D&D General 4e Healing was the best D&D healing

[Undrave]

Moreover, if we do pretend that it's reasonable to assume any PC of a given level will deal at least 8 damage with an attack, then why not model those minions as having 8hp? It would solve almost every complaint, while being virtually identical in play (according to your argument). The only possible explanation I can see is that they were intentionally trying to alienate any potential player who wanted to take the game seriously; in which case, mission accomplished.

No, it's just so you DON'T have to track their individual HP. That's all. I'm pretty sure Minions don't take dmg on a miss either. For minions, 1 HP doesn't actually mean 1 HP, it just mean "beat their AC (or other defences) once to get rid of them". You don't roll for damage and you ignore anything but immunity.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, it's just so you DON'T have to track their individual HP. That's all. I'm pretty sure Minions don't take dmg on a miss either. For minions, 1 HP doesn't actually mean 1 HP, it just mean "beat their AC (or other defences) once to get rid of them". You don't roll for damage and you ignore anything but immunity.

You can say that a mechanic doesn't actually mean what it says, but at the end of the day, the mechanics are what we used to determine what happens. If you say that the ogre doesn't actually have 1hp, but it dies after taking 1 damage, then it really does have 1hp.

Of course, they could have earned some leeway if they'd actually bothered to address that topic, instead of letting the mechanics stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).

 

[Teemu]

No, it's just so you DON'T have to track their individual HP. That's all. I'm pretty sure Minions don't take dmg on a miss either. For minions, 1 HP doesn't actually mean 1 HP, it just mean "beat their AC (or other defences) once to get rid of them". You don't roll for damage and you ignore anything but immunity.

You do roll for damage. There are a few minions with high resistances to represent specific weaknesses. Like these undead spirits in the Nentir Vale MV that resist 15 all but radiant. And I’m pretty sure minions can gain temp hp from allies.

 

[Undrave]

You can say that a mechanic doesn't actually mean what it says, but at the end of the day, the mechanics are what we used to determine what happens. If you say that the ogre doesn't actually have 1hp, but it dies after taking 1 damage, then it really does have 1hp.

Of course, they could have earned some leeway if they'd actually bothered to address that topic, instead of letting the mechanics stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).

Minions were a great idea.

 

[Fanaelialae]

And I'm talking about creatures that actually deal 1 damage, which is the only number that matters in any discussion of minions.

So then you agree that some things (being hit by a toddler with a stick) should not deal damage?

If he was a minion, he never would have survived long enough to encounter the PC in the first place, especially while training to become a soldier. He would have suffered some injury at some point, of sufficient severity that a finite number of them would result in death. And if he's a minion, then any amount of quantifiable damage will instantly result in irrevocable death. Minions are entirely incapable of being non-fatally wounded, or of healing, or of being beaten into unconscious (with the possible exception of a deliberate attack by someone attempting to spare their life).

If we're only concerned with this soldier's interaction with the PC, then 1hp is sufficiently similar to 8hp iff the PC cannot possibly deal less than 8 damage with a hit, which is never guaranteed to be the case. It's certainly possible for almost any PC to deal less than 8 damage with an attack, regardless of level. Maybe they're throwing a rock. Maybe they're de-buffed, or the minions are buffed, or other situational modifiers are in effect.

Moreover, if we do pretend that it's reasonable to assume any PC of a given level will deal at least 8 damage with an attack, then why not model those minions as having 8hp? It would solve almost every complaint, while being virtually identical in play (according to your argument). The only possible explanation I can see is that they were intentionally trying to alienate any potential player who wanted to take the game seriously; in which case, mission accomplished.

What you're missing is that being a minion is a relative state of being. It's like in the Feng Shui RPG where you face hordes of names mooks. However, if one of those mooks gets away and makes an appearance as a named NPC, he's no longer a mook but a fully fledged NPC.

It's not that soldier was a minion when he was going through training camp. Stating that the soldier is a minion is just saying that for this fight the fates are not smiling upon him. This is not his day. If he gets hit at all, it's going to be lethal.

You see this is stories all the time. Orcs in Lord of the Rings and Stormtroopers in Star Wars are two examples that frequently function as minions.

In other words, the reason why minions make no sense under rules as physics is because they aren't meant to be viewed through that lens. If you think of them as an abstraction, they work very well. You can send hordes against the PCs without the clunkiness of 'you did 1 HP shy of his full HP so I guess he sticks around for another round', which is not the feeling you want to evoke when using minions, as well as tedious bookkeeping for the DM.

 

[Garthanos]

You do roll for damage. There are a few minions with high resistances to represent specific weaknesses.

How few or how many in the first monster manual it sounds like the rare exception. If 98 percent of minions never have that the exception means most of the time you have no reason to bother and as a DM not bothering when I don't need to is the point of minions

And I’m pretty sure minions can gain temp hp from allies.

Trying to find monsters that give allies thp? That would be an unnecessary thing monsters are not typically hanging around after an encounter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd say it's not so much a difference between abstraction and disassociation so much as they are not the same category of thing. Abstraction either causes disassociation or it doesn't.

Either way, 4e healing isn't any more abstract than 5e healing, and makes more sense to a lot of us than previous edition healing.

To be fair, I think there are a lot of us on both sides.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So then you agree that some things (being hit by a toddler with a stick) should not deal damage?

I don't think we were ever in disagreement about that. If a finite number of strikes would be incapable of killing someone, then it's inappropriate to model that strike as dealing damage, because that's what HP actually measure.

What you're missing is that being a minion is a relative state of being.
[...]
You see this is stories all the time.
[...]
In other words, the reason why minions make no sense under rules as physics is because they aren't meant to be viewed through that lens.

Then it sounds like we're in agreement on this, as well. Minions only make sense using story logic. There's no way to actually take them seriously.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So then you agree that some things (being hit by a toddler with a stick) should not deal damage?


What you're missing is that being a minion is a relative state of being. It's like in the Feng Shui RPG where you face hordes of names mooks. However, if one of those mooks gets away and makes an appearance as a named NPC, he's no longer a mook but a fully fledged NPC.

It's not that soldier was a minion when he was going through training camp. Stating that the soldier is a minion is just saying that for this fight the fates are not smiling upon him. This is not his day. If he gets hit at all, it's going to be lethal.

You see this is stories all the time. Orcs in Lord of the Rings and Stormtroopers in Star Wars are two examples that frequently function as minions.

In other words, the reason why minions make no sense under rules as physics is because they aren't meant to be viewed through that lens. If you think of them as an abstraction, they work very well. You can send hordes against the PCs without the clunkiness of 'you did 1 HP shy of his full HP so I guess he sticks around for another round', which is not the feeling you want to evoke when using minions, as well as tedious bookkeeping for the DM.

And that's a key point as well. In 4e, the mechanics are explicitly designed to tell a certain kind of story, and a NPCs stats are based on their role in the story at that moment. I've come to believe that I don't want the mechanics to have that strong a role in guiding the genre and the story, at least not in something called D&D. Call it something else, or have similar mechanics in a different game (FFG's Star Wars for example) and I have no problem with it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Then it sounds like we're in agreement on this, as well. Minions only make sense using story logic. Trying to take them seriously is missing the point.

You can take the game seriously without presuming that rules are physics. Plenty of people do.

The minion rules do produce reasonable outcomes. In the real world, there are plenty of cases of soldiers who survived numerous deadly engagements only to be taken out by a single shot.

And that's a key point as well. In 4e, the mechanics are explicitly designed to tell a certain kind of story, and a NPCs stats are based on their role in the story at that moment. I've come to believe that I don't want the mechanics to have that strong a role in guiding the genre and the story, at least not in something called D&D. Call it something else, or have similar mechanics in a different game (FFG's Star Wars for example) and I have no problem with it.

That's fine. I'm not trying to push minions onto anyone. I'm just rebuting the argument that they don't make sense. Like I said before, if you don't like them, don't use them.