Why I think you should try 4e (renamed)

[jgbrowning]

Really? Are you honestly going to say that there are DM's out there who do not simply decide who won the Battle of Emredy fields but actually play out, according to the rules of the game, the interactions of NPC's when no PC's are involved?

No. I'm not saying that.

The rules indicate things such as black dragons like swamps. I, therefore put black dragons in swamps. The rules indicate that minions are destroyed when they take any damage. Any existing minion has never suffered damage in their entire life or they would have no life.

This is what I'm talking about when I say using the rules away from the table to create a world guidelined by those rules.

Every DM in the world simply designs through fiat.

I disagree. Most DMs design world through fiat under the guidelines of the rules. The minion rules are not conductive to world creation because minions are a mechanic aspect of combat, and were not conceived of as a mechanical aspect of an independent pretend world.

joe b.

 

[Gothmog]

Generally speaking, I've found that if you're using your daily on a minion, the DM isn't describing things in much detail, or the players are naturally twitchy. Most players I've dealt with take their dailies fairly seriously, and save them for clear and obvious threats — discerning between rank-and-file orcs and the big badass with the bow who's filling Boromir full of arrows. The only times I've seen dailies used against minions in-game is when a PC throws an area-effect daily against a distinctly tough enemy and catches some minions in the burst. (I have seen some encounter powers wasted on minions, to variable definitions of "waste," but not more than once for any given player. After that they pay more attention to description.)

When we were learning 4e last summer, my group and I jointly agreed that if a PC uses a daily or encounter power that only affects/hits one minion, the use of that power is not expended. This does not apply to burst/blast powers that hit multiple creatures, and might only hit one minion due to attack rolls. We've kept that houserule since then, and while it doesn't happen very often anymore due to players being more familiar with the system, it does occasionally pop up, and keeps the players from feeling as if they have been gypped or wasted a powerful ability.

 

[jgbrowning]

Oh absolutely. I play that game all the time, to the chagrin of my wife and employers. But that game's an act of writing fiction. I don't need game mechanics for it.

If you plan to use the fiction at the table, rules help. When you do a D&D fiction, it's different then when you do a Traveler Fiction, or a Spirit of the Century fiction. The fictions are shaped by the ruleset.

This is what happens when you extrapolate how a world works from a set of rules designed to facilitate the acting out of adventure stories.

As in all things there are gradations of rules extrapolation. My previous post indicates what level of rules I'm concered with in world creation. Kraken are encountered in the water. If the kraken's couldn't breath water, I'd have a rules problem with it from the perspective of fiction building.

Better to see the game rules as a set of interface protocols, between the the players and the fictional world the game takes place in.

That's how I see it. The rules should seamlessly flow from table to non-table. That's the goal for a good rule. Some rules perform well in one place, and not in another. They are rules that are not so good. Minions are one of those rules, IMO, like aging to pick one from your list.

Our 4e homebrew setting 'pretend exists' outside of the PC's, because the various co-creators and DM's (and players) involved are engaged in the act of imagining it into continued existence. The campaign uses Minions. The two things look wholly unrelated to me.

You're fine with the extrapolation of the minion being different at the table compared with not at the table. I'm not. It's really just as simple as that.

I find the extrapolation too contrary between these two areas for enjoyment because of the dramatic difference it the "reality" between the two. In one area (table) minions die from any damage while in the other (non-table) they are just like regular monsters. And there are many other people who don't like it as well and because of that, I think it wasn't a good design decision as there are probably ways to have the "minion" effect without causing dissatisfaction.

joe b.

 

[Barastrondo]

When we were learning 4e last summer, my group and I jointly agreed that if a PC uses a daily or encounter power that only affects/hits one minion, the use of that power is not expended. This does not apply to burst/blast powers that hit multiple creatures, and might only hit one minion due to attack rolls. We've kept that houserule since then, and while it doesn't happen very often anymore due to players being more familiar with the system, it does occasionally pop up, and keeps the players from feeling as if they have been gypped or wasted a powerful ability.

That's a good call. My brother also favors letting people make Insight checks to determine "do I sufficiently outclass this guy that I can drop him with a well-aimed shot?", and in some cases to determine whether a creature's lowest NAD (such an unfortunate acronym!) is Fort, Ref or Will. I've adopted both practices, and I think it works out fine. If the players are going to be acting like movie heroes, they should have the confidence to drop mooks without bringing out the big guns, as well as the heroic instincts to tell whether a raging minotaur is likely to be psychically vulnerable or powerfully stubborn.

Recognizing minions for what they are or targeting weak defenses isn't a game-breaker, enjoyably enough. The only question is if you can make that revelation an interesting part of the game.

 

[Obryn]

Minions are a funny thing. As I've said before, there's a certain zen to minions. Minions are gamist or narrative; they aren't a simulation of anything in the real world.

If you're treating minions as independent creature types, I think it creates more problems than it solves. And, more to the point, I think you're missing the spirit of them. For example...

The rules indicate that minions are destroyed when they take any damage. Any existing minion has never suffered damage in their entire life or they would have no life.

...takes what's not a simulationist element and treats it in a simulationist fashion. It's not surprising when it blows up and doesn't make sense.

This absolutely doesn't make world-building impossible. It's just a different kind of world-building, and a different level of detail - should the DM choose to use minions in their game.

Say, there's a keep deep in the forest. I know it's inhabited by 50 brigands. They have a wizard with them, and the bandit king is a warlord of some repute. These sorts of details can be set in stone - they're part of the world. The game statistics of those average bandits, though, could vary. While the wizard and bandit king may be set ahead of time, the individual brigands could be lower-level monsters or higher-level minions depending on their purpose at the time.

Alternately, as I said, a DM intent on simulation could stat every single one of them out right at the outset. They're never minions; they're just lower-level brigands. There's no problem with this; the minions are just an optional shortcut. If it's important to you that you can stat out the entire world independent of the PCs, you should never use minions.

-O

 

[scruffygrognard]

Um, how would you do this before?

In 3rd edition, you would use relevant skill checks (such as profession: engineer along with profession: carpenter). In AD&D you would use a secondary skills (from page 12 the DMG) or non-weapon proficiencies.

 

[AllisterH]

Take a look at the monster statistics and "to hit" tables from 1E AD&D. There were no rules or guidelines saying that a monster or a PC had to have AC X at a given level. Defenses didn't rise through the roof requiring a slew of bonuses stacking just to get the privelege of a 50% chance to hit. Defenses didn't "scale" so much. The end result was that, as levels were gained your character actually improved and hit things more often.
The higher hit points of tougher monsters gave them staying power and provided for tougher fights. Before the layering of bonuses there was no need to scale defenses higher and higher. Why keep jacking up the hit points of monsters in addition to making them harder to hit based on level?

The overall effect of this was that lower level monsters were not rendered totally irrelevant at higher levels. If the DM handed out too much magic then the party might be too well protected for the lowest level creatures to provide much of a threat. The difference is that it is not the system telling the DM that the PC's should have all these goodies.

Ok, time to defend 3e AND 4e from this assertion.

There's this belief that 3e and 4e are the first editions which "quantified" what a PC needed in terms of equipment and stats.

However, this I find not true....3e and 4e are the first to EXPLICITLY tell you. 1e and 2e tended to "hide the math" from the players.

For example, the fighter gained followers at 9th and this is expected. Take a look at what the fighter GAINED as followers.

You don't think the system was assuming that a 6th level fighter had plate mail + 1, a shield +1 and a spear +1?

As for the "non-scaling" issue,

2nd edition - Human wearing full plate armour + shield (nonmagical versions of both). - AC 0.

Which means that kobolds and goblins ALREADY can't hit the heavy armour wearing people other than on a 20.

Let's assume we have a "munchkin" player and he rolled a 17 DEX and the "monty haul" DM (a.k.a, a typical adventure module) at 5th level had provided a full player armour + 1 and shield +1.

AC of -5. So, how many monsters in the MM can actually hit this? Pretty much any creature under 5 HD is not even touching this.

 

[jgbrowning]

I don't think that's entirely true. A pretend world that exists independently of the PCs is still subject to the GM's narrative control whenever he wants things to happen. To some, that's a major advantage. If Crescentia declares war on Akklorash, the GM doesn't have to play through the overtures, making NPC Diplomacy checks to see whether the war is averted or not. He can if he likes: but he's deliberately making extra work for himself, and not everyone enjoys that extra work.

I expect GMs to always exert narrative control to the point of mostly ignoring all rules except those that make players question their suspension of disbelief. For some, minions break that suspension because they're handled so dramatically different in the two realms (table and non-table.)

I believe that the split here isn't between "whether you think the world should exist independent of the PCs," it's the question of whether the rules are the foundation for what happens in the world, or whether what happens in the world is the foundation for the rules. If a sudden plague sweeps across a given country, one approach is to come up with mechanical effects for the plague and then apply them to each NPC by the rules; another is to determine how lethal it is, what NPCs die, and then figure out rules for the plague that reflect that. It's a top-down vs. bottom-up decision.

I think most people employ neither a top-down nor a bottom-up decision, but use a series of smaller decisions made from both perspectives.

Again, I think you're not necessarily representing the group you're talking about. I like worlds that exist outside of the PCs. I run worlds that exist outside of the PCs. But I don't require them to be mechanical outside of the PCs' interaction. This no doubt comes from the way I played back in college, where dice would come out only every other session or so and half the people we interacted with were never statted, but the concept of a world that exists and does things just isn't married to mechanical presence in my mind.

The reason why so many people have responded to my post is that they seem to think I'm saying that one must stat things out and use the rules instead of GM fiat, whereas what I mean is that the rules one has for the game influence what type of fiat one performs. If you want Hong Kong action fiat, don't use Rolemaster rules, use Feng Shui.

By introducing a minion rule in D&D that has "turned off" a sector of D&D gamers that don't want to fiat a fiction based upon that mechanical construction. Even within the group that accepts the minion concept, there are those that don't like high-level minions because the concept becomes increasing harder to fiat with increasing power levels for them.

Generally speaking, I've found that if you're using your daily on a minion, the DM isn't describing things in much detail, or the players are naturally twitchy.

The daily was used to make sure I was communicating how minions can result in misplaced application of limited resources. I don't think it would happen very often, but it does show the point.

Edit: Gah, with those other two posts, this looks like a dogpile. Hope you take this post in the spirit in which it was intended!

No problems. I'm just talking about rules and how they affect design, so I don't have any skin it it to feel dogpiled. It's just business to me. I'm always trying to identify mechanical effects and consequences with an eye towards design.

joe b.

 

[AllisterH]

In 3rd edition, you would use relevant skill checks (such as profession: engineer along with profession: carpenter). In AD&D you would use a secondary skills (from page 12 the DMG) or non-weapon proficiencies.

1. Profession does not work that way...seriously, I've noticed people seem to ignore how profession works and put an entirely new spin on it.

2. This kind of leaves out 1e since IIRC, secondary and NWP were *optional* rules.

:re Minions
For me personally, as expected, I LIKE being able to do what my players read and see on the screen. For me, D&D is a way to be Conan or Aragorn.

 

[Hussar]

No. I'm not saying that.

The rules indicate things such as black dragons like swamps. I, therefore put black dragons in swamps. The rules indicate that minions are destroyed when they take any damage. Any existing minion has never suffered damage in their entire life or they would have no life.

This is what I'm talking about when I say using the rules away from the table to create a world guidelined by those rules.

I disagree. Most DMs design world through fiat under the guidelines of the rules. The minion rules are not conductive to world creation because minions are a mechanic aspect of combat, and were not conceived of as a mechanical aspect of an independent pretend world.

joe b.

But what if I put my Black Dragon in a jungle? Can I do that? Or would I have to roll in order to see if my black dragon could survive in a new environment?

You are right though, minion rules are not conducive to world creation. However, 1e survived with 25% of the population of the world having 1 hit point and no one bitches about that. Basic D&D did the same as well. Normal human got d4 hit points. Did you wipe out 25% of your populations regularly when you played 1e or 2e?

Somehow I doubt it. Why? Because things like hit point and armor class and whatnot have absolutely nothing to do with world building. They are combat rules, not rules for creating a world.

Heck, even in 3e, a 1st level commoner has 1 hit point 25% of the time. Yet, for some reason, we didn't have massive deaths occuring regularly in 3e campaigns either.

Think about this for a second when you say that the rules inform world building. 25% of ALL 1st level commoners, regardless of race, in 3e have 1 hit point. The overwhelming majority of the population of any humanoid nation are 1st level commoners, meaning that in most nations, (or tribes, or nation states, what have you) somewhat less than 25% of the people, lets be generous and say 20% of the population, has ONE HIT POINT.

Yet, this isn't a problem.

If you could ignore that in every other edition of D&D, why is suddenly having minions a major stumbling block?