Minions in 4th Edition Kinda-Sorta Suck
One of the first changes I noticed in the 4th Edition Monster Manual (which I reviewed here) was the inclusion of Minions, 1HP enemies to use as fodder in large-scale battles. At first I loved the idea, and it made every fight just a little more epic. Some of the first encounters my players had were against a group of Kobold Minions and their leader. It let the characters know that there was a threat, but gave them an opportunity to sharpen their weapons on some flesh before making their way to the boss. At early levels it makes complete sense, but once the players level up and enemies become more difficult the issues grow worse.
I first noticed the problem when planning an encounter against Vampires. Vampires are one of the most different creatures from 3rd to 4th Edition because of their complexity. Most of the differences I was fine with, but adding Vampire Minions really changed the dynamic of the game. Hit the jump for more observations, and possible solutions.
The picture above shows the differences between the Level 12 Vampire Lord and level 10 Vampire Spawn Bloodhunter. They both have high Armor Class, over 25 each, both have nice attacks and overall saves. They both have claws, but the main difference, other than the lack of abilities in the Bloodhunter, is their hitpoints. Being a Minion means that they only have 1HP, so any damage (other than a miss) can take them down. I don’t understand this logic, especially when there isn’t anything in-between the 186 HP Lord and 1HP Spawn. Kobold’s minions having 1HP I could get behind, the same goes for Goblins and other arrow fodder. Orcs, Vampires, and other creatures, though? I don’t know.
It isn’t that the issue is in the Minions themselves, but the rules of a Minion. They cannot be killed by a miss, but they can be killed by AOE’s that don’t have saves. Wizards have plenty of abilities that only deal a few damage but are a guaranteed hit, and this can destroy the Vampire Minion in one blow. I feel like either they should be except from this, or there should be a modification to the rule, or another version of the monster. Maybe make it so they have 10% of the larger creature’s hitpoints (in this case, creating a 18HP Vampire) so they can survive a chance blow. I like minions, but the lack of a middle ground is sort of insulting to the creatures, and I feel like the ferocity of many of them are stunted because of the rules.
Does anyone else have this issue? I might just throw in the 10% house rule, it seems like it would make my job as a Dungeon Master easier and significantly raise the number of creatures at my disposal. Minion’s damage and saves are fine, but a gentle breeze shouldn’t kill any Vampire, regardless of its lord.
Reverend Mike says:
In this case, I imagine the minions aren’t full-fledged vampires, but rather their decrepit spawn…as far as how quickly they go down, I occasionally toss some minions out and require they take 2 hits before going down…I did so to deter my players metagaming when they suspect certain monsters to be minions, particularly when they show up in droves, but the same fix can be applied here…
October 8th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
RPG Ike says:
I’ve only played low-level 4E, but I was suspicious at how well minions work later on. I like the idea of heroes cleaving through fodder to get to the real threats–it’s fairly epic, and not every individual battle needs to be a struggle for life in the greater war.
I see your point, though. It’s funny how quickly a critter becomes a joke in the eyes of PCs when they’re easily killed, and I’ve been concerned with metagaming resources since 4E was released. Minions may encourage this, but are they really any different than having many lower-level critters among the ranks of an army?
Regardless, I think your house rule is a good idea.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Svelt says:
Minions are there so your players can wade through oceans of monsters and feel heroic. They’re supposed to present some challenge to a party but in my experience they wind up dead before they can get close enough to do damage. I consider minions almost window dressing. They are like flavor text; more for atmosphere than a mechanical part of the encounter.
If an ocean of minions doesn’t feel right for your Vampire Lord encounter and you want a smaller number of tougher more respectable sidekicks then by all means create a handful of level 8 or 9 monsters. It’s easy to do.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
amz says:
Just keep in mind that if you do buff minions, you will be breaking the game’s balance. At that point, they should be worth more experience points, and Wizards will need some form of “compensation” – they lost much of their old power so they would be balanced, and now their only real awesome strength is their ability to quickly dispatch large groups of minions.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
The Dice Monkey says:
If you watch a movie like Blade, in that opening scene in the club, he mowed right through those vampires, just as a hero would with vampire minions. Think about mixing in some non-minion vampires into the mix without telling the heroes which aren’t. So for the most part, they’ll take them down with one swing. But then you’ll end up with the occasional vampire soldier who takes a bit more work.
What I have trouble understanding is how it’s possible to have 30th level minions using some of the DM Toolkit. You could have a flock of red dragon minions that only take one hit to kill…
October 8th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Donny_the_DM says:
I found the same issue. My solution was to reduce the normal hp in Paragon 10%, and destined by 20%.
As to the minions…a few are cool, but you want to make an in-betweener – easy as hell, keep the whole minion stat block, and give them some HP.
One bad ass BBEG
2-4 soldier lieutenants, and a dozen minions makes for a nasty encounter – especially if you scrub the silly rule that you always know a minion from a “real” monster.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Donny_the_DM says:
Darn you dice monkey!!!
Ninja’ed : )
October 8th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Coop says:
That makes sense, Donny. I usually ignore that rule, but the players figure it out when I say “a few of them look tougher” or something alone those lines. That, and when they deal 2 damage and an enemy drops, they start to look for similar looking enemies.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Syrsuro says:
It’s a fairly common modification (based on discussions on ENWorld and other forums) to alter the minion rules as follows (or some similar variation).
1) Minions can be bloodied. Note: If you use a bloodied marker on the gametable, this does not increase the necessary bookkeeping at all (one of the points of the 1 hp minion).
2) Attacks that do not involve an attack roll and do less than some threshold value (lets say hit points equal to the minions level) bloody the minion, rather than killing it.
3) Attacks that would do damage on a miss now bloody minions (rather than having no effect).
4) Attacks similar to either 2 or 3 above will kill an already bloodied minion.
Carl
October 8th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Pez says:
Even the latest episode of the official D&D podcast points out the same problem. They’re discussing epic tier games and mention that there’s no way to have a believable, realistic monster that is level 20+ with only 1 HP.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
mxyzplk says:
Yeah, this is a well-worn problem previously discussed with respect to other games with mook rules, like the seminal Feng Shui. As you get to very high levels, you’ll find that you have to throw in 100 minions to make a combat challenging, because just upping their hit/damage/AC doesn’t make them scale.
Part of the usefulness of a mook to the GM is supposed to be “no record-keeping,” however, so adding hit points is one solution, but a kinda painful one. In Feng Shui, instead of hit points, they made it so to take out a mook you had to roll higher than what you needed (5 higher, in this case) as an artificial barrier to taking them out that required less recordkeeping. Or, you can do one, two, or three strikes to take them down, which is easier and lets you have differently abled mooks. (The bloodied option above is one variant of a “strikes” rule.)
The 4e minion rules accomplish some of the goals of why anyone has minion rules – low recordkeeping, higher body count, incentivize fighting the minions before taking on the big bad guy – but unfortunately they’re not scalable.
Did you know there were some 3.5e mook rules? Goodman Games had a “Wicked Fantasy Factory” line of adventures (http://www.goodman-games.com/wicked.html) with their own take on mook rules, boss rules, finishing moves, etc. They had mooks with normal hit points, but players had special abilities against them – all damage spells were Maximized, meleers got Cleave for free, etc. Consider this – what if minions had normal hits but all damage rolls were maximized? You do have to track hp, but the process will be a little streamlined from not having to roll damage.
Now, “believable and realistic” is something that 4e decided to abandon early on, so I’m not sure if that’s a concern.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Mike Lemmer says:
Here’s my initial proposal:
1. Minions take 2 hits to kill, BUT:
2. They go down in the first hit if its total damage is equal to or greater than their level.
It adds a bit of paperwork, but you can take care of it with Bloodied tokens on the minis. I’m concerned it’ll double minions’ effectiveness in Paragon/Epic levels, though.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Coop says:
I guess “realism” isn’t the issue, it’s more of their “Monster Level.” Unless something has 40AC, a 1HP creature shouldn’t be higher than level 2 or 3.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Oz says:
I have issues with 1hp minions because I find them a game contrivance. I know it sounds weird talking about “realism” in a fantasy game, but I have trouble believing an orc with 1 hp would attain any level.
The only situation I would use minions would be as summoned creatures, such as a necromancer raising decrepit skeletons from their graves to battle (or at least delay) the heroes.
If I need mooks I use lower level monsters.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Kevtar says:
What about a saving throw? On a successful hit, a minion makes a saving throw. Success = no damage, or maybe bloodied, and a failure = dead.
Or something along those lines.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Dungeon says:
I see your problem, and i have an idea.
how about they can only kill the minion vampire on a hit when it is with a wooden stake? or holy water, or some other vampire weakness. Imagine a whole group of heroes running after a vampire lord. they run after him in a group of vampire minions, they attack and the party stops them all stabbing them one at a time. but one of the players tries using his normal weapon against the minions… it doesn’t work. they’re vampires! try that, i’m sure it will work.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Reladon says:
When the PC’s turn their attention to a minion a single hit will drop them, not because the minion is a wuss, but rather that the minion just doesn’t care enough to “bring it” and would rather drop out of the fight and hopefully stay alive.
On page 295 of the PHB they have a neat little bit about knocking creatures unconscious rather then killing them. I contend that in a chaotic melee minions are simply not worth the time and concentration it takes to finish them off. So what I envision is that while the PC’s are mowing thru the minions on their way to the boss, the minions are dragging themselves off the battlefield or playing dead just hoping that their side is victorious so they have a chance of surviving.
What I propose as a house rule is that minions not automatically die when they fall but rather slink off or play dead. If they PC’s are victorious they can go back and “mop up” if they are ruthless or perhaps show why they are the heroes in the first place and let the poor SOB’s just go home and lick their wounds. Or maybe at a minimum interrogate them for sport before dispatching them… whatever.
Finally, if minions are backed into a corner by PC’s looking to add to their ear collection after dispatching the “boss” I contend that the occasional “minion” suddenly buck up, grow a pair and throw everything they have at the PC’s. Replacing their minion status with something more appropriate, like brute!
July 4th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Jonny says:
That doesn’t really work doe it Reladon, you seriusly think a vampire would slink off cos it doesn’t want to eat you? I think not.
After reading everyone’s replies I would summarize that minions are worth a small proportion of the cost of a real monster, and yes although they die easily, you as the DM increase the chances of hitting a PC by hving more on the battlefield. You therefore deal damage more with more minions.
What therefore your adventures all lack is the ability to wear down your players. The whole day doesn’t have to be one epic combat, use these monsters as a way of wearing away at the PC’s.
I have considered the problems of epic level combats and I think that the problem is that the new books that are brought out do not play with the older ones, the monsters don’t catch up per say, so the players are a lot deadlier than they were in the PHB1. I would suggest therefore maximizing your enemies against your opponents and most definitely not telling them which are the minions i think that is a definite game killer.
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 am
FemJesse says:
Its rough when you want to have 20 minions on the field, you don’t use the “fancy minis” to represent them. People know the “fancy minis” are the guys with more than one hit point and the various dice are likely minions. I think the only way to use minions effectively is to really outnumber your party with them and of course mix them in with some tough artillery or maybe an elite solo brute that they’d want to concentrate on instead of the minions. This gives them incentive to bust out their encounters on clearing through the horde just to get to the baddy and even though everyone is totally metagaming, gives a rough boss battle by the time they actually get to the elite. Even though I’m DMing a party of three, I find the most interesting battles are when they are outnumbered by minions and lower level creatures with 1 or 2 tanky units that really threaten them. Throwing a higher level lurker in there when the party is distracted by minions after a round or two of battle can be great fun.
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 pm