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

[pemerton]

What I mean by GM's whim, is that it is not informed by the fictional reality. Think in the setting is X, but it is at GM's whim whether it uses minion-X, or normal-X or elite-X rules. The GM is not constrained by the fiction, as the rules do not represent the fiction in consistent manner.

The GM is absolutely constrained by the fiction.

Both the PHB and the DMG explain Heroic, Paragon and Epic tier. The contrast between them is further reinforced by the Monster Manual, which presents monsters of various levels. There is also encounter building advice, which suggests which levels of creatures/NPCs are appropriate for combat with which levels of PCs.

The level of a PC therefore tells us something about that PC's place in the fiction - namely, what tier they are. This helps understand which creatures and NPCs are powerful, or not, in comparison to them. This follows from the descriptions of the tiers. It is further reinforced by the Monster Manual's allocation of level and status (minion, standard, elite or solo) to various monsters.

It is clear from all the material that I've described that (eg) a Hill Giant who is fighting mid-Heroic PCs would not be a minion. But a Hill Giant fighting low-Epic PCs would be an excellent candidate to be a minion. There's nothing arbitrary about any of this.

Having objective rules-fiction conncetion is just simpler than having to separately decide what rule element to attack to the fictional element every time.

Is it? Not in my experience. I wrote up a lot of 4e stat blocks when I was GMing that system. Deciding which creatures to stat as minions, or standard, or elite, or solo, wasn't difficult.

Hit points and hit bonuses are objective and at least to me they do represent diegetic things in the setting, albeit in rather abstract manner. Minion rules are not diegetic.

Diegetic means, of a thing, that that thing is experienced both by the audience and by the characters. So the phrase represents a a diegetic thing is incoherent. If a thing in the fiction is represented to the audience, rather than directly experienced by the audience, that is sufficient to show that it is not diegetic.

Minion rules obviously are not diegetic - like any other RPG rules, they are not experienced by the characters (setting to one side fourth-wall breaking zaniness). But the power relationship between PCs and creatures/NPCs that minion rules express is diegetic: the characters experience it, and so do the audience.

 

[Gammadoodler]

maybe reach weapons need disadvantage on attacks in 5ft radius to begin with.

Or give non-reach weapons other desirable weapon properties (e.g. more damage, some kind of status effect on hit, defensive bonuses, etc.)

 

[pemerton]

IOW, a human warrior covering an area 315sq ft (10’ radius circle) in melee probably takes more time than 6 seconds, and over 700sq ft (15’ radius) would require breaking some laws of physics.

How is this any different from D&D's falling rules, its what happens to a person when swiped by a dragon's claw rules, etc?

It seems obvious that a high level mundane fighter is going to do things that are literally impossible, just as already happens in some aspects of the game.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'll take a stab:

I imagine this largely comes down to anchoring stat blocks as precise descriptions of the creatures they represent. Wolves are like so, so changing one of their properties to produce different gameplay undermines their role. You have not defeated a real wolf, instead the wolf was modified to allow you to defeat it. Comparison to other wolves is thus invalidated, and the fantasy you're trying to deliver doesn't happen, because instead of the character demonstrating something about themselves, they've taken advantage of a property of the opponent, and worse, a property that was induced specifically for them to do so.

I'm less confident in the appeal here, but I think it's about the origin of the mechanics? The AD&D mechanic is a property of the character, instead of a property of the monster.

Appreciate the answer. Going to work backwards:

1) The AD&D original instantiation of this was both (a) a property of the character (you chose Fighter class and the mechanics afford a specific exception when faced with extremely low HD creatures) and (b) a property of the monster (their HD value being less than one d8 HD), so we've got a pretty big (and relevant) confounder to your proposed hypothesis.

2) So thoughts on the first paragraph:

A wolf (or any monster) wouldn't have been modified to allow you to defeat it. They actually wouldn't have been "modified" at all, but rather created using the monster building rules. But if we want to just stay with "modified" for these purposes, that's fine because that isn't the point of what we're discussing. The wolf would have been modified in order to (i) generate a particular fiction while simultaneously (ii) generating a particular, intra-challenge dynamic that either respects (i) or dovetails with it. Now, post-scene, the situation might mature and later we might need to actually modify an NPC; an easy use-case is that you rescue an NPC Minion from certain death, they tag-along, and downstream they mature into an actual Companion Character.

Here is an example of the above. This is a 1st level Minion NPC named Bita-Bousseh. She was a barrister for a covert group in the Empire the game is taking place. The PCs were entangled with that group early and wanted her allegiance. That meant her survival in an early conflict. She was just a vulnerable, Tiefling barrister of a covert group at that point so her statistical debut related (a) that fictional positioning and (b) provided a foundational element for a compelling tactical Win Con of "Keep the (Minion) Barrister Alive." Here are initial stats in that conflict:

Bita-Bouseh
Medium natural humanoid, tiefling
Level 2 Minion
HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. Initiative Minotaurs
AC 16, Fortitude 13, Reflex 14, Will 15 Perception+5 Speed 6

Standard Actions
Infernal Glower
Attack: Ranged 5 (one creature); +5 vs. Will
Effect: The target cannot attack Bita-Bouseh until the end of her next turn.

There Will Be Order
Immediate Reaction (Encounter)
Trigger: Bita-Bouseh or an ally within 3 squares of Bita-Bouseh is knocked unconscious.
Effect: Bita-Bouseh or the ally heals 1d6 HP and saves against 1 ongoing effect.

Lawyer's Dodge
Move Action (Encounter)
Effect: Bita-Bouseh shifts 3 squares and can shift through difficult terrain until the end of her next turn.

Languages Common, Supernal

Skills Athletics +3

8 levels later, here are her stats as a full-fledged Companion Character (or cohort or follower in alternative parlance):

Bita-Bousseh
Medium natural humanoid, tiefling
Level 8 Controller (Leader) XP 300
HP 59, Bloodied 29, Surge 14, Surges per day 8; Initiative +6
AC 23, Fortitude 20, Reflex 20, Will 22 Perception+6, Low-light vision
Speed 6
Resist 9 Fire (5 + 1/2 L)

Standard Actions
Infernal Glower (At-Will), Fear
Ranged 10, Target: one or two creatures
Attack: +11 vs Will
Hit: 1d8 +9 damage, and Bita-Bousseh slides the target 3 squares.

Bedevil the Fray (Recharge 6)
Minor Action - Ranged 5
Target: 1 ally
Effect: Bita-Bousseh slides the target 3 squares, and they make a melee basic attack as a free action against an adjacent enemy.

Infernal Wrath (Recharge 4,5,6), Fire
Free Action Close burst 10
Trigger: An enemy within 10 squares of her hits Bita-Bousseh.
Target: The triggering enemy in the burst
Effect: The target takes 1d6 +7 fire damage, and the target grants combat
advantage until the end of its next turn.

There Will Be Order
Immediate Reaction (Encounter)
Trigger: Bita-Bousseh or an ally within 5 squares of Bita-Bousseh is bloodied
or knocked unconscious.
Effect: Bita-Bousseh or the ally spends a healing surge and gains an additional
1d6 hit points and saves against 1 effect that a save can end and shifts 3
squares, ignoring difficult terrain.

Lawyer's Dodge
Move Action (Encounter)
Effect: Bita-Bousseh shifts 3 squares and can shift through difficult terrain
until the end of her next turn.

Languages Common, Supernal

Skills Acrobatics +6 (Escape), Bluff +13, Insight +11, Stealth +8

S 11 (+4) D 14 (+6) W 14 (+6)
C 12 (+5) I 16 (+7) C 14 (+6)

Fiction has accreted around her over the course of the Heroic Tier of play, but/and (not sure which here) the fact that she was a Minion in her opening scene and is a fully realized Companion Character later doesn't undermine anything (not their role, not their fiction, etc). If anything, I suspect the players might say it backstops it.

We didn't have a concern about "another Tiefling barrister of a covert group" entering play and the minion rules undermining anything (fiction, immersion, etc). And, to date, that lack of concern hasn't proven foolhardy.

Another Minion used in that game were mindless CAIPHON PLASMAS which would carry out their rote work of horrifying undulations and whispers in the name of their dread imperator. They had a move action called Flowing Slime that let them shift half their speed and a standard action called Psychic Slam that afflicted psychic damage and vulnerability psychic. They were small rivulets of The Dread Star Caiphon itself, born into the world from a vile Warlock nexus into that alien celestial body. There was a nested Skill Challenge to Disrupt the Caiphon Nexus. Until that was completed, you had these dangerous spawns of Caiphon entering and threatening this world (and the PCs in this scene). And you had the Warlock and his own summonings to deal with.

But the Caiphon plasmas had their fictional place and had their synergistic mechanical instantiation. We didn't have a concern about "Caiphon Plasmas" later entering play and the minion rules undermining anything (fiction, immersion, etc). And, to date, that lack of concern hasn't proven foolhardy.

Same goes for the Stone Spider Broodlings that saw onscreen time not long ago. Same goes for several other Minions. I believe people are saying its a problem for them, but its just not clear to me what people are imagining happening in the play of the game that would generate this state of "undermining" that is being proposed.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I believe this would probably make reach weapons too good both absolutely and relatively. But with just reach of five it would probably be fine.

You'd need at least 3 enemies within the outer 8 squares of a 3 x 3 grid and be able to get to the center square to achieve any kind of payoff on the ability at that point.

It's part of why the existing Whirlwind attack for the ranger is not particularly well-regarded.

Might be fine if it's a core ability which other character features could add onto?

 

[Oofta]

Certainly there is a multiplicative effect when you combine scaling damage per hit with additional attacks.

But ultimately I think the question you need to get an answer for generally is how much time (i.e. how many actions) a higher level fighter "should" spend on enemies from lower level ranges and then build mechanics to suit.

Which they did when designing fighters. Rogues are one big hit class. Fighters spread out as much or more damage, making them more reliable and flexible.

If you change that paradigm you have to change it starting at level 5 and I think that makes the fighter worse, less flexible and less reliable. A different approach isn't inherently better.

 

[Oofta]

So was there really an issue, or were you just not playing the right game?

I decided 4E wasn't the right game for me.

EDIT: I also created my own custom version of minions while I wrapped up my home campaign. The minion issue was just one of many.

 

[Manbearcat]

This to me seems confused. I really don't see that as analogous to the minion system. We already have ways to measure qualities of creatures: their stats. Introducing a parallel system that measures their quality vis-à-vis an external comparison (the characters) by changing their stats is just bizarre. Nothing of the sort certainly is going on with switching from metric to imperial, or in your lengthy climbing example (which BTW is not particularly useful comparison to people who are completely clueless about climbing, i.e. me and almost everybody else.)

The point of my post was to refute the contention that "variance of an assigned profile to a thing undermines the credibility or the realized objective nature/features of said thing."

Multiple, durable, respected & used, systems for grading routes and boulder problems within the climbing ecosystem. Yet the physical characteristics of any given climbing route/obstacle will endure despite that and the climbing ecosystem simultaneously thrives along with it.

There are legions of examples like this aforementioned Imperial vs Metric and from martial arts to ball sports like American Football (where there is significant variance in expression for the same underlying phenomenon, yet you have a durable, legitimate phenomenon in concert with a thriving ecosystem).

 

[Pedantic]

Appreciate the answer. Going to work backwards:

1) The AD&D original instantiation of this was both (a) a property of the character (you chose Fighter class and the mechanics afford a specific exception when faced with extremely low HD creatures) and (b) a property of the monster (their HD value being less than one d8 HD), so we've got a pretty big (and relevant) confounder to your proposed hypothesis.

I don't think that follows. The fighter has an ability, the monster meets the triggering condition. The ability is clearly a trait of the fighter and the mechanic exists to say something about the character. You could take the same group of low HD monsters put them next to a different character, and get a different result. Thus, using the ability satisfies the fantasy, as it differentiates your character from a different character faced with the same situation.

2) So thoughts on the first paragraph:

A wolf (or any monster) wouldn't have been modified to allow you to defeat it. They actually wouldn't have been "modified" at all, but rather created using the monster building rules. But if we want to just stay with "modified" for these purposes, that's fine because that isn't the point of what we're discussing. The wolf would have been modified in order to (i) generate a particular fiction while simultaneously (ii) generating a particular, intra-challenge dynamic that either respects (i) or dovetails with it. Now, post-scene, the situation might mature and later we might need to actually modify an NPC; an easy use-case is that you rescue an NPC Minion from certain death, they tag-along, and downstream they mature into an actual Companion Character.

Here is an example of the above. This is a 1st level Minion NPC named Bita-Bousseh. She was a barrister for a covert group in the Empire the game is taking place. The PCs were entangled with that group early and wanted her allegiance. That meant her survival in an early conflict. She was just a vulnerable, Tiefling barrister of a covert group at that point so her statistical debut related (a) that fictional positioning and (b) provided a foundational element for a compelling tactical Win Con of "Keep the (Minion) Barrister Alive." Here are initial stats in that conflict:



8 levels later, here are her stats as a full-fledged Companion Character (or cohort or follower in alternative parlance):



Fiction has accreted around her over the course of the Heroic Tier of play, but/and (not sure which here) the fact that she was a Minion in her opening scene and is a fully realized Companion Character later doesn't undermine anything (not their role, not their fiction, etc). If anything, I suspect the players might say it backstops it.

We didn't have a concern about "another Tiefling barrister of a covert group" entering play and the minion rules undermining anything (fiction, immersion, etc). And, to date, that lack of concern hasn't proven foolhardy.

I'm not sure how to do this argument, because it just comes down to back and forth assertions that the game's fantasy is predicated on consistent mechanical expressions of objects in the game, or assertions that it doesn't.

I can tell you that I'm unhappy with the idea of a tactical puzzle contained to a singular scene; that's a device one might use to structure a series of events, but I expect the gamestate to be sufficiently robust that the rules of engagement might change, but I should still be able to determine the result from the inputs of the players and the established board. But I'm pretty sure that's not even normative to other players who would be unhappy with this model. If the NPC is likely to remain relevant (in the sense of challenge and combat effectiveness) over an 8 level period of growth, I'd have reasonably expected her to also be involved in whatever progression defines the PCs, probably gaining levels herself, but I'd expect that be reflected in mechanically mediated progression that expands from her initial statblock to her final state. Regardless, the NPC's "fictional positioning" isn't determinative of her stats, it should be determined by them. The game is in seeing that result occur.

Another Minion used in that game were mindless CAIPHON PLASMAS which would carry out their rote work of horrifying undulations and whispers in the name of their dread imperator. They had a move action called Flowing Slime that let them shift half their speed and a standard action called Psychic Slam that afflicted psychic damage and vulnerability psychic. They were small rivulets of The Dread Star Caiphon itself, born into the world from a vile Warlock nexus into that alien celestial body. There was a nested Skill Challenge to Disrupt the Caiphon Nexus. Until that was completed, you had these dangerous spawns of Caiphon entering and threatening this world (and the PCs in this scene). And you had the Warlock and his own summonings to deal with.

But the Caiphon plasmas had their fictional place and had their synergistic mechanical instantiation. We didn't have a concern about "Caiphon Plasmas" later entering play and the minion rules undermining anything (fiction, immersion, etc). And, to date, that lack of concern hasn't proven foolhardy.

Same goes for the Stone Spider Broodlings that saw onscreen time not long ago. Same goes for several other Minions. I believe people are saying its a problem for them, but its just not clear to me what people are imagining happening in the play of the game that would generate this state of "undermining" that is being proposed.

This could as easily read as a play report of a dungeon crawling board game with scenario coded play, something like Descent or Gloomhaven. This feels like you've taken an engine for designing such games and provided the output, introducing a mechanic to achieve a specific setup, creating a board state with reference to these unique mechanics and some universal rules and establishing a win condition to move to the next linked scenario.

The whole differentiating point of an RPG (as far as I am concerned) compared to a similar experience is that it strives to provide a consistent board state on which any number of actions can continue to be resolved with dynamic results. Your NPCs and entities don't have fictional purposes that can be resolved so cleanly; they have statistics that provide information to the ongoing state of play, and learning and leveraging that information to achieve the player desired result is the whole point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

GM is constrained in a sense that they are required to stat the fiction in consistent manner. It is more WYSIWYG and predictable to the players.


I don't think it entirely goes away. The GM still has to decide every time what version of the monster to use. And it will lead to situations like @Oofta described, high level characters helping low level town guards to fight medium power monsters that should be minions to the characters but normal to the guards. I think this is genuinely more convoluted that just having objective stats and being able to throw them into whatever combination and not having to decide to whom the relative stats should be scaled.


No, they don't all have same stats. I modify monster stats often to represent different individuals. But these differences are diegetic. Everyone would agree that the pit-fighting champion Mord is a particularly tough ogre that can punch unusually hard and fast with his meaty fists.


No, no they are not. Like I said earlier, I doubt the purpose of minion ogre is to represent a particularly sickly ogre that is hovering at death's door. In fiction it is supposed to be just a normal ogre and them being easy to kill is a narrative conceit. That's not diegetic.


I don't need stats for that, but when there is a clear rules-fiction connection it is easy to assign fiction to the rules or rules to the fiction. If creature can have whatever rules then this ceases to be the case.


I don't understand what you mean here.


Right. I think I have explained in some detail why I think this method is more complicated. I stand by that assessment.


It indeed is somewhat restrictive, which I consider in this case to be a feature, not a bug. It lends rigour to the mechanical description of the world and keeps rules and the fictional reality aligned. So it is not the tail wagging the dog, it is the tail being attached to the dog in the first place.


Yes. And these represent diegetic differences.


Consistent portrayal of fictional reality by mechanics. But like I said earlier, if you don't care, and do think minions would improve your 5e experience, then just do it. It is even RAW in a sense that the GM certainly has permission to give whatever stats they want to the monsters.

I recall numerous discussions back in the day debating whether or not, when confronted with minions, a PC in 4e should be able to tell. Why would this even be a question if the difference was anything other than a narrative conceit?