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I dislike the implementation of 4e minions. Something, however, I wouldn't mind seeing in Pathfinder: Stat blocks for some readymade 'mook' type enemies juxtaposed next to mastermind type monsters in a bestiary. Some mook stat blocks of basic savage humanoid type enemies at various levels. Or possibly an entire supplement devoted to CR-adjusted mook statblocks. To keep things interesting and viable at higher levels.
Examples: Basic orc warrior, orc barbarian 1, orc barbarian 3, orc shaman, etc.
Would make my life a hell of a lot easier as a GM.
First, I'd like to frame what follows very specifically as not being an attack or a criticism. It's merely my take on it. Seems like half the time I try to make a post these days (on just about any forum or what have you), people start digging in for all out war.
What happened to the cravings for creativity in the GMing community? I fully appreciate and understand the notion behind asking for such things (1-hit minions and multiple tiers of creature CRs) as far as ease-of-use goes. I'm not sure if this is a recent development or if I grew up playing in a vacuum, but I'm used to GMs agonizing over small details that won't even come up during play. Enemies slain have names the Players might never hear, plans that never manifest, and motives that fail to see the light of day. It just seems to me that the very nature of minions and pre-constructed creature variants, when used en masse, is antithetical to the very purpose of the GM. There's a world to present and a story to tell, and yours is the hand that shapes it. Tailor things to suit the situation, your campaign, the world it takes place in, and the players that live within that world -- that's the work load.
I will make a concession here, in regards to ready made variations in bestiary entries (for example, stat blocks detailing your typical orc, an orc champion, a sub-chief, chieftain, or shaman). Players go off the rails. It happens. Having a quick reference to put something in front of them on the fly is not a bad thing by any means. I think PF, as a whole, has this covered pretty well with the very simple rules for Advancing or Devolving (like the Young Template) encounters. The major component of my "gripe" here is the notion that the publishers need to do our work for us as GMs. I speak from a pretty solidly biased position on the matter, however, as I enjoy creating the encounters my players are going to face. Even if they never are in a position to appreciate how much detail went into that wizard they just obliterated in the surprise round, I consider it time enjoyed (ergo time well spent).
Minions, on the other hand, I have trouble justifying as one-hit nobodies. If the whole "cinematic experience" thing is what you're going for, I guess it could fit in that vein. I am still of the mindset that there are other systems designed around that concept that pull it off far better, however.
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Some mook stat blocks of basic savage humanoid type enemies at various levels. Or possibly an entire supplement devoted to CR-adjusted mook statblocks. To keep things interesting and viable at higher levels.
D&D Next will apparently present all monsters as single versions with rules on how to scale them up or down, so rather than Ork Warrior 1, Ork Fighter 2 / Rogue 1, Ork Fighter 4, Rogue 2, XYZ class 5, you will get just Ork.
4e did have some nice simple rules in a similar vein (though not as advanced as D&D Next sounds like it might be) that allows you to quickly scale a monster up or down by a few levels to make it a suitable challenge for your PCs.
I used it alot when I ran my 4e campaign and it was nice - no having to unpick feats and skill points to level a character down, and no having to choose feats and read new class abilities when you level them up.
I dislike the implementation of 4e minions. Something, however, I wouldn't mind seeing in Pathfinder: Stat blocks for some readymade 'mook' type enemies juxtaposed next to mastermind type monsters in a bestiary. Some mook stat blocks of basic savage humanoid type enemies at various levels. Or possibly an entire supplement devoted to CR-adjusted mook statblocks. To keep things interesting and viable at higher levels.
Examples: Basic orc warrior, orc barbarian 1, orc barbarian 3, orc shaman, etc.
Would make my life a hell of a lot easier as a GM.
I agree. I solve this problem because I have hero lab, and I generate mook stats and print them out. I keep one copy in the bestiary incase I forget.
Hero Lab has made preparing Pathfinder supereasy.
What happened to the cravings for creativity in the GMing community? I fully appreciate and understand the notion behind asking for such things (1-hit minions and multiple tiers of creature CRs) as far as ease-of-use goes. I'm not sure if this is a recent development or if I grew up playing in a vacuum, but I'm used to GMs agonizing over small details that won't even come up during play. Enemies slain have names the Players might never hear, plans that never manifest, and motives that fail to see the light of day. It just seems to me that the very nature of minions and pre-constructed creature variants, when used en masse, is antithetical to the very purpose of the GM. There's a world to present and a story to tell, and yours is the hand that shapes it. Tailor things to suit the situation, your campaign, the world it takes place in, and the players that live within that world -- that's the work load.I'm not quite sure that I understand your point here. If I'm making an adventure that includes characters that will be minions in combat those characters still get the same amount of characterisation that I'd give them if they weren't minions. Using minions allows combat to be set up in a certain way. But there isn't anything inherent in the system that means Grug the goblin minion should have less background the Crag the goblin low-level warrior.
I typically assume that minions implies a sort of red-shirt quality to a quivering mass of basically identical creatures. If this is not the case for you, then I salute you. I will also reiterate that, while I don't personally care for minions, I'm not trying to insinuate that no one should use them. I'm just of the mind that lower CR creatures/NPCs in an encounter can accomplish the same thing without the drudgery of 1-shot-popping your way through X amount of goons before the big fight kicks in.
I always thought Minions represented that cinematic battle where monsters are everywhere and as a mob of them overwhelm you, you barely fight them back. Gimli from LotR moives is a prime example of taking out Minions atop the wall of Helm's Deep. Each cleave dropped an orc to his doom. It's done for a cool sense of "Protect the Walls" and seeing a swarm of bad-guys come your way. The same effect can also be done with Swarm rules to similar effect, but to each his own.
I always thought Minions represented that cinematic battle where monsters are everywhere and as a mob of them overwhelm you, you barely fight them back. Gimli from LotR moives is a prime example of taking out Minions atop the wall of Helm's Deep. Each cleave dropped an orc to his doom. It's done for a cool sense of "Protect the Walls" and seeing a swarm of bad-guys come your way. The same effect can also be done with Swarm rules to similar effect, but to each his own.
That goes back to the "cinematic experience" concept I mentioned previously. If that's the angle someone's going for, it probably works out well. I think it's bad form as a standard for every combat, though.
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.
Atlas Games used that idea in Seventh Sea, and the creators of Exalted also used the minions as a sub-element of the boss idea.
And, reasonable deployment and use of minions does add some tactical challenge to a session.
In service,
Wow, I'm sure it's unintentional, but there's a lot of misinformation floating around here.
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.
Minions are used to represent 1) weaker monster breeds and 2) lower level NPCs. So goblin A isn't a minion because he's wearing blue pants; he's a minion because he's an untrained shlub. Goblin B is a standard monster because he's a trained warrior, not because his pants are red.
So unless you have a problem with adventurer A or Farmer Bob going down with a single swing while adventurer B can take an axe to the face, there's no reason for minions to stretch believability.
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Why is the enemy using untrained shlubs?
Because if they die before their 90-day probationary period is up, the enemy doesn't have to pay them benefits.
Why is the enemy using untrained shlubs?
The same reason any army uses untrai...I mean militia, or conscripts. Cannon fodder to soften up the enemy, man!
Either that, or the untrained schlubs are just unfortunate homemakers when those murderhobos come crashing in.
I don't particularly like how 4E does minions, but I don't mind the minion concept. When I ran 4E games I used minions pretty sparingly. I do really like how Mutants and Masterminds does minions (fail your toughness save and you drop). However, that system has very significant variations from other d20 systems (awesome game though).
A lot of 3E creatures have pretty low hp and pretty much function like a minion anyhow (your typical orc, goblin, kobold etc.). They might take two hits to drop if someone gets a low damage roll on one, but instead of worrying about the exact hp left you could just mark that they are really hurt, and one more hit will drop them. For instance, if you're using minis you might stick a poker chip under the mini to remind yourself which of your mooks are about to go down.
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Minions can work well in their place. I have used the successfully and they have also caused issues.
I'm sure you can imagine the complaints of the players when I use the same miniature for the minion as I do for the leader.
All goblins look the same to me syndrome ;)
Though seriously, one thing I really like about 4th ed is ritual magic. Allowing any character to use magic if they invest in the feat and learn the skill.
So much so that I have ritual magic in my pathfinder game as house rules and its working well enough.
Note they are not based on the 4th ed versions, they are implementations of cast pathfinder spells (normally more than one) with all the effects chosen by the creator of the ritual.
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.
I don't know what rules you're talking about, because there are no rules for making/tweaking any kind of monsters, and AFAIK there are no official guidelines for minionizing standard monsters. And I should know, because I wrote my own guidelines for doing just that. My guidelines are based on DMG2 guidelines, which sets minion damage at about 1/2 of standard damage.
So while minions do have a higher damage-HP ratio than standard monsters, it's not the overkill you've been mislead to believe.
A lot of 3E creatures have pretty low hp and pretty much function like a minion anyhow (your typical orc, goblin, kobold etc.). They might take two hits to drop if someone gets a low damage roll on one, but instead of worrying about the exact hp left you could just mark that they are really hurt, and one more hit will drop them. For instance, if you're using minis you might stick a poker chip under the mini to remind yourself which of your mooks are about to go down.
I do something similar with 4e minions. They have a damage threshold and 2 HP. If an attack lowballs the threshold, the minion is is bloodied. If an attack hits the theshold, the minion dies.
As a player I usualy just dislike fighting minions...I find it really unheroic and boring killing guy in red shirt #6. But I think there is a place for them in the game...just hopefuly not at my table...;)
Anyway a way to make minion more interesting in PF might be to bring back the old sweep rule from waaaay back in 1st ed. Which was if a fighter(or anyone with a full BAB) is attacking minion( or back in the 1st ed creature with less than a full HD) he would get a number of attacks equal to his level but could only attack in particular creature just once. Example a 4th level fight is suurounded by 6 minions...he could attack 4 of the minions.
Another thing borrowing a rule from 7th Sea is to treat the minions as one creature (sorta like a swarm but not as annoying to deal with in melee)... with one attack roll...a set damage based on the number of minions left...etc. It is sorta complicated to explain but would making running minion alot faster...and could be more enjoyable to the players. If people are intrested I'll post up my idea...I also need to think about it more.
I use the Mob rules from DMG2 for "minions" -- that way, when 30+ mooks attack, they get treated as a single swarm. It allows you to gave creatures who are weak individually, but who nevertheless present a credible threat when attacking in numbers.
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The major component of my "gripe" here is the notion that the publishers need to do our work for us as GMs.
With respect, if the GM is going to make up all the rules on the fly mid-session, in addition to adjudicating the entire game -- then for the love of Gygax, why not save yourselves the $40 by not buying the rulebook?!
On the other hand, if people are shelling out the cash for a rulebook, doesn't it follow that the said book should actually contain, you know, usable rules?
That's blowing my comment way, way, WAY out of proportion. What I was saying is that there are rules there that cover the creation and government of said systems, left to any particular's GM interpretation or style. The rules provide a very clear path towards tailoring encounters to fit your players. Balking at minions essentially glazing over that entire process is about twenty thousand galaxies removed from saying there's no need for rules.
On a side note, minions in 4E will slaughter parties if run by a GM who uses them to their potential. This is less so with the minions listed with minor static damages in the MM, but if you follow the general rules for minions you do not change anything (including damage) except for their HP, which led to PC death more often than most anything else, merely because they all came built with what amounted to Improved Evasion, so anything beyond a direct hit just wouldn't cut it.
I do not believe this 'general minion rule exists in 4E. There is no conversion guide for minions. Minions are created to be minions and not converted from standard monsters. One does not make 5 'minion' Ancient Red Dragons out of a normal Ancient Red Dragon - there is no conversion guide for doing so. Its possible that the DM might craft an encounter involving, say an adult dragon, and decide that the players are of such level that this Dragons hatching babies will be treated as minions but our DM in this case will have to design the minion hatching from scratch.
Furthermore your contention that minions in 4E cause issues with the system because they are too strong is extremely odd. In fact the common problem 4E DMs have with minions is the opposite - even getting 4 (or 5 at paragon level and beyond) minions does not actually equal the power level of a standard monster - its not usually even that close unless the minions have some seriously bad ass powers like they explode for bucko damage when killed or they have been very well set up (archer minions spread far apart around a large room).
I will defend Pathfinder's (and 3.5's) diagonal movement rule, because it's the approximation that makes the most sense (mathematically) and comes closest to representing actual distances while keeping things snapped to grid squares for ease of mapping and tactical display. The ONLY defense for 4E's diagonal movement is that it makes things simpler for people who cannot understand basic math and elementary geometry (or, to be fair, may understand them, but can't be bothered to actually apply such basic principles in their play).
There is another reason to use 4Es system beyond just simplicity. The 1-2-1 system gives out pretty good looking effects if those effects are reasonably large. Pretty much beyond a 3 by 3 effect. However since we do have to force thins onto a grid the effect on smaller radius elements is not only hard to remember but they look really wonky in any case. Since most effects in D&D are 3 by 3 or smaller there is some significant pull to just going with the ease of use option.