Minions & Vermin

[AresLunthar]

One of the things that pops up in my own Novus material is the idea of a Minion or Vermin class of monster. Essentially I ported it directly in from D&D4E. Does anybody else use this idea? 

In a nut shell both have less hit points than a normal monster- Vermin receive -20 to the HP calculation and Minions -10.  The essentially means that the initial +20 is negated completely for a Vermin and reduced by +10 for a Minion. As a GM I want to populate adventures with adversaries that will be a challenge and colorful but not necessarily "waste time" on lesser foes.  Aside from the HP mods I am wondering if it makes sense to create a set of Saves based on the Monster Class (now being called the MC): if a foe takes HP equal to their WILL POWER they must make a Save vs. WILL (TN 15) or flee. 

Any thoughts?

[Maestro]

I like this idea, and actually already employ something similar in my own fights, but not so solid and rounded. I like the idea of having different "levels" of baddies, so that if you face say, a group of goblins, there will be slight variation in their defense, HP, strength, etc. Your explanation seems to be a more solid and reliable solution.
  As far as the fear thing, I also employ a SAVE vs. WILL but my target number fluctuates. I take into account a couple of variables. For instance, if a group is surprise attacked and one in the group is instantly killed, they are much more subject to fear than if they had already been fighting the characters and one in the group falls. This could be as simple as creating a table of modifiers for the TN such as:
  Surprise Attack: +2
  Susceptible to fear: +3
  Players quickly defeating enemies: +2
  Players make an intimidation roll: +1 for every level of success

  Just some ideas. My numbers aren't solid, just jotting something down some thoughts to get the ball rolling.
 

[AresLunthar]

I think your TN mods are solid.  It is a save after all.  To me having every monster always fight to the death if just crazy.  Especially Kobolds & Goblins etc.  No chance they are sticking around if they are outmatched in the first round or two of combat!  Also, do you "parry" with your bad guys?

[Maestro]

Parry, as in, the combat move? Not often at all. Its a lot of rolling to keep up with when there are lots of guys fighting. It seems to slow it down. The only time I really have my NPCs parry or block is if they are important characters, or obvious enemies that are out of the norm. (As in, you've been fighting goblins, but out of the crowd steps a goblin who is unusually large and armored up. Out of the whole crowd, he might be the only one I parry with.) It just keeps the game flowing for us

[AresLunthar]

That is one of the reasons why I would just make the combat moves special boons - they do slow the game down.  My Brigand posted here somewhere has a couple and as I was calculating the AB etc. I was actually thinking to myself that I would probably never use that.....but, someone might!