Excerpt: Minions. Go forth mine minions! Bring havoc with your 1 hp [merged]

[Nightchilde-2]

Exactly. They're not meant to be a threat by themselves. They're a minor tactical problem, and an opportunity to showboat.

Why do ppl have this aversion to showboating? It is very strange.

Exactly. Especially for the protagonists/heroes of the game, y'know, who should be in the spotlight and should be kicking butt and taking names (with or without bubblegum).

Or maybe I've been playing too much Feng Shui/Exalted/Deadlands/Scion over the last several years...

 

[ebenmckay]

No Kobolds can take a greatsword to the face. Neither can humans, orcs or anyone else. HP are, and always have been, an abstraction. They do not reflect "greatswords to the face". Being reduced to 0 hit points and dying reflects "greatswords to the face".

What he said.

Invoking movies and literature, how often has anyone seen a hero take a hit, be it from a gun, dagger, sledgehammer, sword, or what-have-you, and NOT immediately be terribly wounded? Regardless of the demonstrated power of the hero, a couple landed hits and he's panting and struggling to keep his feet.

I contend that HP have ALWAYS been abstract, and the new edition is no different. Greatsword to the face = dead or dying. Otherwise that level 20 fighter is going to stand there, hands folded and unarmored in front of the classroom while the student with the greatsword keeps chopping him in the head, and that's just dumb.

As for two armies of minions popping each other left and right: sounds fine to me. I think of Helm's Deep, and that old man with the shaky bow who fired too soon and drops a well armored uruk-hai on the front line, or those Civil War movies where lines of soldiers fire and lines of soldiers drop.

It seems reasonable to me that minions fall in one hit. That they necessarily DIE in one hit is what I disagree with. They are certainly out of the fight in mechanical terms, but I see that as the minion going "ow, that hurts, I think I'll stay down and bleed for a bit". It doesn't break believability for me, because I see it in basically every war movie, western, fantasy, scifi, drama, etc. movie where armies are killing each other or heroes are facing hordes of inferior opponents. If you don't have a name, one hit drops you and you stay down, dead or unconscious or just bleeding.

 

[Cadfan]

Perhaps what some consider a moment's thought you consider over-thinking? Sadly I do not believe I can think is smaller increments.

Sucks for you then.

I remember late night conversations back in my old college gaming club, about the way that clerical healing in 3e supported the "meat points" theory of injury, which the game explicitly denies, or about how the fastest way to get better at goat herding was to stab someone. Those conversations were fun. They also weren't the seeds of great RPG design.

In eight years or so, people are going to be going through this all over again. But you know what? Thanks to accidents of history, in your position will be some guy who finds minions acceptable, but who thinks that 3e style clerical healing breaks the game's realism. And those who accept that abstraction is abstraction will continue to enjoy a game that is, at its best, a very abstract model.

 

[Lacyon]

As should surprise no one who read my "Minions are aliens from another game system" thread, I don't fine this Excerpt to be satisfying. Minions are exactly what I expected them to be: an ugly rules kludge for narrative/cinematic purposes. I guess the devs decided "We need Minions", push came to shove, and rather than killing a sacred cow (BAB that advances with level), Sim got thrown under the bus. Needless to say, not the choice I would have made.

If you accept that monsters don't have a "level" granting them bonuses in the same way that PCs do, and instead just get training/racial/awesome bonuses to different stats and abilities, and level for monsters is instead a metagame construct for informing how much of a threat that monster represents, all of these problems go away.

What's so painful about this (to me), is that it's blindingly obvious that the WotC devs knew exactly what they were doing too. The only real difference between the various Minion levels is that Init, BAB, Skills and Defenses all advance the same +1/2 level that PCs advance. Am I the only one who sees this as a stupid arms race? Remove the +1/2 advancement from all parties and what you're left with is the exact same result.

Except that when characters of different skill levels fight, we expect their skill difference to have an impact on how likely they are to succeed at imposing various negative conditions on one another. Your "solution" breaks sim, nar, and game expectations.

 

[Rechan]

What's so painful about this (to me), is that it's blindingly obvious that the WotC devs knew exactly what they were doing too. The only real difference between the various Minion levels is that Init, BAB, Skills and Defenses all advance the same +1/2 level that PCs advance. Am I the only one who sees this as a stupid arms race? Remove the +1/2 advancement from all parties and what you're left with is the exact same result.

What you see as a stupid arms race, I see "Keeping relevant the use of minions".

But then, I have no problem with "same thing, bigger numbers" when, well, that's all minions are meant for.

I guess I'm just the odd man out, not having a problem with WotC using a formula.

 

[Wormwood]

Ripping the weapon out of a foe's hand is a CLASSIC cinematic maneuver. It's precisely the kind of swashbuckling high action 4e is supposed to simulate better than 3e. I've seen it used to great effect in the campaign I'm running currently.

If rules simplification trumps fulfilling the purpose of the rules, there's a fundamental design failure.

I'd say that if you use your Force power to remove a monster's shield (or other piece of fluff) then you get an ad hoc +2 bonus to attack that NPC until he resets back to default (using the 3e "DM's friend as a guideline)

Naturally, I'm sure the 4e DMG will have something to the effect of "what to do when clever, swingy things are done in combat".

 

[Wormwood]

Or maybe I've been playing too much Feng Shui/Exalted/Deadlands/Scion over the last several years...

No such thing.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Interesting idea, so the PC's experience in combat doesn't help them avoid attacks or find openings in their opponents defences, its just the magic items that they find that help them at all?

So apart from a few fancy manouvers and more hp, they are as "skillful" as bob the peasant tm.

Think about the abstract nature of HP and Dmg. We all know that "in real life" a longsword through the center of mass is usually quickly fatal. Yet somehow a 1st level PC can be "hit" with an orc's waraxe multiple times and just "sleep it off." How does he do this? He does this through skill - at the last moment he turns the blow a bit to make it a glancing one, or it misses him entirely (in a physical sense) but he expended a lot of strength and endurance doing so. Only the last blow is the fatal one.

A 1st level Warrior can do this 2-4 times before his defenses are exhausted. A high level warrior can do it all day. How is it that two warriors, facing the same opponent, and facing the same attack roll of 16 from the same axe, get such different results? One loses half his resources, while the other loses less than 5% of his. I would say that's the "skill and experience" of having more HP.

Likewise, if two warriors can attack you with the same longsword, one does 1d8+2 while the other does 2d8+16, I'd say that represents his skill at striking blows. You simply can't turn his blows aside as easily as the lesser warrior's.

Its something to think about, but the +1/2 lvl does allow you to feel as if you are progressing, you know that if you came back to those same silly lvl 1 kobolds in 10 levels time you are going to wipe the floor with them, see i don't think minions should represent the exact same creatures you fought off x levels ago, i think minions should represent different creatures perhaps they are the better trained cousins from up north, who have relavant stats for you to fight against, but the players are still more heroic than them.

That's all in your head. By any rational readings of the 4E rules, there is no difference at all. And the +1/2 advancement is an illusion. See my response to Mustrum_Ridcully.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Think about the abstract nature of HP and Dmg. We all know that "in real life" a longsword through the center of mass is usually quickly fatal. Yet somehow a 1st level PC can be "hit" with an orc's waraxe multiple times and just "sleep it off." How does he do this? He does this through skill - at the last moment he turns the blow a bit to make it a glancing one, or it misses him entirely (in a physical sense) but he expended a lot of strength and endurance doing so. Only the last blow is the fatal one.

A 1st level Warrior can do this 2-4 times before his defenses are exhausted. A high level warrior can do it all day. How is it that two warriors, facing the same opponent, and facing the same attack roll of 16 from the same axe, get such different results? One loses half his resources, while the other loses less than 5% of his. I would say that's the "skill and experience" of having more HP.

Likewise, if two warriors can attack you with the same longsword, one does 1d8+2 while the other does 2d8+16, I'd say that represents his skill at striking blows. You simply can't turn his blows aside as easily as the lesser warrior's.




That's all in your head. By any rational readings of the 4E rules, there is no difference at all. And the +1/2 advancement is an illusion. See my response to Mustrum_Ridcully.

Dungeons and Dragons doesn't seem like the system you need to run games, based on your feedback regarding base mechanics that pervade each and every incarnation of the rules.

 

[jaycrockett]

So what do we know about alchemists fire, acid flasks, caltrops, environmental effects, fist fights, etc and how they interact with minions? And is a 10 fall always lethal?