The Little Raven
First Post
How did said person deal with the fact that a domesticated housecat can kill entire families more easily than a murderous farmer?
Let's talk about minions...
- Thread starter cangrejoide
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How did said person deal with the fact that a domesticated housecat can kill entire families more easily than a murderous farmer?
Obryn
Hero
Sadly, because of the way 3e weds HPs and attack ability, the math breaks down for this after a certain point.
Those hordes of Orcs you're mowing down aren't a real threat.
Mechanically, this was what minions were meant to represent - actual threats that serve as interesting tactical pieces in a battle. And yet, ones which still go down in one hit.
-O
The Little Raven
First Post
There's this crazy story about a kid named David and a giant named Goliath that you may want to reflect on
That kid was also the shieldbearer of the king, a position that would not have been given to your average adolescent.
Obryn
Hero
I think if you're using the game rules to play out combat between two NPCs, you're not using minions right.
No, I have absolutely no doubt that you understand how minions work from your perspective.
When you posit examples like the one above, though, you're not displaying an understanding of how minions function in 4e. Or, more properly, you're treating minions as a simulation, when they're a tactical/narrative construct.
I think that's what all the "You don't unnerstand!" posts are trying to get across. There are some questions and scenarios that are simply silly when you apply them to minions - and as a result, the DM shouldn't use minions in those cases. If you push minions into a spot where they won't work, well - astoundingly enough, they won't work.
If you want to come from the argument, "I want simulation, and this narrativist stuff won't work for me," then that should basically be the end of the conversation. There's no common ground at that point. Forcing a minion into a simulationist example - like you're doing above - is a senseless argument. You're not using them in the manner they're meant to be used, so folks will tend to accuse you of not understanding them.
-O
What doesn't he understand, in your view? You seem to be confusing disagreement with a lack of comprehension. Minions fit a certain style of story, and people who are not interested in that style won't be interested in minions.
---
I'm mildly bothered by the metagame ramifications of minions, myself. Either the DM has to make it 100% clear to the group that you are or are not facing mooks, or else you have no basis to determine the probable toughness of an encounter. "There's 10 of them, so some of them must be minions - let's attack!" But pointing out that figs A, B, and D are actually minions isn't very immersive.
Both QFT.
No doubt it is fair enough to be unhappy that the only inprint version of D&D has a gamist/narrativist rather than a gamist/simulationist orientation. But it seems a little pointless to then labour the point by pointing to every individual narrativist mechanic (minions, encounter powers, healing surges, skill challenges etc) and complain about its failure to support simulationist play.
Ourph got it right, I think. The poster being accused of non-comprehension either doesn't comprehend, or is indifferent to, the fact that it is senseless to complain about the failure of narrativist mechanical devices to support simulationist play.
It would be like complaining about the role of Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel, on the basis that it is unrealistic that a PC fights better against the usurper than a random duelist, simply because at the metagame level it has been decided by the player that the PC's destiny is to become king (although the PC doesn't know it yet). If you don't want to play with that sort of metagame, don't play TRoS.
Similarly, if you want to play a game in which hit points model an intrinsic property of the PC/NPC in the gameworld (eg toughness) than don't play 4e.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
From a "simulationist" perspective, you could see that rules are a model of a fictional world, just as the scientific laws as we describe them with mathematical formulas are a model of the real world.
The laws of science as scientists have formulated so far are not always a cohesive whole. One of the big dividers were (and are) the Relativity Theory and the Quantum Theory. The Relativity Theory described the "big stuff" - gravity on a large scale, the space time, and so on.
The Quantum Theory describes the "small stuff", atoms, electrons, quarks and so on.
These two theories fail to work at certain points, because they violate each other rules. The most important points are black holes (singularities) and the "Bing Bang". Because there the small scale of the quantum theory and the big scale of the relativity theory merge and both must be used to describe the process.
The string theory is an attempt to unify both, but as long as there are no experiments known that could falsify it, it doesn't really lead us anywhere. And as it stands now, it introduces a lot of "baggage", so to speak. You'd have to introduce new dimensions in addition to time and the 3 spatial dimensions, and you introduce concepts like that our perceived universe is merely a brane in an even larger universe.
There are other areas of science - for example material physics - where they use certain models that are not derived from the quantum mechanics of the individual atoms or molecules, but these models manage to give accurate predictions, and while attempts to use quantum mechanics to replicate the results are made (and possibly successful - i am not an expert on the matter), they require a lot of more work and computing power.
So, what's the point of this:
For scientific modeling of real world phenomena, you sometimes use different, inconsistent models. For calculating the expansion of the world, you rely on Einsteins Relativity Theory. For calculating what happens when a stream of photons hits on an excited nucleus, you use quantum theory.
In essence, you use what works and allows you to make reasonably precise predictions in a reasonable time frame.
And as such, the "narrativist" Minion concept can also be seen as using different models applied to the same universe.
A game world entity that can be described as a level 5 monster for level 5 character might be better described as a level 15 monster for level 15 characters. And it's not like the character itself is really level 5 or level 15. He is just something we describe with a level 5 or level 15 model, because its fictional world attributes match this model best.
Of course you can say: "But I want a better model - I want one where I don't have to change the representation based on scales or levels". That's what scientist want, too. But a mdoel that is more precise, more accurate, has the drawback of being more complicated and slower to use. All the computing power in the world might be required to calculate the movement of a human body if you wanted to describe it on the quantum theory level - and it would take them years to do so for a few steps. (I have no idea how long it would actually take ).
Sure, you might say that you wouldn't want to go that extreme, but you still like a higher degree of precision. That's valid. But understand (and accept) that for 4E, the designers decided this degree of precision was the degree that would give the best results for their target audience - Which might mean that you were not part of the target audience.
The laws of science as scientists have formulated so far are not always a cohesive whole. One of the big dividers were (and are) the Relativity Theory and the Quantum Theory. The Relativity Theory described the "big stuff" - gravity on a large scale, the space time, and so on.
The Quantum Theory describes the "small stuff", atoms, electrons, quarks and so on.
These two theories fail to work at certain points, because they violate each other rules. The most important points are black holes (singularities) and the "Bing Bang". Because there the small scale of the quantum theory and the big scale of the relativity theory merge and both must be used to describe the process.
The string theory is an attempt to unify both, but as long as there are no experiments known that could falsify it, it doesn't really lead us anywhere. And as it stands now, it introduces a lot of "baggage", so to speak. You'd have to introduce new dimensions in addition to time and the 3 spatial dimensions, and you introduce concepts like that our perceived universe is merely a brane in an even larger universe.
There are other areas of science - for example material physics - where they use certain models that are not derived from the quantum mechanics of the individual atoms or molecules, but these models manage to give accurate predictions, and while attempts to use quantum mechanics to replicate the results are made (and possibly successful - i am not an expert on the matter), they require a lot of more work and computing power.
So, what's the point of this:
For scientific modeling of real world phenomena, you sometimes use different, inconsistent models. For calculating the expansion of the world, you rely on Einsteins Relativity Theory. For calculating what happens when a stream of photons hits on an excited nucleus, you use quantum theory.
In essence, you use what works and allows you to make reasonably precise predictions in a reasonable time frame.
And as such, the "narrativist" Minion concept can also be seen as using different models applied to the same universe.
A game world entity that can be described as a level 5 monster for level 5 character might be better described as a level 15 monster for level 15 characters. And it's not like the character itself is really level 5 or level 15. He is just something we describe with a level 5 or level 15 model, because its fictional world attributes match this model best.
Of course you can say: "But I want a better model - I want one where I don't have to change the representation based on scales or levels". That's what scientist want, too. But a mdoel that is more precise, more accurate, has the drawback of being more complicated and slower to use. All the computing power in the world might be required to calculate the movement of a human body if you wanted to describe it on the quantum theory level - and it would take them years to do so for a few steps. (I have no idea how long it would actually take
).Sure, you might say that you wouldn't want to go that extreme, but you still like a higher degree of precision. That's valid. But understand (and accept) that for 4E, the designers decided this degree of precision was the degree that would give the best results for their target audience - Which might mean that you were not part of the target audience.
That One Guy
First Post
I remember a player in a game I was in turning to me and asking, 'Okay, so why do minions have just 1 hp?' My response was that, it's not that they actually have 1 hit point. It's that their actual hit points don't have any value. HP as a concept is an assessment of how much damage (emotional, physical, etc.) a person can take before they collapse (and possibly give up on living/die). A minion who is hit may still have enough blood in him that he could still fight, but his morale and adrenaline have given out. It just... dies.
However, I actually am not 100% into how minions work in 4e. I imagine that it is a compromise between more complicated rules. Some things that I've experimented with in games are the idea of damage threshold minions and... fake damage. Threshold is that a single attack has to do a certain minimum amount of damage to fell a particular minion (Accidentally the anti-cloud of daggers). Fake damage is even if an attack misses against a minion, it still is described as a hit. Actual damage is a direct hit and kills it. An abstraction of this rule would be to give minions an actual hp value. When a roll would be a miss, they are given damage as a hit to that hp value. When they are actually hit by a direct hit from a skilled opponent, the enemy then goes down instantly. I think this might be moving towards a middle ground.
I have an idea for a middle ground, but it involves charts and excessive complications that'd probably be much less fun of a compromise than the phantom damage variant. I guess I could throw that into the house rules section... check it out if you understand why minions can be distasteful, but want to squeeze their yummy goodness into a new more edible shape. Or something. Blame 4am.
However, I actually am not 100% into how minions work in 4e. I imagine that it is a compromise between more complicated rules. Some things that I've experimented with in games are the idea of damage threshold minions and... fake damage. Threshold is that a single attack has to do a certain minimum amount of damage to fell a particular minion (Accidentally the anti-cloud of daggers). Fake damage is even if an attack misses against a minion, it still is described as a hit. Actual damage is a direct hit and kills it. An abstraction of this rule would be to give minions an actual hp value. When a roll would be a miss, they are given damage as a hit to that hp value. When they are actually hit by a direct hit from a skilled opponent, the enemy then goes down instantly. I think this might be moving towards a middle ground.
I have an idea for a middle ground, but it involves charts and excessive complications that'd probably be much less fun of a compromise than the phantom damage variant. I guess I could throw that into the house rules section... check it out if you understand why minions can be distasteful, but want to squeeze their yummy goodness into a new more edible shape. Or something. Blame 4am.
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wedgeski
Adventurer
I love minions. Love them. They've already imprinted themselves on my game, whether it was taking a PC down to near death by mobbing him, making the players sit up and take notice when a dozen kobolds ran screeching at them out of the treeline, or being a very handy way of giving one of my players a small army with which to mount a rescue mission, they've been a fantastic tool across the board.
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