...was the creation of 'minions', i.e. generic bad guys like goblins or skeletons who have the same AC, attacks, special abilities, etc. of their comrades but only a single hit point. Nothing is more tedius than keeping track of 10 or 12 goblins hit points, having them nicked by a low roll and carrying on.
What I do is take about half of the baddies in a particular encounter, drop them to 1 HP and then double their number. I find that a 2:1 minion to standard generic foe exchange keeps the CR of the encounter pretty much stable.
It lets you throw twice as many bad guys at your party, giving them the chance to feel really heroic when that Cleave takes out two foes with one swing or that fireball leaves a dozen baddies in a smoldering ruin... but it also keeps the challenge there as players are forced to face a greater range of threats. I also find its a nice way to mitigate (slightly) those min/maxed out players who have to deal 200 hp of damage with every blow.
Instead of a Goblin shaman, a Goblin chief and 6 underlings, an encounter would have a shaman, a chief, 2 'bodyguards' (with standard hit points) and 8 minions who have the same stats as the bodyguards but only a single hit point. I find this works all the way up through the levels, no matter what the CR of the original foes might be.
so alchemists fire splash kills them ...
it will change party tactics a lot and if they give any exp, it might be a bad idea, perhaps have minions be a "feature" of the boss.
Expect that even at high levels very low level means are used to kill them because it's so easy, no need to waste your fireball if alchemists fire kills them.
Each round of an alchemist's fire thrown means the shaman + chief get to do something nasty. So that's fine, that's what minions are for!
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My borders of verisimilitude are rather stretchy, but the notion of a goblin in blue trousers going down to a poke from a pointy stick while a goblin in red trousers next to him takes 10 rounds of hacking with a chainsaw to take out does quite stretch said borders.
Believe so also they take no damage on a miss so you might have then do the save on succesful saves for half damage.
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My borders of verisimilitude are rather stretchy, but the notion of a goblin in blue trousers going down to a poke from a pointy stick while a goblin in red trousers next to him takes 10 rounds of hacking with a chainsaw to take out does quite stretch said borders.Obviously you never watched star trek grin.
Seriously though weren't minions immune to "splash" from weapons in 4th ed?
That's why I prefer Star Wars - all Stormtroopers die just as easily. :)
Till they wear black armor and get jump packs. I saw it in a video game once.
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...was the creation of 'minions', i.e. generic bad guys like goblins or skeletons who have the same AC, attacks, special abilities, etc. of their comrades but only a single hit point. Nothing is more tedius than keeping track of 10 or 12 goblins hit points, having them nicked by a low roll and carrying on.
Minions were done by other games, long before 4E-- so I wouldn't give 4E the credit for that (Mutants & Masterminds, for example-- the mechanics are slightly different, but the bad guy's hordes that go down on the first real hit-- yep, same idea-- and although M&M is the first one that comes to mind, there were other games that had minions too).
4th edition did several things well enough... but none of them brilliantly. it worked mechanically, ticked all the boxes... but my beef with it was that it was always seven out of ten. pathfinder has flaws in its balence, sure, but it has a magic that fourth edition always seemed to lack.
minions i like.
self contained stat boxes i like.
utility powers for non-casters i found fun.
skills that went up when you leveled up, even if you weren't trained in them... that i also like, though perhaps only in concept.
Hurl Through Hell warlock power... how could i not find that awesome, just on concept?
so yes, fourth edition had its good points. it just lacked the spark that 3.5/pathfinder have, and that's what killed it for me. why play something decent when i can play something inspired?
As a player, I was never fond of minions. While I understand their purpose, I always felt cheated whenever I killed them; their deaths were no challenge, and thus no satisfaction was gained.
I actually hated dealing with them, because even though they popped whenever you hit them, you couldn't actually ignore them; they may have the durability of wet toilet paper, but they can still hurt you. They almost felt like a combat tax; waste a few rounds dealing with the crap so you could actually fight the worthy foe.
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...kinda like waves of trash before the boss. A-hyuck!
I think there are systems where minions have a place. I don't think D&D (any Edition) or Pathfinder are among these systems.
I grimace whenever I see people rolling out the "What I would like to see in the 5th Edition/Pathfinder 2.0" threads. Everyone starts pointing at things they love about other game systems. I'd rather see the game evolve based on what came before, rather than try to frankenstein its way to glory by cherry-picking things that are cool from other systems. If those system mechanics are what you prefer, then why not play that system, instead of trying to infuse other systems with it? Seems akin to walking into McDonald's and demanding two gorditas.
...kinda like waves of trash before the boss. A-hyuck!
I think there are systems where minions have a place. I don't think D&D (any Edition) or Pathfinder are among these systems.
I grimace whenever I see people rolling out the "What I would like to see in the 5th Edition/Pathfinder 2.0" threads. Everyone starts pointing at things they love about other game systems. I'd rather see the game evolve based on what came before, rather than try to frankenstein its way to glory by cherry-picking things that are cool from other systems. If those system mechanics are what you prefer, then why not play that system, instead of trying to infuse other systems with it? Seems akin to walking into McDonald's and demanding two gorditas.
Borrowing and assimilating ideas to improve on something that exists separately is not a bad way to go. Your analogy is flawed, too. It's more like we're walking into a fast food chain and saying "you guys could do this too, and I would give you my money." Also, seems like most fast food chains have at least attempted to create a taco meal for their menu.
More on topic: I really THOUGHT I liked the minion concept, until I used it. It didn't create any sense of heroism, just tedium. You basically are adding a second, visible (well, visible if you use a mat and minis) hit point bar or 'shield meter' to whatever the actual threat is supposed to be. Ten minions? 'Gotta try to get ten attacks or an AoE ability in here so we can hit the leader.'
I recommend avoiding minions, but attempting to tweak and refine the rules for creating large mobs of enemies that was done in 3.5.
Minions are an interesting idea but translate very, very poorly into 3.5e/PFRPG. The key problem is that in our edition of the game area damage is very common and available. Anything with one hitpoint is literally an initiative roll away from not participating in a combat.
...kinda like waves of trash before the boss. A-hyuck!
I think there are systems where minions have a place. I don't think D&D (any Edition) or Pathfinder are among these systems.
I grimace whenever I see people rolling out the "What I would like to see in the 5th Edition/Pathfinder 2.0" threads. Everyone starts pointing at things they love about other game systems. I'd rather see the game evolve based on what came before, rather than try to frankenstein its way to glory by cherry-picking things that are cool from other systems. If those system mechanics are what you prefer, then why not play that system, instead of trying to infuse other systems with it? Seems akin to walking into McDonald's and demanding two gorditas.
Borrowing and assimilating ideas to improve on something that exists separately is not a bad way to go. Your analogy is flawed, too. It's more like we're walking into a fast food chain and saying "you guys could do this too, and I would give you my money." Also, seems like most fast food chains have at least attempted to create a taco meal for their menu.
More on topic: I really THOUGHT I liked the minion concept, until I used it. It didn't create any sense of heroism, just tedium. You basically are adding a second, visible (well, visible if you use a mat and minis) hit point bar or 'shield meter' to whatever the actual threat is supposed to be. Ten minions? 'Gotta try to get ten attacks or an AoE ability in here so we can hit the leader.'
I recommend avoiding minions, but attempting to tweak and refine the rules for creating large mobs of enemies that was done in 3.5.
Based on what 4E I've played, I would have to agree with this sentiment. Minions are a great concept, but can become tedious very quickly without adding anything to the battle if not handled with care.
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It's more like we're walking into a fast food chain and saying "you guys could do this too, and I would give you my money."
...which leaves you with a Big Mac in a tortilla.
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Never played 4th, but i have 7th sea and that system used minion like rules too. honestly, we all liked them. i think we were all tired of the BBEG going down in three rounds and he gets like 2 attacks off. with minions, the GM can have his boss guy do more stuff against the PCs and the last fight seems more heroic. but that was 7th sea where combat was really quick anyway. area damage could wipe them out in an instant. but a player in my group who always plays a sorcerer would gleefully laugh everytime he through a fireball into a throng of minions....and keep a counter to how many he took out. if nothing else, it could always be an option to add them if you want.
My first thought when I read the original post was, "Bushido." I ran a campaign back in '82ish using the FGU edition and 1hp minions fitted perfectly into that. Ideal for making the taciturn ronin or the bo stick wielding priest look very cool before the Big Bad turns up, the minions scuttle back into the shadows, and the real fight kicks off.
I haven't tried them in any D&D style game, but my gut feeling is that they would have to be deployed carefully. I might use them as the faceless goons of a crime boss, but I'd use the old trick of making them a little tougher to hit to compensate. Then the overall effect is cinematic; a decent fight, but every blow that gets through to the goons is of high lethality -- impalements, decapitations, et al. Splash and area attacks upon them are a concern, admittedly. Perhaps a successful save means no damage at all.
Never played 4th, but i have 7th sea and that system used minion like rules too. honestly, we all liked them. i think we were all tired of the BBEG going down in three rounds and he gets like 2 attacks off. with minions, the GM can have his boss guy do more stuff against the PCs and the last fight seems more heroic. but that was 7th sea where combat was really quick anyway. if nothing else, it could always be an option to add them if you want.
^ example of minions in a system that works well. You're over-the-top heroes (think Three Musketeers) taking on a bunch of goons, posturing and exchanging monologues with the villain as you cross blades across rolling barrels and exploding breweries.
...which leaves you with a Big Mac in a tortilla.
I fail to see how continuing that analogy furthers your argument except to troll the thread. Nice waste of space.
I haven't tried them in any D&D style game, but my gut feeling is that they would have to be deployed carefully. I might use them as the faceless goons of a crime boss, but I'd use the old trick of making them a little tougher to hit to compensate. Then the overall effect is cinematic; a decent fight, but every blow that gets through to the goons is of high lethality -- impalements, decapitations, et al. Splash and area attacks upon them are a concern, admittedly. Perhaps a successful save means no damage at all.
Making them tougher to hit and giving them what is effectively improved evasion seems like a simple fix, but it's a delicate balancing act to make them just easy enough to kill without wasting them all in a single turn. Not saying it can't be done, but if you plan for 4-6 rounds of minions to cover the BBEG's evil ritual (so that he's ALMOST finished when the PCs get to him) and the players mop up in a mere 2 rounds, you have to decide whether it's logical to pour more minions in and hope the PCs luck doesn't turn sour, giving you another 7 rounds of combat.
A lot of what I have said is based on the randomness of a d20 roll, I realize, but in my experience (I reiterate) minions only make combat more monotonous.
Another problem I have noticed with it is that it takes away some immersion for some people. The the law of conservation of [ninjutsu/awesomeness] kicks in and the players are likely to say "well, there are about a dozen of these guys in heavy armor charging us, but there are so many, I bet they die easily." I have actually heard things like this spoken at my table. So the whole dramatic effect of seeing a large group of enemies is wasted.
Now if you use a few dozen minions as a mini-boss, you might have something there...
4e did a lot of good things that I like. I love the profusion of tactical options in combat beyond just hacking or blasting. I love the fact that my ranger can do anything a rogue can do, if I invest in it. I love the fact that magic enhancements can be moved from item to item.
But 4e did a lot of things I really hate too. Minions would be near the top of that list. The whole idea that it makes players feel more heroic to mow down 1 HP opponents is exactly what I hate about them. "Hey, I killed a bunch of cardboard cutouts! Look at ME, aren't I the AWESOMEST!?"
Spare me.
...was the creation of 'minions', i.e. generic bad guys like goblins or skeletons who have the same AC, attacks, special abilities, etc. of their comrades but only a single hit point. Nothing is more tedius than keeping track of 10 or 12 goblins hit points, having them nicked by a low roll and carrying on.Minions were done by other games, long before 4E-- so I wouldn't give 4E the credit for that (Mutants & Masterminds, for example-- the mechanics are slightly different, but the bad guy's hordes that go down on the first real hit-- yep, same idea-- and although M&M is the first one that comes to mind, there were other games that had minions too).
7th Sea did minions (called "Brutes") back in the '90s.
I like the way 4E did defenses. Wizard rolls attack vs.. Fortitude defense instead of the defender rolling.
I did like the way 4E did GM friendly monsters with self contained stat blocks. Pathfinder could be improved by using those, even without changing the actual Rules.
4E did make playing healers or boosters interesting to play, by allowing them to do stuff in their turns outside just helping others.
I like Pathfinder characters more, the differences between classes, spells, setting etc. However, these 3 points I like.
If you really like minions, bear in mind that you can use 1-HD creatures long after they are no real challenge to the PCs. True, they won't be as effective as 4e minions (because their attack rolls don't scale up), but they can block approaches, provide flanking, use the 'aid another' maneuver, go for grappling en masse and otherwise aid the main villain of a fight. It's also be possible to beef them up (with potions, magic weapon, bardic music or what have you) in ways that leave them a little more threatening while not increasing their hit points at all.
I did this in my early attempts to mimic minions. I think it works a little better to just use a monster that is slightly lower on the CR scale than the APL and say each of them only has a single hit point. They retain some semblance of 'potential threat' that way.
I like the way 4E did defenses.3.5 did it first.
True, but it wasn't the standard for 3.5 or Pathfinder. 4E did, so I think that was à good choice, even if it wasn't a first. Also, i meant attackers rolling, not players always rolling (incl defenses).
I also liked minions as a GM. I don't think I ever got to play a PC against any before PF took over my area (not that I mind). However, when I ran them as GM, instead of always just 1 HP, I gave them 1/4 of the HP of the creature they were based off of. So the cardboard-cutout goblins might die in one hit or maybe two, depending on who was attacking, and they also scale with level while still being weak compared to their base monster.
I liked the bloodied condition. We kept that in for houserules in our games. We didn't go so far as to have abilities that triggered from it, but since it was so useful for players we used that instead of having everyone play guess the HP. Besides, we thought it would be good visual feedback for how the monsters are reacting to the battle.
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~GETTING RID OF THAT STUPID DIAGONAL MOVEMENT RULE. NO! Do NOT defend this rule. It makes NO sense. NONE. Someone tried, I made them walk outside, and *GASP* you get to places QUICKER when you move diagonally, not the same rate. It's STUPID. And of all the rules I moved into Pathfinder from 4ed, this is the one that shall forever move with me. I've NEVER seen it abused in practice.
~A +1 to two attributes at 4th level. I have house ruled this to be: +1 to ONE ability score at every even level, but you can't choose the same score twice in a row.
~Athletics skill. It could have been expanded to include running however. Why Pathfinder didn't include it boggles my mind honestly.
~Endurance skill. By 20th level, a person can swim up a waterfall, climb a wall of ice upside down without using their hands, and jump the distance of the grand canyon, and take a punch from the fist of an angry god, literally, but a ten mile hike? That's still hard.
~Streetwise. I HATE Knowledge: Local. Streetwise made me smile in all the right ways. Charisma. Yes. Gather Info. Yes. Know criminal/underworld lore. Yes. How gangster are you? Yes.
~Arcana. Rolling Spellcraft and Use Magic Device into Knowledge: Arcana? Oh yes.
~Two Skill bonuses for every race.
~Fighters drawing attacks. Even though the concept of the tank character isn't foreign, Pathfinder STILL lacks a class ability that MAKES opponents attack you. Sure you might have a high AC and/or HP, but the monster can just not attack you. 4ed fighters MADE you attack them.
~Orbs, Wands and Staves. I love these being weapons.
~Eladrin and Dragonborn. I know, I know, a lot of people hated them. I loved them though.
~Warlord. Although I didn't love the name, I loved the tactical warrior class without magic.
~The backstabber feat. Sneak-Attack goes from d6s to d8s. Sweet.
~Gnomes. I DID NOT enjoy the fact that they got put into the 2nd PHB, but otherwise, I loved gnomes being NOT DWARVES. Pathfinder did an equally good job at this for fluff, but I felt rules wise, it failed (and rightly so, needing to be backwards compatible).
~The Gods. The Raven Queen? Oh yeah, in all my games. I love Halloween, and she's like the goddess of Halloween.
~Powers for most of the races. Why did dwarves get overlooked? Anyways, it made each race truly unique, instead of being a bonus to a few skills and attributes.
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Things I enjoyed, but just didn't work well in the end:
~Initiative skill. I still love it, but I never had a single player use it, citing it as useless. Someone had great explanation for why it should not be a skill; I can't recall the specifics sadly.
~1/2 level to all skill checks. I love it, I hate it. I love it because everyone gets mildly okay with skills as the game moves forward, I hated it because it did a great job of removing skill points and true customization of characters.
~The armor system.
~A combat power at each level. However, this is what made the game awful as well.
~Saving throws using the better of two attributes. Although, I can't get behind Strength boosting Fortitude.
~More starting HP. However, HP rules in general rubbed me the wrong way.
~Healing Surges. Oh yes. Oh no. I love them, I hate them. I can't explain it though.
~Thievery.
~The Knowledge skills having their own names. However, they also removed any roleplaying aspect from them, and really polished them down, and gave no real reason for a player to have them.
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The one thing I hated that not many people discuss:
~ALIGNMENTS! Where did you put Chaotic Good? Where did you put Lawful Evil? Robin Hood! Gangsters! Honestly! Hell, I hated abandoning True Neutral when we switched from AD&D to 3ed. I honestly loved the POWER behind neutrality, and didn't want to give up my Harpers or Mordenkainen. And now I've got to give up Robin Hood? If you're going to start removing alignments, just get rid of them all!
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Are there other things? Sure. But these are the ones that pop up in my mind.
...was the creation of 'minions', i.e. generic bad guys like goblins or skeletons who have the same AC, attacks, special abilities, etc. of their comrades but only a single hit point. Nothing is more tedius than keeping track of 10 or 12 goblins hit points, having them nicked by a low roll and carrying on.
What I do is take about half of the baddies in a particular encounter, drop them to 1 HP and then double their number. I find that a 2:1 minion to standard generic foe exchange keeps the CR of the encounter pretty much stable.
It lets you throw twice as many bad guys at your party, giving them the chance to feel really heroic when that Cleave takes out two foes with one swing or that fireball leaves a dozen baddies in a smoldering ruin... but it also keeps the challenge there as players are forced to face a greater range of threats. I also find its a nice way to mitigate (slightly) those min/maxed out players who have to deal 200 hp of damage with every blow.
Instead of a Goblin shaman, a Goblin chief and 6 underlings, an encounter would have a shaman, a chief, 2 'bodyguards' (with standard hit points) and 8 minions who have the same stats as the bodyguards but only a single hit point. I find this works all the way up through the levels, no matter what the CR of the original foes might be.
Such minions are god-awful. Don't get me wrong, minions were like my favorite thing in 4E, but we just don't need them in 3.x/PF because we already have minions in the form of low HD enemies, who are already plenty dangerous in numbers (I have a lot of posts on the boards demonstrating this).
Dropping enemies to 1 HP and calling them minions, but otherwise leaving them unchanged, causes horrible problems in game balance. For one, they should slaughter parties pretty regularly, because honestly the sheer number difference would be enough to kill everyone.
Ok, so I take these goblins with 5 hp and give them 1 Hp, but now I put 4 goblins for every one. Now the PCs probably only kill 1 of them per attack, which is about the same as they would have done before, except now we have x4 attacks coming for the PCs. Mm, can you smell the alchemist fire this morning? Smells like overkill.
This doesn't actually work very well in 4E either, since the core rules say that you don't touch their stats (including damage) in any way except for their HP, which generally means that while they're easier to kill (because these kobolds die like 3.x kobolds and don't require 10 minutes of slamming them into the ground before they pop) they are now outnumbering you and focus-firing is a beast. "Ok guys, instead of 2 kobolds with 1d8 attacks and 10 HP each, we have 8 kobolds with 1d8 attacks and 1 HP each". The kobolds are coming out ahead on this one, in terms of PC-killing power.
~Eladrin and Dragonborn. I know, I know, a lot of people hated them. I loved them though.
I liked Dragonborn. They were really cool and my first character in 4e was a Dragonborn fighter.
Eladrin were... elves that could teleport. That's all they were to me. They were 'High Elves' and Elves were 'Wood Elves' and honestly, I wasn't into the whole 'X-Elf' fad that happened (see Grey Elves, Night Elves, Blood elves, Water Elves). Of course, I was sore that they didn't have my favorite race, the Half Orc. So I am a bit biased... :)
Also +1 to Diagonals.
EDIT: Actually, I remember the reasoning behind it was because since each square was 5 feet, the hypotenuse was 7 (ish), meaning two diagonal squares were about 15 feet. So, I suppose it makes sense, but the 4e way isn't unbalancing so it's not a big deal.
I like the way 4E did defenses. Wizard rolls attack vs.. Fortitude defense instead of the defender rolling.
I did like the way 4E did GM friendly monsters with self contained stat blocks. Pathfinder could be improved by using those, even without changing the actual Rules.
4E did make playing healers or boosters interesting to play, by allowing them to do stuff in their turns outside just helping others.
I like Pathfinder characters more, the differences between classes, spells, setting etc. However, these 3 points I like.
+1
Players rolling was a better way to do things.
I like the way 4E did defenses. Wizard rolls attack vs.. Fortitude defense instead of the defender rolling.
I did like the way 4E did GM friendly monsters with self contained stat blocks. Pathfinder could be improved by using those, even without changing the actual Rules.
4E did make playing healers or boosters interesting to play, by allowing them to do stuff in their turns outside just helping others.
I like Pathfinder characters more, the differences between classes, spells, setting etc. However, these 3 points I like.
+1
Players rolling was a better way to do things.
If you want to mimic this in 3.x/PF, simply make all saving throws a static score of 11 + bonuses, and have casters roll 1d20 + DC modifiers against this number, as if it were an AC. You will end up with the same statistical probability of success and failure, except you have reversed who is making the rolls.
Example: A 1st level Fighter with 14 Dex, 14 Con, and 12 Wis would have the following static defenses.
Fort: 15, Ref: 13, Will: 12
EDIT: And the wizard with a 16 Intelligence would be rolling 1d20 + spell level + Intelligence against the above values.
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True, but it wasn't the standard for 3.5 or Pathfinder. 4E did, so I think that was à good choice, even if it wasn't a first. Also, i meant attackers rolling, not players always rolling (incl defenses).
So only use the rule for attackers and not defenders.
Also, what is 'the standard'? I'm not familiar with such a thing in 3.x.
My problems was trying to keep the players from knowing which monsters were minions and which were not. They (my players) tended to adopt different tactics when they knew a monster group had a few minions in it, and that sort of spoiled the game for me (it was a bit meta, but really I can't blame the players for this).
4E style minions by their nature are metagamey.
~GETTING RID OF THAT STUPID DIAGONAL MOVEMENT RULE. NO! Do NOT defend this rule. It makes NO sense. NONE.
*sighs* Yes. Yes, it actually does. You might not like it, but it does. Consider this square, and imagine that each side is five feet long:
http://www.freemathhelp.com/images/lessons/special7.gif
If you were to move from A to B, you would move 5 feet. If you were to move from B to C, that is also five feet. Same with moving from C to D and D to A. However, A to C? Not five feet. It is in fact over seven feet. Not quite seven and a half, but close enough that the way Pathfinder does it ("the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on") is much closer to being accurate, and makes much more sense mathematically. You can dislike this all you want, and rule it however you want in your games - and I don't care nearly enough about this issue for it to have any impact on whether or not I'd play in anyone's game or not - but don't go saying that it "makes NO sense", because that's - empirically - wrong.
Removed posts. Flag it and move on.
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Thanks Liz.
~GETTING RID OF THAT STUPID DIAGONAL MOVEMENT RULE. NO! Do NOT defend this rule. It makes NO sense. NONE.*sighs* Yes. Yes, it actually does. You might not like it, but it does. Consider this square, and imagine that each side is five feet long
So drop the grid and measure everything in 1 inch increments.
~GETTING RID OF THAT STUPID DIAGONAL MOVEMENT RULE. NO! Do NOT defend this rule. It makes NO sense. NONE.*sighs* Yes. Yes, it actually does. You might not like it, but it does. Consider this square, and imagine that each side is five feet long:
http://www.freemathhelp.com/images/lessons/special7.gif
If you were to move from A to B, you would move 5 feet. If you were to move from B to C, that is also five feet. Same with moving from C to D and D to A. However, A to C? Not five feet. It is in fact over seven feet. Not quite seven and a half, but close enough that the way Pathfinder does it ("the first diagonal counts as 1 square, the second counts as 2 squares, the third counts as 1, the fourth as 2, and so on") is much closer to being accurate, and makes much more sense mathematically. You can dislike this all you want, and rule it however you want in your games - and I don't care nearly enough about this issue for it to have any impact on whether or not I'd play in anyone's game or not - but don't go saying that it "makes NO sense", because that's - empirically - wrong.
Get out of my head! :)
I didn't really intend this to be an across the board comparison between the two games, but I'll throw this in as well:
I really liked 'at-will' powers, especially for casters. We're working on doing something similar for our current campaign.