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<blockquote data-quote="Spatula" data-source="post: 4445163" data-attributes="member: 2198">That leads to problems of its own - namely the glass cannon PCs of 3e that can dish out tremendous damage but can't take what they themselves put out.&nbsp; Which you can solve by also ramping up survivability, but then you're back to foes that you can safely ignore because they pose no actual threat.EDIT: my point, that I don't think I expressed very well, is that you could make the &quot;crush waves of foes&quot; scenes work by pumping up the player side instead of having weak bad guys, but you run into meta issues either way.&nbsp; In 3e for example, groups of weak bad guys could be easily killed, but a player could for meta reasons conclude that they need not bother, because such creatures are not credible threats to the PCs in that system.There are solid game design reasons behind each aspect of 4e minions - they are the way they are for good reason.&nbsp; People that don't like the abstract nature have talked about giving them small amounts of HP to avoid the &quot;soap bubble&quot; issue.&nbsp; But an earlier iteration of 4e already did that (as evidenced by the RPG stats on the vampire spawn DDM card) and they ditched it.&nbsp; So, which is worse - the idea that players can (but probably never will) slap a minion to death, or having to track HP for large numbers of weak enemies?&nbsp; The 4e designers went with removing the hassle for the situations that actually happen, instead of going with increased bookeeping to account for theoretical corner cases.Now, that tradeoff isn't for everyone, obviously.&nbsp; Some people enjoy adding complexity.&nbsp; But I think it probably works for more people than it doesn't, as lessens the work in running large numbers of weak foes, and that's what matters to most DMs - how can I accomplish X without bogging down the game?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Spatula, post: 4445163, member: 2198"] That leads to problems of its own - namely the glass cannon PCs of 3e that can dish out tremendous damage but can't take what they themselves put out. Which you can solve by also ramping up survivability, but then you're back to foes that you can safely ignore because they pose no actual threat. EDIT: my point, that I don't think I expressed very well, is that you could make the "crush waves of foes" scenes work by pumping up the player side instead of having weak bad guys, but you run into meta issues either way. In 3e for example, groups of weak bad guys could be easily killed, but a player could for meta reasons conclude that they need not bother, because such creatures are not credible threats to the PCs in that system. There are solid game design reasons behind each aspect of 4e minions - they are the way they are for good reason. People that don't like the abstract nature have talked about giving them small amounts of HP to avoid the "soap bubble" issue. But an earlier iteration of 4e already did that (as evidenced by the RPG stats on the vampire spawn DDM card) and they ditched it. So, which is worse - the idea that players can (but probably never will) slap a minion to death, or having to track HP for large numbers of weak enemies? The 4e designers went with removing the hassle for the situations that actually happen, instead of going with increased bookeeping to account for theoretical corner cases. Now, that tradeoff isn't for everyone, obviously. Some people enjoy adding complexity. But I think it probably works for more people than it doesn't, as lessens the work in running large numbers of weak foes, and that's what matters to most DMs - how can I accomplish X without bogging down the game? [/QUOTE]

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