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One thing I really liked in 4E was minions. I like larger scale fights, but once the PC are level 5+, larger fights becomes a PITA. Either you are having to track the health of 10+ NPCs or you have a bunch of low level NPC who have a snowballs chance in hell of hitting the PCs. Minions were a nice solution for adding bodies to a fight that could actually threaten the PC without adding a lot of extra bookkeeping. The only problem is that PF has a lot more AoE damage than 4E.
Minion Template(CR-4)
Rebuild Rules: Health drops to 1 HP, Advanced Evasion(take no damage on a successful save against any ability or spell that deals damage), Fragile Morale(Becomes shaken if there are no non-minions around, if outnumbered, shakened becomes panicked)
Basically an easy template for adding bodies to a fight. 4 minions = 1 normal monster of that type. They will drop to 1 hit from anything, but AoE will only kill the ones that fail their saves.
One thing I really liked in 4E was minions. I like larger scale fights, but once the PC are level 5+, larger fights becomes a PITA. Either you are having to track the health of 10+ NPCs or you have a bunch of low level NPC who have a snowballs chance in hell of hitting the PCs. Minions were a nice solution for adding bodies to a fight that could actually threaten the PC without adding a lot of extra bookkeeping. The only problem is that PF has a lot more AoE damage than 4E.
Minion Template(CR-4)
Rebuild Rules: Health drops to 1 HP, Advanced Evasion(take no damage on a successful save against any ability or spell that deals damage), Fragile Morale(Becomes shaken if there are no non-minions around, if outnumbered, shakened becomes panicked)Basically an easy template for adding bodies to a fight. 4 minions = 1 normal monster of that type. They will drop to 1 hit from anything, but AoE will only kill the ones that fail their saves.
I would playtest it before putting it into your game for a couple reasons. 1, there are not only more area spells, but there are lots of ways characters can hit more then one target (iterative attacks, whirlwind, cleave). Also you have to consider having lots of enemies with a good chance to hit your party is more dangerous in 3.x then it is in 4E. 4E has alot more in the way of self and party healing, and enemies do far more balanced numbers in terms of damage. In 3.x monsters and enemies can vary greatly in damage they can do in a single turn/hit, which makes the minions much more varied in how dangerous they are.
Personally if i want monsters/enemies that are easy to drop but still threaten my players i use lower level monsters that are buffed to hell. You have to have a caster, or potions about, but you would be surprised how dangerous a CR2 goblin can become if you cast cats grace invisibility, stone skin, haste and heroism on it. I generally bump the CR of the encounter a level or 2 for it, but it works pretty well for me. And i think you'd end up with the same effect.
Alternatively have minions get 2 hp per CR, put have all of their damage divided by a quarter.
The biggest problem with this would be DR, but as PCs rarely have alot of DR, and Dr is almost thematically suppossed to help more with mooks, that kind of works.
I would playtest it before putting it into your game for a couple reasons. 1, there are not only more area spells, but there are lots of ways characters can hit more then one target (iterative attacks, whirlwind, cleave). Also you have to consider having lots of enemies with a good chance to hit your party is more dangerous in 3.x then it is in 4E. 4E has alot more in the way of self and party healing, and enemies do far more balanced numbers in terms of damage. In 3.x monsters and enemies can vary greatly in damage they can do in a single turn/hit, which makes the minions much more varied in how dangerous they are.Personally if i want monsters/enemies that are easy to drop but still threaten my players i use lower level monsters that are buffed to hell. You have to have a caster, or potions about, but you would be surprised how dangerous a CR2 goblin can become if you cast cats grace invisibility, stone skin, haste and heroism on it. I generally bump the CR of the encounter a level or 2 for it, but it works pretty well for me. And i think you'd end up with the same effect.
I am ok with iterative attacks and cleaves killing multiple minions. If anything, minions will force the players to move, kill, move more than they usually do.
I want them to be more dangerous. I don't want the players to feel like they can just waltz past the minions to get to the BBEG unscathed. As for being too dangerous, that is what the fragile morale is about. If you kill the leaders, the reset will crumble and fold pretty quickly. Do you think they are more dangerous than CR - 4? CR - 4 means that 4 minions is the same as one normal creature.
I find in a lot of situations a low level creature buffed to hell can be unrealistic. What if the players surprised him? Now I have to explain how he got all the buffs when he didn't have 10 rounds to case them all.
Alternatively have minions get 2 hp per CR, put have all of their damage divided by a quarter.
The biggest problem with this would be DR, but as PCs rarely have alot of DR, and Dr is almost thematically suppossed to help more with mooks, that kind of works.
The whole point is to make the bookkeeping simple. Wizard casts fireball, remove every minion that fails their save. Fighter smacks 2 minions, remove them.
I am trying to avoid having to keep track of the health of 10-20 NPCs because it is a PITA. Wizard fireballs, the cleric flame strikes while the fighter and rogue are mowing through them 1 by 1... Now which one took full damage from the fireball then saved against the lightning bolt, but was outside the area of the flamestrike? The game gets bogged down with me trying to remember what has happened to each NPC and how much health they have left. Marking the models helps, but it never fails someone knocks over a model, or things get moved around.
One thing to consider, if I remember correctly, minions to a static amount of damage. Maybe just under average damage. something else to remember is that in 4e, because minions do a static amount of damage, a critical hit means nothing. so you should emulate these in your conversion.
I would playtest it before putting it into your game for a couple reasons. 1, there are not only more area spells, but there are lots of ways characters can hit more then one target (iterative attacks, whirlwind, cleave). Also you have to consider having lots of enemies with a good chance to hit your party is more dangerous in 3.x then it is in 4E. 4E has alot more in the way of self and party healing, and enemies do far more balanced numbers in terms of damage. In 3.x monsters and enemies can vary greatly in damage they can do in a single turn/hit, which makes the minions much more varied in how dangerous they are.Personally if i want monsters/enemies that are easy to drop but still threaten my players i use lower level monsters that are buffed to hell. You have to have a caster, or potions about, but you would be surprised how dangerous a CR2 goblin can become if you cast cats grace invisibility, stone skin, haste and heroism on it. I generally bump the CR of the encounter a level or 2 for it, but it works pretty well for me. And i think you'd end up with the same effect.
I am ok with iterative attacks and cleaves killing multiple minions. If anything, minions will force the players to move, kill, move more than they usually do.
I want them to be more dangerous. I don't want the players to feel like they can just waltz past the minions to get to the BBEG unscathed. As for being too dangerous, that is what the fragile morale is about. If you kill the leaders, the reset will crumble and fold pretty quickly. Do you think they are more dangerous than CR - 4? CR - 4 means that 4 minions is the same as one normal creature.
I find in a lot of situations a low level creature buffed to hell can be unrealistic. What if the players surprised him? Now I have to explain how he got all the buffs when he didn't have 10 rounds to case them all.
I dont think killing the leader makes any sense, and good BBEG will not even be touched before all his minions are dead. I guess you might have a leader that is a front liner, but often its not easy to pick this guy out. Certainly in the 4E games i've played its not always easy to figure out minion vs non minion.
And as far as having to explain why the enemies are buffed, dont explain, dont even tell them unless it's stone skin or something obvious. Besides there are always alarm spells and other divinations you can scatter about. I guess i just dont worry about it, because in my group there is always at least one player in full plate completely incapable of stealth.
I dont think killing the leader makes any sense, and good BBEG will not even be touched before all his minions are dead. I guess you might have a leader that is a front liner, but often its not easy to pick this guy out. Certainly in the 4E games i've played its not always easy to figure out minion vs non minion.
And as far as having to explain why the enemies are buffed, dont explain, dont even tell them unless it's stone skin or something obvious. Besides there are always alarm spells and other divinations you can scatter about. I guess i just dont worry about it, because in my group there is always at least one player in full plate completely incapable of stealth.
Depends on the PCs. A wizard BBEG hiding at the back is still vulnerable to a PC sneaks past the minions or an archer. A well placed AoE spell can clear a path for the melee to get to the BBEG.
Not being able to tell the minions from the non-minions is part of the point. It makes the fight look a lot harder than it really is.
I am glad you can get away with that. My group has a tradition of forcing the DM to at least maintain the illusion that they are following the RAW.
One thing to consider, if I remember correctly, minions to a static amount of damage. Maybe just under average damage. something else to remember is that in 4e, because minions do a static amount of damage, a critical hit means nothing. so you should emulate these in your conversion.
Good point, I had forgotten about that, they cannot crit and they always deal average damage.
Addendum, minions are unable to make iterative attacks.
The biggest problem with minions in 4E is the metagaming that makes it easy to know if a monster is a minion. Therefore, I would not go with static damage. The other thing I don't like is minions only having 1 hp, so any design to increase it based on CR, etc. is a benefit. And taken to its conclusion, minions could have abilities of any equivalent level CR creature, except they are a paper warrior. This makes ranged based minions, mixed with spell casting, especially dangerous.
The biggest problem with minions in 4E is the metagaming that makes it easy to know if a monster is a minion. Therefore, I would not go with static damage. The other thing I don't like is minions only having 1 hp, so any design to increase it based on CR, etc. is a benefit. And taken to its conclusion, minions could have abilities of any equivalent level CR creature, except they are a paper warrior. This makes ranged based minions, mixed with spell casting, especially dangerous.
I was thinking about that. A minion who wades into melee is not going to last long, but an archer minion could be very deadly, that is part of the reasoning behind making the minions lose iterative attacks. You could cover this in the metagame by making the minion constantly move and attack.
You have a good point with the static damage. I usually make all my rolls behind the screen to avoid this kind of thing, but if I am having to fake rolling damage for minions, I might as well actually roll damage for minions.
How common is iterative attacks at higher levels for monsters? I would suggest you keep those the same as the standard creature you are emulating. However, minions could be presented as lower level guards, creatures, etc. and therefore would do less damage and be less likely to hit.
How common is iterative attacks at higher levels for monsters? I would suggest you keep those the same as the standard creature you are emulating. However, minions could be presented as lower level guards, creatures, etc. and therefore would do less damage and be less likely to hit.
Anything that has a BAB of 6+ will have iterative attacks. If I make 4 archer minions that are level 16 defending a warlord who is level 18. Those 4 archers will have 4 attacks each for a total of 16 attacks per round. That has the capability of killing any level 17 PC in a single round of attacks. That is why you need to remove iterative attacks.
Lets is say you have a BBEG who is a level 10 wizard with 60-70 health facing a party of level 9 players. For my players if I want this to be a challenging fight, I need to make it somewhere around CR 11-12. So I need to add something else to the fight that is around CR9. My options are:
Add in 1 level 10 fighter as a meat shield.
Add in 2 level 8 fighters as meat shields
Add in 4 level 6 fighters as meat shields
Add in 16 level 2 fighters as meat shields
A level 2 fighter is going to be almost no threat to a level 10 PC, yet the fighter will still have around 20 health for me to keep track of, and will probably take 2 or 3 hits to kill, and will probably survive a fireball if they make their reflex save. That is a lot of bookkeeping for something that the PCs can just walk past is impunity. Even 4 level 6 fighters would not be that much of a threat to the PCs, but they would take 50-60 damage to bring down.
With the minion template, I now have the option of replacing 1 fighter with 4 minions of the same level. The whole point is to use minions when you want to have a large group of foes, but don't want to get bogged down with a lot of bookkeeping. I go with 1 level 8 fighter as a body guard, and 8 level 6 minions. I now have the PCs facing 10 foes, but 8 of those foes have minimal bookkeeping requirements.
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The whole point is to make the bookkeeping simple. Wizard casts fireball, remove every minion that fails their save. Fighter smacks 2 minions, remove them.Alternatively have minions get 2 hp per CR, put have all of their damage divided by a quarter.
The biggest problem with this would be DR, but as PCs rarely have alot of DR, and Dr is almost thematically suppossed to help more with mooks, that kind of works.
The only problem with the all or nothing on the saves is lets say 2 minions makes their save vs. that wizard's FB. Then next round the same thing from the flame strike cast by the cleric. And then by a stroke of luck they both make their save vs. the wizards lightning bolt. So they avoided 3 spells with no effects. In PF they would have taken 1/2dmg (unless they were rogues), + 1/2dmg, +1/2dmg from all three spells and most likely be dead.
Don't get me wrong, I do like some aspect of the minion "concept", but there are better ways without creating player exceptionalism. Optimize and shift stats to fill their niche (ranged has super high dex, melee str, etc), up their AC, and to counter act all of this on the CR side give them 1/4 to 1/5th their hp.
A level 2 fighter having 20 hit points and require 2-3 hits? I have a 7th level fighter in my group generating 12-21 points of damage before power attack with each attack. A 7th level wizard will be doing around 28 points (avg) with scorching ray (2nd level spell)- no save.
Again, up their scores, maybe even give them bonus feats and reduce their hp considerably. To hit, saves, bab, AC all stay a threat but they go down much quicker. Keep the same CR or even reduce it -since they only have a fraction of the hit points. A template to calculate he changes and trade-offs would be good for minions at different tiers.
The whole point is to make the bookkeeping simple. Wizard casts fireball, remove every minion that fails their save. Fighter smacks 2 minions, remove them.Alternatively have minions get 2 hp per CR, put have all of their damage divided by a quarter.
The biggest problem with this would be DR, but as PCs rarely have alot of DR, and Dr is almost thematically suppossed to help more with mooks, that kind of works.
The only problem with the all or nothing on the saves is lets say 2 minions makes their save vs. that wizard's FB. Then next round the same thing from the flame strike cast by the cleric. And then by a stroke of luck they both make their save vs. the wizards lightning bolt. So they avoided 3 spells with no effects. In PF they would have taken 1/2dmg (unless they were rogues), + 1/2dmg, +1/2dmg from all three spells and most likely be dead.
And if all those bad guys were all level 2 rogues? The same thing would have happened, except they would still have 15 HP, and they would be good only for giving the real bad guys flanking bonuses.
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I can actually give a playtest result of straight porting minions over from 4E. I probably didn't do it as intelligently as suggested here, but oh well, live and learn.
The battle was Shackled City, Thirteen Cages module. Had to pare it down because I only had one night to wrap up the campaign. Fight was with Nulin and Ardeth, and a horde of 1 HP minions. Party was cleric, monk, and fighter/rogue.
Fight started with imp minions crawling out of the walls as Nulin and Ardeth went invisible on the party. Party starts wading into the minions, and dropping one per hit. Nulin and Ardeth begin hit and run tactics, attacking, then restoring invisibility. First mistake, cleric didn't use invisibility purge. Party continues hacking minions, taking constant hits from the invisible spring attackers. This goes on for three hours of play before they finish off the minions and invisibility purge.
Mistake on my part, too many minions for an inexperienced party with no AoE. The fighter and monk wasted round after round (like 10 of them) full attacking minions. If they hadn't had uncanny dodge, sneak attacks would have murdered them. No see invisible also hurt, also due to player inexperience.
Overall, minions can be a serious action drain on people unable to hit multiple creatures at once. Be sure to account for that in encounter design.
What about skipping the evasion-like effect and each one having 1hp, and simply put a "hit treshold" or something like that? When they take more than 1*CR damage from a single attack, they die. If they take less, nothing happens. Like some form of super-damage reduction.
What about skipping the evasion-like effect and each one having 1hp, and simply put a "hit treshold" or something like that? When they take more than 1*CR damage from a single attack, they die. If they take less, nothing happens. Like some form of super-damage reduction.
Interesting idea. I would extend it to if they take that much damage from a single full attack action. So a druid in kitty who was throwing out a lot of weak hits might require 2 or 3 hits to bring a minion down, but as long as those hits were part of the same full attack action it would count.
I would also bump it up to maybe CR * 2 + 1. That puts it at a level where an AoE spell should just fail to kill them on average if they make the save. If the caster rolls well, or they fail the save they should be down.
I kinda like it because it doesn't override standard evasion.
For example, you have a rogue minion with normal evasion that is CR 7 which is a threshhold of 15. The wizard throws a level 10 fireball for an average of 35 damage. Without evasion, the rogue would still die because half damage is 17. So in this case, evasion saves the minion.
What about skipping the evasion-like effect and each one having 1hp, and simply put a "hit treshold" or something like that? When they take more than 1*CR damage from a single attack, they die. If they take less, nothing happens. Like some form of super-damage reduction.I would also bump it up to maybe CR * 2 + 1. That puts it at a level where an AoE spell should just fail to kill them on average if they make the save. If the caster rolls well, or they fail the save they should be down.
Followup idea. How about the threshhold being based on the HD of the minions class.
d6 HD -> CR + 1
d8 HD -> CR * 1.5 + 1
d10 HD -> CR * 2 + 1
I can actually give a playtest result of straight porting minions over from 4E. I probably didn't do it as intelligently as suggested here, but oh well, live and learn.
The battle was Shackled City, Thirteen Cages module. Had to pare it down because I only had one night to wrap up the campaign. Fight was with Nulin and Ardeth, and a horde of 1 HP minions. Party was cleric, monk, and fighter/rogue.
Fight started with imp minions crawling out of the walls as Nulin and Ardeth went invisible on the party. Party starts wading into the minions, and dropping one per hit. Nulin and Ardeth begin hit and run tactics, attacking, then restoring invisibility. First mistake, cleric didn't use invisibility purge. Party continues hacking minions, taking constant hits from the invisible spring attackers. This goes on for three hours of play before they finish off the minions and invisibility purge.
Mistake on my part, too many minions for an inexperienced party with no AoE. The fighter and monk wasted round after round (like 10 of them) full attacking minions. If they hadn't had uncanny dodge, sneak attacks would have murdered them. No see invisible also hurt, also due to player inexperience.
Overall, minions can be a serious action drain on people unable to hit multiple creatures at once. Be sure to account for that in encounter design.
Question for clarification, did these minions have a BAB of 6 or more?
I also would caution on the hp thing. 5 magic missiles will kill 5 minions, true, but what about the Symbol or Power Word spells?
I would say just drop the minion hp to minimum and re-tool all feats to save boosts. Sure the SoS/SoD spells get nerfed, but a single Fireball will likely kill many of them, or drop them to single-digit hp's. Besides, it boosts the power of evocation, which is usually sub-par anyway.
Alternatively, strip out ALL feats and let them just have at.
The magic missle/PW: Kill thing is covered if you go with the damage reduction idea. A CR18 minion will have effectively have 19-36 HP and will instantly heal any damage that doesn't kill them. That means PW:Kill will take out 4-8 minions. Sounds about right to me.
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On the HP issue, I would give the minion its normal HP, but in its morale, it flees with a single hit.
This way it won't necessarily DIE, can get trapped and be FORCED to fight or die, can be captured for information, etc.
And in many ways it is more realistic. I mean really how many people are going to hang around in a fight after they just had their guts ripped open?
I am NEVER oppose to giving an NPC an average damage amount, just to make my work as GM easier. I may add a point or subtract a point for variety and giggles and grins, but average is okay with me. Bosses and BBEG and Threats should never be average though, heck if you can get away with MAXING them it would be great. Always fun to scare the $h%t out of PCs. lol
and yeah I like minions a lot. it adds the drama and makes an average game feel more grand and epic in scale.
I think that the way the game is built, some hp tracking is the better way to go, even in larger battles. But it can be mitigated somewhat. For instance, I ran a battle with 10+ fire giants in AOW's "Kings of the Rift" chapter. I gave all the non-NPC fire giants minimum hit points to help speed the battle a little. (it was 3.5, but in PF it would be 90hp vs. 142) If you use models, I found labeling each model individually (fire giant #1, fire giant #2, etc) makes it easier to track a given monster's HP. Orc minions made to threaten an 11th level party could simply be 9th level warriors with minimum HP (18). Ogres: give them 6 levels of warrior to have a chance to hit and minimum HP (40).
To me at least, it retains the versimilitude that a tougher minion will still be able to take more damage than a weaker minion, while at the same time making your life a little easier behind the screen.
You could even make the HP thing easier by coming up with a simple formula such as HP=5xCR.
An orc minion will always have 5 hp.
An ogre minion will always have 15 hp
A hill giant minion will always have 35 hp.
It's important to point out that if a creature has less hit points, you will by extension be tracking hit points less, because it will die faster. For example, if you use a hill giant as is in a large scale battle, and let's say fire balls are used, it will take about 3 fire balls to kill one assuming it fails all three times. You've tracked it 3 times. If you go with a simple formula like HP=5xCR the hill giant now has 35 hps. It will take 1 (or 2 if it makes a save) fire balls to kill one. So by extension, you are tracking less.
I think it's important to tell your players that you have devised some minion mechanic. Otherwise, I can hear them saying something like: "these things die so easily, but how are they getting so lucky on their hits against us?"
I like the idea of limiting them to 1 attack per round.
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To me at least, it retains the versimilitude that a tougher minion will still be able to take more damage than a weaker minion, while at the same time making your life a little easier behind the screen.
You could even make the HP thing easier by coming up with a simple formula such as HP=5xCR.
Better, I think, to just decide "this many hits and it dies", and decide what counts as a hit.
I.E.
One hit per CR
8 damage or better equals a hit.
Less than 8 damage equals half a hit.
Simplifies the math.
To me at least, it retains the versimilitude that a tougher minion will still be able to take more damage than a weaker minion, while at the same time making your life a little easier behind the screen.
You could even make the HP thing easier by coming up with a simple formula such as HP=5xCR.
Better, I think, to just decide "this many hits and it dies", and decide what counts as a hit.
I.E.
One hit per CR
8 damage or better equals a hit.
Less than 8 damage equals half a hit.Simplifies the math.
See my edit. I'm a slow typer ;)
to add:
what if you use the simple formula for minions, and in the case of doing damage to them always round off damage to the nearest 5? You'd still be using the same basic system as for fighting normal creatures, but just simplifying the math because you're just dealing with multiples of 5.
So for example, a 10 die fireball catches a BBEG and several hill giant minions in the blast. Using minion HP=5xCR, Hill giant minions have 35 hp. Player rolls for damage: 38. BBEG makes his save and takes 19. Some hill giant minions save and others fail. Those that save take 20 and have 15 HP remaining. Those than fail take 40 (killing them). Later in the round, the cleric smacks a hill giant injured in the blast for 13 damage, which would round up to 15. The hill giant dies.
EDIT: essentially, I'm taking TOZ's idea of determining the number of hits a minion should take and keeping the HP system intact. ;)
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What about skipping the evasion-like effect and each one having 1hp, and simply put a "hit treshold" or something like that? When they take more than 1*CR damage from a single attack, they die. If they take less, nothing happens. Like some form of super-damage reduction.
I do something similar (which I borrowed from our Dark Heresy game)
Minions get 1/2 hit points (30 HP max) and inflict 1/2 the damage. They are destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points or less, or whenever they suffer damage while already being wounded (i.e. while not at full hit points). If the first successful attack against a minion hasn't killed it, the second one will regardless of the damage inflicted.
Any incapacitating effects other than straight damage (fear, blindness, confusion, etc) automatically takes the minion out of the fight.
A minion suffers no damage or negative effects on a successful saving throw.
Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level.
So it is fairly easy to track: A minion is either at full health or wounded (in which case the next hit will automatically kill it)
I've tried it in one of my campaign and it works quite well.
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How hard is it really to have a scratch peice of paper with hit points on it for each monster? Its not. I hate minions in 4e and I'd hate them even more in PF. Quit being lazy. DMing takes effort, but the effort is almost always worth it.
Thank you for your unhelpful opinion. I'm happy for you that you don't mind counting down numbers for creatures that are going to die anyway. We do mind it, and will continue to brainstorm ways to make our lives easier. Good day.
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If I just implied that you are a lazy DM, please accept my apologies.
But there is so much about the MMO that is 4e that promotes laziness and minions are a prime example. (If you cannot tell I loathe what Wizards has done to my beloved D&D. Thank God for Paizo and Pathfinder)
When I play 4e as soon as I see a group of monsters I start looking for the minions. I hate that.
I get your point about how hard it can be to keep track of hp's in large fights. But obviously you're a smart person because you can DM. Just find a way to keep track of each bad guys HPs. Its not that hard. Really.
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Thank you for your unhelpful opinion. I'm happy for you that you don't mind counting down numbers for creatures that are going to die anyway. We do mind it, and will continue to brainstorm ways to make our lives easier. Good day.
That's a circular argument. Aren't all creatures the PC's face in a fight going to die? So why give the great wyrm a bunch of hit points?
Look, I am not necessarily trashing ideas here, I just wanted to point out that its not that hard to keep track of "minions" hit points.
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Apology accepted. I just wanted to point out laziness is not the only reason to search for efficiency in your game. While something may not be 'hard', if it can be made 'easier' then it should be.
Indeed, why track ANY hit points? Just arbitrarily decide when the monster dies. :P
It goes back to the social contract between the players. Monsters have hit points and die after a certain point. If you don't hold to that agreement, your players may become upset with you.
Also, no, not ALL creatures facing the party will die. Hit points help decide which ones will. If you have no interest in a creature surviving, having it go down in one or two hits is a lot easier than playing accountant as they chip away at it.
How hard is it really to have a scratch peice of paper with hit points on it for each monster? Its not. I hate minions in 4e and I'd hate them even more in PF. Quit being lazy. DMing takes effort, but the effort is almost always worth it.
How many dynamic battles have you GM'd with 15+ opponents and 8+ players? Yeah, thought so. I also tend to not run those too much, though I love them. Fights like that are a b---h. They take hours and hours to run. This is about more than just scratch paper. For myself, if the characters get attacked by 30 kobolds riding war boars, I do NOT want to worry about each d6 of damage the gnome druid is flinging out with her slingstaff. I want a kill/miss factor.
But what is it ablut minions that you hate so much? I admit the idea is a bit bizzare, but mechanically it tends to work, and your players get to hack through squads of ogres on their way to the Ilithid bridge captain without each one dragging down the pace, so what's not to like?
This.
I hate it when I have about 10-20 level identical 5ish level thugs on the table.
The wizard AoEs them, hits 5, 3 of them save. The warrior charges in and the rogue moves to flank. The cleric casts a buff.
Next round all of the thugs move. The wizard AoEs again, hits a group of 6, meanwhile the warrior and rogue go to town.
Now, which ones got hit by both AoEs, which ones saved, which one got charges by the fighter, etc. I am keeping track of HP totals for 10-20 NPCs, and trying to make sure I keep the right HP total with the right model.
Worse, If I put 16 NPCs on the table, they have to be an average of 4-7 levels below the party. That means they are not a significant threat to most of the party members. So all that bookkeeping for something that the players can basically ignore.
If you are looking for minions in every encounter, the DM is doing things wrong. You shouldn't use minions in every encounter, but they are a useful tool for some encounters.
How hard is it really to have a scratch peice of paper with hit points on it for each monster? Its not. I hate minions in 4e and I'd hate them even more in PF. Quit being lazy. DMing takes effort, but the effort is almost always worth it.
How many dynamic battles have you GM'd with 15+ opponents and 8+ players? Yeah, thought so. I also tend to not run those too much, though I love them. Fights like that are a b---h. They take hours and hours to run. This is about more than just scratch paper. For myself, if the characters get attacked by 30 kobolds riding war boars, I do NOT want to worry about each d6 of damage the gnome druid is flinging out with her slingstaff. I want a kill/miss factor.
But what is it ablut minions that you hate so much? I admit the idea is a bit bizzare, but mechanically it tends to work, and your players get to hack through squads of ogres on their way to the Ilithid bridge captain without each one dragging down the pace, so what's not to like?
This.
I hate it when I have about 10-20 level identical 5ish level thugs on the table.
The wizard AoEs them, hits 5, 3 of them save. The warrior charges in and the rogue moves to flank. The cleric casts a buff.
Next round all of the thugs move. The wizard AoEs again, hits a group of 6, meanwhile the warrior and rogue go to town.
Now, which ones got hit by both AoEs, which ones saved, which one got charges by the fighter, etc. I am keeping track of HP totals for 10-20 NPCs, and trying to make sure I keep the right HP total with the right model.
Worse, If I put 16 NPCs on the table, they have to be an average of 4-7 levels below the party. That means they are not a significant threat to most of the party members. So all that bookkeeping for something that the players can basically ignore.
If you are looking for minions in every encounter, the DM is doing things wrong. You shouldn't use minions in every encounter, but they are a useful tool for...
Psst. Re-Read Mirror, Mirror's post. He's arguing FOR mionions. It's Orcsmasher who dislikes the idea.
Psst. Re-Read Mirror, Mirror's post. He's arguing FOR mionions. It's Orcsmasher who dislikes the idea.
And I started my post with "This" to indicate agreement, then went on to state why I agree....
Random side issue. Dealing with keeping track of AoE Save or suck effects.
What is the best way to deal with keeping track of something like a slow spell in a large scale combat?
I don't want the players to immediately know which enemies are slowed, but I need to keep track of the one that did get slowed and move them accordingly.
I do something similar (which I borrowed from our Dark Heresy game)
Minions get 1/2 hit points (30 HP max) and inflict 1/2 the damage. They are destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points or less, or whenever they suffer damage while already being wounded (i.e. while not at full hit points). If the first successful attack against a minion hasn't killed it, the second one will regardless of the damage inflicted.
Any incapacitating effects other than straight damage (fear, blindness, confusion, etc) automatically takes the minion out of the fight.
A minion suffers no damage or negative effects on a successful saving throw.
Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level.So it is fairly easy to track: A minion is either at full health or wounded (in which case the next hit will automatically kill it)
I've tried it in one of my campaign and it works quite well.
Reminds me somewhat of the "Up, Down, or Out" method used by Savage Worlds. Have to give this a try, thanks!
1 hp per minion makes it all simple.
Wizards sucked in 4E, but could shine when mowing down minions. Let magic missile take out 5 minions, and the wizard has fun. If the group has lots of AoE attacks, then throw more minions at them = more fun. Minions are made to be mowed down, while sucking up a few actions to give the BBEG an advantage.
In movies it is pretty obvious who the minions are. Give them uniforms or something. Make them appear to be sniveling idiots. Give them silly catch phrases, "Roger Roger". I don't think it ruins immersion if the players know who the schmucks are.
So, I'm super late to this party. Please forgive me, I've only recently discovered the joys of Pathfinder, and TriOmegaZero was kind enough to point me to this thread.
After reading through it, I've made some adjustments to my own "minion template" that I posted elsewhere, and I hope it's alright that I share them here. I originally used both "mega-Evasion" and "uber-DR" to keep higher level minions in the fight, but realized that they were both conversions of 4e's "minions never take damage from a missed attack" rule, and doubling up on both makes minions TOO durable. I would have liked to keep both, but only have the "mega-Evasion" work for the first save a minion makes in an encounter, but then that would just introduce another element of bookkeeping (which minion successfully saved last turn?), so I just dropped it entirely. The math on the "uber-DR" Minion Resistance might be a little complicated for on-the-fly minion creation, but it's easy enough to calculate before a session, and just a note of it on the stat-block makes it as easy to use as DR.
Minion Subtype: Minions represent creatures that, enmass, can still threaten player characters with their strength and skill (rather than luck, i.e. hoping to roll critical hits), but are ultimately small-change and can be taken out easily. The minion subtype can be added to any creature, and provides the following traits:
- Chump (Ex): All minions have 1 hit point. They retain their number of hit dice for determining their vulnerability to certain spells and effects, but these hit dice never increase their hit point total to greater than 1. Minions can never benefit from effects or abilities that grant them temporary hit points.
Any condition that limits a minion's actions (such as confusion, nauseated, panicked, staggered, stunned, etc.) knocks a minion unconscious instead.
Minions always deal minimum damage with any attack or ability they have, including bonus damage dice (such as from sneak attack). This applies even to ability damage, ability drain, bleed damage, etc.
The Difficulty Class for any ability a minion might have is reduced by 5.
- Minion Resistance (Ex): Minions reduce all damage dealt to them from any source (weapons, energy attacks, force effects, spells, etc) by an amount equal to their Constitution modifier (minimum 0) + 1/2 of their CR. Construct minions gain a bonus to this value equal to 1/10th the bonus hit point non-minion constructs would receive from size (+1 for small, +2 for medium, etc). If the creature has preexisting damage reduction or resistances, use those against applicable attacks if the reduction in damage is greater. (For example, a CR 10 medium construct minion has Minion Resistance 7 to all damage, but might have DR 10/adamantine against weapon attacks. All non-adamantine weapon attacks would have their damage reduced by 10, but all damage from any other source, including adamantine weapons, would be reduced by 7). Any immunities possessed by the minion still apply.
- Gang Up (Ex): Minions always appear in gangs of four. Four minion versions of a creature are equal to one normal version of a creature in terms of Challenge Rating. Minions never appear alone, so they do not have individual CRs.
A gang of four minions have treasure equal to a single non-minion version of the same creature, divided evenly among members of the gang.
Stuff.
I would point out stuff up thread where there are 2 issues.
1. The DR idea has one glaring problem. A low damage character like a rogue who isn't flanking could get stuck fighting a minion and unable to kill them. This is why I proposed that every time a minion gets hit regardless of damage, they become shaken. Hit a minion twice, and they will run away. Non-minion leader have the ability to remove the shaken condition from their minions.2. Imagine 4 archer minions fighting from range making full rapid shot attacks or 4 wizard minions casting fireballs. That is a lot of potential damage. The problem is that nothing in your rules lowers the damage potential of minions, and PF is a game of rocket tag. That is why I added a rule that minions cannot full attack, and all spells are cast at -3 caster level.
Add those 2 rules, and I think your rules would work just fine.
Thanks for your input Charender. Mind if I try to come up with some counter points?
1) I don't think I mind if this is the case. I believe the rules of the game are balanced and designed with classes working optimally. (i.e., paladins are always smiting, barbarians are always raging, rogues are always getting sneak attack) To design a game element around "what if a rogue can't sneak attack it?" is not something I think we should worry about. Also, I'm hesitant to use "if something happens to a minion twice" -type mechanics, because the entire point of minions is to make them "fire-and-forget".
2) I'm not sure if you missed it, but my rules have minions always doing MINIMUM damage, not average or half or whatever. So minion fireballs would do 1 point of damage per caster level, and minion archers would do 1+whatever bonus they have to damage per arrow. Do you think this is not enough? I had them doing minimum before I saw this thread, and I liked the "can't take a full-attack action" fix, but I was hesitant about doing both. The caster level thing is also a good idea, but I went with a reduction in save-DCs across the board instead (because, minion monsters might have things like breath weapons but not spells, so I thought the DC reduction was more universal)