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

[clearstream]

I see what you're saying, but the vulnerable wouldn't get singed either (unless their hp drops to half or zero), because, like the other, they are also never contacted.

I just don't see how "no contact" can work with resistance, immunity, and vulnerability in a way that makes setting sense.

I've noticed all through this thread various theories about how the linkage between system and fiction ought to play out when it comes to what is pictured and narrated.

The way I see groups normally apply these things is to vary what is pictured and narrated according to cause and subject. So that the way a creature that resists fire is pictured and narrated to avoid a fireball need not be precisely the same as the way a creature that resists poison is pictured and narrated to deal with a poisoned arrow.

Roughly, it seems that any system output prompts a vast set of candidate fictions from which some are promoted as more fitting, but which are not precisely settled by the system output but demand some deciding by players. Those favouring process-sim want less deciding by players, those favouring FKR-sim want more deciding by players. Both have merits.

 

[clearstream]

Ref the above, they don't write what they mean by "destroy" neither in terms of actual game mechanics, nor in terms of in fiction result. Strictly speaking what they introduce is a "tag" that is hardly ever referenced anywhere.

What is even worse is that if we have your interpretation that this "destroy" overrides the kill/unconcious rule, even the formulation "HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion." make the only defined effect of going to 0 hp to be that the creature get that tag; and the only relevant connection I could find between the tag and more general rules is that that tag causes a creature with that tag to not get a turn in combat. (Edit: Even the duration of the tag doesn't seem to be specified. There are abilities that removes the tag ref Lich, or Wight reanimate. Demons also automatically get the tag erased without it being specified how fast)

I can absolutely believe the designers might have wanted the player characters to carve trough minions like butter. But I still don't accept the claim that they wrote it. The text we are analyzing is far too open for many interpretations, for me to accept that your proposed interpretation is the "one and only" interpretation.

To me, developing theories of interpretation that could result in a minion taking some amount of damage and not being destroyed, is less sound and far less straightforward than supposing that the words mean what they say and stand as an exception to Knocking Creatures Unconscious (just as summoned creatures also seem to.)

I do not feel that the game text is best satisfied by interpretations under which minions can take some amount of damage and not be destroyed. I appreciate that your theory (so far as I can make out) understands "destroyed" to be process that forks at the player decision to knock unconscious. Whilst I take "destroyed" to be a state: a result of taking any amount of damage. No definition exists in the game text, but a state is more straightforward than a process and game text for summoned entities seems also to fit it.

 

[Enrahim]

To me, developing theories of interpretation that could result in a minion taking some amount of damage and not being destroyed, is less sound and far less straightforward than supposing that the words mean what they say and stand as an exception to Knocking Creatures Unconscious (just as summoned creatures also seem to.)

I do not feel that the game text is best satisfied by interpretations under which minions can take some amount of damage and not be destroyed. I appreciate that your theory (so far as I can make out) understands "destroyed" to be process that forks at the player decision to knock unconscious. Whilst I take "destroyed" to be a state: a result of taking any amount of damage. No definition exists in the game text, but a state is more straightforward than a process and game text for summoned entities seems also to fit it.

I do not think we disagree on that point at all? The point of contention seem to be what the "state" of "destroyed" looks like in the fiction?

 

[clearstream]

I do not think we disagree on that point at all? The point of contention seem to be what the "state" of "destroyed" looks like in the fiction?

Wouldn't the answer to that be parallel to the answer to what "killed" looks like for creatures that were never alive to begin with? Which is to say, the system state prompts picturing and narrating fiction fitting to fictional causes and subjects.

A destroyed summoned entity might be narrated to leave no trace (important when characters are trying to get hold of rare components) while a destroyed undead might leave a pile of bones and dust, and a destroyed kitten a piteous corpse. And the cause of that destruction, such as a knife versus a fireball would surely prompt variations on the above.

 

[Enrahim]

Wouldn't the answer to that be parallel to the answer to what "killed" looks like for creatures that were never alive to begin with? Which is to say, the system state prompts picturing and narrating fiction fitting to fictional causes and subjects.

A destroyed summoned entity might be narrated to leave no trace (important when characters are trying to get hold of rare components) while a destroyed undead might leave a pile of bones and dust, and a destroyed kitten a piteous corpse. And the cause of that destruction, such as a knife versus a fireball would surely prompt variations on the above.

And what make a soldier with a broken wrist not be an aproperiate narration of a minion destroyed by being hit by a mace?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've noticed all through this thread various theories about how the linkage between system and fiction ought to play out when it comes to what is pictured and narrated.

The way I see groups normally apply these things is to vary what is pictured and narrated according to cause and subject. So that the way a creature that resists fire is pictured and narrated to avoid a fireball need not be precisely the same as the way a creature that resists poison is pictured and narrated to deal with a poisoned arrow.

Roughly, it seems that any system output prompts a vast set of candidate fictions from which some are promoted as more fitting, but which are not precisely settled by the system output but demand some deciding by players. Those favouring process-sim want less deciding by players, those favouring FKR-sim want more deciding by players. Both have merits.

They do in general, but I expect most folks have a preference for and against, and the two IMO don't cross over well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And what make a soldier with a broken wrist not be an aproperiate narration of a minion destroyed by being hit by a mace?

The fact that that isn't what the word "destroyed" means?

It's like hit and miss. We've been using the wrong terms for 50 years.

 

[Hussar]

/snip Even so, I have never witnessed any player struggling to see what they mean given the causes and subjects they apply to.

Well, apparently you do since you have decided that "destroyed" doesn't mean killed but some other form of death that is somehow undefined but still exactly the same as dying.

 

[Cadence]

I've been watching (possibly too many) British murder mysteries lately. My brain is now trying to imagine a case where someone calls in to report finding a body and says "Help! It's my husband... he's destroyed. Come quickly!" instead of "Help! It's my husband... he's dead. Come quickly!", what the police make of it on the way, how different the other evidence at the crime scene looks between the two cases when they get there to discover the body has been removed, and how important of a clue the word choice is.

 

[Hussar]

game text for summoned entities seems also to fit it.

Except that in no version of D&D can you actually kill a summoned entity. They just poof back to wherever they were summoned from. Now, are you trying to claim that a summoned creature may never be incapacitated? Where is that interpretation coming from?