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

[Hussar]

RE: Hit points are meat. Last night's session, I had the joyous task of trying to explain how Vicious Mockery rendered a frantic deer dead/unconscious because the bard told him he couldn't swim.

RE: Killed vs. Dead vs. Destroyed. Does anyone here really play D&D this way at their table? Does any group sit down and parse each sentence in the rulebook on some sort of legal burden interpretation? How is whether or not you can KO a minion not just a GM interpretation situation rather than argued in court? Can you each be right in your ruling....for your own table?

Only when edition warring.

 

[clearstream]

The answer to that question is yes by the rules. You don't declare that you are rendering a creature unconscious until the DM says it's dead, then you get to unwind it and instead knock it out. If you had to declare in advance before the creature dies that you are knocking it out, then the answer to that question would be no.

In the fiction the creature never dies. In the rules it dies and then stops being dead and is unconscious instead.

Let's agree to disagree!

 

[Enrahim]

And how do you go about picking which words to give such special interpretation? Why not read the rest of the game text "in a different sense than the literal"? The choice seems led by the argument.

I think this hits the core: We are discussing RAW where RAW in its most straightforard intepretation is incoherent. There are multiple valid interpretations that resolves this incoherence trough bending common use of terms a little. Destroyed=killed is one, but not the only of these. Destroyed=reduced to 0 hp is another valid intepretation. Destroyed=[Undead/demon destruction + Living killing + Rendereing unconcious] is another valid interpretation. And if you insist destroyed has to mean something more than the basic rule given it's inclusion (I do not think so, as redundancy is a thing), then I would say Destroyed=no longer relevant for the game is a valid interpretation.

So which of these to chose from? Well I tend to go with the one I think preserves most of the rules, which would in this case be the redundancy interpretation. However if I am convinced that all of the above is equaly valid according to the text I would absolutely jump on the oportunity to use the interpretation I like the most for my game, which would be the latter.

That is if indeed the participants dont agree on intepretation of a written rule, I think the GM should go with the intepretation suggested that they think provides the best game experience for the group, RAI be damned. And that seem to be the situation here. You claim RAW is minions always get killed. I claim that the in fiction state of damaged minions are undefined, and can be decided by us on a case by case basis if this ever is relevant to bring up is equaly RAW.

Which of these two rules would you prefer to play with, if RAW is no longer a concern?

 

[clearstream]

That makes sense and I hope it's the truth for just about everyone here. I certainly have spent many hours here engaging in the same sort of debates.

Over time my view of what D&D (or any RPG system) is has really changed. I no longer view it as a concrete and important set of LAWS THAT MUST BE FOLLOWED and instead a bunch of suggestions for shared vocabulary amongst the players.

This change is so deep in my core that I find arguing about whether or not a minion can be KOed instead of just obliterated almost humorously nonsensical. Of course they can (or can't) as determined by the GM. Nothing else enters into the equation!

I get that for many these multiple hills to die on are for entertainment purposes, but for myself it obscures the more interesting philosophical debate which tells us about who we are as gamers in a more profound sense.

Seeing as I dispense with the Minions mechanic, the outcome of this foray into "destroyed" has no consequence for my play.

However, I'm interested in rules, how they are articulated and structured, how folk grasp them and put them in force for themselves (or not). That is itself material for philosophical reflection.

As for whether they must be followed? In a sense that is the wrong question. It's more important to focus on what happens if we follow them in the way we do.

 

[clearstream]

But why would you take more or less (or no) damage if it didn't actually touch you? Where's the setting logic?

Maybe it's the luck expended on not contacting it?

 

[clearstream]

I think this hits the core: We are discussing RAW where RAW in its most straightforard intepretation is incoherent. There are multiple valid interpretations that resolves this incoherence trough bending common use of terms a little. Destroyed=killed is one, but not the only of these. Destroyed=reduced to 0 hp is another valid intepretation. Destroyed=[Undead/demon destruction + Living killing + Rendereing unconcious] is another valid interpretation. And if you insist destroyed has to mean something more than the basic rule given it's inclusion (I do not think so, as redundancy is a thing), then I would say Destroyed=no longer relevant for the game is a valid interpretation.

So which of these to chose from? Well I tend to go with the one I think preserves most of the rules, which would in this case be the redundancy interpretation. However if I am convinced that all of the above is equaly valid according to the text I would absolutely jump on the oportunity to use the interpretation I like the most for my game, which would be the latter.

That is if indeed the participants dont agree on intepretation of a written rule, I think the GM should go with the intepretation suggested that they think provides the best game experience for the group, RAI be damned. And that seem to be the situation here. You claim RAW is minions always get killed. I claim that the in fiction state of damaged minions are undefined, and can be decided by us on a case by case basis if this ever is relevant to bring up is equaly RAW.

Which of these two rules would you prefer to play with, if RAW is no longer a concern?

I prefer not to use minions altogether

In connection with that, I am more interested in what the designers expressed -- the RAW -- than in the best RAI. (Or you could say that I think the best RAI is to cut the rule altogether.)

As for what is RAW, there is a plain reading with a coherent* result that introduces no extra words and respects the whole game text, so to me other readings aren't equal to that one.


*Its coherence is sustained by the principles of interpretation laid out on PHB 11. One can ask a question like - "Should it be in principle possible to exclude a creature from the knocking unconscious rule?" And see immediately that it should be possible and how one could do it (and that one should be wary of interpretations that might make it impossible!)

 

[clearstream]

It's the nature of hit points.

Take a fireball. Perhaps you got out of the way barely and a large amount of heat washed by for the damage. The resistant one takes less and the vulnerable one takes more. At half some of the fire caused burns. If it takes them to 0, monster char char.

Or that the resistant one exerts themself less, if above half hp.

 

[Enrahim]

I prefer not to use minions altogether

In connection with that, I am more interested in what the designers expressed -- the RAW -- than in the best RAI. (Or you could say that I think the best RAI is to cut the rule altogether.)

As for what is RAW, there is a plain reading with a coherent* result that introduces no extra words and respects the whole game text, so to me other readings aren't equal to that one.


*Its coherence is sustained by the principles of interpretation laid out on PHB 11. One can ask a question like - "Should it be in principle possible to exclude a creature from the knocking unconscious rule?" And see immediately that it should be possible and how one could do it (and that one should be wary of interpretations that might make it impossible!)

The proposed incoherence I refer to is related to the unwritten principle of simulation.

That is the minion text under the literal straight forward interpretation indicate a human lackey gets destroyed by a knife stab. This indicates a completely different kind of reality than what we are inhabiting ourselves, given normal understanding of the word "destroy".

Sticking to this RAW straight forward interpretation would demand of us to narrate that the lackey dissolves into some kind of goo, goes poof, or undergo some similar extreme transformation of state in fiction. If you look for what RAW is saying without allowing any room for there being some unorthodox use of terminology - I am pretty sure this is what you get.

If what you wanted to talk about all along is how you dislike D&D 4ed is describing a fiction with certain severely structurally compromised humans (and other "fleshy" inhabitants), I guess you would have an easy time to get people on board that this would be a bad thing; but have a real hard time convincing anyone that this was actually what the designers of the game intended and "architected" the system to represent.


Edit: In short, what you seem to be criticizing is not the concept of minions, but rather some nitpicky detail about how they got presented.

 

[clearstream]

The proposed incoherence I refer to is related to the unwritten principle of simulation.

That is the minion text under the literal straight forward interpretation indicate a human lackey gets destroyed by a knife stab. This indicates a completely different kind of reality than what we are inhabiting ourselves, given normal understanding of the word "destroy".

So you find 4e minions to fit the reality that we inhabit ourselves, but not that they should be destroyed by any amount of damage?

Sticking to this RAW straight forward interpretation would demand of us to narrate that the lackey dissolves into some kind of goo, goes poof, or undergo some similar extreme transformation of state in fiction. If you look for what RAW is saying without allowing any room for there being some unorthodox use of terminology - I am pretty sure this is what you get.

Would you apply that to every piece of rules text? So that DMs ought to narrate precisely and only what that text says? I suspect that runs into problems all over the place (such as some warlord powers, things that were never alive "dying", fireballs knocking creatures unconscious, and of course the notorious tripping cube.)

EDIT This does raise an interesting question around the expected linkage between rules text and narration. Here I would likely echo something you said above, e.g. that "destroyed" requires upholding a system state (e.g. of no further actions, for a creature) but that it is narrated taking into consideration other inputs (like what it is, that in this instance is destroyed.)

If what you wanted to talk about all along is how you dislike D&D 4ed is describing a fiction with certain severely structurally compromised humans (and other "fleshy" inhabitants), I guess you would have an easy time to get people on board that this would be a bad thing; but have a real hard time convincing anyone that this was actually what the designers of the game intended and "architected" the system to represent.

Seeing as they wrote that is what they intended, I believe them. They want player characters to carve through minions like butter.

Edit: In short, what you seem to be criticizing is not the concept of minions, but rather some nitpicky detail about how they got presented.

As I stated going into this discussion, I'm willing to investigate this narrow rules point out of curiousity. Perforce we are getting into rules detail. You have (appropriately for this conversation) raised all sorts of nitpicky notions in reply. We're able to analyze rules on more than one level, surely?

 

[Lanefan]

I think this hits the core: We are discussing RAW where RAW in its most straightforard intepretation is incoherent. There are multiple valid interpretations that resolves this incoherence .....

Some of us spent the entire decade of the 1980s doing just this.

Guess some things never change, huh.