Are you a Minion?

Minions in D&D 4E are odd critters. I know they aren't unique... Feng Shui has its mooks that fill the same role. But having played out four combats involving Minions now, I find they still seem weird to me.

The one thing I'm wondering about is whether it should be clear to the PCs that they are Minions. Combat tactics are different if you can tell which kobolds have one hit point and which have 27. And for that matter, once you hit a Minion and realize its nature, are the minions clearly differentiated from non-Minions? Kobold Minions and Skirmishers carry the same gear... can you visually tell them apart?

I also ran into a situation where Minions created false expectations for some roleplaying newbies. The Minions fell left and right... but they were a bit surprised when the kobold Slinger took four hits to take down. (Kobolds sure have a lot of hit points nowdays.)

I can see having weaker versions of the monsters, but I'm conflicted over this "one hit point" thing. Would having five or six hit points really change their effectiveness in combat, though? Swinging at a Minion isn't a guarantee of a hit, though if you hit them they go down. Giving them five our six hit points changes that uncertainty theoretically, but practically, I'm not sure that it would change anything. So I'm guessing that the one-hit point thing is to simplify accounting for the DM. Pushing the hit points high enough that it makes a difference probably pushes them out of "Minion" status.

I guess what's bothering me is why are these kobolds so weak compared to the next level up? This kobold takes one hit, this other kobold takes, on the average, four or five. It means the heroes can wade through these kobolds and then suddenly those kobolds slow them down. I don't expect D&D to be "realistic," but this keeps grating on me.

I see where this is coming from... this is the "storming the castle, taking out guard after guard with one slash each" movie thing. Where, for some reason, the guards are child's play and the villain and his elite guards are far tougher.

I think the problem here is that we expect to see this in the movies, but I (and the newbies) don't expect the game to work this way. (Despite the newbies trying to do things that were obviously inspired by the movies.)

And it gets weirder when you look at things like the Level 7 Human Lackey Minion. 19 AC, +12 vs AC, deals a flat 6 damage... but has only one hit point. A Level 7 Minion? "Level 7" doesn't sound like "minion" to me.