I like minions because I can lay down a ton of them and I don't have to keep track of hp and thus monitor which one is which. However, I don't like that they are always one hit wonders.
To make them less predictable, I'm play testing a mechanic whereby if a minion takes a hit I roll a d6. If the roll is 5 or 6, then the hit is negated and the minion is still fully functional. If the roll is anything else the minion takes the hit and goes down. This makes minions slightly tougher and less predictable, but still very simple and easy to manage. I don't see the mechanic slowing the game down much, because even if several minions take a hit in a round, I can still roll the die real fast to check for survivors. If I want tougher minions I could always increase the threshold for survival. As an alternative to the d6 you could just have the minion roll a saving throw and if it makes it dodges/negates/survives the hit.
As a thought for tracking xp, you could just keep a tally. Every time a minion takes a hit tally 1 and every time a minion lives tally 1. At the end of the fight add up the total and this would be the equivalent number of minions killed for determining xp.
"To make them less predictable, I'm play testing a mechanic whereby if a minion takes a hit I roll a d6. If the roll is 5 or 6, then the hit is negated and the minion is still fully functional. If the roll is anything else the minion takes the hit and goes down. This makes minions slightly " - I used to use this exact system on smegs when running 3.5 and it worked a treat, no HP's to worry about but you could have a minion style of play. Ive even extended it to tougher opponents being dropped on a roll of 1,2,3 and surviving on 4,5,6.
Speeded the game up to no end. Other options tried were basing the survival roll on the damage rolled, as in base chance to survive 3,4,5,6 if damage was over five survival on 4,5,6. If damage of 10 then survival on 5,6 etc.
Made the damage have a greater effect.
This really seems like a good idea and great way to give minions a "fighting chance" against controllers or other classes with area damage. I understand that minion are meant to die but it seems silly that if somebody with an area wins initiative the minions are effective punch bags of XP. I am going to try the saving throw method and see how it goes. Another though would be like have them take a collective -1 to their save per minion "death" so despite how your rolls might rock they are bound to die soon or later.
Something else I have heard of (but never used) is to 'bloody' a minion on its first hit then eliminate it on the second. This seems appealing to me since there are more than a few powers/feats/etc that gain bonuses when the target is bloodied.
I am going to be using something similar for Paragon & Epic level minions - Paragon minions take 2 hits and Epic level ones take 3 to destroy.
This really seems like a good idea and great way to give minions a "fighting chance" against controllers or other classes with area damage. I understand that minion are meant to die but it seems silly that if somebody with an area wins initiative the minions are effective punch bags of XP. I am going to try the saving throw method and see how it goes. Another though would be like have them take a collective -1 to their save per minion "death" so despite how your rolls might rock they are bound to die soon or later.
Isn't that the point of having a controller in the party? To me, this seems like you are "crimping a classes style" (for want of a better description). The way I make Minions of more "survivable" is just to add more of them. 40 skeleton rotters vs. Lvl1 party. Now THAT was an epic encounter :D
Although truthfully, if I had to do it again, I would have had 10 skeletons that had 4 "lives" each. When they die, they reform themselves. would give quite a nice sense of the "power" of undeath (which is a big theme in my campiagn).
That may be a good way of making minions more survivable (but would only work for some monsters)
For my particular group there is no controller though, so there is no class that I am "crimping." I can see the point though but if the controller hits 5 minions, that is a -5 to all the minions saving throws. Hit enough and they will function like normal regardless of number of minions. It also still is based on dice luck. I have seen a minion hang on for 5 hits itself while all its buddies died in the first hit. So far it seems to be working out. I might drop the "saving throw" later though depending if things get too rough or annoying.
Isn't that the point of having a controller in the party? To me, this seems like you are "crimping a classes style" (for want of a better description). The way I make Minions of more "survivable" is just to add more of them. 40 skeleton rotters vs. Lvl1 party. Now THAT was an epic encounter :DAlthough truthfully, if I had to do it again, I would have had 10 skeletons that had 4 "lives" each. When they die, they reform themselves. would give quite a nice sense of the "power" of undeath (which is a big theme in my campiagn).
That may be a good way of making minions more survivable (but would only work for some monsters)
While, on the surface, the mechanic would seem to hurt controllers, because it makes them less effective in the type of encounter in which they excel, I suspect that, in practice, it actually makes area effect and mult-attack classes even more important in such encounters when compared to characters that do few hits for lots of damage because you have effectively increased the number of times the players must generate hits in the encounter. If minions survive 50% of all hits regardless of the damage the hits do it becomes critical that groups of them start taking hits in a hurry before they start to shred the party by pure force of numbers. By upping the danger level of such encounters you've essentially put a premium on classes best suited to handle them and thats controllers and strikers that can do many hits in a round.