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

[Tony Vargas]

But it doesn't feel like it! Mechanics matter. This genuinely cannot be that hard to comprehend, even if you personally wouldn't feel this way.

Mechanics matter, certainly, which is why class imbalances and failure to emulate genre need to be addressed at the mechanical level.

Feel is subjective. For an number of folks in the thread, minions feel just fine, for me, I take an added step when DMing, of making sure a minion meant to represent the same monster, has the same xp value, because I find that consistent in the same way you're looking for in giving it the exact same stats.

A strictly PC-side solution, like the below, would presumably not be objectionable, either.

You can effectively minion-ize certain monsters by implementing class features for a fighter that turn out to be much less objectionable (at least so far IME) than 4th edition style minions.... For example...

Deathbringer. When your attack would reduce a creature to 6 hit points or less, you may instead choose to reduce the creature to 0 hit points with a finishing move. At 5th level, this affects a creature that you reduce to 12 hit points or less, at 9th level 20 hit points or less, at 13th level 30 hit points or less, and at 17th 42 hit points or less.

Something like that could help the fighter get closer to the specific Conan bit Pemerton was talking about. Minions were a more general solution - while they enabled that sort of thing, wizards and other controllers were even better at minion-sweeping.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So you think minion status is diegetic? That a minion ogre is genuinely some super sickly ogre barely clinging to life? Because I'm pretty sure that is not the intention.

They're not sickly. they're just going to die quick.

They're the action movie goon who catches the bullet in the head instead of the shoulder.

They are serving a narrative purpose, not a simulationist one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The relationship between hp and damage is only relevant during a combat encounter.

Specifically a combat encounter where the PCs are participants.

PCs have no knowledge of what HP total a given monster has or how much numerical damage they are doing. What they know is what it takes to kill the monster and how good a hit 'felt'. Likewise for other creatures in the world. The cat doesn't know that they are dealing 1 hp of damage, they know that they can kill a mouse and not an ogre. The PCs don't know that they are doing 20 damage, they know that they can kill goblins but behirs take a few more swings.

The flipside of this absolutist approach to hp and damage is that a swing of a fighter's greatsword is never more lethal to an ogre than encountering 20 CR 0 cats in a dark alley.

I personally would rather increase PC damage than reduce monster hp to 1, but at the end of the day, we're talking about the same relationship.

But increasing the damage approach doesn't break down when the mighty heroes are attacked by ogres at their home and their stalwart housecat decides to fight alongside them.

And this really isn't a weird niche complaint. At least in my experience it is pretty damn common that the characters end up fighting alongside with allies that might be drastically different level than them (usually lower.)

 

[Sacrosanct]

The relationship between hp and damage is only relevant during a combat encounter.

Specifically a combat encounter where the PCs are participants.

PCs have no knowledge of what HP total a given monster has or how much numerical damage they are doing. What they know is what it takes to kill the monster and how good a hit 'felt'. Likewise for other creatures in the world. The cat doesn't know that they are dealing 1 hp of damage, they know that they can kill a mouse and not an ogre. The PCs don't know that they are doing 20 damage, they know that they can kill goblins but behirs take a few more swings.

The flipside of this absolutist approach to hp and damage is that a swing of a fighter's greatsword is never more lethal to an ogre than encountering 20 CR 0 cats in a dark alley.

I personally would rather increase PC damage than reduce monster hp to 1, but at the end of the day, we're talking about the same relationship.

I can’t speak for everyone naturally, but I suspect a whole lot of people view mechanics in context with everything else. If a player realized it only takes 1 pt of damage to kill an ogre, they are going to wonder why. Why don’t the commoners just kill it?

That relationship and context with other things in the game beyond the combat encounter matter to a lot of people because it sets up immersion. Which is important in a role playing game.

For me, reducing monsters to 1 ho seems really gamist and breaks immersion.

 

[Oofta]

Something like that could help the fighter get closer to the specific Conan bit Pemerton was talking about. Minions were a more general solution - while they enabled that sort of thing, wizards and other controllers were even better at minion-sweeping.

Except you can do this easily in 5E as well. Take the lowly skeleton, CR 1/4 with 13 HP and vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. Put them in plate armor, give them necromantically cursed weapons so they hit a bit more often and do a bit more damage and you're off to the races. Same monster, just different equipment. Perhaps throw in some other supernatural or spell buff.

Or just, I don't know, use the rules from the DMG and send a mob of skeletons. Just don't pretend that I made my CR 1/4 skeletons into CR 7 Skeletal Knights with 115 HP because I gave them armor.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes. But like you said, "the hero gets more powerful", their stats increase allowing them to actually beat the same monsters easier.

Except the cold hand of bounded accuracy says 'not that much better or easier'.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They're not sickly. they're just going to die quick.

They're the action movie goon who catches the bullet in the head instead of the shoulder.

They are serving a narrative purpose, not a simulationist one.

Right. I get that. And that makes it non diegetic! And you don't care, I know. But I do. We want different things from the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Except the cold hand of bounded accuracy says 'not that much better or easier'.

Number of attacks increasing helps quite a bit here.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And third, as a player, does it feel to you that you defeated a powerful monster if you kill a one HP monster?

Again, not the point.

The minion's purpose isn't to make you feel like you beat a powerful monster, it's to make you feel that these guys are nothing against me.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Number of attacks increasing helps quite a bit here.

So you're expending more in-universe work to get the same results. I thought we were doing dianetics or something and that wasn't the idea.