Minion Fist Fights

[Majoru Oakheart]

As a writer of brilliant tales, deeply moving, with complex character arcs and the ability to fairly easily respond to radical changes in cast and timing imposed on him by external factors....he is a master.

Agreed.

I am of the type who, when desperate, will flip open a monster manual until I find a critter which implies a plot to me, then build a plot around it -- at least enough to get by. (I rarely do more than 30 minutes prep for my 3e games; indeed, I'll sometimes brag to players that "Hey, I actually did prep work this time!") From what I've seen of 4e, it works the other way -- you get an idea then find monsters to fill it. Everything has a niche, a role, a purpose, and can't easily go beyond it. Encounters are more complex, involving larger numbers of monsters. Terrain and tactical options are more important. Everyone says it's easier to ad-hoc things in 4e, but I don't see how; stuff I used to fudge because it didn't matter now becomes vital due to expanded player movement abilities and the wide range of tactical positioning options.

Well, 4e can be done either way. It's possible to just get an idea by looking at the books. It's also possible to get an idea and use the books to build it.

As has been said in the past, it's possible to open the MM look for a bunch of monsters around the PCs level with a variety of roles and have an interesting encounter. Terrain isn't all that hard. Throw in some trees or rocks or lava or whatever in some random spaces on the battlemat and you have interesting terrain.

However, IF you have the time or inclination to plan in advance, you can use the templates, rules for increasing or decreasing the level of monsters, traps, creatures of various levels(or even creatures you make up yourself), and carefully crafted terrain to give the enemies an interesting advantage in order to build the exact encounter you want that fits in perfectly with your planned adventure.

Both methods work fine.

 

[Andor]

Life wasn't meant to be easy.

Wow. No "here's how to do it" or "this is why it's good." Just a snark that amounts to "You're right but I don't care."

Have you just gotten that tired of trying to pimp for 4e?

 

[Korgoth]

I think one thing that may be getting left behind in this discussion is this: players of the game are often called upon to make a choice in order to solve a problem (that's kind of what games are). What resources do players have to call upon in order to try to make a good choice? They have 2 things:

1) Stuff they know about the real world. If you deny this, you don't know what you're talking about. Any role playing game is replete with such expectations. When they need to get into a room, most players will trying using that thing called a "door" at some point. Why? Because that's a bit of real world knowledge they're expected to apply. Likewise, they don't have their characters jump into lava or try to ask directions from stray dogs. Because they know from the real world that, all other things being equal, those things don't do you any good.

2) Those things which are explicit or implied within the rules. If hitting a werewolf with a non-magical mace doesn't hurt it, a frying pan probably won't work either. You know how one things works in the rules, and from that you infer whether something else will or won't work.

So demands for consistency aren't merely aesthetic demands, which is how some folks seem to be treating them. A demand for consistency is a demand for a playable game.

 

[hong]

Wow. No "here's how to do it" or "this is why it's good." Just a snark that amounts to "You're right but I don't care."

Indeed, I am assuming that Lizard is right when he says "this is how I like to do it".

Have you just gotten that tired of trying to pimp for 4e?

Psst. I am WotC's bitch, not WotC's pimp.

 

[hong]

I think one thing that may be getting left behind in this discussion is this: players of the game are often called upon to make a choice in order to solve a problem (that's kind of what games are). What resources do players have to call upon in order to try to make a good choice? They have 2 things:

1) Stuff they know about the real world. If you deny this, you don't know what you're talking about. Any role playing game is replete with such expectations. When they need to get into a room, most players will trying using that thing called a "door" at some point. Why? Because that's a bit of real world knowledge they're expected to apply. Likewise, they don't have their characters jump into lava or try to ask directions from stray dogs. Because they know from the real world that, all other things being equal, those things don't do you any good.

2) Those things which are explicit or implied within the rules. If hitting a werewolf with a non-magical mace doesn't hurt it, a frying pan probably won't work either. You know how one things works in the rules, and from that you infer whether something else will or won't work.

You forget:

3) Stuff they know from movies. (Or cartoons, or comics, or whichever medium you prefer.) In general, this tends to trump (1) when they come into conflict.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

1) Stuff they know about the real world. If you deny this, you don't know what you're talking about. Any role playing game is replete with such expectations. When they need to get into a room, most players will trying using that thing called a "door" at some point. Why? Because that's a bit of real world knowledge they're expected to apply. Likewise, they don't have their characters jump into lava or try to ask directions from stray dogs. Because they know from the real world that, all other things being equal, those things don't do you any good.

True. However, there will always be exceptions that work differently in the game world than the real world. A lot of things CAN be assumed as working the same way as in real life. I'm certainly not going to assume that there is a company called Pepsi in the game world simply because it is in real life. Generally people only use this for basic things rather than complicated things. The economy is unlikely to work the same way as it does it real life either.

Still, I agree this needs to happen for a game to work.

2) Those things which are explicit or implied within the rules. If hitting a werewolf with a non-magical mace doesn't hurt it, a frying pan probably won't work either. You know how one things works in the rules, and from that you infer whether something else will or won't work.

True. I think this is where the disconnect comes in. I expect that if I am using a set of rules that says "Here's what the chance of a player hitting a monster is." I don't assume that it is the same chance all creatures everywhere have of hitting all other creatures in all circumstance. It is simply one rule that applies in one circumstance.

When a rule doesn't cover something, I default back to rule number 1 or use rule number 3 that you missed:

3) Those things which are explicit or implied by the campaign setting. If you know the average city has only 300 people in it, then villages would have to be smaller than that. If there is an oracle who can tell the future I'm going to assume that such a power exists in some people even if it isn't in the rules.

So demands for consistency aren't merely aesthetic demands, which is how some folks seem to be treating them. A demand for consistency is a demand for a playable game.

I think consistency is good in some ways. Doors should continue to be opened by turning the door handle through the whole game. Walking through walls shouldn't suddenly become possible without a reason.

I think applying consistency to a rule that shouldn't be consistent is a bad idea. If a particular rule works perfectly well when you apply it in a group of players who are fighting some monsters then good. If that same rule causes oddities when you use it for NPCs against NPCs then you use a different rule in that case. Especially when in 99% of all cases, the players aren't going to care if you followed the rules exactly when it doesn't involve them.

I think players are looking for as much consistency as they see in real life. Which means they get a LOT in some areas(the laws of physics), and not so much in other areas(the "better" fighter losing in a boxing match, the worst candidate getting the job, one person being able to understand something easily while another has problems, and so on). They expect a certain level of "things don't work exactly the same for everyone."

 

[Korgoth]

I think applying consistency to a rule that shouldn't be consistent is a bad idea. If a particular rule works perfectly well when you apply it in a group of players who are fighting some monsters then good. If that same rule causes oddities when you use it for NPCs against NPCs then you use a different rule in that case. Especially when in 99% of all cases, the players aren't going to care if you followed the rules exactly when it doesn't involve them.

I think players are looking for as much consistency as they see in real life. Which means they get a LOT in some areas(the laws of physics), and not so much in other areas(the "better" fighter losing in a boxing match, the worst candidate getting the job, one person being able to understand something easily while another has problems, and so on). They expect a certain level of "things don't work exactly the same for everyone."

I agree with your post pretty much without qualification, up to this point. At this point, my agreement becomes qualified.

I can accept that within a fantasy world, certain people are picked out as people of destiny and so have greater potential (for triumph and tragedy) than an average person... in fact, that seems to have been the view of some cultures upon which traditional fantasy cultural tropes are based. No problem. I can even buy, after having certain insights brought to my attention, that certain denizens of the world are "minions"... peons in the aristocracy of Fate.

But what I need at least, I suppose, is a "metaconsistency"... that if someone has 1 hit point (whatever the physical, metaphysical or cosmic meaning of that status) then they always have that, at least until their fortunes improve somehow. Sure, I know very well the importance of DM fiat. And I know that what we're discussing here is fantasy. But there has to be some substrate of consistency in which those fiats and fantasies inhere... that substrate is the internal logic of the game world which is represented by the rules.

That has always been the case with D&D. As far as I can tell, that has been what gaming was since '81 when I started, and it was before then as well. I very much hope that 4E still supports that approach to gaming, because it's bascially the sine qua non of me actually caring enough about the game to play it. And I don't think that's too much to ask.

I play in a semi-regular D20 Babylon 5 game. Now, that's a game based on a show where starships move at the speed of plot and the whole thing was very cinematic, preachy, used story structure and had transparently manufactured sets (great show, though). But the Ref does an excellent job not only of not railroading the group (which is really tough when they have easy access to FTL travel and what the Ref might be called upon to improv is virtually limitless) but of making the world feel "real". There is a basic sense of consistency (or at least metaconsistency) such that you feel like you're interacting with something that is not merely a cardboard prop, but a thing with space and depth. If that 'sense of reality', manufactured as it is, were not present, there'd be no reason to continue playing the game.

So, to bring it back around to minions: I can accept that, at least in a fantasy world, some guys are metaphysical losers. But I can't accept that they oscillate from "loser" to "winner" based upon their physical proximity to the PCs. A guy is either a minion, or he isn't... and if he stops being a minion, that would have to be subsequent to doing or experiencing something of comparable importance to the status he is gaining.

 

[Hussar]

So, to bring it back around to minions: I can accept that, at least in a fantasy world, some guys are metaphysical losers. But I can't accept that they oscillate from "loser" to "winner" based upon their physical proximity to the PCs. A guy is either a minion, or he isn't... and if he stops being a minion, that would have to be subsequent to doing or experiencing something of comparable importance to the status he is gaining.

Look at it this way. The rules are a spotlight focused on the PC's. The entire function of the rules is to determine the results of actions that the PC's take.

End of story.

As soon as you take PC's out of the equation, the spotlight is turned off, and you are free to use any rules you like. This has always been true. It's a pretty rare DM that would tear up his adventure because his BBEG actually died in an earlier adventure while he tried to level the BBEG up to the appropriate challenge for the PC's.

Instead, the DM simply writes BBEG Wiz 15 and moves on. He completely and utterly ignores all the rules that govern the PC's. The minion rules simply expand upon this. When there are no PC's around, Mr. Minion goes about his life as normal. But, when he faces a PC, he gets whacked in one hit.

 

[Kishin]

As a writer of brilliant tales, deeply moving, with complex character arcs and the ability to fairly easily respond to radical changes in cast and timing imposed on him by external factors....he is a master.

As a builder of wholly consistent worlds....erm...well, let's put it this way, I found THREE dates for the first lunar colony in canon sources.

I would take the former any day. A good story trumps (more than that, good -characters-) trump just about everything in my book. But that's more straying in to the realm of fiction writing, I imagine.

I am of the type who, when desperate, will flip open a monster manual until I find a critter which implies a plot to me, then build a plot around it -- at least enough to get by. (I rarely do more than 30 minutes prep for my 3e games; indeed, I'll sometimes brag to players that "Hey, I actually did prep work this time!") From what I've seen of 4e, it works the other way -- you get an idea then find monsters to fill it. Everything has a niche, a role, a purpose, and can't easily go beyond it. Encounters are more complex, involving larger numbers of monsters. Terrain and tactical options are more important. Everyone says it's easier to ad-hoc things in 4e, but I don't see how; stuff I used to fudge because it didn't matter now becomes vital due to expanded player movement abilities and the wide range of tactical positioning options.

I must say I'm surprised. Given your admitted love for worldbuilding and being absolutely certain of internal consistency, your self described DMing style runs almost entirely contrary to that. Ah well, never let it be said that human beings weren't complex.

The thing is, you can still fudge it. You don't have to incorporate the length and breadth of those considerations into every session/adventure, IMO. I don't see anything about 4E that makes you beholden to that. Not every fight needs to have crazy secondary terrain effects; But it does make things more interesting now and again, and clearly the intent was to provide for the greater possibilities inherent in expansion of terrain effects/tactical options/riding a dinosaur into a heavily fortified position (well, maybe not the last one), but that doesn't mean you need to wholly abandon your way of doing things.

Have you just gotten that tired of trying to pimp for 4e?

I think Hong wisely realizes when he's trying to sell a blowtorch to a guy looking for a wrench, that's all.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

So, to bring it back around to minions: I can accept that, at least in a fantasy world, some guys are metaphysical losers. But I can't accept that they oscillate from "loser" to "winner" based upon their physical proximity to the PCs. A guy is either a minion, or he isn't... and if he stops being a minion, that would have to be subsequent to doing or experiencing something of comparable importance to the status he is gaining.

Why would something "metaphysical" need to change, there isn't a big metaphysical change that happens, when by random a person trips on the stairs and falls and only gets a bump on the head and the second time when they snap their neck? The first fall the person is normal, the second they are a minion.