I really like the way that Toughness works in Savage Worlds. If you've never seen the books, it goes like this...
Your damage is compared to a Toughness score. If it's equal, the target is Shaken (no actions besides making a Spirit roll to recover). If you beat the Toughness by four, you take the target down.
This could be easily applied to minion monsters to make them a little more interesting in a fight. The minion would have a damage score, and when you beat it, it inflicts a condition on the minion. I would want to set the damage score to the level of an average At Will to immobilize, and the average damage-focused Encounter/Daily to kill outright. It gets a save against its conditions just like any other monster.
The idea is to give the party some interesting choices. They can burn a damage power to have a good chance of killing the mook. They could immobilize it with a At Will, move past and mess up the controller or artillery. They could team up or spend an action point to put it out of commission in one round with two At Wills. A Rogue with combat advantage could possibly take it down in one round.
So the stat block would look something like this:
Vampire Spawn Fleshripper
Level 5 Mook
Medium natural humanoid
Initiative +6
Senses Perception +4; darkvision
Damage Score: 13, immobilized. 20, slain.
AC 20; Fortitude 17, Reflex 18, Will 17
Immune disease, poison; Resist 5 necrotic
Speed 7, climb 4 (spider climb)
Claws (standard, at-will) ✦ Necrotic
+11 vs. AC; 5 necrotic damage (7 necrotic damage against a bloodied target).
I'm assuming that characters of levels 5-7 will take this thing on. They've probably got +4 main stats, +1 or +2 weapons/implements, level 5 dailies, and maybe level 7 encounters.
I'll make a wild-ass guess that the character's good damaging powers will dish out between 15-25 damage. Their at-wills will be whacking around 13 damage. If they at-will a coup de grace while it's immobilized, they'll certainly hit the 20 they need to kill it.
Characters with damage type that matches a mook's vulnerability would burn through them faster than the rest of the party, giving them a nice spotlight moment. I'd figure one mook would be worth two minions for purposes of encounter balance and XP.
So, poke some holes in this idea, find reasons it won't be fun, kick the tires, etc. Thanks!
Okay now that we've got that post out of the way...
Seriously an in-between the mook, sorry minion and the normal creatures isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes it adds more bookkeeping compared to a regular mook. (sorry True20 the last long while and minion = mook to me).
If an average roll for the level range will typically take down a mook (your term now) the on average it's still a one shot mob. Barring crappy rolls on the part of your player's damage then for all intents an purposes your mooks are just minions. But when they fail their damage rolls or get low ones this gives them a chance to go, "WTH? I thought those were minions?! One hit kills!" And you can smile and go, "Maybe not so much."
I'm finding 4th Edition minions more fragile than True20's Mooks. In t20 the minions have to fail their toughness roll after they're hit so that's two chances to avoid death. In 4th edition pretty much any to-hit roll kills them.
Essentially you have the T20 Mook here, I'm not familiar with the Savage worlds mook but this something I'm perfectly willing to give a shot to help fill in the gaps between one roll kills and regular mobs.
And I'd agree, making these worth two minions in cost sounds about right.
Characters with damage type that matches a mook's vulnerability would burn through them faster than the rest of the party, giving them a nice spotlight moment.
Just gotta say, that is probably the thing I like most about this idea. As such, I have to recommend that you plop a little Vulnerable Radiant 5 on your fleshripper example there.
So to make a detailed explanation summed up, each Mook has a (lets call a spade a spade) a Toughness value. Unless it takes damage equal to or greater than that value, it doesn't die. The Toughness value (in the OP's case) would be two fold. One value = to the average At-Will damage would immobilize the Mook. The second slighly higher value would kill the Mook.
And a simpler version (not necessarily better) is that each Mook has a Toughness value. Until takes damage equal to or greater than that value it continues to stay in play. The Toughness value would be equal to or slightly greater than the average damage a character of the same level would cause using an At - Will power.
So a first level Mook would (option a) have perhaps a Immobilize of 4 and a Death of 6? Or (option b) would simply have a Death of 5.
No extra bookkeeping other than the Immobilize effect to remember and with option b you wouldn't even have that.
It's definitely a valid option IMO and one I'll certainly be using the more I think about it. And my players are already familiar with the concept of Toughness so no issues there for me personally, you and yours of course might feel differently. And that's okay.
D
It would remove all possible book keeping, since you wouldn't need be modifying anything at all (other than they should be only allowed to do it once per encounter...
so:
Minion Life (special, encounter)
When a minion would be killed it makes a save. If successful the minion does not die. This power can never be regained through any means; once used it's gone.
One of the things I've missed so far in 4e is the feeling of tearing through bad guys with a well-designed build. Minions are supposed to be there for that purpose, but since you know they will always go down as long as you hit them, the reward for killing a few of them doesn't feel the same. Minions are like getting the Participation ribbon on field day, all you have to do is show up. This mook idea might be a good replacement for that, and a nice fill between minion and regular creature. I'll have to test it out.
GrogMcGee:
Giving minions a "Save Or Die" will make them tougher, but doesn't introduce any new choices to the players. If they don't go down once, just Scorching Burst them again. One of the things I don't like about 1 hp minions is that there's no critical hit (or just massive damage) bonus. It would make cool stunts like swinging from the chandelier and knocking them out the window more cool, since they're gone and don't get the save. I do like that you could just flip a coin while the player is rolling and resolve it's save.
DanmarLOK:
Didn't know True20 did it too. I'm going to see if they have any books down at the FLGS that might have some ideas I could use. (I'm stealing this idea from Savage Worlds, after all.)
You are correct in assuming that there's no book keeping involved, or at least there isn't the way I would do it. The whole idea is that you can put enemies out there that don't take up time and space on the DM scratch paper. If you only give them one status effect (whether it's stunned, dazed, immobilized, helpless, etc), you can keep track of it by putting their minis on their sides, and standing them back up when they save.
ElJeffeX:
Oops. I meant to use "Helpless", in my example above. That would make them targets for coup de grace. But Dazed is fine choice too. I imagine the exact condition (or no condition, just death) inflicted could just be noted in the minion/mook's stat block. You could even double up on conditions, but I'd have one save end both.
So here's a second proposed stat block. Let's just say minion for now, but it could be elite minion (contradiction in terms?), mook, whatever.
Vampire Spawn Fleshripper
Level 5 Minion
Medium natural humanoid
Initiative +6
Senses Perception +4; darkvision
Toughness: 13, immobilized and helpless; save ends both. 20, slain.
AC 20; Fortitude 17, Reflex 18, Will 17
Immune disease, poison; Resist 5 necrotic; Vulnerability 5 radiant
Speed 7, climb 4 (spider climb)
Claws (standard, at-will) ✦ Necrotic
+11 vs. AC; 5 necrotic damage (7 necrotic damage against a bloodied target).
It is nice and simple but that puts the onus back on the DM to do the save rather than player? It's a subtle difference but I think (no playtesting yet) that putting the responsibility on the player to do X amount damage will be better for the overall feel? Rather than "Damnit, the DM rolled high and my hit didn't kill it!" with a standard save you get "Damnit! I didn't hit it hard enough!" if it's the player who needs to roll well to succeed.
Mechanically they work out to the same thing but experience wise I think having the player succeed or fail is better than having the DM succeed or fail?
Or am I reading too much into it?
If the idea is to make minions not autokills why not just give them a save. Ie, minions after a certain level gain a save vs being killed.
It would remove all possible book keeping, since you wouldn't need be modifying anything at all (other than they should be only allowed to do it once per encounter...
so:
Minion Life (special, encounter)
When a minion would be killed it makes a save. If successful the minion does not die. This power can never be regained through any means; once used it's gone.
The other way to do the save would be to make it that you have to roll an 18-19 to save the minion from death, @ Paragon the widens to 17-20, and then @ epic is widens to 16-20; sort of like a the Death "saving-throw". Makes them more fragile which is a good thing- and you could have some fun with the flavor when you (as the DM) roll high.
But all in all a minion HP does sort of feel more correct from the PC side of things.
I however, see no reason to go beyond saying they have xHP verses xTougness since that merely a semenatic difference that means absolutely nothing.
Still, I had an idea looming in the back of my mind for some time to make the minions more resilient whilst simultaneously avoiding bookeeping without modifying their defenses or attacks.
Basically, it would borrow a system from an old tabletop roleplaying boardgame called Darkworld.
In this game to kill a monster you had to roll damage equivalent or higher to its hp total. However, if you rolled lower, you would not wound the creature, and you did not have to keep track of its hit points, just how much damage was dealt to it on an attack.
Thus, if a goblin had 3hp, you had to roll 3 damage or more to kill it. Any less and it would still be alive. Even if you rolled a 2 it would not go down to 1 hp, it would still have 3 hp and it would still take 3 or more damage to kill it.
Such a system would not be too unbalanced to use in the 4e minions, really. Think of it as hit points used as a sort of "secondary AC".
So you could have a minion with, say 12 hit points, and only 12 damage or more would kill the creature, any less and it would still be alive, kicking, and still effectively at full hp.
The only thing that would need to be kept track of is a way to balance out the minion hp levels so that generally there is a good chance that the damage dealt in a single attack will down it according to player level. While 12 damage at early levels is feasible, it's far too easy at later levels, where damage goes quite high.
Typically, it would have to have enough hit points to ensure that it has about a 40-50% chance of surviving on a hit.
Could this work?
Thus, if a goblin had 3hp, you had to roll 3 damage or more to kill it. Any less and it would still be alive. Even if you rolled a 2 it would not go down to 1 hp, it would still have 3 hp and it would still take 3 or more damage to kill it.
I really like this. Maintains the zero-bookkeeping nature of minions' HP, but toughens them up just a little.
What would their HP be? Equal to level? Or equivalent to the Toughness feat (5 per tier)?
Example, I ran a playtest with 4 'mooks' aka upgraded minions and set their toughness (your terminology may vary here) to 5. All four were killed with one shot. Why? Lance of Flame = 1d8+Wis = 5 damage minimum. Rogue's attacks were 1d6+4 damage = 5 damage minimum.
So my current thinking is: start with a base of 4. Check the At-Will's for your players and compute their average damage based on dice rolls only. Average that. Add that average of the average to the base of 4.
So for my playtest with the rogue and cleric against 4 mooks (and a sharpshooter but that's another story) I redid it with the mooks having a toughness of 8 this time. And now finally I got the effect I was looking for. Two of the mooks went down with one hit. One took two hits and the third one due to low rolls lasted three hits.
Frankly after playtesting more, I'm just going to make all Minions use this mechanic. It feels better to me and my players actually enjoyed it more since it added a lot more 'mystery' to the battle where instead of just knowing that if they're facing a several creatures they 'know' that most of them will die in one hit. Now if a creature doesn't die in a hit, is it because of the damage they rolled or is it because it's a normal creature?
YMMV of course.
You could have mooks give slightly more exp than normal minions. Plus the laws of probability say that by the time you've made your fifth roll you're just short of guaranteed to get the damage you need.
Anyway, 5 or 6 rolls is about what a normal monster needs, and since minions already have almost 0 bookkeeping having them last longer won't hurt.
I'll give you a hint Minions rely on math to be balanced.
It's assumed that you should be hitting them with consitency. Drop the AC on the Mooks and you'll hit them slightly more often, thus get a few more chances to kill them.
You're in house rules. If you can't be costructive take your *****iness elsewhere.
The idea is to give the party some interesting choices.
I like the concept, and also some of the adjustments that have been tossed around. I think this will add some interest and flavor for my players. Thanks!
Danmar, if you do that... you're making the game far more dangerous for PC's than it should be and cheating them out of XP. Especially if you make all minions follow that mechanic. What happens when you have a single minion (who is supposed to die in one hit) that sticks around for 100 pts of "damage" due to low rolls?
*shrug* Then I adjust it as needed. And I give that minion a MVP plaque and a proper euology when he does finally go down. And it makes for a very memorable fight for the players.
I do have a lot of experience GM'ing (28 years across multiple genres and platforms including DnD from 1980 ) so no I'm not going to just tpk a party because they're rolling low. See they don't know what monster is what so if things get out of hand due to laws of improbable dice rolling, then the balancing force, aka me, steps in and equalizes the imbalance.
I've used mooks in another game that employed _exactly_ this mechanism. One roll to hit, one roll to see if destroyed (True20) and other systems use similar systems as well.
And after playtesting more, with my players (YMMV), they prefer this method. None of the four enjoyed the one hit to rule them all of the official minion. The dragonborn who used her racial power to sweep away a herd of minions in a encounter said, "Uh, that was anti-climatic. And I get to do this every fight?".
And that's when it struck me what was bothering me about about DnD4's minions, they ARE anti-climatic instead of cinematic for us.
In terms of 'cheating' them out of experience, I guess you're saying that this makes them harder to kill and thus they should be worth more experience. That's a valid point for a lot of play groups and if they feel that's so then simply up the exp to 50 or 75 (scale as needed for higher levels). Or just use the Minions as is.
But our group, my players, have possibly a non-common philosophy, leveling is second place to virtually the rest of the game. It's the journey not the destination.
Or in other terms, each of us are much more likely to explore a zone from end to end just to see what's there rather than use a leveling guide to hit 70 as quickly as possible.
Both are perfectly valid play styles, we just lean toward one rather than the other.