Minion Fist Fights

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah, the DMG in previous editions was harsh the way it prevented people from doing that.

A friend of mine found an underground cyberpunk to remove the tracking device from his DMG so he could put 1hp opponents in his game. It was harrowing for a while there.

Oh, wait, that means you could have done that with any of previous editions. So, there you go. You have three previous editions of AD&D and the BECMI version to choose from.

Hmm. That's a good reason to go 4E, even if you dislike a lot of aspects. You can just houserule anything you don't like!

Sorry, this kind of arguing doesn't really further the discussion at all. At best it shows that you can have fun even with imperfect systems, but we know that already, since basically everyone here played 3E and had fun with it at some point.

 

[Lizard]

Yeah, the DMG in previous editions was harsh the way it prevented people from doing that.

A friend of mine found an underground cyberpunk to remove the tracking device from his DMG so he could put 1hp opponents in his game. It was harrowing for a while there.

Oh, wait, that means you could have done that with any of previous editions. So, there you go. You have three previous editions of AD&D and the BECMI version to choose from.

You also had 3e "mook" rules from Atlas Games, which were also included in "Ultimate NPC" by Mongoose (via the miracle of OGL!) as "Faceless Hordes".

Those with an interest in irony might check authorship on that latter tome.

Sometimes, supporters of 4e remind me of the earnest people who show up with a booth at every GenCon, eagerly showing off their "original" fantasy game where "you don't have to memorize spells" and "wizards can use swords".

 

[Storm-Bringer]

Well, it was pretty hard to have 1 hp AC 37, +26 to hit creatures...

Why?

If it is just a narrative device to simulate the swarm of bad guy henchmen anyway, why would it be difficult to just give higher level creatures 1hp in previous editions? Previous editions had a built in 'avoid damage on a miss-effect', because no one did damage on a miss.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Saying that you can house-rule 3e to have 4e-style minions is correct.

You could use Shadowrun rules in 3.5 too.

That doesn't say anything substantive about 3e, 4e, or Shadowrun, though.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Also, Lizard, can you explain your poor-deluded-fools-at-gencon analogy?

As far as I can tell, there's not a pin of difference between the strongly pro-3e and strongly pro-4e folks, as far as logic and rhetoric go. We all chose a position based on gut feeling, and are rationalizing our feeling using logic as best we can. Standard human behavior

 

[Storm-Bringer]

That would be one way to do it (perhaps in a game that didn't emphasise tactical movement or positioning so much) - much as HeroWars handles NPC companions, which simply add Action Points to the boss PC.

But there is no difference. You are rolling a 'skill challenge' to shut off the damage that is taken on a somewhat random basis. It doesn't really matter whether it is a horde of angry orcs or one orc with the same hit points and same number of attacks. That you have distributed the damage around to other minis that stop after one successful attack isn't a mechanical difference. At best, any individual minion is a mobile trap with a difficulty of (attack roll) and a success/fail ratio of (successful attack)/(PCs hit points)

But I don't see how it's an objection to a mechanic that it (i) allows the story to involve hordes of foes and (ii) makes that horde mechanically easy to handle. If you think (i) is irrelevant, because you don't care for flavour text, then fine - but I think most RPGers do care about the flavour text. It what distinguishes an RPG from a wargame or an abstract board game.

I don't see how you need rules for that. You are arguing that flavour text needs rules to support it. By definition, it is part of the story, not the rules. The only time I can see rules being needed for a story is in some story writing competition.

Given they will never be exposed to an infinite number of miss effects, that counterfactual claim has no significance. One of the PCs will hit them (especially because some damage, such as Cleave, does not require a to-hit roll).

And yet, no matter how many times (one, ten, or a hundred) they are to receive damage from a miss-effect, it will never add up, but it will for the 2nd level Orc drudge right next to them. In effect, their hit points waver between one and infinity, depending on how well the player rolls their attack.

 

[Bagpuss]

Are you forgetting that 3e has encounter level guidelines for constructing encounters? That's not new with 4e. If your 3e DM throws 15 ninjas at you, you can guess that they're a lot lower-level than if he throws 1 ninja at you.

The problem there was one high CR ninja to make an appropriate EL, had a good chance of hitting you, and was tricky to hit. 15 ninja's of reduced CR to make the correct same appropriate EL could most likely only hit you on a 20. Thankful in 4e the minion rules fix this.

Or is your argument that 3e is so much worse at balancing encounters that the 3e encounter-level guidelines might as well not exist? In which case, I disagree with you - 3e is not THAT bad.

It's still pretty bad, especially if you go above two or three opponents.

 

[Andor]

And yet, no matter how many times (one, ten, or a hundred) they are to receive damage from a miss-effect, it will never add up, but it will for the 2nd level Orc drudge right next to them. In effect, their hit points waver between one and infinity, depending on how well the player rolls their attack.

I'm pretty leery of the minion rules, I think that's clear. But otoh I think the "No damage on a miss." rule is one of the potential saving graces of the minion system, because it helps blur the line between these critters and the rest of the game world.

E.G. If the wizard fireballs a bunch of orcs rushing at the party, and the survivors drop easily, then it makes it seem as though they actually had a few HP and the Wizard softened them up for the fighters.

It's the fact that minions are made out of soap bubbles and silly string that disturbs me. Anything that makes that less glaringly obvious is a good thing.

 

[hong]

Yeah, the DMG in previous editions was harsh the way it prevented people from doing that.

A friend of mine found an underground cyberpunk to remove the tracking device from his DMG so he could put 1hp opponents in his game. It was harrowing for a while there.

Oh, wait, that means you could have done that with any of previous editions. So, there you go. You have three previous editions of AD&D and the BECMI version to choose from.

So... 4E is bad because it lets you do stuff you could do in previous editions.

No, wait, 4E is good because it lets you do stuff you could do in previous editions.

Clearly this must also be a postcount thing.

 

[hong]

And yet, no matter how many times (one, ten, or a hundred) they are to receive damage from a miss-effect, it will never add up,

Assuming a 50% chance to hit an orc minion, it will be roughly one in a thousand orcs who survives 10 attacks, and 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 who survives 100 attacks. We can safely assume that a minion who lives through that has the protection of the gods, and hence deserves promotion to at least drudge status.

Trust me, I'm a statistician.