Minion Fist Fights

[Lizard]

It is entirely ridiculous to assume that a missed burst or blast that does half damage would not kill a minion.

I can already see that I'm going to have to houserule this, until WotC can provide any better reason NOT to.

The same reason for all the head-go-splodey rules in 4e.

Game balance.

If minions die on a miss, then any 'roomsweeper' spell like fireball kills all the minions, no need to worry about you roll. Anyone with AE 'damage on miss' spells will just use their lowest level, otherwise useless, spells to wipe out the highest level minions. Thus, because Fighting Minions Is Fun, they have to be given wholly illogical, wholly inconsistent special abilities to keep them from being cleaned out by any character with access to damage-on-miss abilities, so that the Defenders can get to do THEIR shtick and stop the Onrushing Hordes.

You know, I already own Feng Shui.

About the only way one can make even the tiniest bit of sense out of this mess is to surrender all pretense that the game is simulating or modeling anything, and that, outside of their encounter with the PCs, minions have "normal" hit points and don't die when they stub their toe, but that "Minion" is a dramatic label, that the same individual who is an orc minion today might be a non-minion tomorrow if his role changes for some reason. "Minions" don't exist in the world; creatures are given "minion" status when the plot demands it, and they all dodge the fireball that singes the higher hit point chief in their midst because, well, the plot demands it. It's 100% handwaving, with no possible "realistic" justification, even with the amazingly loose definition of "realism" required for high fantasy adventure.

Even M&M, which likewise has Minion rules, didn't have them be magically immune to area affects. (OTOH, there was no 'half damage on miss' in MM, that I can recall; you ended up doing much lower damage, on average, with AE powers because AE raised the power cost so much.)

 

[Mallus]

About the only way one can make even the tiniest bit of sense out of this mess is to surrender all pretense that the game is simulating or modeling anything...

Assume the game is modeling an action movie or novel. Problem solved!

 

[Lizard]

.

But the statement above that I put into bold is absolutely wrong. Its not only wrong, its nonsensical. It mixes PCs and NPCs into the same pot. You are essentially arguing that unless every NPC has the intrinsic mechanical ability to become a PC, the game cannot model a world in which a PC can become a PC. That's nuts.

How so? It makes sense to me.

Most people DON'T go on adventures, because they don't. But, yeah, given the same stat array, the only thing which (should) separate Fred the first level fighter from his twin brother Joe the first level commoner is the life choices he made. He chose to run off and learn combat arts and master weapons and get in enough fights (and survive them) to earn his first level as a fighter; Joe stayed home and farmed cabbages. If Joe up and decides to follow in his brother's path -- and rolls well -- he may become a Commoner 1/Fighter 1.

 

[Mallus]

Most people DON'T go on adventures, because they don't.

Most NPC's in my setting don't adventure because I-as-DM don't need them to. Narrative imperatives and all...

If Joe up and decides to follow in his brother's path -- and rolls well -- he may become a Commoner 1/Fighter 1.

If I-as-DM decide that Joe takes up arms, which is just another way of saying 'I have a new use for this fictional character', I wave my magic author-wand and Joe is transformed into a low level fighter.

What stops me-as-DM from doing this? A cranky simulationist armed with a baseball bat?

 

[Wormwood]

Most NPC's in my setting don't adventure because I-as-DM don't need them to. Narrative imperatives and all...

And let's be honest. The minute Fred the 5th-level fighter gets eaten by a grue, his twin brother Joe the Cabbage Farmer 5th-level fighter can join the party in a Quest for Vengeance™.

 

[Celebrim]

Most people DON'T go on adventures, because they don't. But, yeah, given the same stat array, the only thing which (should) separate Fred the first level fighter from his twin brother Joe the first level commoner is the life choices he made. He chose to run off and learn combat arts and master weapons and get in enough fights (and survive them) to earn his first level as a fighter; Joe stayed home and farmed cabbages. If Joe up and decides to follow in his brother's path -- and rolls well -- he may become a Commoner 1/Fighter 1.

This is how I've always seen it as well. For one thing, if a PC dies, a well positioned NPC is likely to become the replacement PC. For another, NPC's are likely to evolve over the story with the assumption that if they do the sort of things PC's do, then they level up and conversely they leveled up because they've been doing similar things to the PC's.

Moreover, there is always the assumption that the PC's aren't the only heroes in the world. They have rivals and foils and allies out there which are heroic (or at least 'exemplars of villany') in thier own right. For one thing, its quite possible that there are or will be parallel campaigns played out in different parts of the game world.

But mostly it just makes sense to assume that what makes a PC special is something more abstract than simply having extremely good stats and the ability to swing a sword better than his peers. One of my assumptions is generally that PC quality individuals are not overly rare, but groups of them together sharing a (largely) common cause which they are working toward even at risk of life and limb are indeed very rare. Another assumption is that this is the story we are telling because we always tell the story of the heroes who became heroes because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time and who did something about it. There might have been and indeed likely were other individuals that could have done it, but they didn't or didn't have the oppurtunity. They met maurading giants back when they were 1st level. They were hundreds of miles removed from the center of action. They had no friends or allies to rely on. Or whatever. The characters are heroic not because they are exceptionally special or advantaged (although they might be special), but because of what they do especially when they do it despite not being exceptionally advantaged.

Most of all, the purpose of having NPC's and PC's use the same rules is to partially be able to claim and partially foster the illusion that the reason for the characters success is the quality of the players play. In other words, there isn't much satisfaction in winning because you've had the odds stacked in your favor at every oppurtunity compared to winning because you made your own oppurtunities.

 

[Celebrim]

What stops me-as-DM from doing this? A cranky simulationist armed with a baseball bat?

Nothing stops you from doing that. Its the DMs perogative to be inventive and its a necessity of the job. The simulationist just says, "Why not assume a simulation where you've done as much of the waving of magic wands before you start so that the tools you want to use later are already there?" Thus, Joe is a low level fighter not only because of narrative need but also because he lives in a world where it is the nature of people of his profession, background, and social status to be low level fighters, and we can expect NPCs in similar circumstances (yoeman, farming at the edge of the wilderness, son of a soldier and younger brother of an adventurer) to be low level fighters. Thus Joes existance and the story which proceeds from it are logical within the framework of the setting the story takes place in.

The simulationist gets cranky when the rules cease to describe the setting and become merely story tropes which cannot be applied literally to the setting. The Minion rules are like that because you can't apply the characters minion status in a logical way outside of the minions narrow role as a petty obstacle to be overcome. The Minion doesn't live outside of this role except by waving your magic wand and removing his minion status.

 

[Cadfan]

How so? It makes sense to me.

I'm not surprised, because...

If Joe up and decides to follow in his brother's path -- and rolls well -- he may become a Commoner 1/Fighter 1.

...of this. You seem to believe that non player characters, created by the Dungeon Master to fill a gameworld in which Players enjoy a game, are somehow real people.

The are not real people. They are ideas that exist in my mind. They don't make decisions. I do. They don't even have immutable or intrinsic stats. They have what I give them. They are constructs, fictional, ephemeral creations.

Further, when the players create a character, they don't pick an NPC from the cast of characters occupying my gameworld, divert his destiny, and start leveling him up. They create a character of their own.

Now that character might be Joe, previously Joe the Commoner. And he be an every day guy who learns to wield a sword and wear armor, and then rises to greatness.

But that has nothing to do with what his stats were before he was a Fighter, because before he was a Fighter he didn't exist.

And when I invent an NPC, that NPC doesn't need a mechanical capacity built into his stat block that enables him to convert what he is now into player character levels, just in case he becomes a hero. He's not GOING to become a hero, because he's an NPC Minion Dirtfarmer. If he WAS going to become a hero, I'd have statted him differently in the first place. And on the outside chance that an NPC I didn't expect to be important suddenly becomes thrust into heroism? I'll restat the sucker.

Anyways, the fact that a particular NPC isn't built to level from Dirtfarmer to Hero has nothing to do with whether Fred the Commoner, a random person selected by Destiny for greatness (Destiny, in this film, being played by my friend Ben), can rise from obscurity into heroism.

I don't know how to make this more clear. PCs and NPCs don't obtain stats until AFTER its determined whether they're the one destined for greatness, ie, whether they're a player character or an NPC.

 

[Mallus]

And let's be honest. The minute Fred the 5th-level fighter gets eaten by a grue, his twin brother Joe the Cabbage Farmer 5th-level fighter can join the party in a Quest for Vengeance™.

Exactly! I-as-DM would never deny the grieving and suddenly talented Joe his revenge!

 

[Vael]

Considering that PCs will have built in retraining rules to allow them to swap feats and powers, I have no issue with restating Joe the NPC to Joe the Fighter.