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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DracoSuave" data-source="post: 5093087" data-attributes="member: 71571">That's not what he's saying at all.The statement 'I don't think all foes should be surprising' is not the same statement as 'I think no foes should ever be surprising.'And you know it.Having the possibility and completely concealing which foes are minions are not the same thing at all.This is true if and only in encounters where only minions are ran.I don't worry about encounters that don't exist.Standard encounter design for published adventures usually spreads the starting position of minions out.  Blasting all of them with area-close attacks at the beginning of combat isn't really a possibility for a well-designed encounter anyways.Again, I don't worry about occurances in encounters that don't exist.Of course, this also brings up the question:Is having an encounter where the players blast the minions to bits with bursts a bad thing?  That question is subjective, and only answered by your group.I see a difference between 'realistic encounter' and 'false example used to prove a point.'I do not know about games of D&D you run.  But in every game I've played, they don't consist of gamers encountering people on the street and then engaging in combat.  Instead, they consist of capable combatants encountering armies of enemies that are determined to bring pain.As such, is it plausible for capable combatants to look at an opposing army and pick out the lieutenants from the privates?  The officers from the seamen?Hell, I've no military experience but I can tell.  So... someone who fights for a living probably has some greater insight than that.But, you're not adding more.  You're reducing unecessarycomplexity by offering the possibility of understanding which the easy opponents are.See, if players are given an idea of where to put the big guns, and where to put the light guns, then they have a choice that they can make correctly.  However, if you don't reveal any clue at all, then they're not actually making a choice.  They're being dudes at random, and if they make 'a mistake' then it's only out of ignorance.So... how does that make it a game of choice?  It's no more a game of choice than Deal or No Deal's case selection.  Giving players the opportunity to have information allows them to -use skill- in the game.  Notice, that does not mean spoonfeed them information every single game on every single monster.  Such a rebuttal is simply mistating the opposing case.  What it means is giving the players the opportunity to acquire that information before they start blasting foes, so that they can possibly make informed decisions about foes they blast.Again, you haven't answered the question:What's so exciting about minions that concealing their minionness adds to the game?Not hiding traps.Not concealing strong monsters.Not concealing the secret plans of your big bad.Concealing minions.  Answer -that- please.</blockquote>

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