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<blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 7614974" data-attributes="member: 13107"><p>Some points about minions:</p><p></p><p>I <strong>think</strong> the "1 HP" notion is an attempt to model a more general feature: Minions are intended to model creatures which die after one solid hit. A more accurate model would give minions about 1/2 the HP value of an average attack. As a simplification, that is changed to "1 HP", which required a further modification to prevent low damage area effects from killing minions too easily.</p><p></p><p>Also, minions are not quite creatures modified to fit their use outside of their usual level band. Minions "break" usual scaling by increasing their expected damage output but leaving their effect hit points unchanged. Although not tracking exactly, level increases mean increasing attack bonuses <em>and</em> armor class, and mean increasing damage output <em>and</em> hit points. Minions break this by increasing the combination of attack bonus and damage, without increasing the combination of armor class and hit points.</p><p></p><p>That is, a goal of the the core combat model is to roughly preserved combat as levels increase. One of the features of combat which is <em>not</em> preserved as levels increase is that detail and complexity increase, as both the characters and their opponents have many more abilities. Minions "break" this model.</p><p></p><p>A way to (partially) unify minions with usual opponents is to replace hit points with a chance of elimination: If on average, five 10 hit point strikes are needed to defeat a 50 hit point opponent, that can be replaced with a 10 hit point strike having a 20% chance of defeating the opponent outright, and an 80% chance of being ignored. The inverse of this replacement is arguably the effect of introducing hit points, with the intended benefit to reduce the variability of combat.</p><p></p><p>Thx!</p><p>TomB</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="tomBitonti, post: 7614974, member: 13107"] Some points about minions: I [B]think[/B] the "1 HP" notion is an attempt to model a more general feature: Minions are intended to model creatures which die after one solid hit. A more accurate model would give minions about 1/2 the HP value of an average attack. As a simplification, that is changed to "1 HP", which required a further modification to prevent low damage area effects from killing minions too easily. Also, minions are not quite creatures modified to fit their use outside of their usual level band. Minions "break" usual scaling by increasing their expected damage output but leaving their effect hit points unchanged. Although not tracking exactly, level increases mean increasing attack bonuses [I]and[/I] armor class, and mean increasing damage output [I]and[/I] hit points. Minions break this by increasing the combination of attack bonus and damage, without increasing the combination of armor class and hit points. That is, a goal of the the core combat model is to roughly preserved combat as levels increase. One of the features of combat which is [I]not[/I] preserved as levels increase is that detail and complexity increase, as both the characters and their opponents have many more abilities. Minions "break" this model. A way to (partially) unify minions with usual opponents is to replace hit points with a chance of elimination: If on average, five 10 hit point strikes are needed to defeat a 50 hit point opponent, that can be replaced with a 10 hit point strike having a 20% chance of defeating the opponent outright, and an 80% chance of being ignored. The inverse of this replacement is arguably the effect of introducing hit points, with the intended benefit to reduce the variability of combat. Thx! TomB [/QUOTE]
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