D&D is NOT Kobolds surviving Fireball

[pemerton]

Such a rule is not Gygaxian realism, it's not simulationist. It's part of the 4E narrativism that turns off a lot of 3E players.

Gygaxian...realism?

I think what is meant is "Gygaxian Naturalism". According to its proponents, this is the

tendency, present in the OD&D rules and reaching its fullest flower in AD&D, to go beyond describing monsters purely as opponents/obstacles for the player characters by giving game mechanics that serve little purpose other than to ground those monsters in the campaign world.​

The purpose of this is said to be

to paint a picture of a "real" world, which is to say, a world that exists for reasons other than purely gaming ones. The implication is that monsters have lives of their own and thus go about their business doing various things until they encounter the player characters.​

(I think the original blogger of the notion somewhat contradicts this claim about purpose by going on to say this is

one reason why AD&D has stats for so many kinds of "ordinary" animals: you can't build a "real" world without stats for sheep and cows and horses and such, because you never know when the PCs might need to kill one.​

This doesn't sound like part of a program of statting things up independently of their mechanical interaction with the PCs.)

Anyway, whatever the general status of the notion, I think it has one particular implication when applied to hit points (not a logical implication, but at least an implication of tendency): it implies that, at least as far as monsters and NPCs are concerned, hit points are meat. Because, to the extent that hit points are not just meat but also luck, divine favour etc, it does not contradict the notion of a PC-independent gameworld to posit a skilled, well-trained (and therefore high level) monster or NPC who is simply devoid of luck or divine favour, and therefore apt to be killed by a single sword blow (as tends to be the case for even the most skilled non-protagonists in REH's Conan, for example) - and this is exactly what the typical 4e minion is.

This is one of the game splits that D&D 5 will have to deal with.

This much at least is true! (And once again we see that it all boils down to hit points, and different understandings of how these correlate to the ingame reality.)

 

[Hussar]

This is one of the game splits that D&D 5 will have to deal with. Such a rule is not Gygaxian realism, it's not simulationist. It's part of the 4E narrativism that turns off a lot of 3E players.

Why are minions not simulationist? Or do you mean not simulationist in the sense of "not in my view of reality" vs simulationist in the idea of trying to simulate something. Because minions fit perfectly well in the idea of heroic fantasy simulation where the protagonist wades through dozens of bad guys before kicking the high priest in the rump and rescuing the damsel.

1e used small monsters as minions. You'd see it all the time. The bad guys in the back with a small horde of smaller bad guys in the front. It worked well because the numbers were so flat - when the difference between a small bad guy and the biggest bad guy is like 80 hit points, it's not that tricky.

However, a scale that flat is also very, very limiting.

 

[keterys]

It depends in part on the extent of scaling. In a game with steep scaling, like 4e

All versions of D&D so far had steep scaling... 4e was just extra explicit about it.

But when you'd pick up a shovel full of d20s and have the 30 kobolds shoot at the PCs looking for 20s... yep, that was sharp scaling all right

Even in terms of hit points, in a lot of cases it's just relative. My high level AD&D PC did like 20 dmg a round and had like 80 hp, whereas my high level 4e PC does like 50 dmg a round and has the equivalent of 200 hp. (Little more complicated than that, in both cases, but eh)

 

[Fifth Element]

1e used small monsters as minions. You'd see it all the time. The bad guys in the back with a small horde of smaller bad guys in the front. It worked well because the numbers were so flat - when the difference between a small bad guy and the biggest bad guy is like 80 hit points, it's not that tricky.

It was also helped along by the fighter getting one attack per level vs. <1 HD creatures. The fighter could wade through these guys because he got so many attacks against them.

But that rule was surely simulationist, while 4E's minions are ugly gamist constructions, right?

 

[prosfilaes]

Why are minions not simulationist? Or do you mean not simulationist in the sense of "not in my view of reality" vs simulationist in the idea of trying to simulate something. Because minions fit perfectly well in the idea of heroic fantasy simulation where the protagonist wades through dozens of bad guys before kicking the high priest in the rump and rescuing the damsel.

I mean simulationist in the sense that there's a world there, and we're trying to have the rules describe the world. You're talking story there; that's why I made the distinction between narrativist and simulationist. In a simulationist world, you can't have big dangerous demons who fall over and die when stuck with daggers.

(And, yes, HP do have a connection to meat. I can't find a Huge creature in the 3.5 MM with less then 6 HD; Colossals start at 24 HD. The only diminutive monsters have one HP (1/4 HD), and the Tiny Dragons have no more than 5 HD. That increases to 36 when they hit Gargantuan, of course. HP are a hairy mess of things, but one of those things is the amount of meat you have.)

It was also helped along by the fighter getting one attack per level vs. <1 HD creatures. The fighter could wade through these guys because he got so many attacks against them.

But that rule was surely simulationist, while 4E's minions are ugly gamist constructions, right?

That rule was arguably simulationist, and definitely gamist. I said 4E's minions were narrativist constructs, not gamist, and in a different game, I'd be fine with them, but the D&D I'm familiar with is not a very narrativist game.

 

[MichaelSomething]

In a simulationist world, you can't have big dangerous demons who fall over and die when stuck with daggers.

Then your daggers obviously aren't powerful enough.

 

[pemerton]

All versions of D&D so far had steep scaling... 4e was just extra explicit about it.

But when you'd pick up a shovel full of d20s and have the 30 kobolds shoot at the PCs looking for 20s... yep, that was sharp scaling all right

<snip>

Even in terms of hit points, in a lot of cases it's just relative.

I agree on hp. 4e hp don't seem that excessive to me, relative to the damage totals. I GMed an AD&D fighter wit over 100 hp once he was into the name levels, and the damage that monsters inflicted was no where near what it is in 4e (didn't some dragons have claws that did d6?!).

On the attack and defence scaling - I don't think it was as steep (eg if you look through the ACs the high level party in Against the Giants will face, there are heaps above 0 (probably a signficant majority of them), and the fighter's attack bonus has increased by 10 - whereas at 1st level the PCs weren't facing many foes with ACs worse than 7.

But kobolds were certainly no signficant threat to a high level AD&D party (putting to one side Tucker-style scenarios). My solution to this in 4e is the swarm - I find it plays a lot better than the old bucket-of-d20s!

 

[nnms]

As for the bringing up of forge/three-fold model/big model type terms like gamist and simulationist, I have to say is this: One thing that is more dangerous than not knowing kung fu is knowing a little kung fu.

The 4E minion rules can be either gamist or simulationist depending on how it is used in the context of an instance of actual play. The rules themselves are not inherently G, S nor N. They may, in aggregate, encourage people to produce play that prioritizes one of those creative agendas, but no technique is necessarily linked to a particular creative agenda.

As for the original post, I mostly agree. I grew up on D&D where kobolds are monsters and they have their stats and they don't necessarily also get levels and roles and templates and stuff. They have 1d4 HP and the weakest fireball does 5d6 with a save for half. So if the damage roll is terrible and a high HP Kobold makes a save, it *might* survive.

If someone started playing with a different type of kobold (say one with roles, levels and templates) or a different type of fireball (say with fixed damage) then they're going to have different expectations of what feels like D&D to them in this regard.

 

[prosfilaes]

As for the bringing up of forge/three-fold model/big model type terms like gamist and simulationist, I have to say is this: One thing that is more dangerous than not knowing kung fu is knowing a little kung fu.

What words do you want me to use? There are games designed around simulating a reality; there are games designed around telling a story. D&D is not Baron Munchhausen. One of the features where pre-4E D&D tries to simulate a reality is where it gives larger creatures more HPs. 4E trades that off to tell a better story.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think what is meant is "Gygaxian Naturalism". According to its proponents, this is the

tendency, present in the OD&D rules and reaching its fullest flower in AD&D, to go beyond describing monsters purely as opponents/obstacles for the player characters by giving game mechanics that serve little purpose other than to ground those monsters in the campaign world.​

For a lot of people D&D is pretty much the benchmark for lack of this feature, though I agree with James that Gary is more concerned with naturalism in 1e than OD&D. The OD&D mega-dungeon is a very non-naturalistic, gamist-play supporting, and game-y, construct. Why are all these disparate groups of monsters living so close together? How do they live? What do they do? Why do dungeons exist? Why do the monsters get more powerful the deeper one goes? In a way the mega-dungeon is OD&D's equivalent of a dissociated mechanic, its martial daily or action point.

D&D compares very unfavourably with RuneQuest, in which there really aren't any monsters, just NPCs. RuneQuest is very concerned with the daily lives, culture, and particularly the religion, of 'enemy races'. You'd never get a mega-dungeon in RuneQuest.

AD&D's wilderness encounter tables could be seen as simulationist, while its dungeon encounter tables are gamist. In the wilderness, the type of monster the PCs encounter is determined entirely by terrain type, with the power level being totally variable. In the tropics they might meet a jaguar, or a roc. Whereas in the dungeon, monster power is determined by dungeon level. It's impossible to meet Demogorgon on level one.