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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8620230" data-attributes="member: 7032025">And if it's physical, it should say so, and be described that way so that once more intelligent players can deal with it properly instead of being subjected to them by DM's fiat, in particular if it's because the DM has simply decided that it would be cool tactically.First, it's funny that you type Dreadlock instead of Deathlock, you should google that and it will make it much less horrific, or rather horrific in a different way. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Moreover, I really dislike that kind of interpretation, I'm pretty sure that a lot of players would complain about player agency here, as a DM you don't get to describe how a character reacts to an event. Being horrified and forced to flee is cool, it leaves some agency to the player. Being forced to move back exactly 3 squares is totally silly to me and just a backwards justification for a power that moves figurines on a boardgame.That, on the other hand, I can sort of agree with, but again, why does the wight not show her visage to every one around her ? Why is that a specific power in one direction only ? Is she forced to hide her visage again for the rest of the encounter ? Why does just showing her visage need to RECHARGE ? These are simple technical implements with no grounding in the fiction. Once more, this was built backwards, not from the fiction, but from the technical power.And you know what, I agree, but it just shows the heart of the problem. The SYSTEM decided to implement forced movement because it's a nice boardgame trick and it generates technical combos, and the narration explanation where just strapped on, however implausible it is.OK, so where does the specific differences of these orcs come from ? Answer, it comes from nowhere apart from the DM needed monsters TECHNICALLY at the level of the PCs. It's totally artificial.And then, it's just a TECHNICAL device that 4e IMPOSES to tell ITS story. But 5e has just demonstrated that you DON'T NEED that technical device. Just use the same monster, no need for technical changes, it works.Saying that a given adversary is powerful in the world has sense. Saying that it's power is relative to the PCs' current level is what is ARTIFICIAL. You don't need it for your narration, it's contrary to the logic of the world. The ONLY thing that it provides is confort for the DM that the difficulty of the encounter is totally controlled. And that's one of the only two major reasons for which the 4e encounter calculator of 4e is more precise than that of 5e, because the aberrations come in 5e when you have multiple monsters and levels that vary a lot compared to that of the PCs (the other major reason is that 5e PCs are far less calibrated than 4e ones).So it's just confort for the DM, but it's artificial and not needed for narration at all.Only it's the other way around. You decide TECHNICALLY to use minions, and, thank goodness, the fiction supports it. But only part of the fiction, the local fiction that you IMPOSE on your game by constantly reworking the adversaries so that their level matches the PC, minions and others. But don't you see how artificial this is ? How unneeded it is and how it contradicts the global fiction of the world ? I'll give you a pointed example below.No, it does not, it is completely opposed to it. You START with the TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES of minions. They are not needed, so they should not even exist. 5e understood this.No, they are not, you have everything totally backwards, first requiring that the entire world adapts to the level of PCs, totally artificially, then using these technical constructs to build a fiction.Fiction works the other way around, you create fictional situations where levels and other constructs don't matter.And what happens when they are side by side ? Or adventure in the same world. Do monsters change from one to the other ? I've had this specific example in shared campaigns, in particular our best one that lasted 10+ years with multiple DMs, where we had adventurers at any level between 1 and 20 (this was 3e) sharing the world. Did we need to adapt the monsters ? No, we did not, a monster was a monster, he did not suddenly change into a minions with totally different stats when another group, more or less powerful, went to the same type of area.And that's your problem, right here. I don't do that. It's not needed. It's not fiction, it's technical encounter building.My worlds are completely different, there are situations, some the PC will decide to tackle, others later, others not, but the monsters will not change. And there is a good reason for that, because if they have different abilities, their plots would be different.Once more, this is purely technical encounter building, it's artificial.Again, the technicalities come first, not the story, not the world, not the fiction.Certainly not, you keep saying this, but it's not the case, it's just technical adaptation to the PC level, you said so yourself, how more artificial can it be ?The changing numbers on a PC sheet reflect the transformation of the PC from noob to hero, it happens over time, and is more or less continuous. Does this mean that the world transforms around them, that monsters change drastically gaining or losing abilities ? Not, it does not, it's not needed, as 5e has demonstrated. It does not happen in the genre, I'm finishing re-listening to the Wheel of Time, the trollocs and fades who were terrifying in the first books are now canon-fodder to the heroes, BUT STILL THE SAME than in the first books and still killing lower level heroes and even more peasants. The entire world does not revolve around a single group of PC, all the adversaries do not adapt their level to match that of the PC because it's easier for the DM to compute ELs.And each and everyone of those was totally artificially constructed to match their level at the time. But what would have happened if the PCs had tackled things in a different order ? Again, the monsters would have artificially adapted to the different path, guaranteeing exactly that they met their match. There is no use being clever, there is no penalty for being dumb, the world adapts around them, and you think it creates fiction. It does not, it just creates a succession of challenges that you call greater because you adapt not only the numbers of the adventurers as they progress, but the numbers of the whole world.If it works for you, cool, but once more, it's not needed, and there is no benefit to it as 5e has demonstrated, except for your confort of a 4e DMs of presenting technical challenges that you know will be tough, but are confident will not be overpowering. But it's for YOUR CONFORT there, and for technical reasons only.That is very bizarre as a statement, since 5e does exactly this, kobold to demogorgon or an arch devil or tiamat. And it's demonstrated in every single published adventure.This is probably the most astonishing thing that you have said. "Effortlessly" when actually it requires adapting every single encounter to the level of the PCs at the time ?Honestly, I find it even more effortless to NOT do that, just use the monsters as written or as I imagine them when I create my own. If the PCs are overwhelming either technically, by cleverness, or choosing weak foes, they will slaughter them (I don't even create "random" encounters on Avernus, we all assume that they crush them beneath the wheels of their mighty Profanator, and I certainly don't suddenly create incredibly powerful Lemure Minions to challenge them technically), if they bite off more than they can chew, usually for failing to gather enough information, too bad, they have to run or suffer loses. That is effortless, and totally in line with the fiction and the consistency of the world, something that 4e NEVER achieves.</blockquote>

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