Minion Fist Fights

[Storm-Bringer]

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.

Agreed. The FBI statistics someone posted a while back demonstrate that the movie notion of dying after one stab is entirely fiction. Most stabbing victims have been stabbed dozens of times in the face, neck and chest, and still managed to crawl away. Sometimes to get medical attention, other times not. The whole notion of relatively minor wounds killing people is somewhat absurd.

All the minion rules seem to do is allow a DM to apply arbitrary damage to the characters, which the players have some level of control over. It isn't really terribly different than the Random Damage Table from the April Fools issue of Dragon a number of years ago.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Celebrim, sometimes your criticisms of non-simulationist play rest upon assertions like the above - roughly, that non-simulationist mechancs will produce a poor play experience.

This is an empirical claim. What is the evidence in its favour? Certainly, not everyone believes it. Ron Edwards makes it clear that he thinks more people would enjoy playing RPGs if there were more (and more mainstream) non-simulationist RPGs for them to play. It seems to me that WoTC agree with him (otherwise why would they write such a non-simulationist game as 4e?).

I have no particular view one way or the other. I think (from my own experience) that wargamer/boardgamer types probably do enjoy simulationist rulesets to a degree, but they are certainly not the only actual or potential RPGers.

So, just to reiterate - on what evidence are you basing your hypothesis about enjoyable play experience?

 

[pemerton]

All the minion rules seem to do is allow a DM to apply arbitrary damage to the characters, which the players have some level of control over. It isn't really terribly different than the Random Damage Table from the April Fools issue of Dragon a number of years ago.

What is a dungeon - indeed, what is a 10-year campaign - but a series of applications of the Random Damage Table accompanied by a bit of flavour text?

If someone can't conceive of the logic of monster design, encounter design, adventure design, campaign design, character creation, and the actual GM player-interaction that is play itself, other than as an applicaiton of the Random Damage Table, then maybe RPGs are not for that person.

Conversely, if someone can appreciate that the flavour text is more than just a gloss on the Random Damge, but is actually one of the principal purposes of play, then they can presumably appreciate that this is also true when it comes to the particular application of the mnion rules.

 

[bramadan]

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.
[\quote]

Fighting through being stabbed or successfully hit by a mace or being slashed by a saber is at best a rare exception. Claiming that most of those will, unless deflected by armor or dogged (both of which are separate mechanics in DnD) incapacitate any even remotely human-like creature is by no means ludicrous, it is common sense.

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.
[\quote]

There are *cases* of humans taking wounds and functioning - but those are exceptions - notable and in some instances heroic exceptions. If you ask any martial arts instructor, or for that matter a cop: expected reaction to being severely injured - with a knife, bullet or a heavy blunt object is incapacitation.
Most exceptions that we hear about are actually consequence of the very modern high-velocity weapons, but even with those in greatest majority of cases if you get hit with a lethal weapon you are almost certainly down.

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.
[\quote]

reasons they fail casual realism test is that HP system is not particularly realistic. There are recorded instances of people falling from extreme heights and suffering little or no injury, but most often - falling results in injury that is at least temporarily incapacitating, much as most often being stabbed with a knife results in injury that is at least temporarily incapacitating.

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.
[\quote]

That is question of taste. I do not think that DnD would particularly benefit from the "incapacitation table" on which to roll when an NPC drops to 0HP, but it is easy thing to add if you think it would.
Previous edition rules were at least as ambiguous as to what happens to 0HP opponents so you can not claim this is something particular to the 4th.

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?
[\quote]

You can not have it both ways, either something is potentially lethal or it is not. If people are upset about the world in which bee-sting or a fist blow can be incapacitating then it makes sense to assume that in their campaign those things will not be incapacitating. For the purposes of this text I assume the healthy, strong individuals - not the elderly who fill in the "died from the fall in the shower" statistics. Burly guy (Orc) can exchange fist blows for a while but will go down very fast if guns or knifes are pulled out.

And yes, I have been both hit with fist and stabbed with a knife... difference is *significant*, even with the stab being very deliberately "non-lethal".

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?
[\quote]

I grant that there are exceptions - but fact is that one hit by a lethal weapon will take most people out of the fight most of the time. Disagreeing with that fact is not a question of mental state - it is a question of a basic ignorance as to how weapons (and human physiology) work.

[quote
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.

There are probably even thousands of such recorded incidents, but they come out of the pool of millions of instances where people were incapacitated after suffering a blunt or penetrating trauma. Those incidents are *recorded* exactly due to their exceptional nature.

Entire fighting styles are predicated on the idea that one hit will incapacitate trained opponent, most sword fighting techniques, from small-sword to kendo, make no sense if you do not expect your opponent to drop on a hit. Most policing techniques (pre-tasers) also do not make sense if you assume that. It is just within bad movies and RP-games that people trade blow after blow in a combat.

I understand that it is good game mechanics because it reduces swingyness etc... (and I actually do not mind it too much within a game) but HP mechanic is not the one on which you should be making the verisimilitude stand.

 

[bramadan]

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.

Fighting through being stabbed or successfully hit by a mace or being slashed by a saber is at best a rare exception. Claiming that most of those will, unless deflected by armor or dogged (both of which are separate mechanics in DnD) incapacitate any even remotely human-like creature is by no means ludicrous, it is common sense.

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.

There are *cases* of humans taking wounds and functioning - but those are exceptions - notable and in some instances heroic exceptions. If you ask any martial arts instructor, or for that matter a cop: expected reaction to being severely injured - with a knife, bullet or a heavy blunt object is incapacitation.
Most exceptions that we hear about are actually consequence of the very modern high-velocity weapons, but even with those in greatest majority of cases if you get hit with a lethal weapon you are almost certainly down.

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.

reasons they fail casual realism test is that HP system is not particularly realistic. There are recorded instances of people falling from extreme heights and suffering little or no injury, but most often - falling results in injury that is at least temporarily incapacitating, much as most often being stabbed with a knife results in injury that is at least temporarily incapacitating.

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.

That is question of taste. I do not think that DnD would particularly benefit from the "incapacitation table" on which to roll when an NPC drops to 0HP, but it is easy thing to add if you think it would.
Previous edition rules were at least as ambiguous as to what happens to 0HP opponents so you can not claim this is something particular to the 4th.

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?

You can not have it both ways, either something is potentially lethal or it is not. If people are upset about the world in which bee-sting or a fist blow can be incapacitating then it makes sense to assume that in their campaign those things will not be incapacitating. For the purposes of this text I assume the healthy, strong individuals - not the elderly who fill in the "died from the fall in the shower" statistics. Burly guy (Orc) can exchange fist blows for a while but will go down very fast if guns or knifes are pulled out.

And yes, I have been both hit with fist and stabbed with a knife... difference is *significant*, even with the stab being very deliberately "non-lethal".

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?

I grant that there are exceptions - but fact is that one hit by a lethal weapon will take most people out of the fight most of the time. Disagreeing with that fact is not a question of mental state - it is a question of a basic ignorance as to how weapons (and human physiology) work.

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.

There are probably even thousands of such recorded incidents, but they come out of the pool of millions of instances where people were incapacitated after suffering a blunt or penetrating trauma. Those incidents are *recorded* exactly due to their exceptional nature.

Entire fighting styles are predicated on the idea that one hit will incapacitate trained opponent, most sword fighting techniques, from small-sword to kendo, make no sense if you do not expect your opponent to drop on a hit. Most policing techniques (pre-tasers) also do not make sense if you assume that. It is just within bad movies and RP-games that people trade blow after blow in a combat.

I understand that it is good game mechanics because it reduces swingyness etc... (and I actually do not mind it too much within a game) but HP mechanic is not the one on which you should be making the verisimilitude stand.

 

[bramadan]

Agreed. The FBI statistics someone posted a while back demonstrate that the movie notion of dying after one stab is entirely fiction. Most stabbing victims have been stabbed dozens of times in the face, neck and chest, and still managed to crawl away. Sometimes to get medical attention, other times not. The whole notion of relatively minor wounds killing people is somewhat absurd.

it is not a question of killing, it is question of incapacitation. Most people will not die after one stab (or after being hit once by a truncheon), but most people will cease to offer much in terms of resistance after one successful stab (which is why the opponent manages to stab them dozens of times without much injury to themselves).

When someone not only lives and crawls away after being hurt with a lethal weapon but continues to fight, that is news-worthy (dare I say heroic) indeed.

If you need confirmation of this - check those same FBI statistics as to the number of instances of knife fights where both sides ended up with significant stabbing wounds, I think you will find them a miniscule number in comparison to ones where the guy who stabs first "wins".

 

[Andor]

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."

God yes. I used to play with a GM who would have a picture of some scene he wanted to describe in his head, and would do whatever it took to make that scene happen so he could describe it. It was appalingly awful. Often we saw it coming from miles away and would go to great lengths to explain how we couldn't care less, our characters were trying advance the plot, not get side tracked by the dramatic scene de jour. Nothing worked. The game died.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

What is a dungeon - indeed, what is a 10-year campaign - but a series of applications of the Random Damage Table accompanied by a bit of flavour text?

Is the entire dungeon or campaign able to be finished by one attack roll? Or, alternately, effectively immune to damage on a miss-effect?

If someone can't conceive of the logic of monster design, encounter design, adventure design, campaign design, character creation, and the actual GM player-interaction that is play itself, other than as an applicaiton of the Random Damage Table, then maybe RPGs are not for that person.

Similarly, if hewing dozens of opponents that are no real challenge is considered the height of tactical play, perhaps that person ought not play RPGs either.

Conversely, if someone can appreciate that the flavour text is more than just a gloss on the Random Damge, but is actually one of the principal purposes of play, then they can presumably appreciate that this is also true when it comes to the particular application of the mnion rules.

Except, 'minion rules' are, by definition, not 'flavour text'.

As Irda Ranger mentioned initially, minions have been stripped of fully half the ability to challenge characters that normal opponents have. They have been reduced to a skill check, in that they are either hit and dead, or missed and alive. It is really no different than having the opponents with hit points waiting around until you pass the 'minion disposal skill challenge'. Complexity (number of minions) (minion) Successes before (party hit points) Failures.

It is a clumsily implemented attrition mechanism to wear down the characters' resources. Effectively, they have binary hit points. On a hit, they have 1hp, on a miss (even with a miss-effect) they have infinite hit points. There is no point in them being there. Roll your to hit as a skill check or take X damage, and don't bother with minions cluttering up your battlemat or combat notes.

 

[Korgoth]

Ron Edwards makes it clear that he thinks more people would enjoy playing RPGs if there were more (and more mainstream) non-simulationist RPGs for them to play. It seems to me that WoTC agree with him (otherwise why would they write such a non-simulationist game as 4e?).

I don't know which is more funny: "Ron Edwards makes [blank] clear" or "WoTC agrees with Ron Edwards"! Anyway, I don't think that these statements clarify anything. Technically, every role playing game ever written has been "non-simulationist" because, as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "simulationist" game.

"Simulationist" appears to be nothing more than a semantic placeholder for "thing I'm going to say compares unfavorably with whatever it is I like". It doesn't have any content.

Is "simulationist" trying to simulate reality, or a genre? If reality, does it matter how that is done? Two games might set out to simulate reality. The first one models gun fights by comparing bullet caliber with the target's bone density to adjudicate the precise trajectory of the bullet after it strikes your femur. The latter one models gun fights by saying "FBI statistics show that 1% of bullet wounds from that range of that caliber are instantly fatal, and a further 32% are eventually fatal. Roll percentiles please." Both end up (for the sake of argument) returning a "realistic" result, which is to say a result that basically measures up to how that scenario would play out in the real world. But their methodologies are completely reversed. Are they really in the same category? And what if you're trying to simulate genre? And what if you're trying to simulate genre, but within certain parameters of verisimilitude?

I'm sorry that my thread has deteriorated to this degree. Perhaps I can help get it back on track? I think that Charwoman Gene had an excellent point earlier. It has always been the case in D&D that, whatever hit points are, a basic villager cannot have more than 6 of them. Is D&D attempting to claim, therefore, that this villager (Villager Bob) cannot sustain more than 6 actual injuries? Or that Bob's diminutive son, Villager Tim, who has 1 hit point (whatever they are, it has always been possible to have 1) cannot endure even 1 single injury?

It seems that this is not the case, if we assume that D&D has attempted to make reasonable claims about the denizens of its virtual villages. A cut is an injury. I have given myself a good gash with the old hobby knife on occasion. If, in the course of a D&D session, a character accidentally cuts himself with a hobby knife (or let's say a butter knife at the family dinner table) does that necessarily inflict at least 1 hit point of damage? I can imagine Tim cutting himself with a small knife and not flopping over dead. Would D&D have ever posited that 1/6th of the inhabitants of its virtual world flop over dead from common household accidents? We could maintain that it has done so... but why assume something ludicrous only to get upset about its implications?

Rather, if the D&D rules are applied to its virtual world consistently, we must say that not every cut or other minor injury causes the loss of hit points. If we allow the text to tell us what it is really telling us, it is saying that the loss of even 1 single hit point represents a life-threatening injury. It must, since some people can die from it. I think we can conclude 2 things from this: first, hit points must represent, at minimum, your ability (for whatever reason) to avoid dieing from life-threatening injuries; and second, not every cut, bruise and sting does hit point damage.

Since the latter point is an interesting challenge to DM narration of results, how do we account for minor cuts, bruises and other non-life threatening injuries that can crop up in combat (like getting nicked by a blade, or suffering a minor flesh wound)? Obviously, since hits do 1 point of damage or more, those must be "misses". Or at least, they can be misses... though one might also narrate hit point loss as the luck or skill that reduces what would have been life-threatening strikes to those minor and incidental wounds.

 

[Andor]

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.

Now this, on the other hand, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense at all.

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.

You know, I've been posting on this board for better than 6 years now. I've had many good discussion with many people, including you. I've often had people fail to understand my point, but never understand it and claim it was worthless. Perhaps you should have looked at bit closer, before assuming you grasped what I was saying.

I'll repeat myself and bold the word you seem to have missed.

I feel like a character is a hero because he made a difference. If the NPCs are visibly cardboard props in the set dressing of the story, then no difference has been made.

Do you understand? Indy shooting the swordsman was a great scene. If there had been a sound boom visible in the shot it would have sucked rotten eggs. If the minion rules make the existence of mooks not only visible, but distractingly obvious in the context of the game then you raise the bar for willing suspension of disbelief to levels I cannot match. The boom is in the shot, the set falls over, and the magic goes away. My character stops being a hero, and becomes a set of numbers of paper. The NPCs stop being villagers and become a set of plastic minis. I stop caring.

Allow me to draw you a scene that can and will happen around the tables of poor to mediocre GMs everywhere in coming years.

GM: "Okay. The last of the Orcs falls dead, when you loot the bodies you get..."
Minerva the Mage: "Hold on. I used my sleep spell so we could get some prisoners to interogate."
GM: "Yeah but then you killed them with a fireball."
Minerva: "Not that guy."
Borax the Fighter: "That's right, I was standing there next to him, and she dropped the fireball over a couple to miss me and catch that bloodrager dude."
GM: "Okay fine. You tie him up, he's awake now. What do you ask him?"
Rodger the rakish rogue: "Foul miscreant, who paid you tribe to attack these pilgrims?"
GM: "I ain't sayin nothin."
Borax: "I pop him one on the lip to get him to loosen up."
GM: "He dies."
Borax: "What?"
GM: "He was a minion, you made a to hit roll, he dies."
Minerva: "I'm pretty sure minion status is meant to be a narrative device and not a litteral..."
GM: "Stuff it. He had one hit point and he's dead. Now do you want your loot or not?"

Are you telling me that wouldn't interfere with your suspension of disbelief?