Minion Fist Fights

[hong]

No, vampires.

Politics is involved in pretending to be vampires?

 

[Andor]

Politics is involved in pretending to be vampires?

You never played a Vampire LARP?

 

[hong]

You never played a Vampire LARP?

Politics is involved in a Vampire LARP?

 

[AllisterH]

I don't either. I see it as a highly gamist game. The rule changes are designed to encourage a more minature driven tactical game, ensure greater balance between the classes, ensure greater viability of classes at all levels of play, remove anything from core play which is difficult to translate to a video game, allow for more open ended play by implementing diablo/WoW like 'fixed math', and so forth. It's not a story driven rules set. It is a combat driven rules set. It's a tactical skirmish game with the option to role play.
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The only thing I disagree with you is "translate to a video game". Mainly because 4E seems explicitly to rely on DM judgement calls. As Hong keeps pointing out, "don't think about it too hard/just accept it" works well with a human DM to keep things inline but as a videogame?

It would be horrendous.....

 

[hong]

The only thing I disagree with you is "translate to a video game". Mainly because 4E seems explicitly to rely on DM judgement calls. As Hong keeps pointing out, "don't think about it too hard/just accept it" works well with a human DM to keep things inline but as a videogame?

It would be horrendous.....

Somehow, "different rules for PCs and NPCs" seems to have morphed into "video gamey".

This is of course a total furphy, because "different rules for PCs and NPCs" is in fact anime.

 

[Andor]

Politics is involved in a Vampire LARP?

Yes. Also hair dye.

 

[hong]

Yes. Also hair dye.

No, politics is not involved in a Vampire LARP.

 

[med stud]

Two things: The main difference between low level opponents of previous editions and 4e minions is that the minions are dangerous. Against a level 12 party, 100 orcs are just tedious. They have no realistic chance of being a real danger to 4 mid/high level PCs.

100 orc warrior minions are nothing to sneeze at. They hit often enough, together they hit hard and if you are not careful, they can kill you. You will still kill them left and right and you can take on far more of them than regular level 9 orcs, but there is a point of playing out the fight.

This means that you can have the PCs engage huge amounts of enemies and still keep the drama. The fight will be dynamic and victory won't be a given. If those orc warriors instead were 1 HD creatures with AB +3, there would be no need to play it out. You could just narrate the death of the orcs instead.


The second thing is the in-the-game-world vs the in-the-rules is how much it takes to kill a mionion compared to a "real" creature.

Example in game: An orc minion is shot at five times by archers. Everyone misses their attack except for the last one. That means that it took FIVE attacks to kill the minion. The next orc, who is not a minion, is attacked FOUR times by the same archers and everyone hits. They roll good damage and the orc falls over. This means that the minion took one more attack to kill than the non-minion. In the game world, this would mean that it took more to kill the minion than it took to kill the non-minion, hence the archers would most likely think that that orc was tougher. I don't think anyone of the archers would pick up their stale muffins for the rest of the fight.

 

[Lizard]

Thus, there is no reason, in game, for anyone to conceptualize making bombs to dispose of minions. You state that "city guards aren't minions" as if this were empirical fact.

It is. We've seen the stat blocks.

Now, it's possible there are Night Watch Grunts which ARE minions. The question is, do they know it? Or is it discovered the hard way?

"We sent Corporal Smith out with the grenade to kill those orcs."
"And?"
"He's dead."
"Huh. I could have sworn we had a 'no minion' policy in the guard."
"That's for the Elite Watch, sir. He was with the Slum Patrol. They'll take anyone."
"Oh well..."

Heck, I'm fairly certain that you could have epic adventures where dragons are minions. An epic level dragon guarded by all sorts of smaller dragon progeny.

Send in the peasants to clear them out. 20 per dragon. Peasants are cheap.

Yet, as far as the in game world is concerned, there is no "minion" designation. Simply because there is absolutely no way to test it. If you throw a stale muffin at someone, he's not going to die, because his minion status depends on his relationship to the PC's.

Is this explicitly stated anywhere? Are there rules for "deminioning" someone?

We know this for an absolute fact. The designers have said as much. THIS IS NOT SIMULATIONISM. Why do you insist on trying to force these rules to be simulationist?

Because regardless of the purpose of the rules, players WILL treat them as descriptions of the universe, and to the extent they need to be told "Well, yes, according to the rules you could do that, but you can't, because that's not how the rules are supposed to be used", they will feel limited and constrained. If game balance is based on "People should honor the spirit of the rules", game balance is broken.

It's like being in a video game where you can blow up tanks, but not a flimsy wooden door, because the game designer wants you to find a key. It blows immersion out of the water.

Now, to be fair, according to a blog post by Mike Mearls, 4e explicitly opposes that style of play, encouraging players to treat the environment as 'real' and not as a set of skill check DCs. Unofrtunately, that kind of thinking is inherently simulationist and doesn't mesh well with anti-simulationist rules.

 

[hong]

It is. We've seen the stat blocks.

Now, it's possible there are Night Watch Grunts which ARE minions. The question is, do they know it? Or is it discovered the hard way?

"We sent Corporal Smith out with the grenade to kill those orcs."
"And?"
"He's dead."
"Huh. I could have sworn we had a 'no minion' policy in the guard."
"That's for the Elite Watch, sir. He was with the Slum Patrol. They'll take anyone."
"Oh well..."

So... a plan to kill the bad guys by dropping a fireball at ground zero fails, and this is a Bad Thing?

Send in the peasants to clear them out. 20 per dragon. Peasants are cheap.

It is going to be generally assumed that the players want to wear the white hats. Or at worst, slightly grimy grey hats. Players who deliberately put on black hats are nobody's problem but their own.

Is this explicitly stated anywhere? Are there rules for "deminioning" someone?

Why do you need this?

Because regardless of the purpose of the rules, players WILL treat them as descriptions of the universe, and to the extent they need to be told "Well, yes, according to the rules you could do that, but you can't, because that's not how the rules are supposed to be used", they will feel limited and constrained. If game balance is based on "People should honor the spirit of the rules", game balance is broken.

Game balance works perfectly fine. This is not a game balance problem, but a believability problem, and that you conflate the two illustrates a poor understanding of what constitutes game balance.