D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AlViking]

Arguably, it was trying to serve multiple masters on the game/story/world axes, and it shouldn't surprise people that the net effect of that was that it doesn't really do any of them well, either.

Doing the "well" is a matter of preference and opinion. We can be objective about certain things like how detailed or abstract rules are, what percentage of the rules are dedicated to what aspect of play the game focuses on.

Every game will have tradeoffs but it seems to me that the people who say things like D&D doesn't do anything well are really just expressing an opinion that they like some other game better.

 

[TwoSix]

So if a 20th-level group of PCs meet a minion Ogre and one of the 20th-level PCs has a pet cat on her shoulder, what then?

Narrate something relevant as the DM, or ask for a check. The cat is background flavor, not something relevant to the resolution.

More relevant, perhaps: if that 20th-level group of PCs has a couple of 8th-level henchmen with it, what then?

It's 4e, not AD&D. Don't do that.

And if you need to do it for some story reason, see the cat example.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The bolded is far too deep in metagame-side thinking for my liking.

If memory serves (this was 17 years ago!) the trap did something like 3d6 damage to anyone caught beneath it when the rocks came down. Most 1st-level characters in our game have between 5-12 hit points; and death is at -10 (at 0 or below you might be unconscious). The simple math there says death is unlikely but possible while getting knocked below 0 is fairly likely - if you get hit.

Then the dice took over. Natural 20 for the Ogre's "aim" with the trap; crit roll gave 4x damage, and the charaacters were bunched together. 11 points damage became 44 (I remember those numbers clearly!) and at 1st level there ain't nobody gonna survive that. Of a party of (I think) 9 at the time, 4 died on the spot and the rest fled. (after doing some recruiting they went right back there and took out that Ogre)

Same thing could have happened had the Ogre got a 4x crit on an attack, except it would only kill one character at a time.

Unfair? I don't think so. Unlucky? All day long.

To the bolded: it's not my place to tell people how to play their characters. Full stop.

Never mind that the infighting is where all the good stories came from, still told and laughed about today.

Yeah, just last night in a game with my kids my daughter decided to test her Sleight of Hand skills by stealing her brother's money pouch (successfully as it turned out) with no intention of giving it back. My wife and I warned her there might be alignment implications if she keeps this sort of thing up, but I also told her that I don't control what players decide to have their characters do, and it was her choice. It was a fun moment for all with no hard feelings, because we were roleplaying.

 

[Enrahim]

Narrate something relevant as the DM, or ask for a check. The cat is background flavor, not something relevant to the resolution.


It's 4e, not AD&D. Don't do that.

And if you need to do it for some story reason, see the cat example.

I have a much easier solution. Houserule nat 20 don't autohit for friendly npcs, and keep playing a fully functional game. A minion or two might go down thanks to the henchmen, but that is what minions/henchmen are for!

I do not like artificial restrictions in my ttrpgs.

 

[Maxperson]

It's probably more of a gamist construct, in that the stats are designed to maintain pacing in the challenge portion of the game.

It does also lean "narrative" in the sense that the monster's stats are being used in the context of presenting a challenge to the players, not to establish the presence of the NPC in the setting purely for its own sake. This lack of setting context is generally the portion that most simmers object to.

The 4e minion rules literally say that they are for use when the DM wants to throw a lot of monsters at the PCs without it becoming a slog. That's a narrative contrivance.

The stats are mechanics built to support that narrative goal. Not everything mechanical is gamist.

 

[TwoSix]

I have a much easier solution. Houserule nat 20 don't autohit for friendly npcs, and keep playing a fully functional game. A minion or two might go down thanks to the henchmen, but that is what minions/henchmen are for!

I do not like artificial restrictions in my ttrpgs.

Having to provide a statblock for a color inclusion like a pet cat just so it can have a chance to kill an ogre seems "artificially restrictive" to me. (Not to mention that games in general are defined by rules which are restrictive, and all those rules are artificial.)

If you're bound and determined to have a party of henchmen participate in a fight against high-level monsters, then just stat them as minions. Or make them 8th level standards; they're not going to be super-effective at (level - 12) but it's just tedious, not unworkable.

 

[TwoSix]

The 4e minion rules literally say that they are for use when the DM wants to throw a lot of monsters at the PCs without it becoming a slog. That's a narrative contrivance.

The stats are mechanics built to support that narrative goal. Not everything mechanical is gamist.

"Not become a slog" doesn't really fit into the creative agenda buckets, as @Pedantic mentioned before.

It's more akin to bounded accuracy in 5e, or the decision to not allow advantage/disadvantage to stack and cancel. It's for the goal of "ease in play".

 

[Maxperson]

"Not become a slog" doesn't really fit into the creative agenda buckets, as @Pedantic mentioned before.

That isn't the agenda, though. The agenda is a cool fight where the PCs can just mow through a bunch of monsters that still challenge them.

Avoiding the slog is to make that fight against a ton of PCs 1) enjoyable, and 2) possible. Even a high level group isn't going to mow through a ton of 111 hit point ogres.

 

[Enrahim]

That isn't the agenda, though. The agenda is a cool fight where the PCs can just mow through a bunch of monsters that still challenge them.

Avoiding the slog is to make that fight against a ton of PCs 1) enjoyable, and 2) possible. Even a high level group isn't going to mow through a ton of 111 hit point ogres.

Just wanted to point out is that this is because D&D adopts a linear(/quadratic) rather than exponential power curve. This puts the 10th level + monsters out of reach for ever being mowed down by a 20th level party.

Several idle games on pc adopts an exponential power progression, and here ogres quickly do become insignificant fleas.

 

[Faolyn]

The ASI should be tied to - and forced to go on - the prime stat for the class. A Fighter should only be able to ASI Strength (or maybe Constitution), for example, as an abstraction of the idea that she's been pumping iron and so forth in any downtime she's had while adventuring. That at least makes it somewhat diegetic, thouugh it's still pretty gamist.