At the risk of being beaten with digital sticks, might there be a possibility of mixing something like the 4th ed. minion rules into the mix. They are incredibly useful for the DM, allowing the battlefield to be populated with monsters without increasing the EL to epic proportions. Is it possible to do something similar without breaching copyright?
Warmage 101
Using 3.5 monsters, such as a goblin, how many 'minions' would you equate single point of CR/ECL?
for example, using goblins I was going on the principle of five minions (normal goblin stats but with one hp) being equal to one 'normal' goblin - one single hp minion for each hp on an average hp goblin. Do you think that's too many or too few?
Warmage 101
I thought about treating all creatures with a CR 5 or more lower than the party level to just have 1 hp and only one attack per round. I just make a wild guess how many of them are making an attack on a PC and once any of them gets hit, they are dead.
No worrying about which of the 20 goblins was allready hit and how many hp he has left. And if it's a simple goblin, chances are good, that most hits would be instant kills anyway.
The problem with the "1 hp minions" rule in 3.P is... well, imagine the "Burly Brawl" in The Matrix Reloaded with 100 orcs vs... a housecat familiar.
(Cat leaps up in slow motion, slashes two orcs with its claws, then bites the throat out of a third. It looks at the rest of the orcs... and meows. They run in terror.)
I've seen mook rules in other games like Feng Shui that predate 4th edition, so I wouldn't worry too much. Feng Shui divides baddies into two categories: people with names, and mooks. You don't name mooks, and they don't have hit points.
You can do this in D&D informally without worrying about housecat fu: don't keep track of hit point damage for mooks in a fight. If there's a solid hit that might kill the mook, the mook dies. If there's an area of effect spell, don't roll saving throws. You can leave one or two of the mooks staggering around for verisimilitude if you want. The level of mookdom changes as characters grow in levels - kobold mooks at first level, ogre mooks before too long.
If the attack had no chance of killing them (drive-by-housecat, single magic missile) either promote that target from mookdom or handwave the attack and just ignore the damage and figure that a real hit is going to come along soon.
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I think i posted this on another thread on minions but I can't find it to link to so here it is again.
I have drifted a lot of True20 stuff into my 3.5 house rules and the theme of the minion mechanic was one thing I implemented for those “Crazy 88” type battles. This works for us because the Wizards and Sorcerers have access to feat based, low level, arcane energy attacks so they don’t burn spells in minion encounters. The Pathfinder Wizard and Sorcerer level abilities take the place (maybe still not sure on house rules yet) of the feat based magical attacks. They go like this.
- Minions = Adversaries with a CR of 1/3rd the Average Character Level or less.
- Minions have HP equal to half the EL of the minion encounter. (We assume that most characters can deal damage per hit equal to half their level)
- Minions cannot crit.
- Minions that fumble provoke an AoO from nearest PC in range including those using missile weapons.
- PCs cannot “crit” but each attack that would threaten a crit gain a bonus attack (and a free additional 5’ step) that round.
- Minions attack at their normal ability but all damage rolls are assumed to have been rolled at their CR
- PCs do max damage on all attacks
- Area effect damage is allocated to the minions in range 1 at a time until there isn’t enough damage left to kill the next. Remainder is lost.
- Minions make/fail saves by % of total number. Minion Save Value/DC=%, that number of them within effect make the save.
As DM I just print out a grid with minions represented as circles and cross off each one as they fall. Simple record keeping. You only need one Attack number, damage number, AC & saves off to the side to keep track.
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- Minions = Adversaries with a CR of 1/3rd the Average Character Level or less.
- Minions have HP equal to half the EL of the minion encounter. (We assume that most characters can deal damage per hit equal to half their level)
- Minions cannot crit.
- Minions that fumble provoke an AoO from nearest PC in range including those using missile weapons.
- PCs cannot “crit” but each attack that would threaten a crit gain a bonus attack (and a free additional 5’ step) that round.
Oh, I like this one, free 'Supreme Cleave' for minions only, so that the heroes can wade through them!
Minions attack at their normal ability but all damage rolls are assumed to have been rolled at their CR
So a bunch of Kobolds or Goblins would do only a single point of damage per attack? I'd considered giving them average damage, rather than rolling (which I tend to do in large combats anyway, since I try to save time).
PCs do max damage on all attacks
This was the one I was definitely thinking of doing for 3.X style minions.
Area effect damage is allocated to the minions in range 1 at a time until there isn’t enough damage left to kill the next. Remainder is lost.
Minions make/fail saves by % of total number. Minion Save Value/DC=%, that number of them within effect make the save.
As DM I just print out a grid with minions represented as circles and cross off each one as they fall. Simple record keeping. You only need one Attack number, damage number, AC & saves off to the side to keep track.
Awesome ideas. I'm not sure I'll use all of them (I might even go so far as to have minions autofail saves), but there's definitely stuff there I want to pillage.
Minions not being able to crit, and the free step and cleave on a PC crit are great ideas!
Very cool suggestions. I'll have to try them out. The Question of CR though - what is the CR value of any given minion? How many of them can/should be placed in an encounter? How many minion versions of a creature equal a normal version of it?
Once again, great stuff.
Warmage 101
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Very cool suggestions. I'll have to try them out. The Question of CR though - what is the CR value of any given minion? How many of them can/should be placed in an encounter? How many minion versions of a creature equal a normal version of it?
Once again, great stuff.
Warmage 101
Use the book CR of the creature.
See page 121 of the Alpha 3 on encounter buildingThey go like this (updated and filled out).
- Minions = Adversaries with a CR of 1/3rd the Average Character Level or less. Minion encounters not to be used for parties with average character level less than 5.
- Minions have HP equal to half the EL (rounded up, minimum of 3) of the minion encounter. (We assume that most characters can deal damage per hit equal to half their level)
- Minions cannot crit.
- Minions that fumble provoke an AoO from nearest PC in range including those using missile weapons.
- PCs cannot “crit” but each attack that would threaten a crit gain a bonus attack (and a free additional 5’ step) that round.
- Minions attack at their normal ability but all damage rolls are assumed to have been rolled at CR (minimum of 3). Note that in cases where multiple dice are used for damage or damage is modified (1d6+2 etc.) this number is only the result of the die roll not total damage.
- PCs do max damage on all attacks
- Area effect damage is allocated to the minions in range 1 at a time until there isn’t enough damage left to kill the next. Remainder is lost.
- Minions make/fail saves by % of total number. Minion Save Value/DC=%, that number of them within effect make the save. (Negative save modifier = complete save failure for hoard)
As DM I just print out a grid with minions represented as circles and cross off each one as they fall. Simple record keeping. You only need one Attack number, damage number & saves off to the side to keep track.
Example
Example – Goblin Hoard (30 goblins) vs. 4 PCs 5th level.
APL=5
Encounter = Challenging
CR=1/3
Goblins
AC = 15
Attack = Morningstar +2 melee (3 damage) or javelin +3 ranged (3 damage)
Saves = Fort +3, Ref +1, Will –1 (note that in this encounter ALL will saves fail)
Very cool suggestions. I'll have to try them out. The Question of CR though - what is the CR value of any given minion? How many of them can/should be placed in an encounter? How many minion versions of a creature equal a normal version of it?
Once again, great stuff.
Warmage 101
Well taking the marker from 4th Ed, I think 1 normal creature counts the same as 4 minions for XP's.
If you want to make a few creatures in an encounter into minions then each time they're hit roll a dice (I use a D6) on a 5 or 6 they stay alive, any other result and they drop down dead. I'll normally drop the XP's a little bit if the encounter seemed too easy but not often. Its a lot better than tracking HP's for a large group of goblins\orcs etc.