Minion Fist Fights
- Thread starter Korgoth
- Start date
An awesome saying - I think of Cadfan's - comes to mind here.
Lots of folks have internalized the DnD mechanics so deeply as to mistake them for the way world works.
One stab wound will usually incapacitate or kill a person - no matter how skilled or experienced they are. Blade penetrating more then an inch into the body will throw human into shock which is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the 0HP state in DnD.
Falling into 10' pit unexpectedly tends to break limbs with similar results. Suffering 3rd degree burns, taking crushing blows with a mace, being savaged by a bear... all those will either kill or incapacitate anybody in "real life" with rare and insignificant exceptions.
Keep in mind that "incapacitate" specifically does not mean kill - even in DnD. We already know that 0HP for non PCs is entirely open to interpretation by the DM and that shock or broken limbs are as valid interpretation (if narratively relevant) as death.
If you are cut open in the bar fight you may not be dead, you may not even be in shock, but you are, likely as not, holding your wound and crying Uncle. If you are not, if you are shrugging it of and fighting on you are most definitively not a minion.
Things that deal HP damage in DnD are as a rule lethal or incapacitating things - it is therefore not at all surprising that a significant number of creatures in DnD world will be killed or incapacitated by those things. Things that do not kill or incapacitate - falling in showers, being punched with a fist, being stung by a bee etc... - by definition do not deal HP damage.
If you want your DnD realistic - then all characters, PC and NPC are "minions" in the sense of having 1HP (and potentially high defenses due to their skill etc).
Where the realism is sacrificed for "gamism" is not in the minion rules but in the HP rules for non-minions. DnD - wanting to simulate heroic fantasy - wants to give heroes and some antagonists multiple leases on life through a mechanic that incorporates things like morale, grit, divine favor, luck and sheer awesomeness factor.
If you are interested in any level of "simulation" in DnD then HP do not represent ability to sustain physical damage because human beings are simply not able to sustain the physical damage of being hit by a sword - even once - even by a novice swordsman. That is why Warlord shouting encouragement can "heal" HP, that is why Cleric muttering prayers can "heal" HP, that is why (a heroic character) can "pull themselves together, take a deep breath" and heal HP.
That is why most non-heroic folks have 1HP - they are simply regular Joes who do die or get injured when hit with deadly weapons.
In many ways minion rules make it possible for much more "realistic" campaign worlds. If anything, capable individuals no longer have to be PC-like larger then life figures who laugh at crossbows pointed at them. They still can be - but there is no built in game expectation that they are.
Finally to answer the question - what happens when two minions fight each other: same thing that happens when two people fence in real life. There is a few rounds (for a given value of round) where their attacks get parried or deflected by the opponent (due to miss) and then one gets a lucky break and skewers the other - this can only sound unnatural to someone whose entire perception of the world is colored by DnD.
Lots of folks have internalized the DnD mechanics so deeply as to mistake them for the way world works.
One stab wound will usually incapacitate or kill a person - no matter how skilled or experienced they are. Blade penetrating more then an inch into the body will throw human into shock which is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the 0HP state in DnD.
Falling into 10' pit unexpectedly tends to break limbs with similar results. Suffering 3rd degree burns, taking crushing blows with a mace, being savaged by a bear... all those will either kill or incapacitate anybody in "real life" with rare and insignificant exceptions.
Keep in mind that "incapacitate" specifically does not mean kill - even in DnD. We already know that 0HP for non PCs is entirely open to interpretation by the DM and that shock or broken limbs are as valid interpretation (if narratively relevant) as death.
If you are cut open in the bar fight you may not be dead, you may not even be in shock, but you are, likely as not, holding your wound and crying Uncle. If you are not, if you are shrugging it of and fighting on you are most definitively not a minion.
Things that deal HP damage in DnD are as a rule lethal or incapacitating things - it is therefore not at all surprising that a significant number of creatures in DnD world will be killed or incapacitated by those things. Things that do not kill or incapacitate - falling in showers, being punched with a fist, being stung by a bee etc... - by definition do not deal HP damage.
If you want your DnD realistic - then all characters, PC and NPC are "minions" in the sense of having 1HP (and potentially high defenses due to their skill etc).
Where the realism is sacrificed for "gamism" is not in the minion rules but in the HP rules for non-minions. DnD - wanting to simulate heroic fantasy - wants to give heroes and some antagonists multiple leases on life through a mechanic that incorporates things like morale, grit, divine favor, luck and sheer awesomeness factor.
If you are interested in any level of "simulation" in DnD then HP do not represent ability to sustain physical damage because human beings are simply not able to sustain the physical damage of being hit by a sword - even once - even by a novice swordsman. That is why Warlord shouting encouragement can "heal" HP, that is why Cleric muttering prayers can "heal" HP, that is why (a heroic character) can "pull themselves together, take a deep breath" and heal HP.
That is why most non-heroic folks have 1HP - they are simply regular Joes who do die or get injured when hit with deadly weapons.
In many ways minion rules make it possible for much more "realistic" campaign worlds. If anything, capable individuals no longer have to be PC-like larger then life figures who laugh at crossbows pointed at them. They still can be - but there is no built in game expectation that they are.
Finally to answer the question - what happens when two minions fight each other: same thing that happens when two people fence in real life. There is a few rounds (for a given value of round) where their attacks get parried or deflected by the opponent (due to miss) and then one gets a lucky break and skewers the other - this can only sound unnatural to someone whose entire perception of the world is colored by DnD.
Last edited:
Celebrim
Legend
Mallus said:
I started to write a long responce, but I'm at work. The problem is that you are creating a world where the players must very consciously be at all times genera blind so as to avoid roleplaying a character who isn't genera blind.
Now, to a certain extent this is true of all fantasy, but you are upping the bar to the point that I think every good story still looks like 'Order of the Stick'.
If you don't want a world that contains literal minion beings who have the physical attributes described by the minion mechanics, then you are working against your interests to have NPCs that are mechanically minions.
Or perhaps an even briefer response is that I don't think that story is the end all be all of a role playing game. I don't think that the two are exactly equatable. Story is hopefully one of the products of a role playing game, but it is not itself a story.
Arguments about the unbelievability of the minion rules seem to rest on the notion that various particular individuals in the game world "are minions," and noticeably so.
But that's not what minion status is for. An individual character (PC or NPC) considered as an individual is never a minion.
Minions come in hordes of nearly-identical critters. That's why they have the bookkeeping-friendly hp.
So, within the orc tribe, you don't have Grik who was born a normal monster and his cousin Grak who was, tragically, born a minion and has only survived to this day by being as obsessive as Thomas Covenant.
If Grik and Grak are going to be encountered as a pair of orcs who put up a good fight, maybe even surviving to return another day, then the DM uses the stats of normal monsters or maybe even elites.
If the "same" two orcs who are notionally named Grik and Grak are just parts of an orc horde whose stories the PCs will never know, then the DM uses minion stats for them and the rest of the horde.
But most likely, the DM didn't pick out two orcs and give them names in order to use them as indistinguishable parts of a horde of minions, so you will never get the situation in which Grik and Grak suddenly "become" minions.
Unless maybe the higher-level PCs, after the battle against the horde, happen to recognize two of the corpses as the same two orcs who gave them such a hard fight at lower level.
(What about when the orc horde fights the town militia, both groups of which would be treated as minions were they to fight the PCs? Then the DM describes the fight however he likes, presumably not playing it out blow-by-blow. There's no need for him to acknowledge the "reality" that all of these combatants die from a mild shove -- because that's not the statement the minion rules are making about the world.)
Likewise, Grargh the Ogre might be treated as a solo monster when he first comes up against the party, but later (assuming he survives) he might be treated as just one normal monster in a whole group of ogres and other monsters. That doesn't mean that Grargh's physical characteristics have literally changed inside the game-world, just that an ogre is no longer useful as a solo threat against the PCs (and therefore doesn't need the enhanced hp, defenses, and special attacks that make a solo a challenge for a whole party). Why is the GM reusing Grargh, then? Maybe he has the idea that, if the PCs recognize their old foe or vice versa, the encounter could become a social challenge instead. Maybe Grargh owes the PCs a favor for letting him live last time (or vice versa!). Or maybe the PCs can appeal to some element of Grargh's personality that they remember in order to change his mind about serving the Dark Lord of the Week. Thus, even with situationally fluctuating combat stats, Grargh can still serve as a recurring NPC with good backstory and characterization.
The whole minion thing (and to a lesser extent, the elite/solo thing) are there to facilitate fun gameplay and sort of a cinematic flair. They don't represent in-game reality to the extent that a particular NPC "really is" a minion and dies easily no matter what the circumstances.
Yes, that's a very different take on the relationship between game stats and in-game reality than 3e had. Like many here, I thought the 3e approach really refreshing when it first came out, yet I also see the downsides and am open to 4e's entirely different direction (which may well turn out to have plenty of downsides of its own over the course of the edition's life). Yes, it means the hit points of a creature and the hit points of an inanimate object measure different things, even though they use the same game-mechanical term.
Obviously, a number of people don't care for that change, and that's perfectly fine. 'S'why there's more than one RPG system in the world. But the "4e way" is not seriously putting forth that there are certain identifiable monsters who die when flicked on the nose, so that's rather a silly claim to be using against it.
Deadstop
But that's not what minion status is for. An individual character (PC or NPC) considered as an individual is never a minion.
Minions come in hordes of nearly-identical critters. That's why they have the bookkeeping-friendly hp.
So, within the orc tribe, you don't have Grik who was born a normal monster and his cousin Grak who was, tragically, born a minion and has only survived to this day by being as obsessive as Thomas Covenant.
If Grik and Grak are going to be encountered as a pair of orcs who put up a good fight, maybe even surviving to return another day, then the DM uses the stats of normal monsters or maybe even elites.
If the "same" two orcs who are notionally named Grik and Grak are just parts of an orc horde whose stories the PCs will never know, then the DM uses minion stats for them and the rest of the horde.
But most likely, the DM didn't pick out two orcs and give them names in order to use them as indistinguishable parts of a horde of minions, so you will never get the situation in which Grik and Grak suddenly "become" minions.
Unless maybe the higher-level PCs, after the battle against the horde, happen to recognize two of the corpses as the same two orcs who gave them such a hard fight at lower level.
(What about when the orc horde fights the town militia, both groups of which would be treated as minions were they to fight the PCs? Then the DM describes the fight however he likes, presumably not playing it out blow-by-blow. There's no need for him to acknowledge the "reality" that all of these combatants die from a mild shove -- because that's not the statement the minion rules are making about the world.)
Likewise, Grargh the Ogre might be treated as a solo monster when he first comes up against the party, but later (assuming he survives) he might be treated as just one normal monster in a whole group of ogres and other monsters. That doesn't mean that Grargh's physical characteristics have literally changed inside the game-world, just that an ogre is no longer useful as a solo threat against the PCs (and therefore doesn't need the enhanced hp, defenses, and special attacks that make a solo a challenge for a whole party). Why is the GM reusing Grargh, then? Maybe he has the idea that, if the PCs recognize their old foe or vice versa, the encounter could become a social challenge instead. Maybe Grargh owes the PCs a favor for letting him live last time (or vice versa!). Or maybe the PCs can appeal to some element of Grargh's personality that they remember in order to change his mind about serving the Dark Lord of the Week. Thus, even with situationally fluctuating combat stats, Grargh can still serve as a recurring NPC with good backstory and characterization.
The whole minion thing (and to a lesser extent, the elite/solo thing) are there to facilitate fun gameplay and sort of a cinematic flair. They don't represent in-game reality to the extent that a particular NPC "really is" a minion and dies easily no matter what the circumstances.
Yes, that's a very different take on the relationship between game stats and in-game reality than 3e had. Like many here, I thought the 3e approach really refreshing when it first came out, yet I also see the downsides and am open to 4e's entirely different direction (which may well turn out to have plenty of downsides of its own over the course of the edition's life). Yes, it means the hit points of a creature and the hit points of an inanimate object measure different things, even though they use the same game-mechanical term.
Obviously, a number of people don't care for that change, and that's perfectly fine. 'S'why there's more than one RPG system in the world. But the "4e way" is not seriously putting forth that there are certain identifiable monsters who die when flicked on the nose, so that's rather a silly claim to be using against it.
Deadstop
That makes sense. Although I'd note that the big evil bad guy's faceless stormtroopers aren't living, breathing, thinking characters, at least, not after the PCs get done with them.Andor said:
Now this, on the other hand, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense at all.Andor said:
Are you seriously arguing that killing imaginary faceless minions is a circlejerk if the minions have minion rules, but is deep and meaningful and worthwhile if the minions don't? Are you calling the very idea of a big, important villain having faceless minions bad storytelling? The existence of minion rules is not only irrelevant to whether the PCs actions are meaningful in the context of a larger plot, its irrelevant on a second level as to whether the minions of the bad guy are faceless, or objects of pathos. Or whatever it is you want them to be.
Your argument is literally akin to saying, "Killing faceless minions is meaningless without a story behind it that makes it worthwhile. Therefore, the cover of the PHB should be blue." This isn't a straw man- your argument really is that bad. Your complaint and your solution have absolutely no relationship to one another.
Celebrim
Legend
bramadan said:
No.
Lots of folks have apparantly so internalized the rejection of DnD mechanics so deeply that they are willing to make absolutely ludicrous claims about how the world works so as to justfiy thier own dislike of past D&D mechanics.
As many others have said, D&D never precisely simulates the real world, but at low levels D&D has always had a sort of casual realism.
Eventually. Sure. And D&D doesn't model bleeding or shock. But a one inch gash in your body is unlikely to send an energized combat heightened individual into immediate shock. It's quite possible in the middle of combat to get shot and not even realize it until after things have settled down. There are any number of cases of humans taking extraordinary wounds and still being able to act. Does this mean that hit points are in any way realistic simulations of how the body takes damage? No, but at low levels of play they have a casual versimilitude, especially outside of some corner cases.
Sometimes. But the fact is that simulationists have been fiddling with falling rules since the early days of the game because for various reasons I won't go into here again they fail the casual realism test.
The number of things which are entirely open to DM interpretation in the new edition keeps increasing. As a DM, that sounds burdensome to me rather than liberating.
You might want to check out the statistics on how many people die after falling in the shower. Likewise, you speak like someone who has never actually been punched in the face by a fist very hard. Likewise, what's the most bee stings you've ever had at one time?
BUHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Again, "Lots of folks have apparantly so internalized the rejection of DnD mechanics so deeply that they are willing to make absolutely ludicrous claims about how the world works so as to justfiy thier own dislike of past D&D mechanics." Are you really suggesting that the minion rules are 'realistic'. Because in that case, not only the above, but apparantly you've so internalized the 4E D&D mechanics that you are mistaking them for how the world really works.
So, are we through with that lazy 'attack the other posters mental state as defective' nonsense?
And yet there are hundreds recorded incidents of taking multiple swords or bullets through the chest and not only living, but actually taking conscious actions after doing so.
That never stopped you before!Celebrim said:
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I'm having trouble parsing this sentence. Could you rephrase?
This is only true if you have a problem with the 'minion' descriptor being context-sensitive.
Not sure where this is coming from. I used 'narrative' earlier to describe the parts of the game proceeding without explicit rules support. Those parts are no less the game then the stuff described in the RAW. I didn't make any statements about prioritizing any particular play agenda (aw crap, I'm veering into Forge-speak...).
robertliguori
First Post
First, it would probably help it the spelling 'genre' were used. Next, as a first attempt, I'd say that it means that characters can't reach reasonable conclusions. For instance, they can't note that the horde of goblin runtlings go down with just a stab from the beleaguered wizard's emergency backup dagger, and decide to use non-attack autodamage area attacks. This is the logical thing to do in-game (that, or start dissecting minions to discover why Flaming Death Murder Meteorite which deals umpdy-d6 (and half damage on a miss) will fail to kill minions 5% of the time.Mallus said:
Most annoyingly, the problem could have been solved much more elegantly with the tools and conditions already existing in D&D 4E. Give each minion a bloodied value and a dead value. Minions that get hit for their death amount die. Minions that get hit for between their death amount and their bloodied amount are bloodied; minions that get hit twice for this amount die. In the case of high-level minions that should actually not go down with two hits from a peasant with an ax handle, you can use resist all.
We have not seen the minion descriptor be context-sensitive, is the thing. Hell, I'd love to see minion as a template that could be applied to normal monsters to make them cannon fodder-ish, with the proviso that the template should only be applied when the monsters are in a group and facing attacks that will kill them outright 90% of the time. What I don't like are 9th-level orcish minions remaining orcish minions when they're attacking a village full of non-9th-level adventurers. I want stats for what the orcs are in the gameworld, and the ability to simply to make my life easier.
I'll rephrase the statement, then; the way the DM chooses to dramatically frame the scene is not the be-all and end-all of what should happen. In fact, I've found that I get better results by abandoning "I want there to be a climactic showdown between the party and the necromancer." and going with "The necromancer has these goals, and these resources. You have these goals, and these resources. He's going to try to kill you as hard as he can; I'd advise you to return the favor." and working from there. There are three outcomes here, based on my choice. Either I design for the scripted setpiece climax, or I work organically. If I work organically, I run the risk of unfun outcome. However, I've personally got a lot better player reception from the encounters in which I had stopped trying to reach an outcome as GM and started running with what the NPC would do. Sometimes this meant desperate retreat, and PC death. Sometimes it meant watching my carefully-prepared villain blow a Spot check and then go the way of the Raiders of the Lost Ark swordsman. But on the whole, the highs of careful planning, desperate improvisation, and honest victory outweighed the highs of a carefully-planned encounter. More interestingly, the stories my players tend to remember are the ones that begin with me looking at my notes for the evening, sighing, tossing them up in the air, and saying "OK, give me five minutes, then we'll run with this."
Lizard said:
It's never been even a remotely simulationist game either. It has never even made a conscious effort to place simulationism as a valued tenant of design.
IMO, complaining about how simulationist ideas don't mesh in D&D is basically tantamount to complaining about how those square pegs you have just can't seem to fit into the round holes.
Also, I wish I could reach back in time and annihilate every speck of the G/S/N theory, or whatever you want to call the nonsense that spawned so many ridiculoues arguments.
Disregarding the slightly disparaging tone towards Minion rules, this is more-or-less true.Lizard said:
This is 100% false. The inference from "this rule has no simulationist logic" to "this is not a rule, its just handwaving" is an utterly unsound inference. It implies that there are no RPGs which (i) have rules and (ii) are not simulationist, but in fact many such RPGs exist (including, apparently, 4e D&D).Lizard said:
Similar Threads
