Homebrew: 4e Minions in PF2

Hey folks!

Several years ago, before the Troop rules existed in PF2, I ported the rules for minions from 4e into PF2. It didn't feel perfect, and when Troops came out I figured that I should try the official version and see what all the hype was about. 

While there's a lot to like about Troops, however, I also had a lot of complaints! Chief among these:

• Troops feels more like fighting a normal enemy with weird resistances and abilities, rather than like fighting a large number of foes.
• Troops targeting reflex rather than AC feels odd, and leads to a situation where Rogues were better at leading their allies into battle than Champions, which feels ever worse!
• AoE damage isn't better enough against Troops when compared to single-target attacks. While that gets better when there are 3-4 Troops, it doesn't feel significantly difference than targeting 3-4 normal creatures.
• Troops are hard to physically maneuver on the table! In person, it's a ton of minis to manage, and if you have  multiple identical troops you need them to be different enough that you can tell the different units apart. Tracking is easier on VTTs, but it's almost impossible to get the level of movement flexibility that Troop Movement is supposed to allow. Same deal with using movement trays for IRL minis.
• Troop Defenses are hard to track! I don't know that I've ever remembered to check if a Troop was passing through 2 HP thresholds, and the stuff about single-target vs. area effects are consistently hard for us to remember.

These are all ultimately problems of fantasy - the rules for Troops work, but not in ways that feel right to me at the table. If you like the overall fantasy of fighting a Squadron rather than its individual members, however, feel free to take a look at "Fixing Troops" at the end of this article!

I'd previously used Minions quite a lot in 5e, and I know that I love the way that they feel when used correctly. Plus, in the interim, MCDM came up with incredible innovations that I couldn't wait to try out in PF2. So, over the past few years, I spent a long time crunching math and trying things out, and I am pretty happy with where we ended up.

Here's the full document. Let's jump in!

How Mooks Work

First of all, for rules-purposes, I'm calling them "Mooks" rather than "Minions", because there's already a Minion trait in PF2 that does very different things. I like "Minions" better, but is what it is.

In theory, about 4-5 Mooks are equivalent to a single creature of the same level. So the party could face 2 level 2 creatures, or 8-10 level 2 Mooks.

I'll be using lots of examples throughout this post, broken out into breakout boxes like this!

Targeting Mooks

Damaging Mooks. Mooks are killed if they take any damage from a successful attack or a failed save. Otherwise, e.g. from a successful save or from force barrage, they die only if they take damage equal to their Max HP. Otherwise, the take no damage.

Overkill. When a Mook is killed, if the source deals extra damage equal to their Max HP, it can kill multiple Mooks! In order to do so, they must be in its area of impact. For a Melee attack, the new target must also be within reach of the attacker. For a Ranged attack, they must be past the original target from the attacker and within the attacker's first range increment. For anything else, go off the fiction!

Lets say a warrior is surrounded by Mitflit Minions with 6 HP. They only need 1 damage (on a successful attack) to kill one, so they kill one Minion if they deal 1-6 damage. If they deal 7, then they kill the first with the first 6 damage, and have 1 leftover for the new Minion. Since they only need 1 damage to kill a Minion, they kill 2 if they deal 7-12 damage! This can repeat - so they'd kill 3 if they dealt 13-18 damage, 4 if they killed 19-24, and so on. 

Along similar lines, if the party sorcerer cast electric arc on those  minions, dealing 4 to one (on a successful save) and 8 to another (on a failure), they wouldn't kill the first one, since it succeeded and the damage didn't match its HP, but would kill two on the failure, as the one who failed the save clung to an adjacent minion and shocked them to death as well!

Incapacitation. Mooks count as 5 levels lower for the purposes of Incapacitation. You can also use the original creature's level if that's different, or just use its new Incapacitation Rank minus 2 - whatever makes the most sense in your brain!

Penalties To Hit. If any Mooks participating in a Group Attack (see below) have a penalty to hit, they all take that penalty. Therefore, something like fear can be an effective way to debuff a whole group! This represents the diminished Mooks getting in everyone else's way, or infecting them with their fear. Note that slowing Mooks or otherwise limiting their actions doesn't affect everyone else, though it might mean that the 2nd/3rd Strikes in a turn have fewer participating members.

Acting With Mooks

Initiative. Mooks have group initiative, either all together or in groups of 5-10 (depending on how many there are). If in separate groups that get whittled down, they will frequently Delay to be able to act together.

Group Attacks. Instead of all rolling individual attacks, whenever 2 or more Mooks would attack the same target, they instead make a Group Attack. They make a single attack roll, with a circumstance bonus equal to the number of participating Mooks (to a max of +5). On a hit, they combine all their damage.

All members of the group must be the same creature stat block, and must make the same type of attack. So Hobgoblin Minions can only Group Attack together, and cannot combine Melee with Ranged attacks.

If any of the participating members count as flanking, the Group Attack gains the benefits of flanking. Otherwise, the group gains all the penalties that any of their members have, but only gain bonuses that all of their members have.

For example, 7 Hobgoblin Soldier Minions shooting their shortbows at a target would gain a +5 to hit (7 minions, capped at +5), and would deal 21 damage on a hit. On a Crit, they would all also each add 1 to their damage (from the Deadly 1 trait), for a grand total of 49 damage (21x2 for the crit, +7 for each Mook's Deadly trait)! Again, Mooks aren't that scary individually, but in numbers they can quickly bring down a tougher foe.

If one of the Hobgoblins was frightened 1, the Group Attack would gain a -1 status penalty. If one of the Hobgoblins had heroism cast on them, the Group Attack would not gain an status bonus. However, if a nearby cleric had cast bless and they were all in the radius, they would then gain the status bonus.

Flat Damage. Mooks don't roll damage, they have a static damage number to speed up play!

Act Together. At the GM's discretion, Mooks can follow the same format above for other actions! Most commonly, demoralizing, grappling, or tripping a foe.

Reactive Strike. If a creature triggers the Reactive Strike of multiple Mooks, the Mooks make a Group Attack instead of rolling individual attacks! This applies to other similar reactions as well.

Mooks vs. NPCs

In some situations, the PCs might have allies that are lower level than them! In these cases, you might decide that, while the PCs can kill a Mook in a single blow, their allies probably can't. It's up to you how to handle this! For the purposes of interacting with that NPC, you might decide to treat them as their original stat block, to use their new stat block but track damage (instead of dying in 1 hit), require the ally to beat their Max HP to kill them, or just handle it narratively and have the NPC engage a pair of Mooks, effectively taking them out of the combat.

This is ultimately a personal decision, based on the role that you want the NPC ally to fill in the party! If it's easier to let them 1-hit kill the Mooks as well, just ignore this section and do that.

Building Mooks

To create a Mook, the easiest method is to take an existing creature, give it the Mook trait (conferring the rules above), simplify complicated abilities, change its Damage and HP to be in line with its new level, and increase its other stats! See the full doc for more details. The core combat stats - attack bonus, AC, and saving throws - should add their new level, not their old level. Perception and any Combat Skills (skills that are core to how they play in combat) should add their new level minus 2. Other skills (lores, etc.) should either be removed for space/clarity or remain unchanged.

The other method is to basically take this doc and select values in the listed ranges! You can look at this spreadsheet for how I derived these numbers, but in brief: HP is such that Crits are usually needed to Overkill same-level Mooks, and only the highest rank Spells will likely kill Mooks on a successful save. AC is low to moderate for its level, Saves are terrible to moderate, Perception is terrible to low, Skills are 2 less than low to moderate (or 5 less for non-combat skills), and Attack Bonus is 3 less than moderate to extreme (they should be scary as a group, but not as individuals). Damage is 1/4 of High to Extreme for the same reasons.

In either case, you'll want to either remove damage weaknesses/resistances or increase them to full Immunities (depending on how important they are to the creature's fiction) to keep damage tracking easy. You'll also want to simplify or remove any complicated abilities, especially spellcasting. For example, I removed the shields from Hobgoblin Soldiers because I didn't want to keep track of who had their shields raised. Bonus points if the new version specifically references the Mook rules or plays into their teamwork!

Mooks In Play

Introducing Mooks

In my opinion, the most satisfying Mooks to fight are ones that didn't used to be Mooks! For example, in my current Red Hand of Doom game, the PCs fought Hobgoblin Soldiers through level 5, and then Hobgoblin Soldier Minions (in much greater numbers) starting at level 6. This allows Hobgoblin Soldiers to be at least somewhat relevant all the way up to level 10 in high enough numbers, and should make for an epic conclusion to the campaign!

If you want, you can establish a reason why these creatures are Mooks rather than full creatures. Zombies might be withered and old. Drakes might be malnourished. Elementals might be volatile experiments. However, because of Pathfinder 2e's heroic power scaling, it's also totally fine to just say "These creatures were a big threat to you before, but now they're not! At least not individually. As individuals, they don't even count for XP purposes since they're more than 5 levels below you. As a group, though, they can still threaten you!"

If they ask why their stats are higher, I usually tell PCs that it's largely because the Mooks have heard of the PCs exploits and have studied their fighting style! For example, I plan to have the PCs find little pamphlets explaining their fighting styles, along with those of other powerful NPC allies. You could also say that the Mooks are just being way more cautious than normal, since they know a single hit will take them out. Honestly, though, most tables will respond well to "to keep them relevant" as the answer, as in theory they're about the same threat level, just more of a glass cannon than before.

Encounter Design

This is largely untested so far, but here are my general thoughts! The best use for Mooks is to supplement a single powerful bad guy (likely level +2, possibly only +1). It can similarly be rad to have 2-3 decently powerful creatures plus several Mooks, or a handful of "sergeants" plus a bunch of Mooks! I would usually avoid having a fight that is all Mooks, but you can probably get away with 1-2 of those per campaign.

In other worse, I think Mooks make a better supplement to an encounter, to fill in the gaps, create drama, or accurately represent the fiction, rather than being the main event of the encounter.

Running Mooks In Combat

Ideally, Mooks should be pretty straightfoward to run! If you don't see good options, you can just have them Group Attack 3 times and accept that 2 and 3 will likely miss. However, a lot of Mooks will have clear built in special abilities (like the Infantry Devil's "Burning Charge" and the Fury Devil's "Furious Fusilade" in the doc), and almost all will have skills you can use! Doing a big group Demoralize is always good, and in some situations it can be better to Group Trip or Grab a PC to be maximally annoying! Especially in smaller groups, where the damage isn't as high - you can even have one group trip and the other attack normally!

It's also tempting to group as many minions together for a big Group Attack, but I recommend keeping the fight more dynamic by having them move around, rush past frontliners to go for casters, etc. They might even ignore Reactive Strikes if their boss is scary enough, figuring that some of them will get through!

The biggest thing to keep in mind, however, is that minions are supposed to 1. be easy to run and 2. make the PCs feel awesome. If you're ever getting bogged down in the rules or not sure what to do, make a quick ruling centering those two things and it'll be fine!

Mooks Out Of Combat

Out of Combat, Mooks are supposed to be quite shit! Their perception might be slightly higher to represent their increased caution given their fragility, but they're still fairly easy to sneak past, deceive, convince, etc. They know this, however, and they're still people, so a lot of them likely either have a "this is above my pay grade" attitude, or are likely to run for help at the slightest sign of trouble.

"Fixing" Troops

Some folks reading this might agree with many my complaints about Troops, but overall like the way they feel - coordinated units rather than individual soldiers! For those people, what might "Fixing" troops look like?

Making AoEs Matter

A big problem with Troops, regardless of whether you like their overall vibe, is that AoEs aren't all that good against them. They are a little better, sure, and if there are 3+ Troops in a fight, they feel pretty solid! But that would be true if those were normal, non-Troop foes as well. The fantasy of AoEs is that they devastate large swathes of foes, and the fantasy of Troops is that they represent large swathes of foes - so, how can we make AoEs feel more devastating? There are three options as I see it:

• Increase their weaknesses! Maybe double the values?
• Instead of having a traditional PF2 weakness, go 5e and have Troops take double damage from AoEs and Splash Damage!
• As suggested by someone on Reddit that I now cannot find, for AoEs that cover an entire Troop rather than just part of it, or for other effects like chain lightning that would likely hit every member of the Troop, treat their Degree of Success as 1 lower. This rewards Area size, rather than damage.

In any case, you might want to increase their HP a bit to compensate! I wouldn't go too far with this, as while I think giving AoEs a place to shine is great, we don't want Martials to be incapable of dealing with Troops. For option 1, you might add 1-2x the the increase in resistance. For options 2-3, you might add their level, or 2-3x their level.

Making Armor Matter

At least for me, in my fantasy of the clash of armies, the people leading the charge are heavily armored Knights and Champions, not dexterous rogues! There's a reason Bilbo put on heavy armor at the end of The Hobbit, even if he ended up avoiding combat either way. However, with Troops targeting Reflex, Rogues are effectively invulnerable against them, and while Fighters do turn Reflex Successes into Crits at level 15, Rogues do so at level 7, and Champions never get that ability.

The solution is simple! Let Troops make the attack instead, using their DC minus 10 (or 12 if you wanna be nice) as an Attack roll against the AC of all creatures in their reach, dealing half damage on a (non-critical) failure. You might still decide that dodging a hail of arrows should be Reflex (maybe adding a Shield Bonus if you have one), the wail of a Troop of ghosts might still be Will, and so on.

That's all for now folks! I have a few other posts that are like 3/4 done, but I'm not sure which ones I'll finish first. Tune in next time to find out - and happy holidays :)