D&D 4E Style Minions

[mayapuppies]

So I'm tossing around the idea of building D&D Style Minions for a setting rule.

 

Would it be easier just to build them with 1 Body and 1 STUN and be done with it, or would it be more representative to have them have a Vulnerability against all effects?

[Christopher]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

What are D&D Style Minions?

 

And why define them at all, if you want a "1 hit down" polic anyway?

 

Have you thought of rolling multiple characters into one sheet? Having a single 175 points squad isntead of 4 50 points Soldiers. Might need some immunity to stun (unless you asume the whole squad is so shocked when one is taken down, that they stop acting in any effective way).

[Escafarc]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

I would go with the Vulnerability(except from other Minions) myself.

[GestaltBennie]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

So I'm tossing around the idea of building D&D Style Minions for a setting rule.

 

Would it be easier just to build them with 1 Body and 1 STUN and be done with it, or would it be more representative to have them have a Vulnerability against all effects?

 

Take a look at the one-hit agents on p. 168 of VIPER: Coils of the Serpent.

[mayapuppies]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

What are D&D Style Minions?

 

And why define them at all, if you want a "1 hit down" polic anyway?

 

Have you thought of rolling multiple characters into one sheet? Having a single 175 points squad isntead of 4 50 points Soldiers. Might need some immunity to stun (unless you asume the whole squad is so shocked when one is taken down, that they stop acting in any effective way).

Essentially they are 1hp versions of full monsters but are immune to effects from "missed" attacks, such as "Half-Damage if target missed".

 

I'm working on a setting and I am wanting to include this as a template that can be stuck on to NPC's/Monsters as needed by the GM.

 

I would go with the Vulnerability(except from other Minions) myself.

This is what I'm thinking as well.

 

Take a look at the one-hit agents on p. 168 of VIPER: Coils of the Serpent.

I don't have that book and since I don't play supers campaigns, I likely won't ever get it.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Assuming you actually need to stat it out (you don't; you can just say 'these guys are one-hit villains'), you could just give them a Phys Lim of 'Minion', which makes them one-hit villains.

[Susano]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

I don't have that book and since I don't play supers campaigns' date=' I likely won't ever get it.[/quote']

 

Scott, it's page 166.

 

To sum up, the idea is you have 1-Hit, 2-Hit, 3-Hit Agents and the like. A 1-Hit agent goes down on any attack that hits his DCV. A 2-Hit automatically goes down on any attack that hits 1 above DCV. A 3-Hit is DCV +2. In other worlds, you have a set of minions with a DCV of 5. 10 are 1-Hit and go down from any attack that hits DCV 5. Four are 2-Hit and go down in any attack that hits DCV 6. 1 is a 3-Hit and only goes down if you hit DCV 7.

 

You can also lump minions into groups and treat the group as a character. The Mass Combat section in Fantasy Hero talks about this.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

I've toyed around with a, "minion" template. It would have reduced BODY, but a couple of extra points of Resistant PD and ED (with the SFX of receiving a superficial wound). I also wouldn't use hit locations - a low damage roll by the PC is an arm, leg, or other minor wound, and a good damage roll is a lethal blow.

 

However, the idea raises questions about proper character design for antagonists. How do you challenge the party without it turning into a grindfest where the PCs slowly whittle down their opposition?

[mayapuppies]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

The goal for these guys is allow for Diablo-esque mass slaughter of opponents. The Minion version of the monster hits just as hard as the "normal" version, but is slain easily. Thus you can have many many more of them assault the PC's.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

However, the idea raises questions about proper character design for antagonists. How do you challenge the party without it turning into a grindfest where the PCs slowly whittle down their opposition?

 

I ran a Fantasyhero over Easter weekend and I thought my lesser Goblins at 8 bod were going to go down easy, they only had 2 res def. The buggers lasted awhile. Yes, we used hit locations but my players either a) rolled an 11 which is the chest and armor. They rolled arms which is half damage.

[Sean Waters]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

So I'm tossing around the idea of building D&D Style Minions for a setting rule.

 

Would it be easier just to build them with 1 Body and 1 STUN and be done with it, or would it be more representative to have them have a Vulnerability against all effects?

 

If you actually want them to be one hit wonders, then give then no defence and 1 Body and 1 Stun: a vulnerability makes a one-hit likely but does not guarantee it. Or, perhaps better yet, do what Crosshair Collie suggested and have a 'Minion' physical limitation (Fully limiting, Frequent). that way you are not artificially deflating the value of the character. Another alternative (assuming teh aim is to reduce paperwork for the GM not to make knocking down minions easy) is to make the Minions low Body Automatons. That way you can ignore stun damage and only worry about Body.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

My friend when he gms just goes by the dice roll. Basically if you roll a 3,4, or 5 then they go down automatically. It doesn't make them one hits per se, but does reward a player for rolling well.

[Bolon]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Hey dude, you are the GM or whatever you wish to call it. If you make one hit wonders and want to run it like 4th Ed D&D, do it and just make it a rule. I would just use a large tracking sheet for minions or agents and just do it. It is the flavour you want, then make it so. Your call and if you don't like it, or the players don't, just revamp the game. The rules are a suggestion so you don't have arguments and can have a common understanding. If you can all agree to the one hit minions and they all know it, it would give a great flavour especially to simulate the idea of tough strong powerful heroes. It's your game and just do it.

 

I would make some rules on when they appear versus not appearing just so your players don't screw up the tactics and attack a large group of regular monsters thinking most go down in one hit. You don't want to blindside your players. You could make it so the mindless cannon fodder are the minions but individuals or monsters with individual actions or outfitting would be standard. Therefore it should be obvious when the big nasty has minions or not.

[Tasha]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

So I'm tossing around the idea of building D&D Style Minions for a setting rule.

 

Would it be easier just to build them with 1 Body and 1 STUN and be done with it, or would it be more representative to have them have a Vulnerability against all effects?

 

I just leave minions at base 20 stun, 8 body and no more than 3 pd and ed (+ at most 3rPD/rED armor) and call them a "one Shot" minion. Which I usually define as doing average damage for that genre and campaign (ie a DC7 game would be 24 stun rolled on a die). I don't keep track of stun, If the hit was less than average then it takes another hit to KO the individual. You could potentially do the same thing with BODY of minions, but honestly I wouldn't bother. Knocked out is not getting back up in a Fantasy game (unless you want PC's that go around slitting the throats of unconscious beings). KOed in most modern and scifi genre games = not going to prison.

[Lucius]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Minion: (Total: 35 Active Cost, -22 Real Cost)

Takes No STUN (60 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (BOD score halved; -2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Attacks that succeed by 4 pts ignore defenses; -2), Always On (-1/2) (Real Cost: 11)

plus

No Hit Locations (10 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (BOD score halved; -2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Attacks that succeed by 4 pts ignore defenses; -2) (Real Cost: 2)

plus

Susceptibility: Any attack succeeding by 3 or more 3d6 damage Instant, An attack succceeding by 2 does 2d6, 1 does 1d6, Standard Effect: 1 BOD per die (-25 Active Points) (Real Cost: -25)

plus

Accidental Change: Hors de combat: incapacitating attack rolled at -8 (-10 Active Points) (Real Cost: -10)

 

Applying this power to a character means:

 

Immunities: Character takes no STUN damage, cannot be stunned or knocked out, nor impaired or disabled, nor is the Hit Location chart used to modify damage.

 

Defense: Cut to 1/3

 

BOD: Cut to 1/2, also considered dead at 0 BOD

 

When attacked: Any to hit roll that succeeds by

1 pt: does 1 extra BOD damage (even if did not penetrate defenses)

2 pt: does 2 BOD damage over and above the damage done by the attack if any

3 pt: does 3 "bonus" BOD damage as above

> 3 pt: as above but ignore defenses

 

If someone actually wants to take a minion alive: an attack with a -8 penalty and appropriate description (targetting the head for a knockout, the legs to immobilize, etc) will leave a minion out of the fight but still alive.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is nosing around for the mini-onions it keeps hearing about

[bigbywolfe]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Lucius, that's almost as good as your "bad at combat" martial arts package.

[Lucius]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Lucius' date=' that's almost as good as your "bad at combat" martial arts package.[/quote']

 

Thanks. When I aim to be awful it seems I succeed.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary professes to be in awe

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

If you're designating them as one-hit wonders, you don't even need to fuss with computing their Body, Stun and Defenses; the only defensive stat that matters is DCV (and maybe ECV, depending on if the PCs have mental powers).

[Norm]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Not really into the SuperPower thing, so I do not know if this is even possible as I do not play with a bunch of fancy write-ups. I may have even read it somewhere.

 

How about expanding a bit on what Susano said about treating the group/squad as a creature?

1. Some sort of multi-limb with autofire (hit limit on the number of limbs). Should also make it easier to roll up (I think). Any 'limb' that takes damage is destroyed. Almost like some skeleton write-ups somewhere.

 

2. A creature that has a no-range AoE attack (minion swarm). Creature size (and AoE) is dependant on the number of Body left.

 

I should not be thinking and trying to write this late at night.

[Christopher]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Not really into the SuperPower thing, so I do not know if this is even possible as I do not play with a bunch of fancy write-ups. I may have even read it somewhere.

 

How about expanding a bit on what Susano said about treating the group/squad as a creature?

1. Some sort of multi-limb with autofire (hit limit on the number of limbs). Should also make it easier to roll up (I think). Any 'limb' that takes damage is destroyed. Almost like some skeleton write-ups somewhere.

 

2. A creature that has a no-range AoE attack (minion swarm). Creature size (and AoE) is dependant on the number of Body left.

 

I should not be thinking and trying to write this late at night.

Especially the later idea reminds me of how Deathwatch (Warhammer 40k Elite Space Marines) is handeled. To even chalenge the "heroes" normal people actually have to attack in hordes. These "hordes" have no value like "X people". They have a Magnitude.

The magnitude is how many attacks they have. You don't deal damage to a single target in a horde or even to a group of beings in the horde. You have to directly attack the Magnitude Score of the horde (evey attack causes one magnitude loss, some like AOE attacks or Autofire weapons deal more).

[mayapuppies]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Thanks everyone, I have a lot to think about on this.

[Wolfgar Lyles]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Scott, it's page 166.

 

To sum up, the idea is you have 1-Hit, 2-Hit, 3-Hit Agents and the like. A 1-Hit agent goes down on any attack that his his DCV. A 2-Hit automatically goes down on any attack that his 1 above DCV. A 3-Hit is DCV +2. In other worlds, you have a set of minions with a DCV of 5. 10 are 1-Hit and go down from any attack that hits DCV 5. Four are 2-Hit and go down in any attack that hits DCV 6. 1 is a 3-Hit and only goes down if you hit DCV 7.

 

Just ignoring Defenses, STUN, and BODY and doing this seems the most elegant solution.

[Markdoc]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

The initial suggestion - make them low STUN and BOD - seems to me to be the best. In my games, minions, by definition are not kamikazes who fight to the death: if they get KO'ed, they don't spring to their feet as soon as they get a recovery and get back into the fight. They either feign death, lie around moaning, or, if possible, creep away. From the player's point of view, it doesn't actually matter if they are surrounded by 20 corpses or 20 unconscious bodies, who will flee if/when they recover. Either way, the enemy is defeated and the ground is littered with bodies.

 

The reason I don't like tweaking the rules to generate minions, is that it encourages the players to go for twinky low-cost builds, which devastate vast swathes of minions, but (for example) can't damage a normal house door and leave an angry dog largely unscathed. You get the sort of logic trap where the PCs confront a mob of armed guards and then go "Watch out, one of them's got a housecat!". You also get the rather silly situation where a bunch of housewives armed with fish-scalers are more or less as threatening as the king's guard, all clad in plate harness.

 

Essentially, by making one-hit wonders, you are compressing the bottom of the scale so that the leap from minion to "ordinary soldier" is orders of magnitude.

 

The real trick to making fall-down-minions is (in addition to low STUN and low BOD) low DCV and low defences do that PCs can (with some confidence) use tricks like called shot, multiattack, or area effect attacks to drop them in swathes.

 

cheers, Mark

[Wolfgar Lyles]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

The reason I don't like tweaking the rules to generate minions, is that it encourages the players to go for twinky low-cost builds, which devastate vast swathes of minions, but (for example) can't damage a normal house door and leave an angry dog largely unscathed. You get the sort of logic trap where the PCs confront a mob of armed guards and then go "Watch out, one of them's got a housecat!". You also get the rather silly situation where a bunch of housewives armed with fish-scalers are more or less as threatening as the king's guard, all clad in plate harness.

 

Well, there your mistake isn't in making the guards so fragile, it's in making the fishwives and housecats so tough. Obviously if it's not meant to be a serious threat or challenge to the players and you are using these minion style of rules, it makes sense to just make everything that isn't supposed to be challenging wet cardboard. Whether it matters for the low end to be so compressed is if the PCs are routinely fighting mobs of guards and housewives in the same day, and chances are that they aren't. So it's mostly theoretical.

[Markdoc]

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

 

Well' date=' there your mistake isn't in making the guards so fragile, it's in making the fishwives and housecats so tough. Obviously if it's not meant to be a serious threat or challenge to the players and you are using these minion style of rules, it makes sense to just make everything that isn't supposed to be challenging wet cardboard. Whether it matters for the low end to be so compressed is if the PCs are routinely fighting mobs of guards and housewives in the same day, and chances are that they aren't. So it's mostly theoretical.[/quote']

 

If it's theoretical, why bother having a minion rule at all? The very existence of such a rule means that it is expected to be relevant.

 

Your suggestion that everything apart from challenges be wet cardboard makes sense - but it also makes the point that the GM is going to have to do a lot of rewriting, or accept that frequently his game is going to throw up yuk-yuk inducing illogical results - swords that can slice steel like it was butter ... but only some of the time, and depending on who's holding it.

 

Basically, it's usually more of a problem than a solution: one of the advantages of Hero is that it scales very well. Whacking the bottom off the scale and saying "Either it's a boss or it's background" does not make much sense to me.

 

cheers, Mark