D&D General What does the mundane high level fighter look like? [+]

[Crimson Longinus]

Isn't "powerful" a relative notion? Eg were-hyenas are powerful when fighting ordinary soldiers. But they are not all that powerful when fighting Conan (who I am putting forward as a paradigm of a "mundane" high level fighter).

It of course is somewhat relative, but is not entirely relative in this context. In 5e a werewolf is a powerful monster, and whilst a mighty hero might be able to defeat them with relative ease, even they cannot just casually swat them left and right, and must put some effort in the killing.

If a FRPG based on levels doesn't permit a high level fighter to emulate Conan's feats, then I think it has failed.

There are many possible mechanical formulations that can avoid this sort of failure. But in this thread, I am mostly just expressing a view as to what the mundane high level fighter looks like. That fighter looks like Conan.

In broad sense that is fine. But I don't think this means the game must be produce the exact same narrative than a book down to blow to blow detail. And I also submit that these were hyenas from the book are more analogous to gnolls than to werewolves in D&D. They are hyenas, they appear in a large group and most importantly they're easily injured by perfectly normal damage, no magic or silver required. And a high level barbarian or fighter in D&D 5e indeed can defeat 20 gnolls, and even oneshot some of them. So I'd say the game can produce similar enough fiction that the condition is satisfied.

The minion stat block used in 4e D&D does represent something that is part of the setting, part of the fictional world - namely, it represents the relation between the PC and their foe. It represents that capacity of the PC to kill the foe with a single blow.

This is one of the possible mechanical formulations I mentioned just above.

It is not codified at all, it just completely to whims of the GM. So it is not really relational in any measurable sense, it is about the narrative role of the minions in the story.

 

[Sacrosanct]

TSR era/OSR D&D didn't have bounded accuracy.

Maybe not officially, but effectively yes. Especially compared to other editions. I'd say 99% of PCs and monsters from level 1 to end game had an AC within 15 points of each other (10 to -5). And it officially capped at -10. that would be like 5e limiting AC to 10 to 25, capping at 30. I don't see much functional difference there.

 

[Minigiant]

I'd be fine with getting rid of bounded accuracy.

Nah keep it.
Just make magic items and feat core rules and make those the progression instead of bloating HP.

If someone wants easy mode or tutorial D&D, just make easy feats and +X magic items.

 

[Minigiant]

Maybe not officially, but effectively yes. Especially compared to other editions. I'd say 99% of PCs and monsters from level 1 to end game had an AC within 15 points of each other (10 to -5). And it officially capped at -10. that would be like 5e limiting AC to 10 to 25, capping at 30. I don't see much functional difference there.

AC was bounded somewhat.
Accuracy was barely so. It could just when up a lot more than 5e and allowed for more ways to boost it.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm almost at the point where I think characters should not get a bonus to HP from Constitution.

That should be a Fighter, Barbarian, and Dwarf trait. Or for select monsters. Or people with the Tough Feat. Or poeple wearing special magic items.

This would lower HP across the board.

Now the Orc has 9 HP, and a level 15 Fighter can kill 3 orcs a turn 90%.

In return, PCs could start with a bonus HD.

A Fighter's Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d8+ 10 + your Constitution modifier
A Cleric's Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d8+ 8
A Rogue's Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d8+ 8
A Wizard's Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d8+ 6

I like the overall idea. I ran numbers on a very similar change a while back, and the character who suffer the most from this change are higher level (10th) warrior types. So in your proposal, 10th+ Rangers and Paladins would suffer from this implementation. Neither wrong nor right, just good to know the impact.

You also have a lot of smaller weaker monsters with 10 Con that still have 2 HD which would not be affected by this, like goblins.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Something about the mechanics of 1e or 2e gating of minion-status via HD vs 4e's iteration of the same...or something else.

When you think about it, the dividing line for 1e minion status was the line between the 1-1HD goblin and the 1HD orc. Below that line, the fighter got 1 attack/level vs the little suckers, while above it, just the same attack routine as vs any other foe, on up to dragons &c.

It was pretty stark, really, yet it hardly mattered. Those minion-level monsters had the worst attacks in the game, low hp, were dreadfully susceptible to Sleep, fireball, Cloudkill, Deasthspell, &c, and were just generally pretty much meaningless. In theory, a 9th level lord whacked 9 goblins a round, in practice, they were blown up before they ever got that close, or just ran in terror from the party....
....or, hid in their deep warrens, filled with traps, and snuck about and you never get 9 of them in arms reach at once...
It was nice in theory, in that you could picture a fighter standing atop a mountain of bodies like Conan on the cover of some REH pastiche, but it didn't much deliver.

The big difference with 4e minions - like the similar mechanics introduced by games like FengShui or GURPS Cinematic a decade or more prior - was that they were designed relative to the PCs. Now, TBF, everything in every TTRPG is relative to the PCs, they're what the players experience the world through, but 4e minions, and monsters in general, were designed to work with that. So a monster that was a terrible danger facing down a party by itself at low level, could be a standard you fight in groups at higher level, and part of a horde you plow through at the highest levels. That fits the intended zero to hero trajectory of D&D, it fits some examples of genre - series, particularly, where the first time a monster is encountered it's a big deal, but the more the same sort shows up, the more of 'em it takes to be scary and the faster the hero dispatches them - but it's not something other editions of D&D actually tried to design, too.

Ultimately, for all the consideration the pile-o-bodies fantasy is getting, it's never been done well by any edition of D&D, not as a thing for the fighter. A few flashy AE spells deal with such enemies a lot more efficiently, in every ed.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

My point is that good mechanics, in a mainstream level-based fantasy RPG like D&D, will enable a high level fighter to emulate Conan's feats. And Conan is able to "one shot" were-hyenas.

In that story, Conan is one-shotting low level monsters that can be taken down with an unarmed strike. Maybe more along the lines of gnolls rather than D&D were-creatures. Different universal rules give different results. Heck, in the rules of the Conan universe, they may be effectively minions, or perhaps crowds of foes may not even have HP, rather they drop if they are hit and don't have narrative plot points to prevent it.

I don't think a D&D Fighter should be one-shotting a crowd of werewolves.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Why is it arbitrary? It's deliberate - deliberate on the part of the GM, to represent the power dynamic of the fantasy world as that pertains to this creature and these protagonists.

It is based on whims of the GM, not anything that actually exists in the fictional world. It is representing role in the story, not a feature in the world. Having the GM to case by case decide whether apply this kludge of using a different statblock fo the same creature is just massively awkward and inelegant design. If you want creatures to be relatively weak compared to the mighty heroes, just design the basic statblocks of each so that this happens.

 

[Minigiant]

I like the overall idea. I ran numbers on a very similar change a while back, and the character who suffer the most from this change are higher level (10th) warrior types. So in your proposal, 10th+ Rangers and Paladins would suffer from this implementation. Neither wrong nor right, just good to know the impact.

You also have a lot of smaller weaker monsters with 10 Con that still have 2 HD which would not be affected by this, like goblins.

In this version of D&D, Paladins and Rangers would lean more into their ability to heal with magic. Both would have healing spells. ThePaladin would have Lay on Hands. The Ranger being a natural alchemist and having potions.

For the monk, I am tempted to let monks add Wis to HP. Their spiritualism and discipline allowing them to think past pain and shock. Mind over matter.

Drop the monster's HP a few dozen and it bolsters a lot of the fighter's fantasy. It lets the drop weaker minions easily. And when a monster does add CON to their HP, it displays its hardiness or skill that the fighter or barbarian is needed to overcome it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's not a thing in the world. That's a game state at the table.

The game state at the table is how the players experience that world, tho.

WOTC decided to bound accuracy and AC in 5e. But a level based progression system needs progression. And feats were optional. So they progressed damage and bloated HP to hell.

TBF, there was also some pretty substantial scaling in spells level & slots. Unseen Servant to Wish is a some serious scaling.

It is based on whims of the GM, not anything that actually exists in the fictional world. It is representing role in the story, not a feature in the world.

Well, no, a minion is a thing that exists in the fictional world - a threat to the PCs, who also exist in that world, that they can dispatch fairly easily. The exact same monster, in another context, could be modeled differently. If it's fighting much lower level PCs, it could be an elite or even a solo, able to pull combat tricks against them that the higher level PCs would've shrugged off without a thought. If it's fighting some other monsters in the background, it doesn't need stats, at all.
Whether you think of it as a story with the PCs as protagonists, a game with the PCs as pieces controlled by the players, or a world that the players experience through the PCs - relative to the PCs is the only way anything exists, at all.