D&D 4E In Defense of 4E - a New Campaign Perspective

[Garthanos]

However, I have never heard complaints about minions. Ever. And I'm a huge 4E fan and I've very personally gotten heat for that. But minions? Eh. Never heard those complaints. Honest truth, never heard anyone complain about minions. Generally speaking even among 4E haters, what 4E did for monsters is usually regarded positively.

I actually see minions and swarms as fighting styles in reaction to the situation the same Ogre against level 4 schlubs will be knocking people around with his bad assed moves that 5e never gives him btw (in story the same ogre and same moves just lack the omph to do anything much they have to adjust taking easier opening trying to risk less and failing resoundingly)

Minions are out of their league and they know it easily intimidated I consider them functionally always bloodied, they lash out out with desperate attacks which leave them open to retaliation and scramble with similarly exaggerated attempts that only stop the least of attacks while still leaving deadly openings they are in their present context the delta on the totem pole they generally look to leaders or are bullied or inspired by leaders into being in this circumstance when they would rather be elsewhere.

Yes same monster fighting differently when outclassed and forced to.

The swarm is a group acting much more in concert as individuals the probably would be minions but training and team work and the presence of a leader make all the difference when a swarm is defeated you may have stragglers of minions but the majority are not necessarily killed but usually rather dispersed (rather like armies where it was historically rare for a war to average 1/4 dead)

I have heard someone also call minions a tacit allowance for the Trope of "conservation of Ninjutsu" - which is kind of fun

 

[cbwjm]

LOL@ Canadian style of magic. I'm not sure if that's an auto correct or not but it's funny as heck.

I've had to read back through but I thought 4E's stances worked just like 3.5's Tome of Battle? You switched into one and stayed in that stance until you didn't? I mean I guess if you switched out you couldn't go back...but I don't really remember the 4E stance rules.

Damn you autocorrect! Vancian was the word I was trying to use.

Unless I'm not remembering correctly, a stance was a daily that lasted until the end of an encounter unless you ended it earlier.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Maybe. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think minions help facilitate certain more "cinematic" elements of gameplay, such as the assassin taking out the guard with a single neck snap. Without special corner-case rules to facilitate such an event, this can't happen in say, 5E or 3.5/Pathfinder

It certainly can happen in Pathfinder or 5E! It just involves the minion-esque guard being a level one creature with bad Con. If a monk (or brawler) with a decent damage bonus can get behind the guard and deal lethal damage with their first unarmed strike, then I have no problem with that being narrated as a neck snap.

The real issue I have with minions, is the way that PCs are forced to acknowledge how they work, in order to interact with them. If you want to snap a neck in 4E, the characters need some way of determining that the NPC in question is susceptible to it, and I don't know how to describe that if it's not based on their physical endurance (Con score) and it's not based on their skill or power level (hit dice). Physical endurance, and skill/power, are things that are at least nominally observable to the PCs.

The tipping point for me was in a game where we rescued some miners from a group of drow, and we equipped the miners so that they could help us fight back against the drow; but the very first fight had the drow cast some sort of AoE that did like 3 damage with no attack roll required, and all of the miners instantly died. For a system where a level 1 goblin has 25 hp, the disparity between minions and non-minions is just too significant. I can't suspend disbelief that far.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Minions in D&D? Can't be a bad thing!

 

[Immortal Sun]

Damn you autocorrect! Vancian was the word I was trying to use.

Unless I'm not remembering correctly, a stance was a daily that lasted until the end of an encounter unless you ended it earlier.

It's been a looooooong time since I played 4E *goes and reads up* yeah you got it. Lasts the encounter unless you end it or switch out.

It certainly can happen in Pathfinder or 5E! It just involves the minion-esque guard being a level one creature with bad Con. If a monk (or brawler) with a decent damage bonus can get behind the guard and deal lethal damage with their first unarmed strike, then I have no problem with that being narrated as a neck snap.

A minion in all but name and a good damage roll? Eh. I don't see "It's basically a minion, but not really." as any different than "It's a minion." End result? A mook with low HP that will 99.9% of the time die in one hit.

"A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet."

BTWs: prior to 4E, unarmed strikes were always non-lethal. 4E baked in the option of allowing non-lethal damage on any roll. Can't recall if 5E kept it. I just let people do it because it's not worth the fiddlyness in my book. Without a feat, or a special class (Monk) you quite literally could not kill someone with your fists, which as far as "simulationism" goes is absurdly stupid.

The real issue I have with minions, is the way that PCs are forced to acknowledge how they work, in order to interact with them. If you want to snap a neck in 4E, the characters need some way of determining that the NPC in question is susceptible to it, and I don't know how to describe that if it's not based on their physical endurance (Con score) and it's not based on their skill or power level (hit dice). Physical endurance, and skill/power, are things that are at least nominally observable to the PCs.

I've never had this problem. In fact one of my greatest joys was mixing up minions and non-minons with completely identical appearances and letting players literally roll the dice. I never want my players to assume a guard must be a mook, but I don't want to let them in on the secret that they're mooks until the stuff hits the fan.

The tipping point for me was in a game where we rescued some miners from a group of drow, and we equipped the miners so that they could help us fight back against the drow; but the very first fight had the drow cast some sort of AoE that did like 3 damage with no attack roll required, and all of the miners instantly died. For a system where a level 1 goblin has 25 hp, the disparity between minions and non-minions is just too significant. I can't suspend disbelief that far.

They're NPC commoners. I'm actually legitimately shocked that you thought that would turn out any other way.

I agree with the disparity....to an extent. My resolution was to just throw 25 goblin minions at the party instead of 1 with 25 hp!

I have heard someone also call minions a tacit allowance for the Trope of "conservation of Ninjutsu" - which is kind of fun

I feel this is completely accurate, but totally fits the style of gameplay I enjoy. You know they're mooks because there's a million of them. You know they're not when there's a handful. Or are they?

Minions in D&D? Can't be a bad thing!
*snip*

Now I want to run a campaign where players are Minion minions. No HP EVER!

 

[Lanefan]

I've never been a huge fan of the Canadian style of magic ...

Sweet - we have our own style now!

Look out world, the Canadians are coming!

Lan-"now to sit down and dream up what our spell list would look like...hmmm...Create Beer sounds like a good start..."-efan

 

[cbwjm]

Sweet - we have our own style now!

Look out world, the Canadians are coming!

Lan-"now to sit down and dream up what our spell list would look like...hmmm...Create Beer sounds like a good start..."-efan

You cast magic missiles that spell "sorry" after they hit your enemies.

 

[Zardnaar]

Maybe. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think minions help facilitate certain more "cinematic" elements of gameplay, such as the assassin taking out the guard with a single neck snap. Without special corner-case rules to facilitate such an event, this can't happen in say, 5E or 3.5/Pathfinder

Though I think the "ogre minion" commentary feels a little corner-casey to me. I tend to use minions for hordes, zombies, kobolds, humanoid armies. Sure, you can make a minion for everything, (minion dragon whelps was arguably the most adroable death trap I ever made) but I do tend to agree there's a point where it's just too big, too powerful or too something to be a minion, at least in comparison to the players. I wouldn't argue against an ogre minion and a 20th level player. Even a regular ogre wouldn't pose much challenge.


And I am most certainly not a simulationist. Even though I love 3.5, I love it because it's like legos, you can put together almost anything with a little creativity and elbow grease. But 4E strikes me as a little more "cinematic" and I agree with the "wuxia" commentary I've heard in the past, though I enjoy that it certainly has it's place in things.

But I'm sort of a system agnostic. I'll play almost anything and there's very little on the game side of things that can slow down my ability to get immersed in a game. It's either the DM sucks at setting the scene or the other players won't shut up about football.

Yoou could do that. Just make the guard a lot lower level than the PCs and they could one shot them.

Might be hard because the 3.X encounter guidlines but in AD&D some level 10 adventures had Kobolds in them. The encounter scaling thing was a silly idea in 3.x, 4E a little bit less but you had minons at least.

 

[billd91]

See, what I find odd is that that is the exact same complaint I have about 3.5/PF's memorized spell system. You memorized the spell, but you can only cast it once? Did you have to memorize it 4 times? Does repetition ever kick in like when you memorize the answers to a test? Wouldn't at some point you just KNOW the spell, like if someone said "Quick John! Recite Fireball!" you could just do it?

I did make adjustments to 4E's ADEU system because I agree, doing something you know how to do only once seems a bit odd to me. So I basically gave classes encounter/daily "slots" equal to the number of those powers they knew. It's not a complete correction, the game still needs limits, but it made it more of "you can only exert yourself this hard X times per day".

Magic got away with it because there’s no reality for it to conform to - any rules of magic could be, would have to be, arbitrary. Of course, 3e tweaked the lore to sidestep the memorization problem by calling it “prepped” rather than memorized, meaning “mostly pre-cast except for the completing step”.

 

[Immortal Sun]

Magic got away with it because there’s no reality for it to conform to - any rules of magic could be, would have to be, arbitrary. Of course, 3e tweaked the lore to sidestep the memorization problem by calling it “prepped” rather than memorized, meaning “mostly pre-cast except for the completing step”.

I get it. It's just that argument is very weak and it seems to be the foundation for a vast number of other arguments around how D&D should function, and if the foundation of an argument is weak...then what is that to say of the rest?