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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8397497" data-attributes="member: 12731">Personally I don't like preordaining some creatures as &quot;lesser&quot;, and I never enjoyed the blunt 4E implementation.I fully embrace the fact that mooks are a trope, though. Just that I prefer a rule such as &quot;Fighters instagib lower-levelled creatures on a crit&quot;. The difference is that the scenario (or me the GM) don't point at a given creature beforehand and say &quot;when and if the heroes kill you they shall be robbed of any sense of accomplishment, for I'm removing your ability to represent a true threat for your level&quot;.That is, I prefer it when it is the adventure that determines which creatures turned out to be mooks and which creatures that surprises the heroes with their resourcefulness and luck*. That is, everybody starts out at first level, heroes and monsters alike, and who &quot;grows up&quot; to become a high-level hero is only revealed during play.Zapp*) fans of Under Siege will appreciate the time when the players attacked the goblin tribe (or was it some Underdark race, can't remember) and their cook enjoyed incredible luck, never getting killed and also being able to escape to fight another day... the players became fascinated with that individual, giving it a name, and cheering on when I upgraded it. They almost felt sad when they finally killed it&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool&nbsp; &nbsp; :cool:"&nbsp; data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> Wonderful stuff like that can't happen if the game or the GM has predetermined &quot;you're only a mook, you have zero prospects&quot;. And the point is: such mook rules simply aren't needed in any iteration of D&amp;D where low-level creatures have so few hit points that a few hits kills them anyway. In other words: the problem is with hit point inflation and designs like 5E where too many monsters are just big bags of hit points.tl;dr: Much better than mook rules are games where low level creatures simply fall to a few swings from high level creatures</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 8397497, member: 12731"] Personally I don't like preordaining some creatures as "lesser", and I never enjoyed the blunt 4E implementation. I fully embrace the fact that mooks are a trope, though. Just that I prefer a rule such as "Fighters instagib lower-levelled creatures on a crit". The difference is that the scenario (or me the GM) don't point at a given creature beforehand and say "when and if the heroes kill you they shall be robbed of any sense of accomplishment, for I'm removing your ability to represent a true threat for your level". That is, I prefer it when it is the adventure that determines which creatures turned out to be mooks and which creatures that surprises the heroes with their resourcefulness and luck*. That is, everybody starts out at first level, heroes and monsters alike, and who "grows up" to become a high-level hero is only revealed during play. Zapp *) fans of Under Siege will appreciate the time when the players attacked the goblin tribe (or was it some Underdark race, can't remember) and their cook enjoyed incredible luck, never getting killed and also being able to escape to fight another day... the players became fascinated with that individual, giving it a name, and cheering on when I upgraded it. They almost felt sad when they finally killed it :cool: Wonderful stuff like that can't happen if the game or the GM has predetermined "you're only a mook, you have zero prospects". And the point is: such mook rules simply aren't needed in any iteration of D&D where low-level creatures have so few hit points that a few hits kills them anyway. In other words: the problem is with hit point inflation and designs like 5E where too many monsters are just big bags of hit points. tl;dr: Much better than mook rules are games where low level creatures simply fall to a few swings from high level creatures [/QUOTE]

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