At what point do players know they're fighting Minions?

[KarinsDad]

Okay, I think I get where the miscommunication is here. You're thinking about what the DM should just tell the PCs based on a monster knowledge check, while I'm thinking about what the PC can figure out based on the results of their actions.

I have no problem with the players finding out reasonable game mechanics information as they progress through an encounter. I'm merely talking about what the DM describes when the encounter starts.

A player gets a 22 total to hit against AC and misses, the player knows that the AC of the foe is 23 or higher. I have zip problem with this level of gradual and progressive player information gain.

Let's clear things up with an example:

PC Warlock attempts to use Rod of Reaving's property on Monster X, but observes that it has no effect. He has previously observed that every time he uses RoR on a monster and it has no effect, that monster ends up going down in one hit.

PC tells his party: "Okay guys, I just used RoR on Monster X with no effect. That means he must be a one-hit monster, so don't waste your big guns on him!"

Is there anything metagamey about this line of reasoning, and if so, what?

You find this reasonable?

I would never tell a player that the Rod of Reaving had no effect on a minion. For that matter, I would never tell a player that the Rod of Reaving had a 1 hit point effect on any other monster.

I would just mark a hit point of damage on my DM sheet for either creature and move on.

A single hit point??? Are you kidding?

You find it reasonable that a Rod of Reaving should be a Minion Divining Rod? WotC changed the Rod so that it was no longer a Minion Killing Rod. I hardly think they did that to change the Rod into a Minion Divining Rod. That's an accidental side effect of the lousy minion rules and the fact that they had to nerf the Rod. It's not intentional.

Sorry, but if a player brought such metagaming nonsense to my gaming table, I'd tell him where the door is.

Course, I doubt I would ever hand out a Rod of Reaving to begin with (it's a pretty bland item), so it would never be an issue at my table.

There are always going to be unintentional side effects with regard to certain items and player knowledge. That doesn't mean that the DM has to hand out game mechanics information because certain rules (like the minion rules) are inferior.

 

[KarinsDad]

The tarrasque's fearsome stride is greater than that of a man, and its earth magic allows it to burrow through or climb many barriers.

Yup. No problem as long as the DM doesn't say Speed 8.

A blue dragon has thick and powerful scales that deflect the blows of normal mortals with ease, only paling in comparison to its more powerful red cousins.

Yup. No problem as long as the DM doesn't say AC 30.

Not familiar with the 'mountain' troll, myself, but a normal troll is a fearsome melee combatant that surges into melee and tears at its enemies, barely bothering to defend itself while trusting in its own toughness.

Yup. No problem as long as the DM doesn't say Brute. There are many trolls that are not Brutes (possibly including the imaginary mountain troll that I made up, although it exists in non-4E sources).

At a certain point, you're either making an active decision to deny information that could be just as readily available, or you're suffering a failure of imagination. I'll assume the former, in which case, that's your prerogative, but it's not metagaming to give out everyday information in D&D anymore than it is to tell people how many hp they lost when they just got hit.

I'm not talking about everyday information. I am talking game mechanic information like specific role, specific AC, specific number of hit points, etc.

 

[DracoSuave]

II would never tell a player that the Rod of Reaving had no effect on a minion. For that matter, I would never tell a player that the Rod of Reaving had a 1 hit point effect on any other monster.

That's not kosher; you're supposed to know the effects your abilities, powers, etc have on monsters.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's not kosher; you're supposed to know the effects your abilities, powers, etc have on monsters.

Supposed to??? Those poor entitled players.

It's totally kosher. I'm the DM.

The item does one hit point of damage. I write down one hit point of damage. If you want to play your game with Rods of Minion Detection, have fun.

There is no way I am going to take the DMG suggestion about letting players know how their powers affect the NPCs to the literal ad infinitum level that they get to use Rods of Minion Detection. That's why the game has DMs.

Sure as a general rule, the players get that type of info. But not if they are going to game the system to that degree. This is no different than the DM disallowing anything into his game like an optimized PC from the optimization boards.


Reaping Strike for 4 on a miss. The foe took no damage. It could be because it is a minion. It could be because the foe has resistance or a special ability. I don't just blurt out the answer for the player.

 

[DracoSuave]

Supposed to??? Those poor entitled players.

It's totally kosher. I'm the DM.

The item does one hit point of damage. I write down one hit point of damage. If you want to play your game with Rods of Minion Detection, have fun.

There is no way I am going to take the DMG suggestion about letting players know how their powers affect the NPCs to the literal ad infinitum level that they get to use Rods of Minion Detection. That's why the game has DMs.

Sure as a general rule, the players get that type of info. But not if they are going to game the system to that degree. This is no different than the DM disallowing anything into his game like an optimized PC from the optimization boards.


Reaping Strike for 4 on a miss. The foe took no damage. It could be because it is a minion. It could be because the foe has resistance or a special ability. I don't just blurt out the answer for the player.

So... you protect the minion status to the point that you bend the rules of knowing the effects of your powers -fairly- to conceal that minion status?

Seriously?

That's beyond simply not telling them. That's denying them -any- ability to figure it out for themselves short of attacking it, and watching it die.


There's concealing information you think is non-essential, and there is denying the players knowledge of what their abilities can or cannot do. They have a right to know things like 'The minion did not get injured.'

Couple that with your 'tougher minions' you like to use, and seriously?


Minions aren't that cool that they require THAT level of secrecy, dawg.


And your reasoning?

'You have to figure stuff out, but don't DARE use abilities and powers to do so! Or monster knowledge checks!'

What's left? Guess work? What fair avenue do you have for minion identification so that a player can determine it without having to resort to attacking things until they die or not die?

Or do you think attacking is the only fair means of problem solving in this game? Because if so, I would challenge that belief.

 

[Nytmare]

PC Warlock attempts to use Rod of Reaving's property on Monster X, but observes that it has no effect. He has previously observed that every time he uses RoR on a monster and it has no effect, that monster ends up going down in one hit.

This is one I would have a problem with, though since I'm a DM who hands out minion status at least eight or nine times out of ten, it's not a situation that would readily appear in my world.

The Warlock should never reach a point where he gets to say in character "hey this magic item has no effect on these creatures that we know only have 1 hp." The rule on the item is a mechanical safety net meant to prevent Warlocks from wiping out minions with an at-will minor, and characters in the world do not measure how many times they can be punched, kicked and stabbed with a number. The warlock knows that there are wimpy things in the world that fall down, or get knocked unconscious, or give up, or run away, or possibly die when you hit them once; but I would have serious reservations with a player trying to use a string of rule abstractions as an argument for his character to be able to pull back the curtain and say "Hahahaha! See!? It really IS a game!"

 

[DracoSuave]

interesting stuff

This is a disconnect that only happens when you completely divorce mechanical explanation from fluff explanation. The idea or central concern that players 'should not know game mechanics in progress' and that mechanics get in the way of roleplay... somehow.

The problem with this approach in reference to 4e, is that 4e IS a system that relies heavily on game mechanics to get combat across, and HAS made those game mechanics a forefront of the encounter. It doesn't try to hide the mechanics behind fluff, it revels in the game mechanics and challenges the DM and players to fluff what is going on. But the idea that players can't use legitimate interractions of items and monsters to legitimately discover the status of those monsters goes WAY beyond simply not telling them at the beginning of the match. This is HARDLY 'rules sneakery'. This is having an ability that says 'X are immune to this', using it, finding out they are immune, and determining that they are, indeed, X. And that explanation doesn't apply to Reaper's Strike, which was another example given above. Or Hammer Rhythm, or... you get the drill.

How you fluff that is a DM limitation, not a player shinanegan.

So in the case of Rod of Reaving:

'You bond the enemy's fate to doom and destruction. The enemy's fate is so minor and inconsequential your Reaving Rod has little life force to steal. He takes no damage'

Hey, look, a fluff explanation for what actually happens in game, that follows the DMG guidelines for fair information giving.

Welcome to fourth edition.


PS: Your warlock's just wasted a minor action and his cursing for the turn on a minion. That's actually a mistake, a play error, that should have been avoided by the dispensation of fair information. At -that- point, if his action can turn up something useful, then he hasn't wasted his time. Wasting an action, and the use of an ability... that IS the minion being a trap, and that's not what minions are for either.

 

[Flipguarder]

First off, just something I noticed: You seem entirely too angry in that last post, it might be my imagination, but that's what I see come across.

The main difference in opinion here is on the answer to this question:

Is minion purely a mechanical idea?

My answer is yes, yours is no, I don't see either of us changing our minds.

 

[Garthanos]

Given fate and doom and luck are in fantasy very often real coherent identifiable things or even beings and a minion is someone not favored and not held up as a foil against the those who are favored. I am completely uncertain about calling minion status a purely mechanical thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Mmmmm. Mixed in with the rhetoric there is a real debate here, but honestly I don't think there is a single clear answer to what 'minionhood' is. Some may see it as one thing and some as another, and there are those of us who may see it as possibly going both ways. Mostly the approach the DM takes is a matter of style, group preference, and perhaps circumstance.

Personally I've chosen to hew close to the letter of the written rules with 4e simply because I choose to play a game as it was written at least to the extent that it appears that the designers did a decent job of thinking things through. Once in a while you run into a situation where they may not have, but in the case of 4e I don't often find that to be the case. More often I find they had thought well past the point I was at when I thought about it.

So lets see...

The knowledge rules divide everything up into three groups: common, expert, and master. Additionally knowledge can be more restricted by tier so paragon and epic tier related knowledge is harder to come by.

Monster name, type, and keywords is basically common knowledge (admittedly it has a slightly higher DC). So while not every peasant knows enough about goblins to identify them a fair number do. Most level 1 PCs will have a fair chance of knowing a goblin when they see it and in most parties at least one PC will probably know this stuff trivially. This is your "type, typical temperament, and keywords". Whether this is literally including the MM name of the specific monster is a bit ambiguous but certainly the character will easily know "This is a goblin warrior, which is a natural humanoid goblin", perhaps couched in less technical terms by the DM.

Likewise the average adventurer has some chance of knowing what powers said goblin has and an expert will probably know this more often than not. Exactly what is meant by knowing a creatures powers isn't precisely defined but presumably you have a good idea of what kinds of attacks they can make and other 'special' things they can do. "Goblin warriors prefer to use javelins and when able to move freely their attacks can be quite dangerous. Like all goblins they are experts at slipping away from attackers and are hard to pin down."

Chances are most PCs at level 1 won't know highly specific resistances and vulnerabilities but as they travel around and gain experience this information will likely be available to them. Presumably a cleric will get a handle on the more esoteric characteristics of undead as they level up. By 10th level a cleric will most likely know the resistances and vulnerabilities of heroic tier (reasonably common) undead. "You know that the Osteopede is a construct of bone which is not vulnerable to radiant damage as most undead are. However it is highly resistant to necrotic energy and cannot be poisoned."

All of this is just inherent knowledge that PCs have. The rules don't even say there IS an option to make this check, it just happens. When you see something you get a knowledge check. Now, noplace in here do the rules explicitly talk about minion or other status or monster roles. The rules seem to be primarily giving a framework for determining character knowledge. This doesn't mean that players can't, shouldn't, or don't know anything about game mechanical knowledge, of course they do. It just means the designers left it to the DM to decide how much and at what level of detail and by what means to reveal it.

I won't get involved in the arguments on this thread. Personally I don't use the terms minion or elite or solo or even the names of roles in-game. Honestly I've just never seen a need to do it. We all talk about this stuff now and then in bull sessions after a game or during a break when we may talk about the rules but I don't feel a need to give that info the characters.

Realistically I've found that its rare for the characters to fail to identify the "mooks" and deal with them accordingly. Depending on the situation that may be a result of how a monster is described or how it acts or things a character notices using perception or insight, or once in a while a player has dropped an encounter spell on a minion. Honestly they're usually just happy they killed something easily. The few times a player has broken out a daily on one it has always been something with substantial ongoing effects anyway and they had nothing to complain about.

It all seems like a fairly minor issue to me overall. In some groups maybe it would be an issue, I don't know. I'd think its up to the DM to adjust a bit to play style but that too may depend on the context of the game.