more than minions – Dungeon's Master

Greatest Hits 2011: Two-Hit Minions

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Of all the articles I wrote in 2011, the article on two-hit minions is one of the ones I’m most proud of. Most of our articles are tips, tricks and advice for how to improve your game or make it more fun; rarely do we try and introduce any new mechanics. The two-hit minion was an exception. It was a mechanic that Sterling first suggested almost two years earlier, but when we actually started using the two-hit minions regularly this article was born and the feedback was very positive.

It took a few sessions of play testing before I believe I found the right balance for running two-hit minions, and each time we tweaked the mechanic the players confirmed that it was getting better. I’ve been using two-hit minions in my games, especially D&D Encounters, for about six months now and they always make the game more interesting. The players love the rush that comes from mowing down a bunch of minions, but they really love that some of those minions have the strength to take a hit and get right back up.

I’ve also learned that the key to two-hit minions it not to overuse them. This is good advice for minions in general, but is even better advice when it comes to the two-hit variation. By switching it up and mixing regular minions in with two-hit minions, players stop making broad assumptions about monsters until they actually have a chance to engage them. They no longer assume that six identical minis are going to be minions that will fall with one hit. Now they take into consideration the possibility that some or all of them might survive a blast from the controller so they need to be ready for that eventuality.

Two-Hit Minions

The two-hit minion isn’t new. We first suggested the idea over two years ago in one of our very first articles, More Than Just Minions. It was a reaction to DMs who felt that the normal minions were lacking something. I’ve felt that way for a while now and a few months ago I decided it was time to start using two-hit minions on a regular basis. The results were fantastic.

During this season of D&D Encounters we’ve been running tables with very large parties. The more heroes there are in the party, the more monsters I’ve placed on the map. However, week after week of just adding more monsters was starting to get a little bit boring, not to mention that it led to combat encounters that were taking a very long time to complete. I knew that I needed to shake things up and my solution was two-hit minions.

When I was using regular minions I found that the players, upon learning which opponents had only 1 hit point, treated the minions differently than other monsters. A lot of the PCs ignored them. The PCs with powers that could target multiple creatures (usually the controllers) would often eliminate all the minions in one round. It was very unsatisfying for the players and for me as the DM. Enter two-hit minions.