D&D 4E Keith Baker on 4E! (The Hellcow responds!)

[small pumpkin man]

(Mandatory Disclaimer: I haven't actually run a game for characters over 3rd level. I have no personal experience with 20th level play. My statements should not be taken as evidence that 20th level characters inflict 30 damage on an average attack, or that the kobold king has an army of 100 kobold minions. Ask your doctor if Lipitor is right for you.)

Do high level minions even use the "1 hit you're dead" rule? I mean, the stats we've seen for a 6th level minion (vampire spawn) give them 10 hp, let alone 20th level minions.

I'd also like to point out for Lizard's benefit, for the point of this entire discussion, that while the rules seem to support, and even encourage drama based play, I really don't think they require it, I think what you're seeing here is people who always wanted to play like this (and often do) being given better tools to do so. The point of the minion/solo rules is to design creatures in a way which simulates the way the creature fights/is fought, and to communicate that to the GM. For some people/settings/genres/playstyles, whether or not a creature is a minion will depend on their position in the plot, for others (you I assume) it would depend on their position in the world or their training, or something innate about how they fight.

While having level 1 Kobold warriors (or whatever) turn into level 8 Kobold minions if they're fighting much higher level creatures/characters (I think that's how the scaling works) makes the fight much simpler while keeping the power level of the Kobold very similar*, this doesn't mean you have to do it if it doesn't suit your playing/GMing style. And there's no need to get in peoples faces about the fact that it does suit their style.

*it mostly seems to involve things like making their damage flat instead of dice so that you don't have to roll it and they can't crit, raising their defenses and lowering their hp so that they take a similar amount of rounds to kill, but you don't have to worry as much about counting tonnes of critters who only get wounded.

-Edit, damn I take a long time to post.

 

[Spatula]

It comes from the rules text for the minion: "HP: A minion dies when hit by an attack that deals damage." Therefore, something that isn't an attack technically cannot kill the minion - it has no hp value but dies when hit by an attack ("hit" and "attack" both being terms that have rule-meanings). I'm really not sure why they just didn't give it 1 hp. Easier to type out and less prone to rules-lawyering (or rules misunderstandings, in the cleave case). Now, that was just from the DDXP writeups so it may have been someone's intention to be cute with it, as opposed to being taken from the MM. If that text does appear in the MM, then I seriously wonder about the level of polish on the initial books.

And not all minions have (the equivalent of) 1 hp and thus do not need their hp tracked, Keith. We've seen a vampire spawn that is a level 6 minion with 10 hp. (dammit, beaten to the punch; that's what I get for looking up the text on the kobold minion stats!)

 

[Andor]

Something that may be valuable to point out: The rules do not exist to provide us with "laws of physics." Common sense can do that. A given rule set may be able to double as a set of physical laws for the game world, but that is not why they exist. They exist to tell us, as players, how to play -- how to interact with the system, in order to create a shared imagined space.

-Will!

See, this kind of attitude breaks my brain. Because the rules do in fact provide some of the rules of physics for the game. If my character has a +15 jump check, then that tells me that my character can make a 25' running long jump without breaking a sweat. (I.E. Taking 10.)

If I have more than 6 HP I know that my character will always survive a 10' fall, barring a hostile enviroment at the bottom. And my character knows this too. Indeed if he didn't he'd be a fool to make that 25' jump since by the RAW he's 12'5' up at midleap.

If my character is a 1st level wizard with a 10 con, then he probably knows that he is enough of a wimp that reaching into a campfire to pull out the amulet of importance might just cause him enough pain to knock his wimpy butt unconcious. (1d6) Just like his Barbarian buddy knows he can tough out that same fire for at least 12 seconds.

It might be dramatically appropriate for my high level fighter to surrender when faced by a squad of first level bowmen, but to ask him to do so , even though he was feathered by 20 arrows two days ago and didn't even get slowed down is to ask him to ignore his experience with the physics of our world in favor of the fact that to do so would be just common sense in our world.

IOW What might seem like common sense to you might seem bizzare to me, and vice versa. The idea that characters are supposed to be ignorant of the rules of the world in which they live is just incomprehensible to me.

 

[catsclaw]

I think what you have there is a judge who misunderstood something, not a hard-and-fast rules issue.

Well, I had at least three judges who misunderstood, and several of them were specifically discussing the new rule change that had just come from the designers.

And given that I'm not the only one who heard the "minions only die from a to-hit roll", I'm sure there's some basis in truth. Again, it sounded like they hadn't fully made up their mind about the rule, so I've no idea how it ended up in the printed rules. Or the likelihood of it getting errata'ed. In either direction.

 

[wgreen]

See, this kind of attitude breaks my brain.

Ow!!

Really, all I'm saying is that the rules govern how the players interact with the system. If the players aren't interacting with the system, the rules don't necessarily have to come into play. Everything you say is fine, but don't worry about cats killing commoners. The players aren't playing cats, nor are they playing commoners. Therefore, it just doesn't matter. If the players are watching commoners fight cats, the DM just declares the commoners the winners, because that's what makes sense. It's not physics; it's game rules.

Edit: Further, I wasn't so much saying that the rules don't serve as physics, as that the rules' purpose isn't to serve as physics. Whether or not they do is largely immaterial. I mean, look at games like The Pool. They're legit RPGs, but nobody could claim their rules serve as physics.

-Will!

 

[Andor]

Ow!!

No attack intended, but I've run into a fair share of DM who takes this kind of attitude and it generally turns out to mean that the DMNPC can do what the rules say he can do (or more) but that your PC is subect to whatever 'commonsense' rule would make them look worse than the DMNPC. Needless to say it's made me a bit touchy about the "Rules aren't really rules" attitude.

Edit: Further, I wasn't so much saying that the rules don't serve as physics, as that the rules' purpose isn't to serve as physics. Whether or not they do is largely immaterial. I mean, look at games like The Pool. They're legit RPGs, but nobody could claim their rules serve as physics.

-Will!

Oh absolutely. The rules cover what the rules cover, and the rest is up to the GM and common sense. I love a well run Amber game for example. But if the game does cover a rule, like falling or fire damage, or HP, then it seems only sensible to me that the people who live in that world would be, on some level, aware of it.

For a comedic example: The Diskworld series by Terry Pratchett is a world of narrative causality and they know it! This leads to some amusing circumstance sometimes. For example everybody knows that million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten. This lead to a scene where some guards tried to take advantage of this by handicapping an already stupid plan to try and hit that magic million-to-one chance. (It didn't work.)

 

[hong]

You don't find abilities which come and go with the needs of drama to be immersion-breaking; I do. This is a matter of taste. 4e is to your taste; while I agree with most of the design goals and like some of the mechanical improvements, the overarching design model is not to mine.

Really?

 

[hong]

Remember the old SW RPG ads? The "What's this guy's story?" ads? Those were great. They captured that exact spirit, that sense of "Everyone has a tale, even that guy who appeared for two frames in Episode V."

Those were the ads for the Star Wars Galaxies MMO, IIRC.

I don't get that feeling from 4e, the feeling that the game exists to model a world.

And thank god, because SW Galaxies tanked.

 

[hong]

No attack intended, but I've run into a fair share of DM who takes this kind of attitude and it generally turns out to mean that the DMNPC can do what the rules say he can do (or more) but that your PC is subect to whatever 'commonsense' rule would make them look worse than the DMNPC. Needless to say it's made me a bit touchy about the "Rules aren't really rules" attitude.

A DM like this is going to run a DMPC regardless of the rules. The best solution is to start your own game and not invite them to join.

 

[Scrollreader]

Well. I can't speak from a business perspective, but from a player perspective, I left when the dumbed it down far too much. In my opinion, that's how you would do 4e /wrong/. At least, wrong for me. But from what I've seen, they've taken a similar idea (too much fiddly stuff gets in the way) and managed to implement it in a way that respects their players intelligence, and still gives meaningful choices and interesting characters. I'll wait until the books are out to pass my final judgement, but so far, I've liked what I've seen about 4e.