All Minions, All the Time.
Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 11:06AM J4 over at Campaign Mastery decided to use U20's first killer encounter combo in his 4E camapign. Unfortunately, we share a couple of players and one of them recognized the map from my recent session.
Not quite defeated, Johnn has decided to run the same map but change the encounter. I made some suggestions, among them was to simply fill the room with minions (imagine being the PCs when every coffin in the room flies open in a cacophany of gurgles, moans, creaking hinges and undead joints). Or a continuous susurrus of "join uusssss..." that starts moments before the first round of combat, seeming to come from every direction at once (as indeed, it does).
You could reskin the level 6 legion devil grunts as mystical skeletons, for example, and I expect their very respectable defenses and teleportation could provide a fair challenge while being rather cathartic for your players.
Please! We just want to cuddle!
Your standard XP allowance for any given level allows for 20 minions to pit against your PCs. I haven't done it yet, though, and naturally I have questions about that scenario.
Have you ever made an encounter entirely out of minions? How did it go? Was it a decent challenge for your players? Was it fun on both sides of the screen?
Please, educate us, and thanks in advance.
4E, Encounters, minions in 4E, DMing, Encounter Design, Running Encounters 
Reader Comments (8)
I like the idea of creating an encounter with nothing but minions. I’m defiantly going to try it the next time I’m the DM.
One way I’ve found that gives you more bang for your buck with minions is temporary hit points. It happened totally by accident in a recent game, but the evil spell caster used a power that granted all adjacent allies 5 temporary hit points. I couldn’t think of a good reason to exclude the minions from this effect, so they went from 1 hp to 6 hp. When the minion didn’t just fall with one hit the PCs got really scared. They started running away from all similar monsters on the battlefield because they no longer believed that they were “just minions” even though all by two really were.
It reminded me as a DM to never underestimate the minions.
I've played a couple of encounters with only minions. The players tended to find them flat-- though perhaps that was because it dragged out, given the lack of a wizard to blast the minions en mass.
I still like the idea of minion heavy encounters, but I'd add at least one leader or similar to mix things up. Staging the minions also seems like it'd mix up the encounter more-- I don't know if that'd be enough alone.
I've tried it, but without a strong leader to buff and direct them effectively, the battles always come out too short.
I have found that using LARGE numbers of creatures of level (party -2) or so, you can have pretty stout creatures that the party mows through at a much slower pace, while still getting their HULK SMASH on.
It's mainly about style. I use minions as speed bumps and back-fillers. If the battle is WAY too one-sided, I'll bring in re-enforcements in the form of a gang of minions.
Those moments when the party sneaks up to a guard post and finds it's inhabitants sleeping and carousing? Minions.
They are very useful...you just have to use them right.
As to the encounter in the example...imagine it now, with a horrid necrotic womb strung up in the corner. Every round, it spits out 2-4 minions, and itself is a level equivalent or party -1 or 2 threat itself.
Replace the womb with an invisible/teleporting necromancer...the possibilities are endless!
Hrm. Mixed results, it sounds like.
I had considered the several critters of level - n approach, but assumed that the abilities, attack bonuses, and defenses wouldn't scale well enough to provide even as many successes as minions would. I'll have to do some experimenting.
Good advice, though, fellas. I'm not sure how I feel about a horrid womb, though. Where's that from, Donny?
Thanks for stopping by, fellas.
I have run a battle with just over 50 1st level minions agains a grooup of 5 1st level PCs. The PCs had ranged weaons, they had a wizard and a swordmage, and they were on a barge that was being attacked by the bandit minions in rowboats. The PCs creamed them. It was not a difficult fight, but really, the effect was good because the players were really worried about letting the bandits board. It was very cinimatic, and the tension was raised for most of the fight, as soon as the tension dissipated, the minions retreated.
I think that it was a success. Not what I would use for most battles, but it was fun for this encounter. It is fun to see the reactions of the players when 50 unknown bad guys seem to want to kill them.
Funny, that minions in rowboats vs pc's in a barge was the first encounter I ran in my recent 4e game. It worked really well - PC's had combat advantage a lot, but there were archers on the banks, and the barge kept drifting as the rowers got hit. Lots of fun, and really kept things hopping.
Our game master did an encounter entirely out of minions. There were about fifty of them. It was extremely easy because of a power our Ranger had. I don't even think the combat lasted three rounds.
I did, once, a few months ago. And my players still talk to me about it to this day (literally, we had a talk about minions today).
Since the minion levels were a little cranked up, they were about 12. The dragonborn paladin's dragon breath quickly dispatched them, which made him feel awesome.
However, what I suggest about minions is to put them in an otherwise normal encounter but while keeping this is mind: make them a nuisance, and make dispatching them too much of a hassle in light of the danger at hand. Minions with bows, ducking behind seats in an opera house balcony that would take three rounds to reach do the job. Especially while the party is under the immediate treath of a summoning warlock and his infernal thralls.