One difference is that you aren't guaranteed to one-hit opponents. This doesn't directly equate to the minions of 4e, but it does fill a similar role. The difficulty increases but the XP gained does not increase. Rules for using large numbers of creatures appear in Dungeon Master's Guide p.82.

This means even when you're high level, you can reliably kill many low-level monsters in one fireball, but they can still hit your AC and pose a challenge. The proficiency bonus only scales from +2 to +6 over twenty levels (instead of +1 to +20), and doesn't apply to AC. In D&D 5e, the numbers for attack and damage no longer scale linearly with level. That effect was even stronger in 4e, where all monsters added their level to AC and attack. In 4e preview book Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters, p.10, James Wyatt notes that large numbers of low-level monsters rarely posed a threat in 3e because they could rarely hit PCs, whereas the PCs could hit the monsters easily. This means if you want a low-HP creature in 5e, a low-level monster is still fairly viable.ĭ&D 4e needed minions because of the way the numbers worked in that edition. There is less difference between low and high level creatures in terms of attack bonus and armor class. Low-level creatures they work better at high level in 5e than before.Ĭompared to 3e/4e, the numbers in 5e are much flatter.

Trouble minion game rules