Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 45 - Using Minions from D&D 4E to Make Combat Better

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

A lot of people dismiss D&D 4th Edition as a mistake but there were a lot of good aspects to that version of the game.  One of them was minions which were simplified monsters used in tandem with bosses and boss fights.  In this episode Jeremy suggests that bringing the concept back can spice up combat encounters.

Before I get started on this episode, I wanted to thank one of my listeners, Mike, who corrected something from episode 44. I mistakenly said that the movie Aliens was made by Ridley Scott, when in reality it was directed by James Cameron. Ridley Scott directed the first movie, Alien, not the second one, Aliens. Thank you so much, Mike. You are absolutely correct, and I am sorry about that. Thank you for letting me know. This has been the first, but most definitely won't be the last, instance of Jeremy is a Moron. Now, on to the episode. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 45, using minions from 4th edition D&D to make your combat better. Our sponsor this week is voting. Listen, I don't give a damn who you vote for or what party you

identify with. In the United States, our national elections are this week. Voting is your method of making your voice heard, so get out there and vote. A couple of quick announcements before we get started. Number one, we are on YouTube. Just as a reminder, go to YouTube, do a search for The Taking 20 Podcast. Stop on by, subscribe, and we put the audio from all of our episodes up there, so it's just another way you can consume this content. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell everybody about The Taking 20 Podcast, both on YouTube and on our home at www.taking20podcast.com. We'd love to get more listeners and we'd love to get more traffic, but we need your help to do it. Thanks in advance for any help that you can give. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition gets a really bad rap. I mean, it had interesting classes

and abilities. It was a complete rebellion against the complexities of 3e and 3.5e. They simplified a lot of the rules and a lot of the concepts, so I'm not a big proponent of version hating, so don't hate on 4e too hard. 4e had some good ideas, and just like anything else, borrow the stuff that works or that you like from other campaigns and other editions and other game systems and insert them into your campaign. 4e was described as kind of video gamey, but that doesn't mean it was a giant turd sandwich with nothing good in it. One thing that was good in 4E was this concept of minions. I love minions and I use them in my games periodically, regardless of the gaming system I'm

running. So let me start this whole episode by saying, minions have nothing to do with those little yellow things that are in memes all the time and they act like idiots and they talk in gibberish from the movies. Of course, if you want to create a couple hundred of those for your party to slaughter, who am I to judge? Knock yourself out. So let's define what a minion was from 4th edition. A minion was a monster role that served as a disposable frontline combatant. It was meant to be used in large groups to try to overwhelm the party. Minions are vulnerable in all types of combat, especially against area of effect spells. All of them had

the same ability scores, statistics, initiative bonus, AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, and they are all based on the level of the minion. There was one important difference between a minion and a regular combatant. All minions only have one hit point. Minions are meant to represent the ways of henchmen a villain could throw at the party. Low-level cultists who surround the high priest, goblin warriors on a battlefield, snakes for a super brood mother. At higher levels, stronger creatures, ogres, even ettins or low-level giants can be treated as minions. Any situation where tracking the individual status, hit points, and abilities of all of these little low-level creatures would simply be overwhelming for the DM and largely unnecessary. Using them as minions allows DMs to have a large number of combatants on the field while keeping her sanity.

Minions are an abstract concept, and they represent a creature even if the hit point statistics aren't realistic. They're always creatures of a much lower level than the party, and they represent creatures that pose very, very little threat to the party overall. Creatures that likely could be killed in one, maybe two hits. So why only one hit point for each minion? It's a way to reduce bookkeeping. That way, as soon as the minion takes any damage from failing a save from a fireball, an arrow to the face, psychic damage, whatever, they're removed from the battlefield. They're taken out of combat. The DM doesn't have to keep track of, this one has three hit points left, while the blue-robed one still has six hit points, the one with a scar over his eye is weakened but at full hit points, and so on and so on and so on.

They're cannon fodder, meant to die easily but still present a modest level of threat. They can still attack, they can still damage, there's still a lot of attack rolls associated with them. PCs, once they reach a certain level, they're near unkillable by low level creatures. Barring a lack of healing or incredibly stupid tactics, when's the last time you've had a level 10 PC die to a CR1 skeleton? It just doesn't happen. Well, let me correct that. It can happen, and it's happened before, but boy is it rare. The PCs, by and large, are going to mop the floor with these low level creatures. They might as well be cutting wheat with a scythe. By making these creatures minions, you still give the PCs the feeling of being these unstoppable badasses

without having to keep a 100-row spreadsheet of current creature statuses and hit points. Rolling out minions allows you to put a large number of combatants on the battlefield at one time. Initially, this many opponents will make the PCs nervous. The lizard folk leader points his holy staff in the PC's direction and yells something in a language you don't understand. The throng of his worshippers turn your direction and run, screaming with hate in their eyes. They're coming to kill you. The players stare at the digital battle map in horror as dozens of combatant icons appear. I need your initiatives, please. battle map in horror as dozens of combatant icons appear. I need your initiatives, please.

Before long, the PCs will damage one and it'll drop very quickly. They'll realize that each one of these creatures doesn't have a lot of hit points, but it does make them stop and strategize, and that's what you're going for. Suddenly, the PCs have to think how they're going to take out this horde of tissue paper lizardmen. One cuts a PC with a lucky attack roll, the sorcerer drops a fireball that kills 10 of them, the barbarian whirlwinds PC with a lucky attack roll, the sorcerer drops a fireball that kills 10 of them, the barbarian whirlwinds and takes out four more, and the battle is on. Now if you want to use minions, there are three important things to account for. In 5th edition, sleep spells affect a certain number of hit points of creatures. For the purposes of the sleep spell and anything that affects something by hit points,

give the creatures their actual hit points rather than one, otherwise the sleep spell becomes stupid overpowered. 2. Minions don't take damage if an attack misses, even if the player has an ability that does damage on a missed attack. And 3. For spells that allow a saving throw for half damage, minions take no damage on a successful save. By using those three rules or those three things to account for for minions, it makes minions a potential threat to PCs, and it changes combat up. So how I typically use minions in 4th edition was by giving them to a boss to distract the heroes from attacking the

main guy. In previous episodes, I've talked about action economy a lot. If you have one big bad going against a group of four PCs, depending on the game system you use, the party will have a 12 to 3 or 16 to 4 advantage on the number of actions they can take each round. By sheer number of actions, the party is at a huge advantage. Minions draw character attention and actions away from the big bad, thereby giving your big bad a greater chance of living to use some of his or her amazing abilities. By no means am I suggesting you make every underling a minion. Every big bad has important lieutenants, assistants, spellcasters, and other interesting opponents that you should

make more fleshed out than a minion. Give them actual hit points. Clashes with these assistants or lieutenants should feel more difficult, more epic if you will. Minions are just for the rank and file rabble that the big bad evil guy employs. They should be creatures which are many many levels less than the PCs and they honestly are usually very low-level creatures, but they don't have to be. More on that in a moment. There's some caveats to using them, though. 4th edition was built for this minion concept, while other systems aren't. Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, 5e, and so forth. So the first time you use them, use them with caution. It's so easy to go overboard and put too many on the battlefield.

Oh, the minions only have one hit point, so I can have an ocean of them and the party will just mop them up. Slow your roll just a little bit. Against a party of five level four PCs, I would throw maybe a CR4 and three to four minions at a party. Start small, ramp them up as you learn how they work in your game and how they will affect your party. If you start with something like 12 minions on the board at the same time, the action economy equation flips against the PCs. 36 actions for the bad guys versus 12 for the PCs. Now the baddies may win out simply because of number of actions. It's action economy all over again. Now if you want to go hog on minions and you feel very comfortable doing so,

a 4 to 1 ratio minions to PCs is a good starting point. 4 PCs against a big bad and 16 minions bring the pain. Let's do this. I wouldn't put all 16 minions on the board at once though. I love the threat timer idea that was discussed by HankerInferndale on his YouTube channel and I'll put a link in the notes page on www.taking20podcast.com. Have a dice on the table. D4 is the one I usually use, set to a certain number for everyone to see. Every round, it counts down by one. So it was three, now it's two. The next round starts, now it's one. Next round starts, now it's zero. And when that number hits zero, more minions show up. Continue until you run out of your planned minion count. It keeps the map from getting crowded, keeps the characters

from getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that are going on, and it keeps you as the DM from having to track actions and positions of so many different minions. I'm going to stop this concept right now because I want to do an entire episode on using various types of combat timers in the future, so be on the lookout for that. Now, minions aren't perfect. There are some flaws with the minion concept. Giving all minions one hit point makes them extremely vulnerable to spells that do area of effect damage. Drop a fireball and it might kill 12 of them. Throw a lightning bolt and it might kill 6 or 7. Flaming sphere can just take one after another after another out. Similar spells absolutely wreck minion face. One of the

rules is that if the minion makes his or her saving throw, he or she takes no damage. That keeps things at least a little bit on the level. Now there's all sorts of suggestions out there to try to combat this whole one hit point thing to make them a little more robust. One suggestion I've read is to give them a percentage of their max hit points instead of one. At that point, if you're giving them 40% of their max hit points, you might as well start tracking a full creature again because you're not really gaining a lot of the benefits of a minion. I've seen some creative suggestions like grouping creatures together. Like you have three bugbears that you want to use as minions. The book says bugbears have 27 hit points, so you divide 27 by the three

bugbears and each one only has nine hit points. Again, I think that undoes the benefit of minions at that point. You might as well start tracking them as individual creatures. So a side effect, one hit point is not believable really if you're going for that immersion. They become porcelain bad guys. They make a beautiful initial impression, but they're very delicate and break easy. If players figure out that the little baddies have only one hit point, they're going to strategize accordingly. It may even break their immersion a bit. Another potential flaw is that most game systems simply aren't built for the concept. 50 level 2 goblin archers can cause

problems for characters in 5th edition and Pathfinder. Low level creatures can still be a threat to even high level PCs. In non-4e game systems, there may be similar capabilities like horde monsters or swarm traits or something similar. Those are theoretically balanced for the game system and those may meet your needs instead of using the Minion concept. But keep this Minion idea in the back of your head. Matt Colville, who is a DM that I respect, he is amazing, he is brilliant, I love listening to his game theory, and I would love the chance to discuss game theory with him. He has a great video where he mentions this topic and some other aspects of 4th edition that can be brought to 5th edition. It's in his Running the Game series on his YouTube channel.

I believe it's episode number 27. I'll put a link on the links page, just like I did the other one. Minions are a way to add some variety and challenge to your combats. It's easy for combat to get stale and boring. Swing, hit, swing, miss, swing, miss, I'm done. Next, swing, hit, swing, miss, swing, miss, I'm done, next, swing, hit, swing, miss, swing, miss, he's done, next. So if you want to spice things up a little bit, find a big bad evil guy that would otherwise be a solo fight for the party and give him or her a few minions.

Try it. Adjust the hit points you give them if you like, scale their abilities up or down as needed, make your characters sweat a little bit. They may grouse at first, but I guarantee they'll be happy for the variety. Short episode this week, and I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen. As a reminder, our sponsor has been voting. If you don't vote, quit your bitching about politics. This has been Taking 20, episode 45, using minions from 4th edition D&D to make your combat better. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.