Pure Glow decimates minions?

[N8Ball]

just have to point out somethiat niggles me.
the title of the thread says, pure glow decimates minions.
so it kills one in ten minions?. not really the best eh?

Yeah, decimate is something a roman commander did to his OWN troops when they lost a battle.

It helped to keep their motivation high..... We made a joke like this when I was in the navy....

"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmm. I don't find that AoEs really make minions useless. I had a bunch of lowly Goblin Cutters running around last night in a level 6 encounter. They annoyed the party plenty, managed to hit a couple of characters and ended up annoying the fighter until he burned Rain of Steel to get rid of them. It was WELL worth the 10% of the total encounter budget from a tactical standpoint.

The encounter before that the hobgoblin warrior minions were lovely. blocked up a chokepoint for a couple rounds, and then 2 out of 3 still managed to beat feet out of the inevitable AoE and gave a Hobgoblin Commander flanking for a couple rounds.

Sure, auto damage is going hurt, but the way I look at it if I can force a player to burn an auto damage power clearing them, its usually worth it. I'd far rather that than it was slagging the artillery.

This is kind of a key point too. Tactically minions should pose a "damned-if-I-do and damned-if-I-dont" kind of dilemma. If the party concentrates on a leader/controller/artillery with their good stuff, then those minions are going to make themselves into a bigger annoyance. On the other hand if the spell casters deal with them right off, that gives you a lot better chance of your key monsters getting to work their good stuff for a couple extra rounds.

Make no mistake, minions certainly have little staying power and often enough things go the other way and they just plain die, but I think if you pay careful attention you'll find that even then they still usually earned their keep. Plus there are always those times when you get a single minion that just won't go down and proves to be a significant thorn in someone's side.

When you get into paragon and epic minions also work a bit differently. They really should synergize with leader/boss monsters, traps, terrain, etc. in interesting ways. I agree that MM1 higher level minions generally missed the boat a bit in that sense. One way to mitigate auto damage in those types of encounters is to create trade offs for the party. Someone wants to swab the decks down with radiant auto-damage? OK, but maybe it carries a small situational cost, like creating an unfavorable terrain situation or a new hazard.

 

[CapnZapp]

just have to point out [something that] niggles me.

Don't. Decimate means "to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely". You're millennia behind current usage.

Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts this extension in the sentence The Jewish population of Germany was decimated by the war, even though it is common knowledge that the number of Jews killed was much greater than a tenth of the original population.

decimate - Dictionary definition and pronunciation - Yahoo! Education

 

[Eldorian]

Yeah, decimate is something a roman commander did to his OWN troops when they lost a battle.

It helped to keep their motivation high..... We made a joke like this when I was in the navy....

"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

I thought decimation was the punishment for mutiny or desertion.

 

[two]

Pedants at their worst

Originally Posted by pascalnz View Post
just have to point out somethiat niggles me.
the title of the thread says, pure glow decimates minions.
so it kills one in ten minions?. not really the best eh?

Yeah, decimate is something a roman commander did to his OWN troops when they lost a battle.

It helped to keep their motivation high..... We made a joke like this when I was in the navy....

"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

You two do realize that you are being intensely pedantic and boring here, right?

Let's think about what you are claiming.

That "decimate" means and only means "what a Roman commander did to his own troops when they lost a battle."

Can you imagine a situation when you would use this word? EVER? Maybe some Roman historians, or those writing Roman Historical Novels. That's about it.

For example, the following would make no sense -- according to you two:

"Captain, it was terrible. The machine guns cut us down ruthlessly. We lost nine out of our 100 troops. We were decimated!"

Pedantic captain: "Actually, we only lost 9%. That's not a decimation. But it is close. You are demoted for incorrect word use."

"Good news captain, one of the wounded just died! That's 10 out of 100! We were decimated!"

Pedantic captain: "Actually, 1 in 10 of our men were killed by ENEMIES. Not by a Roman Commander. Therefore your use of the word is incorrect. You are further demoted."

Do you see how stupid this is?

You do know English is a living language, right? And to insist upon a narrow definition for a word (a definition about 1,500 years old) which has no parallel in our modern world is a fool's errand?

Does the following dialogue make sense to you?

"How did your sales presentation go?"
"Oh god, it sucked. When I got to the projections, they piled on and decimated me. I never recovered."

Does this mean that the listeners attacked the presenter and attempted to kill 1 in every ten of the (solitary) presenters? Of course not.

Did you have any trouble understanding the meaning of the sentence? (if you are honest you will say "no." The sense of the sentence is clear: "the presentation was bad particularly after the projections".)

Am I revealing something to you when I claim that your objections to the use of "decimate" have far more to do with your desire to "show off" your knowledge of a not-very-obscure etymology, and almost nothing to do with clarifying or saying something interesting about the English language as it is now used?

That's not to say people always use words correctly. To call somebody who stands still long enough to kill himself a stillicide is obviously insane. But that's not what is going on here.

 

[Samir]

You two do realize that you are being intensely pedantic and boring here, right?

Speaking of pedantic, was writing a report about this really necessary?

Back on topic: the best system (IMO) was already mentioned in this thread. Allow minions to scale. If they take damage equal to their level, they die; if they take damage less than their level, they are bloodied (or they die if they are already bloodied).

Of course, I wouldn't recommend instituting it now without taking your players aside and discussing it with them. Otherwise it'll just seem like you're trying to nerf your Morninglord.

 

[two]

Speaking of pedantic, was writing a report about this really necessary?

Like, totally dude.

 

[Samir]

Like, totally dude.

Good enough for me.

 

[Dr_Sage]

Yup, 11th level characters are very good at dropping minions en masse.

Agreed.

Somethimes I think people misunderestand what is a minion: IMHO a minion is supposed to succomb the heroes attacks easly. And you could and should use descriptions about how they try to defend themselves but untimately are defeated.

Just remmember: ordinary villagers are supposed to minions as well. thats why townsfolk usually are slaughtered by the orcs and goblins.

Its OK to get rid of the minions to engage the "liutenants and bosses". Think of them as dungerous (they can hurn the PCs), but not the main focus of the story.

To complicate minions is not a very good idea in my oppinion, and its counterproductive. Minions as written allos us DMs to make 40 vs 5 encounters from time to time. (Does anyone remmember the Lord of the Rings battles?)

 

[MarauderX]

I love minions. I love the way they stay out of the way and wait to gum up the works after the first round by getting in the fighter's way, getting snuggly with ranged PCs, and stabbing unconscious PCs. They can stay on the sidelines, waiting (delay) for the first PC to set foot near the hidden pit, then charge with a bull rush. Sure the chances are slim, but even minions roll an automatic hit 5% of the time. Increase your chances by using three of them instead.

Using them as a swarm is just unfair to minions. They know they are vulnerable to auto-damage area attacks; so do you, and so do the players. So why are they huddled in one spot? They should be hiding behind columns, peaking through a secret door, or plain scattered around to avoid such attacks. Put waves of them in to protect that priest from being exposed with a blanket of them after the wizard decimates the first batch with a blast of Winter's Wrath.