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

[Voss]

There's your problem. 1hp<>1hp. If my 10th level fighter has 100 hp, the first hp of damage I take is a somewhat close call, like an arrow flying by my head or a sword swing that glances off my full plate. 99 hit points of damage later, the last hp represents the dagger that buries itself in my throat or a sword thrust through the heart. Not the same.

Thats your opinion, though, not mine. It doesn't help me like these minion rules any more.

But (as has been pointed out many times before) according to the rules a first level wizard *can't* kill a high level minion with a rusty dagger, because if a first level wizard is facing a high level minion, the DM is doing something the rules explicitly warn against. Complaining the rules don't work when you break the rules doesn't really tell us anything about the rules.

Where is the arbitrary line in the sand then? At what point is this not absurd? 6th level? 5th? 4th? Considering the wizard can sleep a random group of kobolds and then stab them with a dagger, and Kobold A is a minion and dies, and Kobold B isn't a minion and doesn't, the absurdity seems to me to go all the way down. Its been said that the definition of insanity is performing the same action and expecting different results. Well, this particular subsystem strikes me as designed to be insane, because you really can perform the same action and get completely different results!


@Rex - Yes, third edition had its share (more, really) of stupid rules. That fact doesn't help me like this rule. The camel (the combat system), is a bit of an ugly beast, but it works out here in the desert of D&D systems. Minions don't make it to the first oasis.

 

[Blackeagle]

Where is the arbitrary line in the sand then? At what point is this not absurd? 6th level? 5th? 4th?

Well, we don't know exactly what advice the DMG is going to give on "appropriate level encounters", so it's hard to say until the books come out. The designers have said that since the power curve is considerably flatter you'll be able to pit the party against higher level foes than you could in 3e without risking a TPK. So I'm guessing 4-5 levels difference will be the max. Looking at the examples we've seen, minions have 1/4 the XP of a normal creature of that level, and a five level difference about doubles the XP. So killing a minion 5 levels higher than you earns you about half as much XP as killing a normal monster of your level. Hardly seems broken to me.

Considering the wizard can sleep a random group of kobolds and then stab them with a dagger, and Kobold A is a minion and dies, and Kobold B isn't a minion and doesn't, the absurdity seems to me to go all the way down.

How is that any more absurd than the rest of the hit point system? Wizard stabs Kobold A and rolls well and it dies. Wizard stabs Kobold B and rolls poorly and it does not.

Its been said that the definition of insanity is performing the same action and expecting different results. Well, this particular subsystem strikes me as designed to be insane, because you really can perform the same action and get completely different results!

I swing a sword and roll high and hit, I swing a sword and roll low and miss. I hit something with a fireball and roll good damage and kill it, I hit something with a fireball and roll poor damage and it lives. I make a running leap across a chasm and roll well on my athletics check and make it to the other side, I make a running leap across a chasm and blow the roll and fall to my death. Same actions, different results.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I actually think that 3e had a lot of GOOD rules.

I have no problem with 25% of commoners having the same number of hit points as a pane of glass.

Most of the time, D&D 3.x rules lead to good gameplay - better than many more realistic systems. Sure, it breaks down catastrophically under any number of thought experiments: many involving HP (are they largely morale - a highlevel warrior can take many hits - or are they meat - cure light wounds fix physical wounds? Why can a low-constitution sage with 20 ranks in a knowledge skill necessarily beat a 1st-level fighter in a longsword duel?), but some involving commoner railguns, infinite travel via a line of horses, etc.

But at the table, it works most of the time, and where it doesn't, everyone agrees to look the other way, or we make a joke and move on. That's how we always played 3.x at my table. 3.x rules are not a good simulation of anything, and they're certainly not internally consistent. If that's your goal, you either should be disgusted with 3e or you have to wear blinders.

But it's worth it, because 3e's many abstractions, shortcuts, and ridiculous assumptions add up to a great game, that has entertained me and my friends for years.

Voss, you don't have to like or use the minion rule. But I wish you wouldn't claim that it's worse than any number of 3e rules. Is it REALLY worse than the sage beating the fighter in the duel? No - they both require a handwave or a lame justification. But who cares? These situations occur a LOT more on message boards than during actual D&D play.

 

[Korgoth]

It was just an example, specifically to point out how absurd the minion rules get. Here's what my problem with minions boils down to:

1 hp is generally something I associate with, say, a glass window. A thrown rock will break it, even if thrown by a small child. 1 hp = 1 hp, so if a small child can break a window, he can kill a 21st level legion devil, an orc minion or a kobold minion, or whatever. This, to me, is an absurd thing. Even if you never have small children killing devils, (though its such an entertaining image...) you still have a subsystem that is actively wacky and absurd. Even in gamist terms, a first level wizard can kill *something* with a rusty dagger, and get somewhere between 25 and several hundred, if not thousand XP. That strikes me as really messed up. Meanwhile, he can run into something of the same type that will turn him into dogmeat if he tries something that ridiculous.

Where does the 1hp = glass window come from, though? It cannot have come from any previous edition of D&D. In all editions, commoners had 1-4 or 1-6 hp. Which means that lots of people had only 1 hp. Likewise, barring house rules about granting max hp at 1st level, a fair number of characters could have only 1 hp as well. So has traditional D&D always been populated with hordes of glass people?

And so what's 2 hp... double-paned glass? I don't think you can consistently think of hit points as a linear measurement of material structural integrity in any edition of D&D.

And again, in reality daggers are deadly weapons! If you get stabbed in the chest, you're going to have a punctured lung at least, if not a destroyed heart. That kills you! So the only defense against daggers is to have them not stab you in the chest. You can do that both by positioning tough materials between your chest and the dagger (armor and/or shield) or by not being where the dagger thrust ends up (getting out of the way).

If a dagger does not strike you in the chest, but merely cuts your arm in a non-vital spot, then I say that you've taken no damage at all. You have a boo-boo... but a boo-boo is not 1 hit point of damage. 1 hit point of damage is either a blade going through your eye and into your brain (thus killing you), or the amount of resources you're charged for that stab to the eye actually being a narrow miss.

 

[Pssthpok]

The way I see it is simple: if you're not prepared for the idea of a wizard one-shot stabbing a devil, you're not prepared for what minions are intended to be.

They're the martially adept goons that Tony Jaa takes out by the dozens.

They're the Foot Soldiers who get tripped by the Turtles and are subsequently out of the fight.

They're the zombies who swarm the doors and windows, but go down with one swift lick of a cricket bat.

If you can't hold that sort of idea in your head and go with it, deal with the pedantry of having goons with x# of HP who need then to be tracked and remembered round by round. Your choice; either way is fine, but one is far more conducive to scene-building and fun.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Also, in 3.5, paper walls have 1 hp. I guarantee you that a small child can totally slice up a paper wall with a chocolate bar, a guitar pick, a fingernail, or a Magic card.

Voss, since you assert that 1hp=1hp, do you assert that in 3.5, a small child can kill 20% of commoners by one hit with a chocolate bar, a guitar pick, a fingernail, or a Magic card?

Do you assert that a paper wall, a glass window, and 20% of commoners take the same amount of force to destroy?

Of course you don't. Hit points are an abstraction. For instance, D&D doesn't have fractional hit points, which would be necessary to model all these things. However, it doesn't, because it wouldn't add to gameplay.

So please, let's put to bed cats, stale muffins, and rocks thrown by children once and for all, and if you want to criticize minions, don't do it on the grounds that 4e is departing from 3e's rigorous scientific model of damage.

 

[Thasmodious]

I actually think that 3e had a lot of GOOD rules.

I have no problem with 25% of commoners having the same number of hit points as a pane of glass.

Most of the time, D&D 3.x rules lead to good gameplay - better than many more realistic systems. Sure, it breaks down catastrophically under any number of thought experiments: many involving HP (are they largely morale - a highlevel warrior can take many hits - or are they meat - cure light wounds fix physical wounds? Why can a low-constitution sage with 20 ranks in a knowledge skill necessarily beat a 1st-level fighter in a longsword duel?), but some involving commoner railguns, infinite travel via a line of horses, etc.

But at the table, it works most of the time, and where it doesn't, everyone agrees to look the other way, or we make a joke and move on. That's how we always played 3.x at my table. 3.x rules are not a good simulation of anything, and they're certainly not internally consistent. If that's your goal, you either should be disgusted with 3e or you have to wear blinders.

But it's worth it, because 3e's many abstractions, shortcuts, and ridiculous assumptions add up to a great game, that has entertained me and my friends for years.

Voss, you don't have to like or use the minion rule. But I wish you wouldn't claim that it's worse than any number of 3e rules. Is it REALLY worse than the sage beating the fighter in the duel? No - they both require a handwave or a lame justification. But who cares? These situations occur a LOT more on message boards than during actual D&D play.

This is a good post. Every game has plenty of corner cases that lead to some silliness if you dwell on it too much. So don't dwell on it. The corner cases of 3e are well known and long discussed, but they did not lead to a bad game as Rex points out. 4e has its corner cases as well, but so what? (and not that I agree, at all, with Voss's attempts at throwing corners at the minion rules here, I think he misses terribly (which we know, does no damage regardless)).

A difference in design conceit is that 3e tried to address as many of those corner cases as it could, which led to a large amount of rules creep which only spawned new corner cases. With 4e, the designers specifically seem to be accepting the existence of these corners and saying, "meh, intelligent gamers understand intent. A group of intelligent gamers aren't going to try and break the system just because something's there, no one is actually going to bring a sack of rats to a fight (or children with rocks)."

Meanwhile, Voss is proudly standing up and shouting back, "I will!" and then claiming that the mere existence of corners means the system is somehow broken and unworkable. I guess if that's your bag, more power to you. Me, I'm going to just enjoy playing a game with my friends, just like I have for the last 30 years.

 

[CrimsonNeko]

Really read the excerpt. I think it illustrates quite well when you use minions. You fight ogres at level 5. Those are normal mobs. However, 10 levels later, those ogres would be a joke to fight. You'd one shot them anyway, and they'd never hit you. Instead of making a worthless encounter, they are giving you rules to make those ogres actually have a small chance to do something while still keeping the feel of "these are just the small guys." I don't know about you, but I find fighting things that aren't a threat in any way, shape, or form kinda pointless.

 

[Voss]

I actually think that 3e had a lot of GOOD rules.

Voss, you don't have to like or use the minion rule. But I wish you wouldn't claim that it's worse than any number of 3e rules. Is it REALLY worse than the sage beating the fighter in the duel? No - they both require a handwave or a lame justification. But who cares? These situations occur a LOT more on message boards than during actual D&D play.

I didn't. I just claimed that the number of rules in 3e, good or bad, was completely irrelevant as to whether or not the minion rule was good or bad.

Do you assert that a paper wall, a glass window, and 20% of commoners take the same amount of force to destroy?

Of course you don't.

Actually, I do. Because thats what the rules say. If you do one point of damage to any of those things, they are dead or destroyed. Its an absurdity, but its the games absurdity, not mine. But can we go back to the minion rules, because I was certainly never criticizing it based on 3e. I was criticizing it based on the fact that its internally inconsistent with other parts of 4e.

@Thasmodious-
The problem is, this isn't a corner case. All minions die when they take at least 1 point of damage from a direct hit. It doesn't matter what the source is, or anything else, just that attack hits and does measurable damage. There aren't any exceptions involved- the attacker doesn't have to be of an appropriate level, a PC or be wearing a blue scarf under the moon- the attacker just has to hit it with a damaging attack.

Furthermore, when you have 5 types of kobolds in a room, and 4 can take 20 to 30 times they damage of the other, there is a verisimilitude issue that isn't even vaguely corner case. Its really that 1 out of 5 kobolds will die to a dagger thrust, while the other 4 *won't die* if hit with a greatsword. Maybe that doesn't bother you. It does bother me, and it certainly isn't more or less intelligent to ignore it than to point it out. Its a matter of playstyle preference. I enjoy games more if they are internally consistent, and if they stand up to a little thoughtful analysis.

I find that most of 4e does stand up better to thoughtful analysis than 3e does. However, there are specific subsystems, like this one, that do not stand up well to analysis.

 

[keterys]

and Kobold A is a minion and dies, and Kobold B isn't a minion and doesn't

'... Kobold A is a COMMONER and dies, and Kobold B is a FIGHTER and doesn't' is drastically different how?