NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5191974" data-attributes="member: 42582">I like this, although I don't share the play preferences it expresses, because it makes very clear what those preferences are about.You're linking satisfaction, here, to facets of ingame reality and their mechanical expression - a creature feeling like it belongs with the rest of the world in virtue of its stat block and the action resolution mechanics that govern it, and a creature being scary for the same reasons, namely, being a mechanical threat to the PCs in virtue of its stat block alone, and the action resolution mechanics that statblock invokes.In my own play experience, these are not very important contributors to feelings of satisfaction. My players' concerns and emotional responses are tyically to what is going on either in the storyline of the game or (during combat) to what is going on tactically in the game. Their responses do not correlate in any very strong way to the mechanical modelling of the ingame elements. It is the ingame situation that matters.Two pick up on your two examples:In my own approach to play, a monster feels like it belongs in the gameworld because, for example, it's a hobgoblin working with other hobgoblins to do wicked things. It's location within the gameworld is established before the combat statblock comes into play - once its minion-ness matters (ie once combat starts), the monster already has a place in the gameworld. The auto-oneshotting that comes with minion-ness contributes to the tactical situation, and (if my group stops to think about it, which frequently they don't) tells us that that was one unlucky hobgoblin, but it doesn't undermine its place in the gameworld. In particular, the players don't lose their suspension of disbelief because they learn that this particular hobgobling has been mechanically implemented as a minion.Similarly, scariness is in part a function of player expectations, and in part a function of how events unfold. Again, it is about situation, not about the mechanical properties of particular game elements abstracted from that situation. Thus, if 6 demons surround a PC, that is scary whether or not they're minions. (I usually play that the players don't know if a monster is a minion until at least one is hit - at that point they can generally guess the rest because of the sameness of token, and often they can guess in advance that some minions are around by metagaming an assumption of balanced encounters. But even if the players know that the 6 monsters are  minions it can still be scary to be surrounded by them.)If the minions are then dropped by an enemy-only burst hitting them all for at least 1 point, the fear will pass and feelings of relief and/or awesomeness may replace it, but that is fine. The fear was still there, even if it has now passed. I find that the game has plenty of ways of generating sustained anxiety in the players if I want to do this (eg elites and solos), and that the presence of minions in encounters doesn't undermine this. Indeed, sometimes it can enhance it - as the minions gradually drop, and then some of the lower level ordinary monsters, leaving only the elite leader left, apparently unfazed by the best the party has had to offer, the tension and anxiety can be enhanced rather than undermined. Again, it is about situation, not individual game elements. I find that the variety of game elements that 4e offers - minions, elites and solos as well as ordinary monsters - helps rather than hinders the process of building up a compelling ingame situation.</blockquote>

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