Minion Fist Fights

[Andor]

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

My bad. I'm still getting these new roles confused.

 

[Scribble]

OK, let's say that a level 22 minion has AC 25 and AB +20. That means that 95% of the time it will kill a peasant, while the peasant will kill the minion 5% of the time. There you have your numbers, the demon minions will kill peasants by the score.

Which also indicates that unless your peasants are psycho death lovers... they will kill a minion 0% of the time. Once they see the first 95% (or more likely a lot less) die without making a scratch on the thing... I'm prettys sure they'd run.

Unless of course there's a big neon sign over the minion's head indicating that each of them has a 5% chance to kill the creature in one hit. In which case, why are we still arguing about lack of realism???

 

[Andor]

OK, Andor. The D&D game you are playing, where the warlord has figured out his hit point value via darts and can announce it to the world, doesn't match my "pretend the stuff offstage follows logical laws" game.

But your position is internally consistent, I think we each understand the opposing points of view, so I have nothing else to say about it. But I'd sit in on your D&D game, and I bet it would be fun.

Thanks.

I'm in the slow process of cooking up a campaign. If you're in central Florida when I get it done, you're welcome to come play.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If the math has really been fixed, there's not really a good reason to keep the nat-20 auto-hit or nat-1 auto-miss rules in the game.

Overall, I agree with what you stated. A high level minion should definitely be scaled down to a solo creature appropriate for fighting low-level commoners, should that be the scenario. Well said.

However, I think that the nat-20 / nat-1 rule will still be necessary for adjudicating some rare cases.

Suppose a fighter was fighting a well-armored creature (a soldier) a few (4 levels?) above his level. He might need a 15 base chance to hit, which is fine. Now a seperate creature hits him with it's 1/encounter fear ability that reduces his chance to hit by -4 (now he needs a 19 to hit). Another creature trips him, so he's prone and receives an additional -2 to hit (he can now no longer hit the creature, unless the nat-20 auto hit rule exists). It's better to give the fighter a chance to hit than none at all.

I admit, it will likely be a very rare occurance for circumstances to conspire JUST SO that you need to invoke the nat-20 / nat-1 rule. It seems to me that the math dictates that outside of multiple conspiring factors, it should be fairly impossible to arrive at a character that can only hit on a nat-20 or only miss on a nat-1 (assuming the DM is doing his job and not throwing enemies that the PCs aren't supposed to be facing, such as a level 20 creature against a level 1 party). Nonetheless, for those rare situations where it does occur, I suspect the rule will remain.

 

[Lacyon]

Overall, I agree with what you stated. A high level minion should definitely be scaled down to a solo creature appropriate for fighting low-level commoners, should that be the scenario. Well said.

However, I think that the nat-20 / nat-1 rule will still be necessary for adjudicating some rare cases.

Suppose a fighter was fighting a well-armored creature (a soldier) a few (4 levels?) above his level. He might need a 15 base chance to hit, which is fine. Now a seperate creature hits him with it's 1/encounter fear ability that reduces his chance to hit by -4 (now he needs a 19 to hit). Another creature trips him, so he's prone and receives an additional -2 to hit (he can now no longer hit the creature, unless the nat-20 auto hit rule exists). It's better to give the fighter a chance to hit than none at all.

Iin that particular case, the Fighter should stand up. Barring that, maybe he should make an attack that still has an effect on a miss, delay until an ally leader can give him an attack bonus, maneuver around the creature to achieve a flank, or otherwise make do under the circumstances.

I admit, it will likely be a very rare occurance for circumstances to conspire JUST SO that you need to invoke the nat-20 / nat-1 rule. It seems to me that the math dictates that outside of multiple conspiring factors, it should be fairly impossible to arrive at a character that can only hit on a nat-20 or only miss on a nat-1 (assuming the DM is doing his job and not throwing enemies that the PCs aren't supposed to be facing, such as a level 20 creature against a level 1 party). Nonetheless, for those rare situations where it does occur, I suspect the rule will remain.

I'm not against the nat-20-rule per se, and don't mind if it's there, but it may well not be in the rules.

 

[Scribble]

Iin that particular case, the Fighter should stand up. Barring that, maybe he should make an attack that still has an effect on a miss, delay until an ally leader can give him an attack bonus, maneuver around the creature to achieve a flank, or otherwise make do under the circumstances.



I'm not against the nat-20-rule per se, and don't mind if it's there, but it may well not be in the rules.

I can kind of see them removing the natural 20 thing. Especialy with, as mentioned above the possibility of still harming on a miss.

 

[Umbran]

Cadfan, you've shown an egregious lack of respect for your fellow posters. These boards expect and require you respect the folks around you.

Please don't post in this thread again.

 

[Korgoth]

I think the key assumption here is that hit points are somehow a property of the person, and that they shouldn't have to change based on circumstances. Instead, what changes is the lethality of the circumstances. A character may trip and fall one day and only take one point of damage because the DM rolled low on 1d6. The second time, he may have critically fumbled a Dexterity check, or some other circumstance occured which increased the damage from the fall to 3d6, and the DM rolled three sixes. In both cases, the results are fully consistent with the fact that he had 4 hp, and will continue to have 4 hp unless there is some change to the person (say, gaining a level, or losing Constitution).

Interestingly enough, I recall an anecdote from a TSR staffer that in the early days of D&D (when a character's Hit Dice were expressed as XdY in the rules), he used to roll hit points for the PCs every session. So, a character with 5d8 Hit Dice could have 20 hit points one session and 40 hit points the next. If that approach had become the standard, it would be much easier to describe minions and paragon-level fighters dying due to falling off horses.

OD&D seems quite open to interpretation about just when you roll your hit dice... rolling every session is not unreasonable.

But I would say, even then, that they're still a consistent number of hit dice. The notion that Johnny Orc is standing around being invincible one day, and the next day, purely because the PCs have shown up, he becomes a 1-hitpoint wonder... that's just far too arbitrary and contrived for me.

I know that my response opens the door to a million arbitrary and contrived things to be trotted out. What can I say? It's a matter of degree. The status of an NPC possessing a modicum of stability is simply one of those things that's required for me to get a feeling of stability and depth from the fantasy world. Bob the Villager is Bob the Villager... he's not Bob the Weak one day and then Bobowulf the Mighty the next day.

I can see what people are saying with their appeals to "narrative" and "story": the game world is admittedly a contrivance. But there's a difference between a work by Jackson Pollock and a work by Bouguereau or Raphael. The former is just a bunch of squiggles, like an ugly wallpaper. The latter actually look like people and real things. They're obviously not real people and things (they're paintings!), but they look like them. They're pleasing because they possess a semblance of the basic congruence of real life.

Fortunately I think that Minions can be interpreted in a way consistent with the old 'metaconsistency' of traditional D&D.

 

[med stud]

Which also indicates that unless your peasants are psycho death lovers... they will kill a minion 0% of the time. Once they see the first 95% (or more likely a lot less) die without making a scratch on the thing... I'm prettys sure they'd run.

Unless of course there's a big neon sign over the minion's head indicating that each of them has a 5% chance to kill the creature in one hit. In which case, why are we still arguing about lack of realism???

I very much agree. If the peasants are charmed into attacking or if they are some kind of fanatics looking for martyrdom, you would see the 95% odds in action. Otherwise they would most likely run just from the sight of the demons.

BTW, this doesn't only go for peasants. A level 1 fighter would have problems fighting one minion with that kind of AB and AC. Most likely that minion will have a damage output at about 15 damage, which gives the fighter something like 3 rounds to get a natural 20. Otherwise, the minions pulls of a victory.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

That's where D&D entered the picture. One fighter can stand against 50 orcs and the orcs will be toast if the fighter is high enough level. Those orcs essentially were minions, it's just that they weren't explicitly called it....I would say that minions aren't anything new to D&D, it's just that the game is open about it this time.

Funny thing is we play D&D for exactly the same reason. Because it supports a mythic feel where level is king. That's exactly the reason I have a problem with minions. They completely short circuit the level-based design scheme. The whole point of level is that a level three monster is of little to no threat against a level 14 PC even in huge numbers. They're only going to touch the PC on a crit. Yet an appropriate level enemy IS a threat and can reliably damage the PC while soaking at least a couple rounds of damage from the PC. These minions are neither fish, nor foul, nor good red meat.

They're a completely narrativist construct from a Forge game applied to D&D. They have all the modifiers of a level appropriate monster to be a real threat to the PCs yet drop like a glass ninja when struck once because they don't have level appropriate HP. Minions stand completely outside the structure of a level-based game for so called "dramatic purposes". This isn't a skill-based game, if the PCs are supposed to mow through a bunch of insignificant enemies you make them lower level and accept that they aren't supposed to be a credible threat to the PCs, they're chaff. On the other hand an enemy with the modifiers to be a threat should have the level to actually be a threat instead of a speedbump.