Community

hellmute wrote:

My point is that for their challenge and one-hit-one-kill they do not fit within the goal. If their XP means anything, then at anytime you could use any mosnter with Y XP, you should be able to use an equal minion. I don't care about the silly idea they made up for 4 minions replace one monster. That is where it is screwed up. You end up with less mosnters in a book that way. All mosnters worth Y XP should be interchangeable as the reward (XP) would always be equal to the risk.

What your not understanding is that there is underlying math involved in the design of these creatures.  WOTC has specifically stated what their goals were in designing minions.

from the Minions excerpt:

Goals of the minion:

Drop in one hit: the minion essentially does his job if it can keep a PC occupied for a turn. Depending on its level and role, a typical monster might take four to six basic attacks to knock out. To provide the same amount of challenge, a group of four to six minions should take about the same number of actions. For a while, we considered giving minions some small amount of hit points, a small enough number that they would drop in one hit. But then we ran into a few situations where the minion would take only a few points of damage, forcing the DM to track minion hit points anyway. Eventually, we realized that the best way to make sure they go down in one hit is by giving them a single hit point. (You could think of it as if you are always doing enough damage to kill it.)

Have sufficient defenses: A PC should hit a minion at about the same rate as that PC would hit a typical monster of the same level. If the PC only misses on a natural 1, then that part of the fight becomes trivial. Thus, the minion’s defenses are set using the same scale as other monsters of its level. Similarly, while minions are meant to be easily dispatched, we didn’t want it to be too easy, so we decided that minions shouldn’t die when missed by an attack roll, even if that attack would normally deal damage on a hit. Of course, they might still die if they take damage from other sources, like walking through a wall of fire or getting hit by a Cleave from a fighter.

Have a meaningful attack: Minions shouldn’t automatically fail at their attacks, or always be hoping for a natural 20. Their attack bonus should be similar to monsters of their level, though their damage is a fraction of other monsters. One minion attacking a PC is more of a nuisance, but a group of them can be as dangerous as any monster. The damage for minions is always flat instead of rolled, which again helps speed up play as the DM only needs to roll one die for each minion.

What does all this mean?  It means that WOTC thought about things such as how long a typical combat should last, hit ratios and damage/turn.  Not in the manner you impy - of setting fixed time periods - but rather what the average party would like, based on polling and playtesting.

Put it this way.  A typical monster will survive around 4 hits at the average damage output per turn of a PC of it's level.  Now if a PC hits roughly 1/3 of the time, that monster will last, on average 12 turns.  4 minions will last the same amount of time.  You adjust their own to hit probability and damage per turn to be slightly lower, to take into account there are going to be 4 minions, and you end up with close to the same amount of in combat tactical value as a single regular monster of the same level. 

hellmute wrote:

It would be like just giving a wizard 2000 XP for learning a new spell from someone elses spellbook, or sucking powers out of someone elses implement (That sounds, bad, but I know no other way of putting it so don't be dirty minded!   ) as may be in 4th edition.

It is something that just doesn't work.

Actually, if you use it as per the rules, the minion rules work fine.  Its when you openly ignore those encounter design rules specific to minions and place them in a combat at a level they are not designed for, in a combat role they are not designed for(as a solo instead of a minion), that they do not work. 

hellmute wrote:

System:
-Find level of encounter.
-Do some math to get a total XP for encounter.
-Buy some monsters using that XP as a budget.

No where does it say look at the level of the monsters. It says look at the level of the encouter. XP is what determines whether you can add a monster to it or not. Want a 400 XP monster/minion and only have 300 XP left in your budget? Well you can't afford it. You can add it, but only when you accept the debt you will be in. Or this case making a tougher encounter that may but the PCs in debt....

And this has been specifically countered by what Alyri and what he posted from his copy of the DMG.  The 4E DMG, by all apperances, states that the level of the monsters must be taken into consideration.  XP is not a fixed amount, but rather a guideline in making sure the encounters progress properly towards the next level and that they are not either too big or too small.  Furthermore, the encounter level is based off of the statical math underlying game, such as the defense scores, BAB, and other PC and NPC stats. 

WOTC has specifically stated that outside of a few levels difference, the underlying math of the system breaks down, and monsters no longer function in a balanced way.  This is not a design flaw, it is an acceptable limitation of the system.  In this manner, it prevents the underpowered/overpowered issues that came into being with the CR system of 3.X.   WOTC even incorporated rules that allow the monsters that are listed in the MM to be customized to be appropriate for the level you want them, so that they will fit into the encounter.

Lodestone7 wrote:

Actually a standard monster would be 1/50th of a level. A solo monster would be 1/10th. Otherwise correct.

I have to disagree with you here. For a party you are correct. 1 monster would be worth 1/50th of what a party would need. That would be based on a party of 5 PC's with 10 encounters of 5 standard monsters of equal level. But remember, I stated that the XP value was equal to 1/10th the requirement to reach the next level for 1 PC.