Clerics can't heal (NPCs)?

[Khur]

What I'm wondering about is all the OTHER people in the world who go into dungeons and kill monsters for fame and fortune.

These people are there, especially in campaign settings. The old barkeep who used to take it to the goblins, the wicked and mercenary adventurers who are the Belloq to your Indiana Jones, and so on. But even these people are exceptional enough not to be commonplace. They don't fill towns wall to wall.

When we do Eberron stuff, I expect to see rival adventurers as potential villains.

The way I see it, you'll have a lot of ways to make up these types of people, depending on how competent and detailed you want them to be.

 

[Dr. Confoundo]

It seems the distinction between HERO and 4E is that the later has smarter game designers. Why waste space and effort and then say "see all these mechanics here, don't use them"?

It's an optional rule, as Lizard mentioned in his post. If you want all the mooks to keep getting up every post phase-12 recovery, go ahead.

 

[HeinorNY]

It's an optional rule, as Lizard mentioned in his post. If you want all the mooks to keep getting up every post phase-12 recovery, go ahead.

I don't think it's an optional rule, it's an advice for the GM to not use the rules as presented, since the way the rules are presented, the game doesn't work well.

The advice tells you that using the rules makes the game worse than when you don't use them, can you believe it?

It's like WOTC assigning Second Wind to all Monsters in the MM, for the sakes of "Realism", so they don't become "non-healing mutants", and then saying the following, in the last chapter of the book: "It's better that monsters do not use their Second Winds, so you and your players will have a better D&D experience and much more fun while in combat." :\

Do we really need to put in the monsters stats the they have to sleep, eat and drink, that some of them have two legs and two arms, a head, that they bleed when wounded, etc etc etc? How far should we go? If some NPC stats are resumed to +8 bluff and + 9 diplomacy, is he a mutant flying mouth?

 

[Dr. Confoundo]

I don't have my copy of the HERO rulebook here at work, so I can't verify whether or not it is described as an optional rule, or helpful advice to the GM... not sure there's much of a difference in any case.

HERO has a very specific way of building characters/monsters/NPCs/villians/etc, so that everything is balanced and paid for with points. If you prefer, when you build your mooks, you can buy down their REC, or put a limitation on it like 'Not usable after being reduced to 0 Stun'. Or you can handwave it, and not give them a post Phase 12 Recovery.

In HERO, all of those items ('sleep, eat and drink, that some of them have two legs and two arms, a head, that they bleed when wounded, etc') are assumed to be the baseline. You need to pay extra points to not have to do some of them (Sleep, Eat, Bleed) or to do/have others (Extra Limbs).

So far, we don't know what the baseline assumptions for all monsters are in 4E. If one of them is 'Has Second Wind', and then later in the rules it says 'Don't use Second Wind to make your game go quicker', that *would* be odd. But for now, that's just a straw man.

 

[Lizard]

It seems the distinction between HERO and 4E is that the later has smarter game designers. Why waste space and effort and then say "see all these mechanics here, don't use them"?

It says "Here are all the mechanics you will ever need. Here's when you should use them, and when you shouldn't."

I'd rather have a kit of 100 tools than just a hammer, even if all I need *at the moment* is a hammer.

 

[Lizard]

It's like WOTC assigning Second Wind to all Monsters in the MM, for the sakes of "Realism", so they don't become "non-healing mutants", and then saying the following, in the last chapter of the book: "It's better that monsters do not use their Second Winds, so you and your players will have a better D&D experience and much more fun while in combat." :\

You mean, like when they said "NPCs and monsters die when they hit 0 hit points, unless the DM decides they don't"?

 

[hong]

It says "Here are all the mechanics you will ever need. Here's when you should use them, and when you shouldn't."

I'd rather have a kit of 100 tools than just a hammer, even if all I need *at the moment* is a hammer.

Yes, this is another common collector's rationalisation.

 

[hong]

Well, this is a good point.

In Hero, agents/mooks/whatever *have* REC -- the GM is just (well) advised to ignore it, either completely, or after they drop to 0 STUN. They aren't weird non-healing mutants (well, unless they ARE, this being Hero and all...); for purely game-efficiency reasons, the DM is given the *option* of having them "forget" to recover.

This is different, very different, from "Low level minions don't have hit points" and "You know a dwarf is destined to grow up to be a great hero/villain if he has Second Wind".

Different in the sense of angels dancing clockwise or counterclockwise on the head of a pin, yes.

How hard would it be to have, say, a note which said "If minion level<=party level, you should consider ignoring their hit points and just having them drop from anything the players do which damages them"?

And you can see that you have already solved the problem.

 

[The Little Raven]

I'd rather have a kit of 100 tools than just a hammer, even if all I need *at the moment* is a hammer.

Personally, I prefer a smaller toolkit with everything I will use, because I don't see the point in purchasing a set with a wet tile saw, since I don't do bathrooms.

 

[Lizard]

Personally, I prefer a smaller toolkit with everything I will use, because I don't see the point in purchasing a set with a wet tile saw, since I don't do bathrooms.

You never know when you will be kidnapped by aliens and told that if you can't redo the bathroom on their spaceship, they will blow up the Earth.