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There are several creatures whose minion versions seem to have been deleted for space reasons. Gnolls for example. No minions.

I think to make a minion you would just take the most basic version of a monster and give him a single hit point.

This wouldn't work with Balrogs. Not only would that be, um, silly, but Balrogs have a lot of different sort of attacks because they're intended to be around for, say, 6-10 rounds. Now, giving him just 1 hit point actually makes him a lot weaker than the normal minion, because normal minions just have a couple of different attack types; they don't need more, they're not built to last. A lot of the balrog's power and therefore XP is premised on him being able to bring a variety of different attacks to bear, which he can't do if he has only 1 hit point.

Not sure what the upper limit on minion monsters is... but surely Balrogs can't be minions. Giants can be minions, I guess, against a high enough level party. But they're not statted for minion versions either.

Okay, maybe the balor was a very bad example. This is what I get for trying to pluck an example out of thin air.:embarrass

What monsters do you think would work well as minions? Are there some guidelines as to what one might want to look out for in a minion? You raised a very good point in that since a minion will likely stick around for 1-2 rounds max, it would ideally be able to deal significant damage in that short period of time so that they can still make their presence felt, rather than simply being some sort of glorified doorstop. Maybe some sort of encounter power so that they can go nova and quickly deplete their arsenal before biting the dust?

In KotS, a Kobold Minion wields a spear in melee.

A spear does 1d8 damage.

A Kobold has an 8 (-1) strength.

The damage range of a Kobold Minion using a spear would be 1-7, or an average of 3.5.

Kobold Minions, as printed, deal 4 damage a hit, which is 3.5 rounded up.

I hereby deduce that Minions deal average damage for their form of attack.

HP: 1
Take away ALL the abilities that require tracking something (encounter, recharged)
Take away ALL abilities that revolve around being bloodied
Basic attack damage: I'd say 1/4 of the average damage for a monster you're making them out of.
Give them 1 ability that mimics something cool the original monster can do, ideally based only on the board, and based on working well in groups.

Dec 22, 2012 -- 2:07PM, DrakonianThunder wrote:

Dungeon Master Guide 2 - page 134

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