Simple 2-hit Minions
Posted in Site Stuff on March 10th, 2010
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I like the idea of minions which require two hits to kill, but it sacrifices a major strength of the minion concept: that the DM literally has to track nothing as far as hit points go for them.
So here’s an idea for 2-hit minions.
1. A standing minion which is hit is knocked prone and its miniature tipped over.
2. A prone minion is considered bloodied.
3. A prone minion which is hit is killed.
On their turn, the minions may stand up as usual. Alternatively, if you don’t mind giving up the easy tracking of prone status, you could tip minions to show that they’re bloodied. I kinda like it like this, though; adds a bit of a sense of urgency, since the PCs have to try to kill them before they get their turn.
In my group, I used the bloodied = 1 hit left on minions…seemed to work easy enough…
we use bottle caps under miniatures for bloodied status and my players are responsible for managing the caps as I tell them which creature is now bloodied…
Also, letting them roll damage let’s them keep the illusion the creatures aren’t minions, only low hp creatures…
My group places a small poker chip under minions to indicate bloodied.
I like it!
And welcome back…
I like this idea. I’d only modify it to have crits always kill a minion. My players are often disappointed when they crit a minion because they feel it was wasted. Having a 2-hit minion with a crit exception would alleviate that.
@Steve Thanks, but I wouldn’t get any hopes up… :/
@Jeff Good idea, crits should definitely one-shot minions using this rule.
When my players crit a minion I usually make up something randomly awesome that they did in addition to their attack. Like, if there’s more minions around, they might kill some of them too. Or knock a minion’s head so far it hits some other enemy. Or so much blood sprays on the guy behind him that he’s blinded. Random GM fiat. No real mechanic behind it. But they enjoy it. This, of course, only works in some groups.
I think this is a good idea, but in practice any strikers in your party may not like it. If a striker is doing a bucket of damage, but it only has the same effect as if a controller pokes it with some crazy AoE blast, that might upset ‘em.
Same problem as with regular minions, but this exacerbates the problem.
@yatesc Indeed, I have noticed that problem before. I ran a game with only 2 players and on the fly dabbled with 2 hit minions… and it did indeed feel wrong to me that the barbarian and cleric were doing essentially the same damage.
Potentially this could be fixed by allowing the striker’s ‘extra’ damage to count as a separate hit… That requires a bit of adjudication in some cases for strikers who don’t have an explicit extra damage ability, e.g. barbarians and avengers. Barbarians might always kill minions in 2 hits, and avengers would if both of their attack rolls using the oath of enmity beat the minion’s defense.
I don’t think you need to change it because a striker does more damage. If an adult and a child step on 2 separate bugs, they would both kill them. The adult wouldn’t do any more damage because he’s more powerful. It’s the bugs fault for being too weak… LOL
What I created was something called an elite minion, which is basically a 2 hit minion. I gave the minion, depending on the tier of play, a damage threshold. If a hit damages the minion beyond this threshold it still instantly dies but if it doesn’t, then it becomes bloodied instead and then becomes a regular minion with all the same rules regarding them. (a miss doesn’t damage it, and so on)
you can check it out here:
http://anuglystick.blogspot.com/2010/03/elite-minions.html
an ugly stick´s last blog ..animated dragon taxidermy
The goal of a minion is to hit someone. If a minion is prone, it cannot hit anyone. Thus, killing it is just a waste of time. But then, if you don”t kill it, it rise again and – again – need two hits to be killed.
So you can continue again and again, and your minion never dies. It seems there is a loophole here
(I like “an ugly stick”‘s idea – it plays with conditions a bit more naturally ; of course, it is less visible than the “knock prone” minion, but there isn’t any loophole).
Best regards ! (and thanks for sharing your ideas)
Emmanuel Deloget´s last blog ..Passage par twitter…
I prep index cards for my initiative deck each week, and will typically run all of the minions for each encounter in the same spot in the initiative. My normal initiative card has
NAME
defenses // speed
attack (+N vs DEF; dmg; condition)
skills
initiative order
but for minions I have
NAME
defenses // speed
attack (+N vs DEF; dmg; condition)
and then a row of checkboxes, one for each minion
A single slash is a hit, and the slash becomes an X on a kill. Sometimes if I’m feeling ornery I add an aura to the leader of the fight that gives nearby minions “resist 10 all damage” so that weak hits don’t land.
I used minions that had the old Displacement rules applied to them (50% miss chance). They were much more entertaining. Players were wasting many more powers trying to deal with them than just laughing at them. Even funnier, the players didn’t seem to think they were minions for at least 5 rounds. Try it out!