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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5191591" data-attributes="member: 61155">I can see that as an interesting approach to a game. On the other hand, I imagine such a fundamental shift would have more than a few other difficulties arise. Among other things, I would expect to see a system like that end up with a much more limited array of options, in order to avoid potential abuse from over-optimization. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - a more limited system would also make for an easier one to adapt to - but it might not be for all players.   Except 4E minions still have scaling defenses. The scrawny scribe doesn't have a great melee attack bonus without investing something in it. It might scale somewhat to level, but Hulko the fighter has significant bonuses from his strength, magic weapon, and random bonuses from class, feats, etc.  Thus, if they both wade into a room filled with orc minions, Hulko will cleave through them, cutting them down in all directions. The scribe will probably be cowering behind him, and occasionally get in a lucky swing and smack an orc over the head with his spellbook, dropping it.  Is that really unreasonable? What benefit would your system have over this? Instead of swinging 4 times and getting in one lucky blow to drop a mook, a wizard caught in melee would swing 4 times for trivial damage until the enemy finally drops? Or would the wizard's attack bonus still be poor, and thus he would need to swing 16 times in order to accumulate enough trivial damage to fell a simple enemy mook? Or was your reference to a scribe not referring to a wizard PC for some reason forced to use fists instead of magic, but to a purely mundance scribe NPC caught in battle with orc minions. In which case... again, he probably will only drop a minion with the occasional hit, which I have no issues with - a companion of the PCs, in over his head, who occasionally lands a lucky blow seems entirely reasonable. Or are you proposing some hypothetical off-screen fight between a bunch of scrawny scribes and random orc raiders?  In which case... really, that's not a scene you need to be rolling out to begin with.   Look, I'll be the first to admit that drawing comparisons between a game and a story can oft be a futile approach. But you are specifically complaining about minions not making sense in the context of the game world. Whether it is random or decided by an author, it makes perfect sense for a hero to still perceive basic enemy grunts as possible threats, and it makes perfect sense that he can dispatch them with ease when he needs a more serious duel to take down their leader.  I'm really not sure what your response has to do with the argument at hand. You laid the claim that the problem with minions is that they don't feel real within the game world. Whether dice are being rolled or not, they work just as well in the game as in classic fantasy stories, as in movies like Lord of the Rings - most enemies the main characters fight are felled with ease, with only the truly dangerous threats requiring more significant opposition. The fighter can carve through orc mooks in order to do battle with the orc chieftain. Whether in the context of a story or a game, it seems entirely consistent to me!</blockquote>

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