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

[Tony Vargas]

AD&D Ogres don't normally attack at range, at least in my memory of them, so I used melee as my framework.

They're damage/attack is listed as 1-10 or by weapon type so a DM could arm them with throwable weapons, the MM illo depicts an ogre holding a spear & axe (both stone), for instance

I think the fact that the 5e Ogres are better off throwing their javelins than charging into melee shows another feature of 5e that is a bit of a departure from the inspirational material.

5e made a lot of changes to simplify combat and make it faster. On balance, those changes favor range over melee, prettymuch for everyone who can scrounge up a viable ranged option.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Instead of "gamifying" monsters into minions, why not enhance the Fighter? Just give them feats or whatever?

Like when you kill s monster with CR half your level of lower, make a free extra attack? Or gain bonus damage against foes ten levels lower then you? Or a furry of blows like ability when they need to spam??

 

[pemerton]

Yes, I know this is how it actually was in 4e, I played it a lot. But people seemed to ignore that aspect and focused on the one shot kills in this context of brainstorming solutions for 5e.

I'm not sure which people you have in mind. But concrete proposals that I have seen in this thread involve either AD&D-esque solutions, where fighter's action economy depends on the HD/CR/Tier of the creature they are fighting; or things like @Minigiant's recent proposal to change the creatures hp and damage while holding their product constant; or things like @Quickleaf's proposal that (in effect) reduce the hp of creatures vs fighters of a certain level under certain conditions (eg in Quickleaf's version, when the creature gets close to zero hp).

None of these stats represent anything anymore. Same thing can be represented by high AC and low HP or vice versa! To me it is just madness.

Well, in AD&D 60 hp can mean you are Conan, or a giant slug. And AC 3 can mean you are a knight in armour, or a powerful martial artist, or a wily customer with a magic ring (DEX 18, ring of protection +3). A fighter's save vs poison represents their toughness, while a cleric's represents their god's protection of them.

The first two points are also true in 5e D&D. (But its saving throws are different from AD&D.)

This is why, as per my post just upthread, I regard 4e D&D as the pinnacle of these Gygaxian conceptions. It puts them to maximal and effective work.

If I want a RPG that doesn't have this sort of abstraction, then I play one where it is absent: in the past that was RM and RQ; today it is Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant.

And once that squire joins those demigods to fight the vrocks, the system breaks down.

<snip>

And again, when the characters fight the ogres alongside the commoners the system breaks down.

This isn't true. Unless the commoner is a PC; but as I posted upthread the rules of 4e are quite clear that PCs should all be of the same level.

If the commoners or squire are NPCs, then they are easily accommodated. I gave an example upthread: the squad of Drow handcrossbowmen gave the PC in command of them a minor action AoE. The squire can be statted as a minion (see eg Mordenkainen's Magnificane Emporium) or as an immediate interrupt, upon being hit, to add to AC - for extra pathos, to add double to the AC but the squire dies!

The rule system is very flexible in this respect.

 

[pemerton]

You are still just agreeing with me. This still is not a diegetic difference of the sort I mean. You say you can represent the same ogre with different stats depending on the situation. Same ogre, different stats.

Same Ogre, different stats, that represent something in the fiction - namely, the relative power of the Ogre and the heroes it is confronting. Where is the absence of diegesis of the sort you mean?

 

[Oofta]

Same Ogre, different stats, that represent something in the fiction - namely, the relative power of the Ogre and the heroes it is confronting. Where is the absence of diegesis of the sort you mean?

Because it doesn't matter which opponent is fighting the ogre. Level 1? Level 30? The minion ogre still has 1 HP vs a PC or a squirrel.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Same Ogre, different stats, that represent something in the fiction - namely, the relative power of the Ogre and the heroes it is confronting. Where is the absence of diegesis of the sort you mean?

Don't do this. You actually understand what I mean. Diegetically same ogre.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Don't do this. You actually understand what I mean. Dietetically same ogre.

If he's eating the squirrel, autocorrect may even have had a point, changing it to Dietetically....

 

[pemerton]

I said it doesn't represent a diegetically different creature in the fictional world. Or at least that's what I meant.

That's not what you said. I'm not going to trawl back through, but you said the minion doesn't represent anything in the fiction.

It's trivially obvious that in 4e D&D a given creature can be statted multiple ways. That's the whole point of having minion as an option for stats. That was the point of @Manbearcat's comparison to temperature or climbing scales - which also represent the same thing in multiple ways.

You also asserted that the choice of representation is arbitrary. That may be true for temperature scales, but is not true for 4e stat blocks. There is a best choice, namely, the one that is closest in level to the PCs. This best choice is driven by considerations of mathematical game play, and the chosen stat block will represent something about the fiction:. Eg if the chosen stat block is a minion, then that represents the relatively greater power of the PCs compared to the NPC/creature.

 

[Quickleaf]

Thank you for doing the real math I was too lazy to do.

Seems like I wasn't far off with my lazy calcs at least.

I’m pretty sure with more optimization and better gear an 11th level fighter could bump that to taking down 3.5 ogres in a single round. Which is pretty good. But I’m a naive forever GM so I’m constantly surprised by the depravities and depths of character optimization

I clicked "love" rather than "like" because of these two points.

The first complements my reply to @Micah Sweet not far upthread: the notion that the PCs can't tell how powerful a foe is, by observation, is highly contentious. You provide a perfect example of how they can do so.

The second complements some of my replies to @Crimson Longinus over several pages of this thread: the assertion that it is easier to use complex damage multiplication etc rules, than to use minion rules, is not obvious to me at all, and actually seems somewhat implausible:

For instance:
The notion of "narrative intent" of the monster is in my view a red herring: I mean, by placing an Ogre (with 59 hp) rather than a Goblin (with 7 hp), is the 5e DM manifesting a "narrative intent" for the foe (to not be one-shottable, killable by fireballs, etc?). This notion that 4e D&D encounter building involves some distinctive element of "narrative intent" seems like nonsense to me.

But turning to the suggested mechanic, how is this easier to use than minions? Instead of putting the work up front, during the GM's encounter design, it makes it matter during play, requiring the GM to share hp totals and requiring the player to make a choice. It also causes weirdness in the play: either the fighter is getting an additional action (their "finishing move") outside the normal action economy; or the fighter player is getting to retcon their attack into a finishing move ("dissociated mechanics"!).

I don't see how jumping through all these hoops in order to preserve invariance of monster statblocks relative to the PC statblocks makes for a better game.

As the originator of the Deathbringer fighter trait idea, also as someone who used minions in 4e and has used them a bit in 5e, and also as someone who understands the opposition to 1 hit point minions, I thought I'd share my design thinking...

I wasn't writing the rule for people who like using minions, first of all. It was tailored for Crimson and Micah and folks who find minions undesirable mechanics. I was proposing it as a solution for those who want it, not a proscriptive solution that would theoretically better the game for all.

I wrote it as part of what I see as a lineage from AD&D's 1/2 HD multi-attacking fighter --- to 4th edition's minion --- to my Deathbringer fighter hack for 5e.

Personally, I think 4e had a more "elegant" solution, however elegance is not the only target in design. In other ways, it missed the mark. Then I'd say AD&D had the second most elegant solution. And coming in last in terms of elegance is my hack.

My goal – given the context of this thread being "What does the mundane high level fighter look like (+)" – was to move the "minionization" into the fighter. Essentially merging the minion IDEA from 4e but bringing it EXCLUSIVELY back under the umbrella of the fighter (like in AD&D) and offering a mechanic for that in 5e.

I can further comment having playtested Deathbringer a bit – the idea came from one of my fighter hacks two or three years ago – that (1) Your objection about how to share HP totals totally was an issue and it was awkward until we worked it out between us, but starting off? super awkward. I suspect it might be easier in a VTT environment with monster HP publically displayed for everyone. (2) Your objection about associated/disassociated mechanics never came up for us, and there was a very natural transition from "I stab it with my spear" to me the GM giving a knowing nod and saying "how do bring death upon it?" and the player just ad libbing from there in the flow. No hesitation. BUT...this was a playtest where I knew to have that PC's Deathbringer value written down behind my screen (along with the usual suspects of Passive Perception, languages known, etc). A GM might not realize they need to do that to make it play as smoothly as I did.

Anyhow, no horse in the race, but thought I'd crack open my brain and share a bit from the little playtesting I managed to do.

EDIT: Reposting text of my hack for convenience...

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.

 

[pemerton]

The differences you are describing are related to their narrative role in the story, not their existence in the setting.

No they're not. The relative power of a PC and an Ogre is not related to their narrative roles in the story. It's a straightforward in-fiction state of affairs.