After some discussion in the comments on the previous post on Space Opera Dogfighting, and some discussion on the S7S Yahoogroup, I am in the middle of rethinkery on SpOp Dogfighting.
Your comments desired; genre/media analysis and game design behind the cut...
Space Opera Space Combat
This post is mostly to help me go back to square one on rethinking SpOp combat. It's me thinking out loud, which I choose to do on this LJ rather than junk up the S7S yahoogroup any further.
From my reading and especially viewing (since PDQ# is a cinematic game), space combat in the Space Opera breaks down into common categories across three scales.
The three scales are: Fighter, Corvette, and Capital Ship.
The obvious common categories are:
1. Fighter vs. Fighter: *-wings vs. TIEs (SW), Starfuries vs. Raiders/*-Fighters (B5), Vipers vs. Cylon Raiders (BG). (Capital Ships are mostly background.)
2. Capital Ship vs. Capital Ship: Constellation/Galaxy Class vs. other Ships of the Line (ST), Ships of the Line vs. Shadow Battlecrabs (B5), Battlestar vs. Basestar (BG). (Fighters are mostly background.)
3. Fighters vs. Capital Ship: The snarl around the second Death Star in RotJ (SW), Vipers vs. Basestar and Raiders vs. Battlestar (BG), several examples (B5).
The obvious but more uncommon categories:
A. Corvette vs. Fighters: Millenium Falcon vs. TIEs (SW), possibly War Rocket Ajax vs. Hawkmen (FG).
B. Corvette vs. Capital Ship: Possibly the Defiant from DS9 (BG), White Stars vs. Battlecrabs (B5).
C. Corvette vs. Corvette: I'm lacking an example here. Possibly something from B5?
D. Major Battle (All Scales at Once): B5 is the exemplar here, I think.
I think that surrounds most of the popular match-ups. In general, I think it's safe to say that in the majority of SpOp combat, ships stay within their scale -- it's either Fighter vs. Fighter (FvF; SW model) or Capital Ship vs. Capital Ship (CSvCS; ST model). Some thought, however, will have to be paid to the FvCS option -- but that's down the road. (Ideas below on how to mechanize these two basic interactions under PDQ#.)
Outstanding Questions to Ponder
Again, your thoughts are welcome in the comments -- I'm especially looking for illustrations of resolutions for the below questions in SF&F media, if you can think of any.
* Combat between different scales (especially FvCS).
* Combat involving all 3 scales at once.
* How to integrate Corvettes? (How do they work in interacting with the higher and lower scales? Are they more big Fighters, small Capital Ships, or something else? This question is especially problematic, since Corvettes are mostly likely to be the right size for a bunch of PCs to work together in.)
* Examples of CVvCV combat in the source genre? (All I'm coming up with is White Star vs. Drakh ships from B5.)
PDQ# SpOp Space Combat Rules Thots
Determining the "basic" scale (F, CV, CS) for a PDQ# SpOp game should absolutely be part of Setting the Dials. Once that's done, many of the other tributary concerns should be easy to resolve, since the majority of space combat will happen in that basic scale.
I think that common cases #1 and #2, from above, are pretty clear-cut under PDQ# -- #1 is a slightly modified Duel [1] and #2 is a slightly reskinned-to-fit-the-genre version of Vehicle Combat from S7S. (#3 will require thought on combat across scales before anything can be done on that; once #3 is figured out, the CV question can be broached.)
[1] In the discussions thus far on SpOp Dogfighting, I have been reminded of the importance of position/advantage (p/a). So, I went back and looked at GURPS Lensmen for its Space Opera Combat System (SOCS) simply for inspiration -- because even it (light by GURPS standards) is way too complicated for the abstraction of PDQ#. However, this review did bear fruit.
The slight modification of the Duel rules for Dogfighting is this: before every Turn, the opposing Pilots have a Flashy Challenge, which represents gaining p/a over their foe. Per the FC rules, the loser takes a Failure Rank and the winner gains a Style Die -- but here's the modification: the winner also gains initiative for the Turn. Duels play out as usual (including the Volte-Face).
I think that this helps give the flavor of the value of p/a without making the benefits of winning or the penalties for losing it overwhelming, or making the system overly complex.
Here are two further ideas to beef up the benefits of p/a, but they might be too crippling, and do not look like they can be used together:
* No Volte-Face: The defender does not get any chance to attack during the Turn. This means that a defender will essentially always be All-Out Defending (3d), and has a good chance at evading damage... but even given that, the Failure Ranks accrued from the FCs for p/a at the top of each Turn will grind down on both fighters.
* Limited Combat Options: After position/advantage is determined, attackers can only All-Out Attack or Strongly Attack; defenders can only Strongly Defend or All-Out Defend.
Thoughts, questions, comments, examples?
[Do] In search of Pilgrim Fei Chong the Chosen Flea of the Blunt Instruments
I am finally transcribing all the playtest character sheets. They're mostly loose notes and single-word, out-of-context stuff so it's gonna be fun piecing some of this together from memory. I came across the character sheet belonging to the pilgrim noted above and found this insane note next to their origin:
"Bug butter black beatle salad"
Pilgrim, if you're out there, I gotta know what the heck that was about.
The Sound and the Fury
So, the premise of yesterday's 4E game was pretty straightforward. People were to make level 18 characters, and were encouraged to optimize. I was going to throw them through the fighting mill, and try to grind them to powder. Guidelines were:
* Level 18, any race or class WOTC or OBE has put out
* Magic items: 1 level 19, 1 level 18, 1 level 17 and the cash equivalent of 2 level 18 items, which could not be spent on anything over 18.
I ended up with three characters, though I didn't see the sheets for them all until the day of the game, and they were as follows:
*![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1)
drivingblind's Halfling Lightning Fury Sorcerer
*evilhat's Genasi Earthsoul Daggermaster Fighter
*bastille's Half Elf Battlecaller Bard
The sorcerer ended up feeling like a wuxia character, as he had an immense number of flight and other movement related powers, including the ability to fly himself or an ally as a move action. This was coupled with heavy use of thunder and lightning. A little abuse of dual implements meant he had a +22 damage modifier, so his damage output was a joy to watch, but he had enough mobility and control that he really escaped the boring repetition that other ranged strikers can fall into.
The fighter was, far and away, the most twinked of the characters, optimized for insanely bursty crits. Daggermaster (a rouge PP she multiclassed to take) increases your crit range to 18-20 with daggers (or, as it turns out, Kukri) which combined with an array of fighter feats that trigger on a crit and a pair of Bloodiron Kukri (+d10 for crits, and extra crit damage is applied again in a round) meant her crits were HUGE. She optimized to make many weaker attacks (to increase the chance of a crit) which ended up making her more of a striker than a defender in practice. The fighter mark and pin came up once or twice, but really, it was all about these huge explosions of damage. (On a personal note, I want to look at that build and see what of it can be ported to a multiclassing Avenger.)
The bard ended up being the surprise. My sense has been that the bard is really the Warlord done right, but I have heard a lot of moaning about bards lacking in healing, at least in part because they have a number of abilities that grant temporary HP rather than heal. Having now seen it in action, this concern looks pretty bogus. His healing was solid, and the fact that he could generate temporary hit points at the drop of a hat (with one ability described as "Pick an enemy. I can make candy come out when you hit him") meant that the players constantly had a decent ablative layer which would get chewed through and replenished, often in a single round.
Fred suggested that they were the sound and the fury. The bard brought the sound, the fighter brought the fury and the sorcerer, with his thunder and lightning, brought both.
Now, given 3 level 18 characters, my at budget for encounters was 6000xp. I started building encounters with a cautious eye - three players introduces certain problems that can be subtle, so I decided to stay as close to budget as possible. However, I also didn't just want 3 opponents, so I tended to grab a larger number of enemies a few levels down. In retrospect I'd have done it slightly differently, but more on that in a bit.
The scenario was composed of three fights with some connective tissue. The PCs needed to use a purifying artifact held by a minor fey lord. While they're negotiating, his place is attacked and someone makes off with the artifact in a flying ship. The lord shoots down the ship (so to speak) but cannot spare men from the battle to go after it. PC's go after it and find it's crashed in a gnome village, and the gnomes seem to be helping repair the ship. Opposition for this consisted of:
Encounter #1: 5800xp
1 Neogi Great Old Master(Level 16 Controller, given 1 action point)
1 Earth Archon Rumbler reskinned as a Steampunk construct with a huge hammer(level 17 brute)
2 Drakkoth Venomshot (Level 16 artillery)
Lots of level 3 gnomes standing around in a daze, acting as obstacles but not otherwie participating.
I liked the map for this one. I used the market square map from Paizo, then took one of the ship maps from WOTC, printed it to scale, cut it out, and laid it on top of the town map. I think it looked pretty cool, and combined with lots of 10' high buildings, the fight had a nice vertical element to it.
The party tried for an ambush, but the Bard botched the stealth roll pretty badly, so it began in open combat with the Sorcerer critting one of the drakkoth with his first attack. The fight was fun - the rumbler closed, the drakkoth sniped from the ship deck, and the Neogi did his psychic business from range. It was a good starting fight, and the dice favored the PCs. They made very nearly every save they rolled (well, except the bard, who spent most of the fight vulnerable to poison) and especially kept saving against the Neogi's mind control.
It turned out someone else had stolen the MacGuffin from them, so the PCs pursue into the sewers, where they encounter a violet dragon, waited on by Eladrin maidens. It is, of course, an illusion and attempted ambush and it is revealed to be:
Encounter #2: 6000xp
1 Adult Wretch Dragon (Level 17 Elite Brute with 2 action points)
1 Flamespewer (Level 16 Artillery)
4 Shattered Wraiths (Level 16 Minions)
So, I had picked the Wretch Dragon because I was not ready for them to try one of the Solos - just too scary, at least on paper. Unfortunately, the Wretch Dragon is kind of a pansy. His Breath Weapon's not bad, but it has no recharge, and his other useful ability (a minor action psychic attack with some damage and a pull component) doesn't hep once someone's close enough to him for an opportunity attack, so after the initial burst of goodness, he was limited to claw & Bite, which were just ok.
The wraiths were also the only minions of the night, because minions are generally stupid at this level of play. However, I'd picked them because of their special ability - if they hit you, gain vulnerable Necrotic 5. As written it has no end condition, and while that may be a typo, for the cost of these things, I was fine saying it was scene length.
For the map, I used the sewer tiles from the Streets of Shadow set. Big open area with lots of canals filled with sludge that was basically double-difficult terrain - 4 squares of movement to move 1 square. The alpha strike was good - the wraiths rushed out of hiding in the sludge to mob the PCs to try to get them vulnerable before dying, the Flamespewer got everyone in its burst attack, and in the next round the Dragon used its breath weapon to scatter the party.
Sadly, it all went downhill from there. Because the dragon's attacks were a mix of necrotic and psychic, the vulnerability only helped so much. The sorcerer made dog chow of the minions, and the fighter took apart the Flamespewer with one of her ungodly crits. After that, the fight was pure attrition, and even after taking a second wind, the Dragon just could not keep up. For this fight, the Sorcerer's mobility really shone. My sole consolation was tha by this point the fighter had burned almost all of her healing surges.
The third fight happened on either way back, as the party was ambushed by
Encounter #3: 8800xp
1 Lingerer Fell Incanter (Leve 18 elite artillery)
3 Wolf Brothers (Level 17 Skirmishers)
(The Wolf Brothers were a custom creation to let me use some cool minis I'd acquired. They began the fight as souped up wolves (which mostly means, attack knocks you prone, extra 2d6 damage against prone targets). After they're bloodied or one of them dies they shift their move and turn into large humanoids with spears that do more damage and inflict 5 ongoing. )
Ok, remember what I said about restraint before? I had designed this as the nastiest fight, but I had put a dial on it. I'd designed it with 2 Wolf Brothers in mind (7200xp) but depending how the party was doing, I could change that to 1 or 3. They had done very well this far, so I pulled out the stops.
We used the outdoor tileset for this one. Not much of note - mostly open space and some cover. Well suited to Skirmishers + Artillery.
This was a brutal fight. With the surprise round, the wolves knocked down and savaged the bard and the incanter immobilized the sorcerer and fighter. However, the sorcerer pulled out exactly the right daily - Howling Hurricane, a level 9 Sorcerer daily. It created a big, mobile, sustainable zone within which he could slide anyone who started their turn 2 squares. Immobilize doesn't stop slide, so this effect kept the party semi-mobile, and let the fighter get into melee and perhaps more importantly, the attacks had to shift to the sorcerer, because this effect was granting too much advantage to the party.
The bad guys dogpiled the sorcerer but the bard demonstrated just how good his healing was by keeping him on his feet, while the party slowly took down the wolf brothers. When the incanter died, they basically had one shot to try to take down his visage (a level 18 non-elite that replaces him) because the visage was insubstantial and could fly, and was more than happy to have this conversation from well out of the fighter's reach. The bard burned a daily teleport to reach the visage and knock him prone (which also knocked him to the ground) where the fighter cut loose, getting a crit and then, with the follow-up attack the crit allowed, getting _another_ crit. It was just ugly.
That wrapped it up. We had started after 1 and finished before 7, with breaks between the fights. It _felt_ fast, but intellectually that's a big chunk of time.
Thoughts and Impressions
* I used the stack method for initiative, and it was a lifesaver. The sheer number of status effects and whatnot made it absolutely necessity. For those who don't know the system, everyone in the fight gets an index card. You write down initiatives, and go through the stack in order. For monsters, you can put their defenses and hit points on the card to track there, and that's handy, but what really rocks is that when a target gains a status, note it on the card. It reminds you of what they need to deal with, that they need to save and so on.
* I could definitely have been meaner in the scenario design. If nothing else it was a reminder that an elite that doesn't have cool things it can do towards the _end_ of the fight is a pretty lame elite. The small level difference was really noticeable - players bonus to hit generally outclassed the monster defenses by more than I'd expect. Given some past analysis, I need to look at this more closely sometime - it's possible monsters don't follow their own rules as much as you might expect.
* Yeah, minions. 75% of the time they are crap at this level. Even the ones I used were overpriced for what they did - I could have used that same amount of XP to introduce a lurker to take advantage of the party getting split up. So yes, use minions if they grant passive bonuses that help out, but make sure their worth it, and make sure there's not a low level creature that can do the same. At level 18 a minion costs 500 xp, and for that you can buy a level 10 creature. They have ~100 hit points, so even if they can't effectively attack or defend, they burn more resources to kill and if you pick some that have non-attack powers or auras (like a Shambling Nexus, Spireborn Eidolon or the Troglodyte Curse Chanter just to pick a few) then they provide a lot more bang for the buck.
* That said, An even better choice is to look at what you could get in terms of support powers if you didn't buy minions, then make your own minions that are good enough to be worth it. For 200 XP I can get a gnome arcanist who grants concealment to all allies within aura 5 and has 62 hit points. If I'm spending 200 or more xp on a minion, you should make it better than me having gnomey just stand around for the duration of the fight.
* Yes, I know the MM2 is supposed to be better in this regard, but better is not yet up to the level of "good".
* This game would not have been possible without the character builder program. Simple as that. 18th level characters are just crazy, and the effort to make them (much less track them as they level) really means that the software is required beyond a certain point. This really troubles me, but that's a separate topic.
* Silver Sharpies are really the best tool in the world for differentiating miniatures.
* When I realized how often the bard would be handing out temporary hit points, I gave him a box of poker chips so he could just dispense them physically rather than increase the amount of writing and erasing. This lead to the running joke that when they hit enemies, coins came out, Super Mario Style.
* Setting side the egregious twinkiness of the fighter, this continues to underscore my feeling that the PHB2 classes are just better designed than the PHB1 classes. The Warlord continues to be the real problem child here, and it's to be expected - it was a new idea at the time. Still, I would dearly like to see the Warlord retooled from the ground up with the understanding they've gained since then.
* Level 18, any race or class WOTC or OBE has put out
* Magic items: 1 level 19, 1 level 18, 1 level 17 and the cash equivalent of 2 level 18 items, which could not be spent on anything over 18.
I ended up with three characters, though I didn't see the sheets for them all until the day of the game, and they were as follows:
*
drivingblind's Halfling Lightning Fury Sorcerer*
evilhat's Genasi Earthsoul Daggermaster Fighter*
bastille's Half Elf Battlecaller BardThe sorcerer ended up feeling like a wuxia character, as he had an immense number of flight and other movement related powers, including the ability to fly himself or an ally as a move action. This was coupled with heavy use of thunder and lightning. A little abuse of dual implements meant he had a +22 damage modifier, so his damage output was a joy to watch, but he had enough mobility and control that he really escaped the boring repetition that other ranged strikers can fall into.
The fighter was, far and away, the most twinked of the characters, optimized for insanely bursty crits. Daggermaster (a rouge PP she multiclassed to take) increases your crit range to 18-20 with daggers (or, as it turns out, Kukri) which combined with an array of fighter feats that trigger on a crit and a pair of Bloodiron Kukri (+d10 for crits, and extra crit damage is applied again in a round) meant her crits were HUGE. She optimized to make many weaker attacks (to increase the chance of a crit) which ended up making her more of a striker than a defender in practice. The fighter mark and pin came up once or twice, but really, it was all about these huge explosions of damage. (On a personal note, I want to look at that build and see what of it can be ported to a multiclassing Avenger.)
The bard ended up being the surprise. My sense has been that the bard is really the Warlord done right, but I have heard a lot of moaning about bards lacking in healing, at least in part because they have a number of abilities that grant temporary HP rather than heal. Having now seen it in action, this concern looks pretty bogus. His healing was solid, and the fact that he could generate temporary hit points at the drop of a hat (with one ability described as "Pick an enemy. I can make candy come out when you hit him") meant that the players constantly had a decent ablative layer which would get chewed through and replenished, often in a single round.
Fred suggested that they were the sound and the fury. The bard brought the sound, the fighter brought the fury and the sorcerer, with his thunder and lightning, brought both.
Now, given 3 level 18 characters, my at budget for encounters was 6000xp. I started building encounters with a cautious eye - three players introduces certain problems that can be subtle, so I decided to stay as close to budget as possible. However, I also didn't just want 3 opponents, so I tended to grab a larger number of enemies a few levels down. In retrospect I'd have done it slightly differently, but more on that in a bit.
The scenario was composed of three fights with some connective tissue. The PCs needed to use a purifying artifact held by a minor fey lord. While they're negotiating, his place is attacked and someone makes off with the artifact in a flying ship. The lord shoots down the ship (so to speak) but cannot spare men from the battle to go after it. PC's go after it and find it's crashed in a gnome village, and the gnomes seem to be helping repair the ship. Opposition for this consisted of:
Encounter #1: 5800xp
1 Neogi Great Old Master(Level 16 Controller, given 1 action point)
1 Earth Archon Rumbler reskinned as a Steampunk construct with a huge hammer(level 17 brute)
2 Drakkoth Venomshot (Level 16 artillery)
Lots of level 3 gnomes standing around in a daze, acting as obstacles but not otherwie participating.
I liked the map for this one. I used the market square map from Paizo, then took one of the ship maps from WOTC, printed it to scale, cut it out, and laid it on top of the town map. I think it looked pretty cool, and combined with lots of 10' high buildings, the fight had a nice vertical element to it.
The party tried for an ambush, but the Bard botched the stealth roll pretty badly, so it began in open combat with the Sorcerer critting one of the drakkoth with his first attack. The fight was fun - the rumbler closed, the drakkoth sniped from the ship deck, and the Neogi did his psychic business from range. It was a good starting fight, and the dice favored the PCs. They made very nearly every save they rolled (well, except the bard, who spent most of the fight vulnerable to poison) and especially kept saving against the Neogi's mind control.
It turned out someone else had stolen the MacGuffin from them, so the PCs pursue into the sewers, where they encounter a violet dragon, waited on by Eladrin maidens. It is, of course, an illusion and attempted ambush and it is revealed to be:
Encounter #2: 6000xp
1 Adult Wretch Dragon (Level 17 Elite Brute with 2 action points)
1 Flamespewer (Level 16 Artillery)
4 Shattered Wraiths (Level 16 Minions)
So, I had picked the Wretch Dragon because I was not ready for them to try one of the Solos - just too scary, at least on paper. Unfortunately, the Wretch Dragon is kind of a pansy. His Breath Weapon's not bad, but it has no recharge, and his other useful ability (a minor action psychic attack with some damage and a pull component) doesn't hep once someone's close enough to him for an opportunity attack, so after the initial burst of goodness, he was limited to claw & Bite, which were just ok.
The wraiths were also the only minions of the night, because minions are generally stupid at this level of play. However, I'd picked them because of their special ability - if they hit you, gain vulnerable Necrotic 5. As written it has no end condition, and while that may be a typo, for the cost of these things, I was fine saying it was scene length.
For the map, I used the sewer tiles from the Streets of Shadow set. Big open area with lots of canals filled with sludge that was basically double-difficult terrain - 4 squares of movement to move 1 square. The alpha strike was good - the wraiths rushed out of hiding in the sludge to mob the PCs to try to get them vulnerable before dying, the Flamespewer got everyone in its burst attack, and in the next round the Dragon used its breath weapon to scatter the party.
Sadly, it all went downhill from there. Because the dragon's attacks were a mix of necrotic and psychic, the vulnerability only helped so much. The sorcerer made dog chow of the minions, and the fighter took apart the Flamespewer with one of her ungodly crits. After that, the fight was pure attrition, and even after taking a second wind, the Dragon just could not keep up. For this fight, the Sorcerer's mobility really shone. My sole consolation was tha by this point the fighter had burned almost all of her healing surges.
The third fight happened on either way back, as the party was ambushed by
Encounter #3: 8800xp
1 Lingerer Fell Incanter (Leve 18 elite artillery)
3 Wolf Brothers (Level 17 Skirmishers)
(The Wolf Brothers were a custom creation to let me use some cool minis I'd acquired. They began the fight as souped up wolves (which mostly means, attack knocks you prone, extra 2d6 damage against prone targets). After they're bloodied or one of them dies they shift their move and turn into large humanoids with spears that do more damage and inflict 5 ongoing. )
Ok, remember what I said about restraint before? I had designed this as the nastiest fight, but I had put a dial on it. I'd designed it with 2 Wolf Brothers in mind (7200xp) but depending how the party was doing, I could change that to 1 or 3. They had done very well this far, so I pulled out the stops.
We used the outdoor tileset for this one. Not much of note - mostly open space and some cover. Well suited to Skirmishers + Artillery.
This was a brutal fight. With the surprise round, the wolves knocked down and savaged the bard and the incanter immobilized the sorcerer and fighter. However, the sorcerer pulled out exactly the right daily - Howling Hurricane, a level 9 Sorcerer daily. It created a big, mobile, sustainable zone within which he could slide anyone who started their turn 2 squares. Immobilize doesn't stop slide, so this effect kept the party semi-mobile, and let the fighter get into melee and perhaps more importantly, the attacks had to shift to the sorcerer, because this effect was granting too much advantage to the party.
The bad guys dogpiled the sorcerer but the bard demonstrated just how good his healing was by keeping him on his feet, while the party slowly took down the wolf brothers. When the incanter died, they basically had one shot to try to take down his visage (a level 18 non-elite that replaces him) because the visage was insubstantial and could fly, and was more than happy to have this conversation from well out of the fighter's reach. The bard burned a daily teleport to reach the visage and knock him prone (which also knocked him to the ground) where the fighter cut loose, getting a crit and then, with the follow-up attack the crit allowed, getting _another_ crit. It was just ugly.
That wrapped it up. We had started after 1 and finished before 7, with breaks between the fights. It _felt_ fast, but intellectually that's a big chunk of time.
Thoughts and Impressions
* I used the stack method for initiative, and it was a lifesaver. The sheer number of status effects and whatnot made it absolutely necessity. For those who don't know the system, everyone in the fight gets an index card. You write down initiatives, and go through the stack in order. For monsters, you can put their defenses and hit points on the card to track there, and that's handy, but what really rocks is that when a target gains a status, note it on the card. It reminds you of what they need to deal with, that they need to save and so on.
* I could definitely have been meaner in the scenario design. If nothing else it was a reminder that an elite that doesn't have cool things it can do towards the _end_ of the fight is a pretty lame elite. The small level difference was really noticeable - players bonus to hit generally outclassed the monster defenses by more than I'd expect. Given some past analysis, I need to look at this more closely sometime - it's possible monsters don't follow their own rules as much as you might expect.
* Yeah, minions. 75% of the time they are crap at this level. Even the ones I used were overpriced for what they did - I could have used that same amount of XP to introduce a lurker to take advantage of the party getting split up. So yes, use minions if they grant passive bonuses that help out, but make sure their worth it, and make sure there's not a low level creature that can do the same. At level 18 a minion costs 500 xp, and for that you can buy a level 10 creature. They have ~100 hit points, so even if they can't effectively attack or defend, they burn more resources to kill and if you pick some that have non-attack powers or auras (like a Shambling Nexus, Spireborn Eidolon or the Troglodyte Curse Chanter just to pick a few) then they provide a lot more bang for the buck.
* That said, An even better choice is to look at what you could get in terms of support powers if you didn't buy minions, then make your own minions that are good enough to be worth it. For 200 XP I can get a gnome arcanist who grants concealment to all allies within aura 5 and has 62 hit points. If I'm spending 200 or more xp on a minion, you should make it better than me having gnomey just stand around for the duration of the fight.
* Yes, I know the MM2 is supposed to be better in this regard, but better is not yet up to the level of "good".
* This game would not have been possible without the character builder program. Simple as that. 18th level characters are just crazy, and the effort to make them (much less track them as they level) really means that the software is required beyond a certain point. This really troubles me, but that's a separate topic.
* Silver Sharpies are really the best tool in the world for differentiating miniatures.
* When I realized how often the bard would be handing out temporary hit points, I gave him a box of poker chips so he could just dispense them physically rather than increase the amount of writing and erasing. This lead to the running joke that when they hit enemies, coins came out, Super Mario Style.
* Setting side the egregious twinkiness of the fighter, this continues to underscore my feeling that the PHB2 classes are just better designed than the PHB1 classes. The Warlord continues to be the real problem child here, and it's to be expected - it was a new idea at the time. Still, I would dearly like to see the Warlord retooled from the ground up with the understanding they've gained since then.
Codex Venenorum is Here
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