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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8620070" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=7032025]@Lyxen[/USER] - there are many "auras" in 4e that are not energy fields (like flame or necrotic dread) but that represent, in the fiction, biting or scratching or other physical attacks. Swarms have them, for instance.Likewise, there are examples of forced movement that do not represent literally being pushed or pulled - for instance, the Dreadlock Wight has a forced movement attack that represents a person recoiling in terror from its horrific visage.Another interesting feature of that horrific visage is that it is a blast - ie operates on only side of the Wight - ie represents it looking at its victims.It's a feature of 4e that it doesn't needlessly duplicate mechanics - you don't need facing rule when you've got blasts; you can use aura rules for any effect that is triggered periodically in a radius about a character/creature; you can used forced movement to also cover involuntary movement such as fear or being wrongfooted (Footwork Lure); etc.Why would level bonuses equate to training? The PCs in my 4e game never trained.The real development with level is new powers and abilities. The level bonus is just a device for moving PCs through the "story" of D&D. It's not that first, we assign some measure of "training" to a 10th level PC and second we assign some measure of "toughness" to Demogorgon or a Pit Fiend, and then third we notice that the PC can't beat the demon or devil. Rather, first we decide that Demogorgon and Pit Fiends are epic (and upper epic) adversaries, and then we assign numbers to them, and to the PCs, that will reflect this. The fiction is first, the numbers are second.With minions, we have a fiction: these are the foes that fall before the swords and spells of the heroes! Then we assign numbers that support this fiction: the minions have 1 hp. Another part of the fiction is: these foes are not unthreatening, or just ignorable. So we assign numbers that support that too: the minions have mechanically meaningful attack bonuses and defences and damage.The fiction is first, and the numbers support that.It's not the only viable method of RPG design - it closely resembles (for instance) Robin Laws's brilliant HeroQuest revised, and is also quite close to Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic; but obviously is very different from a classic like Rolemaster, or a contemporary game like Burning Wheel. But there is nothing "inconsistent" about it. The fiction is completely coherent.Hit points aren't part of the imagined world, so it makes no sense to say that having X or Y hp does or doesn't make sense in the world. Talking about "world-wide consistency" of hp makes no sense. In the fiction, there are people, and orcs, and devils, and demons, but there are no hit points. There are fights, and some are tough, and some are not; there are people who endure many rounds of back-and-forth with their opponents, and there are those who have the misfortune to fall to a single blow. (Like the were-hyenas who fall to single blows from Conan in REH's story Queen of the Black Coast, or the Uruk-Hai who fall to single blows in JRRT's battle of Helm's Deep.)In the fiction, there are no attack rolls or defence numbers or tracking of hp tallies. Those are all things that happen in the real world, at the table, as part of the process of finding out what happens next in the fiction. So to say that "they are not the same creature" because there are two different stat blocks with different numbers in them is incoherent. In the fiction there are no numbers.4e is fiction first, numbers second. The numbers - both the overall framework of level bonuses, hit points and damage per level, etc; and the particular numbers assigned to a particular creature or character - are all in service of the fiction.And the following fiction makes complete sense: for a relatively inexperienced hero, just learning to make their way in the world, fighting this creature is tough; for a hero how is, or is almost, a paragon, this creature will fall before their determined attacks like wheat to the reaping scythe.If I am a 4e GM building an encounter for a PC of a given level, I decide whether I think some of the foes are going to fall like wheat before the scythe - in which case I stat them as minions - or whether they are going to put up a determined fight - in which case I stat them as a standard or an elite.I make this decision based on my conception of the shared fiction - so eg for 6th level PCs ogre minions make no sense; but when I ran my version of G2 for mid-epic PCs, frost giant minions abounded - and also based on my intentions around pacing.If the stat block I need for my purposes exists in the published books then I use it; if it doesn't then I make it up, relying on the excellent advice to GMs found in the DMG which makes the relationship between level and numbers quite transparent.There's no such thing as an "objective" orc or an "objective" difficulty for a PC of intermediate level. There's a decision about what the fiction will be.The second remark here makes no sense to me. In 5e the reason a 10th level fighter can more easily defeat a goblin than a 1st level fighter is because of numerical changes on the PC sheet. That is no more or less artificial than the GM making numerical changes on their monster stat block.In my 4e game, what generated the sense of progression was not fiddling around with numbers - that creates change, which can be interesting, but not progression. The progression took place in the fiction. At low levels the PCs fought individual hobgoblins. At mid-paragon they fought hobgoblin phalanxes (in mechanical terms, swarms of hobgoblins) and fought individual demons. At mid-epic they fought swarms of demons. At high epic they fought individual gods and demon lords.As far as 5e is concerned, it may have solved a problem for you. There are many reasons I don't play 5e, but one of them is that I think it doesn't do a particularly good job of producing fiction that, for me, is paradigmatic of D&D - starting off with kobolds and ending with Demogorgon. Whereas that is something that 4e D&D achieved effortlessly.</blockquote>

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