof of that.

Actually, I think I agree with BP here.  This would be the exception to prove the rule, as far as I’m concerned.

well BP you could also up the minions into full creature in a similar way, but it would be a little labor intensive, just an idea

I could do that, but it would be considerably more work as it would involve adding things to the creature instead of taking them away.  Its generally easier to take something away from a creature that has it than it is to add something to a creature that doesn’t.

A minion template consists almost entirely of taking things away from creatures, which is why it would work where most templates fail.

As a player I didn’t like minions when we did our quick walk through.  Mainly because when I attacked before even rolling damage, being told it died was fairly disappointing.  I want to roll damage and have it mean something.  Since the dice have at least a 1 on them, you’ll always kill them when you hit.

For DM’ing yeah, I can see how this would be great, and for mass combat it is a no brainer.

That strikes me more as a playstyle issue than a rules issue.  For a player like you, the DM shouldn’t be telling you who the minions are and should let you roll damage as if it mattered.  Once you give him the total damage, he can simply glance down as if double checking the creature’s hp total and then declare that the attack hit.  Likewise, on a miss that does damage, he can do something similar and declare that the creature survives.  As the encounter progresses, you might be able to guess which creatures are the minions and which are not, but given your like of rolling damage, the DM shouldn’t be handing that information out easily.

For other players, designating the minions ahead of time is appropriate because they’re far more interested in saving time and doing so allows them avoid having to roll damage.

Really, what the DM needs to do is find the method that works best for his group and implement it.

That’s sort of my point though.  If they don’t tell you ahead of time, then you are really just wasting time rolling damage.  If they do tell you ahead of time it is a little less enjoyable(for me anyway I know I’m not like everyone) to just say “Hit” and then flick over the minion mini.

But you don’t know you’re wasting time.

Here’s an idea I had while posting about this topic over on the WorldsofDND.com website.  Intersperse the minions with a few low level non-minions.  Think of them as squad leaders or whatnot.  The would look the same, have the same gear, etc, but you really wouldn’t know whether they were minions that were missed or in fact real NPCs.

What Cam said.

I actually love the idea of minions and cannot wait to see how they play out in an actual combat (should be getting my Keep on the Shadowfell tonight to try it out!).

One of the most frustrating things for me in my 3.5 game has been trying to find creatures that present a significant challenge to the party without being worth so much XP that they level every few encounters.

I have completely given up on the CR/EL system, because one monster with a CR approximately equal to the party level usually dies so fast that it cannot get more than a hit/spell or two in before it’s dead, and creating a “challenge” for the party based on the encounter level tables requires monsters that are so weak the party can mow through them without breaking a sweat.

Granted, I am not a very experienced DM, so others may experience less frustration with this, but the system seems to me like it is terribly broken by around level 8-10, depending on the quantity and quality of gear possessed by the players.

I currently tend to build encounters with 2-5 creatures that I tweak a little bit so they can deal some damage, take some hits, and survive long enough to present a challenge without being so tough that they overmatch a party member in toe-to-toe combat.  However, this takes a long time, takes a lot of tweaking, and still has the potential to be a cake-walk or TPK depending on how things play out.

4e looks like it will offer the ability to quickly and easily design challenging encounters with a few regular monsters that are already specialized in a role (no applying class levels to waste time and throw things out of whack), and a handful of minions and/or brutes to help keep the party away from the backfield guys long enough for them to do their thing.

Black Plague, I love your idea of the minion template, and I wish WotC had thought of it, just so we could get more regular monsters in the book.  I think that is definitely something I will do with some of the monsters that do not come with minion stats already written up.