Short post today!
Svarýr Soldiers
So Svarýr Soldier Minions are pretty straightforward to run. I only made them +2 levels (level 18 total) compared to the original (level 16), because I wanted to increase the total number of creatures on the battlefield. They have Advantage on initiative, they do a big group charge, and the first time they would die they shield block to survive.
They still died really quickly.
The first time our rogue/fighter attacked them, she crit, dealing exactly enough damage to kill two of them (92 damage!). The second time, she ended up killing them one at a time anyway. Granted, she is dual-classed with some broken as classes haha. Granted, there were only 4 of them - you probably want to have more Mooks total! And granted they did a ton of damage before they died, with a group attack critting for 112 damage.
All that being said, I think there's some tuning and dialing to be done.
Minion Survival Guide
I think the core minion formula works well enough at lower levels. Creature hit points are low enough that creatures die in 4 or so hits anyway, so replacing them with 4 or so Mooks works pretty well. At higher levels, however, HP scales faster than damage! Not as quickly as it does in 5e, where HP bloat gets out of control and fights take forever, but still - a level 6 Guard Captain has 95 hit points, which is probably 5-6 hits (or fewer crits), but she also only deals about 15 damage per Strike, whereas Hobgoblin Minions are a bit easier to kill, but in a group attack they deal about twice the damage! I think it's reasonable to conclude that 4-5 Hobgoblin Minions are about as scary as a Guard Captain, just in very different ways.
Meanwhile, at level 18, you have an Ancient Bronze Dragon with 360 HP (likely about 10 attacks), almost 50 damage per attack, an AoE, and lots of scary abilities, while 4 Svarýr Soldier Minions will still die in about 5-6 hits (assuming they don't all surpass the damage threshold), and they deal 62 damage which is higher but not by nearly as much.
Against AoEs it gets even worse, because casters can bring AoEs much more cheaply and consistently at higher levels than they can early on!
Increasing Numbers
The simple answer is to increase the number of minions! Maybe we do something like this, with creatures that have a meaningful defensive ability getting 1 fewer Mook:
- Lv 1-4: 4 Minions
- Lv 5-9: 5 Minions
- Lv 10-14: 6 Minions
- Lv 15-19: 7 Minions
- Lv 20+: 8 Minions
These numbers are truly just a guesstimate. How do they math out? Let's call that about 7 attacks, which is slightly fewer than the Dragon's 10 but not by much, or 9 if there are 6 Mooks with a defensive ability. And of course AoEs will likely reduce that number significantly, meaning that on the whole 7 Mooks should still be more fragile than an equivalent Dragon. In terms of damage output, it puts them much closer to 2x the damage as well (though that's just of one Strike, rather than a whole routine).
I think that's a good place to start testing at least!
Increasing Survivability
Where do abilities like ferocity come in? And how can we have more or less powerful versions?
In our original doc we have Level 4 Orc Mooks with an ability that reads "The first time each combat this minion would be destroyed by damage less than its Hit Point Maximum, it survives instead." That feels like a huge jump in survivability for a low-level minion, and is even better than the normal Orc Ferocity, since in that version the orc only ends with 1 HP whereas the Orc Mook is basically still at full! Insofar as they have a full.
I'd like to hypothesize the Fragile Condition.
Fragile (Condition)
If a creature with the Mook trait gains this condition, then they can be destroyed by any further damage, rather than following the normal rules for Mooks.
It's simple, it's straightforward, and it even gives a little more value to things like force barrage, which otherwise suck against Mooks. If you want to be a very generous GM, you might even make impromptu rulings when a Mook barely survives (e.g. Force barrage or a successful save is only a few HP away from killing them), they become Fragile.
If/when I playtest with Orc Mooks, I'll definitely have their ability give them the Fragile condition. In general, I think that giving low-level Mooks abilities that let them survive at the cost of gaining this condition, or resurrecting each other with this condition, is a great compromise.
Higher level creatures might not need it, however - it might be fine to just let a Svarýr Soldier ignore a full attack by shattering their shield! We might even want to increase their survivability further, but letting them repair their shield (as the original stat block can) or giving them some ability to heal or resurrect each other - this comes at the cost of making them more complicated to run, but might also mean that we can have fewer of them still feel impactful.
We'll have to see in testing! I'm going to leave them alone but run more of them for right now, and will find every opportunity I can to keep playtesting.
Random Durability Ideas
Remember, these can potentially be a bit more powerful than an ordinary creature might have, because Minions are so fragile to begin with! If you do end up combining abilities, make sure that no Minion has more than 1 ability that you need to track - it's fine to need to put a token next to a mini, but we shouldn't be tracking multiple conditions. Note: These are absolutely not all at the same power level. A future project, after further testing, might be to try to systemize when to use these different types!
- Ferocity. The first time this creature would be destroyed, it isn't. At lower levels, they then gain the Fragile condition, probably not at higher levels. Also at lower levels, this should only be "destroyed by damage less than its HP", at higher levels it might not need to be. Complicated version: "The first time this creature would be destroyed, it isn't. If it would have been destroyed by damage equaling or exceeding its Max HP, it gains the Fragile trait."
- Magical. This creature is immune to non-magical damage. (Only works at low levels, or if you count weapons with only fundamental runes as non-magical)
- Ghostly. This creature is immune to all damage except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality. (Probably include some carveout for Force Barrage - maybe it does double damage?)
- Weakness. This creature can only be destroyed by one of Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing. At higher levels, you might let this become another damage type, but only if foreshadowed well (the more rare the damage type, the better the foreshadowing needs to be).
- Revivification. This creature can be resurrected, either by another minion or by their leader! They gain the Fragile trait at lower levels. If it's another minion, it should take 3 actions, or maybe 2 at higher levels. If it's the leader, it only takes 1 action (maybe per Minion?). You might even let them endlessly revive without anyone spending actions, though in this case it should take 1d4 rounds and there should be a way to stop it (e.g. Holy damage, destroying their leader / an artifact, etc.)
- Tough As Nails. This creature's HP is higher than normal for its level, probably 1.5x but maybe up to 2x!
- Hard To Hit. Either really high AC, or really low AC but needs to be Crit to be destroyed!
- Construct Armor. Give them relatively low AC (3-5 lower then listed), but they take half-damage from everything other than Strikes, and no damage from Strikes. A Critical Hit on a Strike removes this defense and gives them the Fragile condition.
Until next time!
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