TOPIC: Scaling Combat Encounters Difficulty with Minions

I've been mulling over this idea for a while, and I had intended to post it when it could potentially influence 2017 module design. Hopefully it's not too late!

The challenge I'm trying to address is in how to scale combat encounters with the difficulty of the run (normal, hardcore, nightmare). Historically the approach has been to give the monster being fought:

• Much more HP
• Higher AC/Saves
• Higher to hit/damage attacks, occasionally more attacks

Due to the increasingly wide variety of gear available, I see the following challenges with this approach:

• It's hard to pick a good amount of monster damage - For instance at high gearing levels some classes can easily hit 80 HP, whereas others much more typically would be in the ~40 range - it's hard to pick a damage that doesn't 1 shot some party members while still threatening others.
• It's hard to pick a good attack to hit modifier - For instance well geared "tin can" classes can now easily have 38 AC and up, whereas non-shield-and-helm classes more typically have an AC around 28 - it's hard to pick an attack roll modifier that poses a decent threat to the tin can classes without auto-hitting more squishy targets.
• Finally - the biggest part of the challenge at Nightmare is often just in overcoming the monster's HP total before running out of time. Running out of time while you are making progress dealing damage is frustrating - especially when DM computation time is the thing making the difference between getting in 3 or 4 rounds of combat.

My goal here is to propose something that would make combat more dynamic, and more easy to tune than only modifying the stats of the main monster.


D&D 4th edition had a great idea for how to scale up combat encounters on a parallel axis to the core attributes of the main monsters: Minions!

Minions in D&D 4e have similar attack modifiers and damage to typical monsters, however they are destroyed when they take any amount of damage.

So, a DM can easily adjust the difficulty of an encounter by adding in some minions - the player characters have to decide where to focus their efforts (and it's not always clear which monsters are the minions).


In TD there could be a minion area on the combat board, and any slide hitting the minion area (or single target spell directed at a minion) could kill one minion. Different dungeon difficulties could scale by adding more minions to the mix (as well as adjusting boss monster stats), e.g.:

• Normal: 0 minions
• Hardcore: 2 minions
• Nightmare: 4 minions

To keep things fresh minions could exhibit a variety of effects or behaviors based on the module, for instance:

• Basic minion: Each surviving minion gets an attack with the same stats as the main attack of the boss monster each round.
• Shield minion: Each surviving minion grants the boss monster a cumulative -5 damage reduction
• Harrier minion: Each surviving minion harries a DM or module chosen player character - the player character may take no action other than attacking the minion so long as the minion is alive (or perhaps provokes auto damaging attacks of opportunity for other action types).

etc.


I've seen elements of this idea in True Grind (where one combat board represented hoards of cultists), and True Dungeon (where certain regions of the combat board have game effects unrelated to hitting the boss monster).

The "spider egg sack" mechanic in the Drow Crossbow wielder room in 2015 is almost exactly this idea (at least, in my recollection if you didn't kill the sacks they did AOE damage to the party, and you had to choose whether to attack the egg sack or the Drow crossbow wielder). The only difference is this proposal would scale the number of egg sacks with the dungeon difficulty for that room.


The biggest obstacles I can see to this approach are:

• Area of effect attacks (horn of blasting, burning hands, some scrolls) have to be accounted for somehow, to prevent them sidestepping the minions mechanic (maybe just say at most 1 minion is affected by any AOE spell)
• The DM will have to clearly communicate how many minions remain (or at least once they are all dead) so players know to target the minion part of the board and/or to stop targeting the minion part of the board.

Having played 4th I was never a big fan of the minion strategy. I will leave my conclusions on why it is bad to to myself.

TD has many more mass attack options than 4th did. IF you wanted to try it you would want to give the minions enough hit points where a single mass attack couldn't take it out (like 10 hp) but not too many where a party would struggle killing it. Regardless if the entire party had an AOE the minions are going down. Unless and you say they are immune to AOE damage and I personally hate that idea - breaking tokens. It reduces my desire to buy tokens.

I still would like to see the monsters "nudge" character design. Right now on Nightmare AC is not important because the healers can out heal the incoming damage.

Nightmare should be about a good balance of AC, Saves and Damage Output. A few other options would be:

• High Damage Standard Attacks (e.g. two melee attacks each round + 20 to hit, 25 damage)
• More Monster Mass Attacks (based upon Melee/Range) - One die role for all attacks.
• More Removable Conditions (e.g. Poison that reduces your damage output, Stuns)
• More Monster Special Attacks - limited 1 or 2 per room (e.g. Maze - like we saw last year)

Ed

I have not experienced minions, but I tend to agree with Ed. It seems more complicated for the DM then just improving the attacks of the existing enemies. Although it would be fun to see your concept here and there for some variety.

I like more creative attacks and especially more mass attacks, especially thematic ones (e.g. evil attacking the good heroes, or attacking all of the melee fighters, etc).

Used sparingly it could be cool. I would almost say Cogwin and his GearGolem would have counted as such a board. Of the Giant and the dark beguiler (though there were 2 boards in that room)

That said my main concern with minions would be the time constrains present in TD that 4th did not have to deal with. Dealing with minions in 4th was S L O W.

I could also see less geared party members feeling resentful of being told to deal with the minions while the cool kids slay the dragon. Granted not all but Im sure some.

Anyway IMO its an idea that warrents further discussion.

There would be more challenges than that.

I dare say almost every Nightmare group has at least one Horn to one-shot them all in round one, and there's no good way to avoid that. Players HATE their stuff being nerfed, especially when there's no logic to it.
Q: "What do you mean my Horn of Blasting/Scroll of Leaping Lightening/Soundburst spell doesn't affect them all? 'All' means 'all,' doesn't it?"
A:"Well, no. These are special minions who are so weak and puny that they're immune."

Rage-posting will go through the roof.

Or give all minions more HP. My opinion: the average DM is going to struggle with managing HP for a half-dozen critters. And there's nothing more frustrating to me than watching our party "lose" a battle because the DM couldn't squeeze in one more round of combat. We lost to the Mindflayer because we only got in two rounds, and it wasn't the party's fault.

So having a few egg sack minions here and there is fine, limited to the more experienced DMs, but as the default mechanic for scaling, I don't think it would work.

And, to be fair, you totally lost me at "4th." I hated everything about that edition. I literally begged our group on multiple occasions to go back to Third, or Second, or even further. Anything but 4th. When our DM said, "so Fifth is coming out..." I almost screamed "oh gawd yes please" before he could even ask if we wanted to switch.

I just forced our group to switch to pathfinder.

My two groups and I still play 1st Edition.

Ro-gan wrote: My two groups and I still play 1st Edition.

+1

MasterED wrote: Having played 4th I was never a big fan of the minion strategy. I will leave my conclusions on why it is bad to to myself.

TD has many more mass attack options than 4th did. IF you wanted to try it you would want to give the minions enough hit points where a single mass attack couldn't take it out (like 10 hp) but not too many where a party would struggle killing it. Regardless if the entire party had an AOE the minions are going down. Unless and you say they are immune to AOE damage and I personally hate that idea - breaking tokens. It reduces my desire to buy tokens.

I still would like to see the monsters "nudge" character design. Right now on Nightmare AC is not important because the healers can out heal the incoming damage.

Nightmare should be about a good balance of AC, Saves and Damage Output. A few other options would be:

• High Damage Standard Attacks (e.g. two melee attacks each round + 20 to hit, 25 damage)
• More Monster Mass Attacks (based upon Melee/Range) - One die role for all attacks.
• More Removable Conditions (e.g. Poison that reduces your damage output, Stuns)
• More Monster Special Attacks - limited 1 or 2 per room (e.g. Maze - like we saw last year)

Ed

Would like to see variety at the higher tier(s) at least of attacks and where other stats matter more than ac and hp. Encouraging build diversity would be a good thing, more calculated risks in builds vs stacking the hp/ac/heal/spell boost now. For quite a while i've avoided nightmare (and to lesser extent hardcore) just because the only difference is higher dmg/to hit numbers and thinner margin for error on the puzzles.

Regardless any possible changes now or and in the future needs to be easy or easier on dm's in interest in time. Why I like more the 1 die roll or multi-attack personally.

The DM's have so much to do at this point. I don't see adding minions making it easier on them.

MasterED wrote: Nightmare should be about a good balance of AC, Saves and Damage Output. A few other options would be:

• High Damage Standard Attacks (e.g. two melee attacks each round + 20 to hit, 25 damage)
• More Monster Mass Attacks (based upon Melee/Range) - One die role for all attacks.
• More Removable Conditions (e.g. Poison that reduces your damage output, Stuns)
• More Monster Special Attacks - limited 1 or 2 per room (e.g. Maze - like we saw last year)

Ed

I like all these ideas - especially the second one which would make AC worthwhile without slowing things down too much.

I like the third idea quite a bit, but it seems subject to the same "DMs have too much stuff to do already" criticism as Minions.

Brad Mortensen wrote: And, to be fair, you totally lost me at "4th." I hated everything about that edition. I literally begged our group on multiple occasions to go back to Third, or Second, or even further. Anything but 4th. When our DM said, "so Fifth is coming out..." I almost screamed "oh gawd yes please" before he could even ask if we wanted to switch.

Minions as a concept were a diamond in the rough of 4e, to be sure...