D&D is NOT Kobolds surviving Fireball

[Hussar]

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./snip

That's not always what is meant by simulation, as NNMS points out. Simulationist can have a fair number of meanings and I just wanted to pin down the one that you meant. You mean simulationist as in "I want to have a world where the mechanics have a very direct correlation with describing that world." And there's nothing wrong with that.

My point is, at the end of the day, there isn't a whole lot of difference at the end of the day. My high level paladin had a minimum damage of about 20 (Holy Avenger, Girdle of Giant Strength, Unearthed Arcana rules - yeah, we were about 13, sue me. ) which meant that anything 2 HD or less instantly died if I sneezed at it and anything up to about 4 or 5 HD had a pretty good chance of dying. IOW, a very large percentage of anything we met was effectively a minion for my character.

Which is what the minion rules are meant to represent. A simplification of having certain monsters in the encounter that are just small enough to go poof when you hit them, but still have the right bonuses to be able to hit the PC's without having to drop 100 of them on the table because the PC has an AC in the mid negatives and anything under about 5 HD can't hit him on less than a 20.

Generally, this is how things did balance out. The PC's defenses were so much higher - full plate + shield is easily doable by about 3rd level (presuming you are using Unearthed Arcana or later rules) and a 15 Dex isn't that out of line for a fighter. That's a -1 AC without any magic. A fair number of the things a 3rd level party would face now only hits this character about 10-15% of the time.

AD&D lethality came from Save or Die effects, not combat strength. Most of the 1e monsters were pretty darn weak individually and it took a large number just to make a moderate threat.

 

[pemerton]

For a lot of people D&D is pretty much the benchmark for lack of this feature

<snip>

D&D compares very unfavourably with RuneQuest, in which there really aren't any monsters, just NPCs.

I don't disagree with this, but it also raises the question "what is D&D"?

For example, 1st ed AD&D Oriental Adventures is probably closer to Runequest than it is to OD&D in respect of this sort of stuff. Is it therefore not D&D? I've seen that contention put forward on these boards, but I think at that point we're working with a pretty narrow conception of what D&D is.

I've been using the B/X module Night's Dark Terror for the past 3 years as the backdrop and spine of my 4e campaign. That module is not Runequest, but there's no megadungeon (only some modest haunted tombs and a ruined city with a wizard and his hobgoblin army in it) and the non-humanoid tribes all have tribal names and heraldic devices.

One thing that D&D does and Runequest doesn't is gonzo. 4e can do Heroquesting, for example (see The Plane Above) whereas RQ doesn't. Gonzo puts pressure on naturalism, but I think that pressure can be survived if the right techniques are used for building setting and situation. (And one of those techniques, I think, is not to focus too much on the mechanical expression of every story element.)

 

[pemerton]

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.

In my case, I think it's the influence of Rolemaster - Fireball is dangerous but by no means always deadly, and kobolds aren't uniquely puny.

 

[Fifth Element]

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.

To be clear, I only threw out those terms to reflect what others might say (I don't buy a lot of what GNS is selling), given the observed tendency to claim that AD&D is simulationist while later editions are not.

I think arguing that rule is simulationist would be quite a trick, though. A 6th-level fighter against a bunch of 1 HD orcs gets his normal one attack per round. The same fighter against a bunch of 1-1 HD goblins gets six attacks per round. That one hit point certainly makes quite a difference.

 

[The Red King]

But how often do you really roll full damage on a fireball?


Me? Never.

 

[Fifth Element]

What words do you want me to use? There are games designed around simulating a reality; there are games designed around telling a story.

And then there are the other 98% of RPGs, which do a lot of both.

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.

In 1E, it's probably generally true that the larger the creature, the more HD it has. But the relationship isn't nearly as strong as you might think. A gnoll is size L and has 2 HD, which is the same as the size S homonculus. A bugbear has 3+1 HD, which is less than the size S cockatrice (5 HD). A will o wisp (also size S) has 9 HD.

If monster HP in 1E was intended to reflect size (HP as meat), then you might consider that simulationist. But there are many exceptions, and as such the relationship between size and HP is a fairly weak one. And of course, if it were true it would mean that HP means something different for monsters than it does for PCs, which by itself is not simulationist.