Minion Fist Fights

[Fallen Seraph]

Good explanation, but .... ugh.

I want to play in Middle Earth, not a movie set of Middle Earth.

Then in instances when you don't want a opponent to die in one hit don't use minions.

Minions are not a in-game/setting issue in that in-game they aren't viewed as minions. They could very well be the same as any skirmisher or brute or artillery or lurker, just they are the unlucky one where when story does come into play (such as combat narrative) they get killed off in that one lucky blow.

As for the AoE miss issue, doesn't really bother me since well. That simply means that while they may be seriously burnt, etc. that story event where the blow finishes them off hasn't happened.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The thing is, I get this. But the corner case rules (like not taking damage from an AoE spell "miss") just really rub it in my face in the wrong way.

I'm not going to not play 4E because of this, but I think this is my least favorite part about it so far.

Some "fixes" for that issue are bouncing around in another thread.

I think I've settled on ruling that no one ever dies on a missed attack (for now). You have to CONFIRM THE KILL.

This makes sense with how 4e views hit points. Since they're not your literal health, the final attack that takes you down is the one that gets past your defenses and finally hits a soft spot on you.

I'm not letting any misses ever do that to anyone.

So in that respect, it now makes sense: when the BBEG is damaged by a miss, you're still eroding his defenses, but by the time his defenses are nearly gone, his adrenaline is too high to get easily distracted like that -- you need to HIT, or he doesn't DIE.

This keeps minions making sense, because even if you only have 3 hp, if the attack doesn't hit you, it can't kill you.

 

[hero4hire]

I laugh when I see posts that a minion will supposedly die from a catscratch or a bee sting.
A bee-sting or catscratch simply do not do Hit Point damage. A commoner with a steak knife? Well then yes! Certainly she kills the nameless NPC if she hits!
As for not dying on a miss? I like it! It doesn't mean it didn't hurt or that storytelling wise minions werent "burnt by dragon's breath". But instead Just not seriously enough to kill them.
Personally I think the Minion rule will make for great storytelling and make the players feel heroic.

 

[hong]

The thing is, I get this. But the corner case rules (like not taking damage from an AoE spell "miss") just really rub it in my face in the wrong way.

I'm not going to not play 4E because of this, but I think this is my least favorite part about it so far.

I think of it as a variant on my minion rule, which was that any hit for < X damage results in a "wounded" minion, and wounded minions die on any subsequent hit. You could do something similar here: instead of a miss doing no damage, it makes the minion bloodied instead, and bloodied minions die on subsequent hits. There'll be more bookkeeping though.

 

[Stalker0]

Consider this. In 3x you have the ancient red wyrm. One of the most powerful creatures ever to walk the world. It can destroy buildings with its might claws.

It comes across...a lonely peasant.

The dragon wouldn't even have to attack to kill this pathetic creature, he could literally just lay his hand down upon him and crush the mortal as a human would crush an ant with its finger.

And yet, if he rolls a 1, the lonely peasant takes 0 damage from the dragon. 0, from a near godlike creature.

If your okay with that, then allowing minions to live on missed rolls should be just fine.

 

[JesterOC]

Uhhh... isn't this a design issue?

Yes it is. I was looking at it from a simulationist point of view. 3E rules are rule based while 4E rules are excption based (with lots of rules governing the exceptions). Minions are an exception to a normal monster. In fact Minons are not needed if a computer was dealing with the rules as the only reason to have all of the special case rules is so it is easier for the DM to manage hordes of minons. (no hit point tracking) Something that a computer game just would not care about.

JesterOC

 

[pemerton]

There isn't any in game reason and you shouldn't bother looking for one. 4e says, "Oh screw this. It's a game. Nobody asks what happens to the soldiers in Settlers of Cataan after you play one. It's just a game."

The first sentence I agree with. But the bit in quotation marks is a bit unfair - the thought is surely something more like "Given that the mechanics are written to handle the parts of this game that are a game (ie invovle the PCs), don't look to them to tell you what happens in the gameworld outside the context of the game." It doesn't follow from this that no one cares about the orcs when the PCs aren't fighting them - just that the mechanics don't tell use what the orcs are doing under such circumstances.

 

[ryryguy]

"This world is a game; it doesn't exist." I want to feel that the world does exist, and that I'm just visiting it for a while. Blatantly gamist rules like this really break my s.o.d.

This reminds me of the discussion here about the "succubus charming the king" plot and how the succubus stat block charm power wouldn't support it. Like in that case, the answer is that in 4e, the combat rules and the story have been explicitly pulled apart into separate domains. The succubus' combat charm power has no bearing on what she can do to the king outside of combat.

Minions don't exist outside of combat, and probably not outside of combat with PC's specifically. If there's a swarm of minions in a fight with PC's, and those minions survive (maybe the PCs run) and later go to a tavern where they get into a bar fight (with other NPCs), then at that point, they aren't minions. They're now just characters in the story.

Put another way, you know the racial percentage breakdown given in the 3.X DMG for a city population? 80% human, 7% elf, etc.? In the orcish wastelands there isn't a "monster category" breakdown of 80% minion, 7% elite, 1% solo.

I will say this: it is kind of cool about 3.x that you can take the rules system and apply it to world creation and so forth... you can look at a complicated 3.x spell and be inspired to create a plot point that turns on some detail about how the spell works. But on the downside, it can turn into a straightjacket.

In any case, it's apples and oranges... I'm looking forward to trying out the 4e style and see how it works out!

 

[Korgoth]

The first sentence I agree with. But the bit in quotation marks is a bit unfair - the thought is surely something more like "Given that the mechanics are written to handle the parts of this game that are a game (ie invovle the PCs), don't look to them to tell you what happens in the gameworld outside the context of the game." It doesn't follow from this that no one cares about the orcs when the PCs aren't fighting them - just that the mechanics don't tell use what the orcs are doing under such circumstances.

You know why, once a game of Monopoly is over, I don't think about it anymore and why I don't imagine myself as a little scottie dog running around a square version of Atlantic City? Because the rules are arbitrary and abstract.

D&D sounds like it's becoming like Monopoly. The rules don't represent anything at all. It's just a game where you move pieces.

Why even call them "orcs"? Why not just call them "number fives"? Why name your fighter? Just call him "race car" or "green token".

If there's no internal consistency in the game world, there isn't a game world.

 

[ryryguy]

If there's no internal consistency in the game world, there isn't a game world.

The game world is still there. It's just been moved out of the combat rules. The combat rules don't make the game world any more. The game world can still be internally consistent. The combat rules can still be internally consistent. They just aren't always going to be consistent with each other.

Admittedly, the separation of game world/narrative and combat engine probably does create a sort of "seam" that may work a bit against suspension of disbelief. But nothing's perfect. I'm hoping it will not really be as jarring in practice as it might be when you're contemplating it here. We'll see, I guess.